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Looper's Delight
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It's a few different elements, and I admit that I'm probably full of BS. 1) At the time I was entering college, the instruments I played were almost entirely non-melodic instruments - mostly tapes, effects and contact microphones. The classes my college were offering focused primarily on melody and harmony. 2) Any melodies in music I was making at the time were pretty basic and minimal, and I didn't see any need to grow beyond that at the time. (This was the time of techno, industrial and punk rock being very popular.) Even now, I'm much more interested in the characteristics of the sound than the actual melody, but I have to admit that harmony and pitch have a lot to do with the characteristics. 2) I had this thing in my head at the time that learning music theory would = conformity. In the mind of an 19 year-old misfit like me, conformity was a 4-letter word at the time. 3) It seemed at the time like it would be a lot of work for a little gain. I was learning stuff at home that excited me a lot more. Learning a new scale didn't seem that interesting compared to learning how to make a chair shriek emotively across a cement floor. 4) I was afraid that the sounds I was interested in would be seen as worthless in the music theory community. (That was probably not true.) 5) Part of me got all grumpy when I thought I discovered some great new tone cluster or quirky melody through breaking a bunch of rules, and then some music theory person would say "oh, that's just a blankity blank scale". Part of me really wanted to believe I was the first/only person doing it. Later, my perspective was "ok, everything I do melodically is going to have a name in music theory, but that doesn't mean I can't do it." 6) Somehow, learning the science behind how everything worked felt like it was going to take all the wonder of discovery out of music. Imagine that you're just about to see Star Wars for the first time, but before doing so, you have to listen to a Joseph Cambell lecture discussing everything that's going to happen in the movie and how everything is a literature device that's been around for thousands of years. That's what it felt it would be like. 7) And here's one that I thought was wise: I wanted to enter adulthood with skills other than making music. I could always make music for fun, but I didn't honestly think I was going to have a career making the weird music I was interested in. I wanted to be an engineer producer at the time, but was realizing that I didn't have the patience to butt heads with people in bands. So, anyway, now I'm a grown-up, about 17 years after the decision to not major in music. What's it like now? The good: --Sometimes there's an assumption made that if you don't take music theory, you don't learn *anything*. That's not true. I learned different stuff. --Whenever I hit a wall, I either worked around it or turned my focus in a different direction. I don't think I'd be as sonically unique if I didn't hit as many walls. --I think I do ok as a musician. In the improvised music world, people like playing with me because I'm unique and I've learned how to adapt quickly to what they're doing. --I think I'm slightly more successful as a musician than I would be if my skills were more standardized. (If I was doing stuff that more people did, I don't think I'd measure up as well.) --I think I'm happier to be in a non-music related profession. I don't rely on my artistic energy to pay my bills. All my artistic energy can be spent doing the things I want. --Many of the music majors I know are struggling to remain in a music-related profession, as if it would be a failure if they did something else. --I don't make a huge amount of money at my day job, but I make more than many of my professional musician friends. --I don't depend on music to "defend my existence". That's kind of a biggie. As a teen, that was my only perceived value about myself. Now I have a lot of skills that are independent of that. I might do ok in a zombie apocalypse. The bad: --I'm musically naive - very much so. If I happen to stumble on a great melody, it's usually by accident. I'm sure I play a lot of things that sound great to me, but are old news to people who have the training. I get stuck in ruts very easily. --I can't communicate my musical ideas very well. I can't write sheet music. The best I can do is play it myself and hope other people can imitate it the way I hear it. If I can't play it myself, then I'm screwed. --Sometimes when trying to get other musicians to play for me, sometimes I'm frustrated that people don't think about things the same way I do. For example, I want a written cue for: "Try to make it sound like you're playing the drums from 16 feet away with 3 broomsticks tied together. No, you're way too accurate. Really, you need to sound like ... no, now you're just being silly. You need to sound like it's a really clumsy interface, but you're doing the best you can with it." --I'm the dumbest person in any band. Or at least I feel that way. I learn pretty well by ear and trial & error, but that's a lot slower than those who can read sheet music or be told "go from A chord to D chord". --I miss a lot of opportunities: I often have to miss out on playing in improvised orchestras and other group-oriented projects because I can't read their sheet music. Likewise, I've also been afraid to sign up for collaborative residencies out of fear that I'd be the only one there who doesn't speak the language. --At this point of my life, it would be nice to know how to orchestrate. So, why don't I drop everything I'm doing and learn to read western notation? I simply don't like the system. I think the musical staff should be written chromatically, rather than requiring the reader pre-memorize a pattern of valid notes (and then breaking that rule with sharps and flats). I want the symbol for a half-note rest to actually look like it takes more time than a quarter note rest. I'd like to see notes take up as much room on a bar as their duration. (A 1/4 note takes up 1/4 of the bar.) It would be nice if the shape of the note represented the note's dynamics. Lastly, I want intervals to be standardized. I want "a third" to be an interval of 3 chromatic notes, not sometimes 5 notes and sometimes 4 notes. Then people could memorize a major scale as "2,2,1,2,2,2,1" (which people already understand). -- Matt Davignon mattdavignon@gmail.com www.ribosomemusic.com Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com http://www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt Teddy Kumpel <teddykumpel@mac.com> was all: > such an interesting topic... > > Matt... Do you think you still find music interesting BECAUSE you > decided to stay away from institutional learning? I think you would have > stayed interested no matter what... you just found all the music school > stuff too far away from your goal and you didn't see the point at the > time. Totally understandable... there were things in school I pushed > away for the same reasons.... like learning George VanEps chord > solos.... zzzzzz > > my thought about this whole thing is: > > if your goal is to be really really good at a very focused thing that > doesn't have harmony that changes quickly, like ambient music, you > probably don't need music school. > > if you want to have a diverse skill set, music school is probably right > for you. I learned how to arrange for big band, how to compose a modal > jazz song, how to hear every chord from every mode of the 4 main modal > systems, all about jazz standards and chord substitutions, accompanying > a singer in a duo, what swing is.... and a whole plethora of other > things. I don't use them all every day now, 26 years later... but I sure > have appreciated knowing all that stuff throughout the years. > > and.... really the number one reason music school is great: the fellow > students... if you're at the right school... I guess, like anything > else, some schools suck and some are good and therefore the quality of > students attracted follows. > > Rick, your story is really awesome.... you sure are not a lazy man > >