I believe only in composing music so I started this thread so that we can discuss this issue.

I realize that many here will feel threatened by my opinions. They are entitled to think what they want. But I think the highest art known is to be able to compose music on your own and completely disregard dead composers' markings on their pieces. There should be plenty of room for interpretation, deviation, and most definitely, plenty of improvising.

This is the sole purpose of playing piano.

So many of those so-called music lovers who frequent the internet in search of confinement and restriction of expression come across schemes by which they actually reproduce sounds with varying degrees of success. Such endeavor is completely worthless.

No - slavery is the only way to go!

Accidentals, articulations and slurs are only there as visual ornaments, and they must be disregarded. Happy are those without perfect pitch, or a sense of rhythm, or harmony, or voicing, for the kingdom of music is theirs forever and ever.

You've gone too far. "Composing" implies an intent, and intent implies preparation, which is bad. We must free ourselves of the burden of knowledge or preparation, because such things were originally discovered by others, and blinds you from expressing your true creativity. In fact, even knowledge of what keys we are hitting is too much, so I suggest taking apart the piano and playing the strings by hand. Only then will your true creativity flourish, and you can free yourself from the binds of the status-quo approach to learning piano. As a wise man once said "The less you know, the more you can achieve". Or something like that.

I don't necessarily believe what I posted, I was just mirroring the "Slave to the tyranny of classical music" thread.

Must be something in the air

I just throw stuff at the keys.

You just sit down at the piano without any thought of creating something and tune in to your feelings.
Then you start to play the first thing that comes to mind. In other words, your fingers come before your brain.

I realize that this is actually contradictory, and not possible, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Keys are "old school". Blowin' into it is hipper, I think.

Let's not involve fingers in it, because that requires practice and effort. Rather, play from the heart, and the music will flow from the piano of its own accord.

I can do better than that, I let my cat walk on them.

Doesn't that technically make your cat the composer? I think we'd better stick with Theowne's method. *nods wisely*

A spoof of a spoof - interesting. And interesting how close the thesis is to the 'Free to be creative' thread, which was the original target of my wit.

Not to be witty or anything but you're impartially, and in a totally unbiased way, claiming that you were witty?

JF

I'd rather think we're entering the realm of philosophy. Is the cat the composer for creatively walking on the piano... or am I the composer for creatively letting the cat on the piano?

Anyhow, Theowne's method doesn't work for me; I can't take my piano apart -- it's digital

Well, you could try... ... though finding the strings might be more difficult.

It is difficult... I once had a problem and the technician of the shop where I bought my DP was afraid of opening it (his words), so I had to wait for the Kawai man for a looooooong time. Finally he had to come from Sydney because the guy in my town said Kawai doesn't pay him enough for going to people and he was on a sort of strike....

Eh. Either way, the cat's directly involved in the positioning of the paws.

My piano's digital, too. To compensate for not being able to take it apart, I make sure not to turn it on before I start throwing stuff. This way, music will only come if one of the projectiles actually smacks the power switch. Never mind which sounds you'll hear -- whether you hear any sound at all is left to chance. I'm a purist that way.

Oh no, no, can't do that. One of your projectiles might end up setting off the pre-set recording of Bach's Two-Part Invention in C Major (if you own a Yamaha) or Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin (if you own a Roland), then the result would be disastrous!

I threw a zebra at my piano. It didn't sound like much but hey, it looks great! http://www.box.net/shared/7cf1roc75n

Ideally the cat and piano should be locked in a big box with some poison. Hey presto! You have a superposition of composed avant guard music and dead cat.

Hah. If only we could all be as creative as these cats/kittens:

Kitten on the Keys (Zez Confrey)


My cat's into modern jazz chords.

Random thoughts for a random thread:

Love that zebra piano. We could try to have a zebra play instead of a cat.

My cat shows a preference for tone clusters, too.

In one of my dance classes, there's a student who has a T-shirt that says on the front "Schrodinger's Cat Is Dead," and on the back, "Schrodinger's Cat Is Not Dead."

It's been shown that entire molecules, not just teensy things like photons and electrons, will behave in the standard quantum-mechanics manner if you put them through a double slit experiment. That is, they will show an interference pattern as if they had gone through both slits at the same time. It's been said that if you could design a big enough setup, a grand piano would behave the same way, if you threw it at the slits. But it probably wouldn't sound very good.

Have fun....

Elene