How do you figure? You have to follow strict rules of procedure to compose a six-part fugue. Or d'you suppose that a wild display of unbridled emotion wil somehow magically result in a masterpiece popping out of your arse?

Johnny-Boy and gsmonks! Boys! Behave!
Structure without emotion is crap. Emotion without structure is also crap. We all knew that already. Next.

Judging from the timbre of your guys' comments, you want the process of writing classical music to be simple and easy. In other words, you want to be seen as having mastered a very difficult and highly technical profession when you're not willing to do the work and/or assimilate the knowledge.

Furthermore, you want to derail any talk that entails discussing the actual content and mechanism of composing music.

This is highly reminiscent of a writers' site I once belonged to, where I was asked to run and moderate a thread on grammar. What ended up happening was that people who hate the study of grammar derailed the thread, calling people with a keen interest in grammar "grammar nazis" and so on. For some reason the thread seemed to act as a magnet for people who had no interest in grammar, but who felt they had the right to piss on anyone who did.

Interestingly, the same thing is happening here. This thread is about furthering Western music, but those of you doing most of the posting are attacking the subject, and myself for bringing it up.

If this were a site dedicated to writing classical music, you guys would effectively have sabotaged it and shut it down.

Well, bravo! Well done! What a positive, wonderful thing you've accomplished! You should be proud!

Behave? It's known as stating one's opinion. Are you some kind of a self-appointed referee? Besides; I know crap as well as the next guy.

Spot on Jared. This one's going in my quotable quotes book!

Going by the last two posts, I rest my case.

This forum is a complete waste of time. That's it for me.

"Judging from the timbre of your guys' comments, you want the process of writing classical music to be simple and easy. In other words, you want to be seen as having mastered a very difficult and highly technical profession when you're not willing to do the work and/or assimilate the knowledge" - gsmonks

Your process of labeling people is remarkable, if not inaccurate. Okay... you do your thing and I'll do mine. As long as both methods turn out good results, nothing else matters.

Peace, John

Exactly. It's the fruit that matters. How it got produced is secondary.

You're the one who kept responding (5 times) to your own original post. You were trying to get people to respond. I'm not trying to argue or start unhappy discourse, I'm really not! I'm upset that it had to come to this in such an un-political forum. I disagree entirely with your idea of composition. It should never be so limited. Why further only Western music? If this site were dedicated only to classical music, I would never have made an account here. This is the composers' lounge, not the western classical composers' lounge! Structure is great and can help propel a piece forward, but without emotion, technically created pieces fall flat. I have friends who struggle with composing for this very reason. I re-read everything that you wrote on this thread, and I have to say I'm getting a mixed message. On the one hand you preach closed composition techniques that have been dead (unchanged) for centuries, and on the other you are trying to say that composers must break new ground. I disagree with both of these things, but they do not coincide...

I did not mean to misinterpret what you meant with the "layman." But you did say that


and then you tried to say that you didn't mean the layman "doesn't understand emotion" in the music. Haha.

I disagree with you, but I don't think that's a call for animosity. This should be a constructive debate, and if you're going to get all fussy when people disagree with you, then it takes away from the learning.

Imagine (I exaggerate, just slightly mind you) witnessing Einstein and Dirac beginning a fascinating conversation, but it only lasts two minutes till they start shouting opposing opinions about which way the toilet paper should unroll. You might try to prod them back to sanity.

Everyone knows that toilet paper should unroll from the bottom.

Especially if you have a cat!

Wonderful. So stop stinking up this thread with crosstalk and go somewhere else.

I did not "respond" to my own post. It was an ongoing series of posts on the same subject, primarily because this box doesn't work with large posts. But you know that.

If you disagree, do something constructive and post elsewhere. If you can't stay on topic, stop bogging the thread down with crosstalk, and stop trying to derail it.

Which has what to do with furthering classical music, exactly?

Which has what to do with this thread?

Which has what to do with furthering classical music, exactly?

That is a load of bollocks. There was no "conversation". What there was was contradiction and crosstalk.

No, it's not a case of stating one's opinion. It's a case of derailing someone else's thread with b.s..

The thing is, Jared, this thread is about furthering classical music. You can not cause progress through emotional means. Every advance in classical music has been through technical means. This is because it takes technical know-how to work with musical devices.

Writing from a standpoint of emotion is no different from writing popular music, and as we all know, popular music consists of static forms that do not progress.

Progress, after all, is what this thread is about.

Or what part of that do the lot of you not understand?

If you have an opinion about that, express it elsewhere. Start your own thread. But THIS thread is about advancing classical music.

Anyway, now that we're back on track . . .

It has been claimed many times, down through the years, that everything that can be done has been done.

The response to this claim was the counterpoint of Bach, free modulation, floating tonality, serialism, bi-tonality, microtonalism, and other systems yet to be invented.

The question at present is what is to be done next?

"The question at present is what is to be done next?"

Maybe it is time for emotionalism.

All kidding aside; though I adhere as much as possible to my emotions when composing, I'm sure my thorough education in theory & harmony directs me at least unconsciously. I do believe music should be constructed into some intelligible form.

Also, we're using the same half-tone raw material (except for the handful of quarter-tone fanatics). I try not to worry as much about discovering new ground as being true to myself. I'd like to think part of me manifests in everything I compose. i.e., Chopin is Chopin, Rachmaninov is Rachmaninov, Ravel is Ravel, and I do hope, for better or worse, that Johnny-Boy is Johnny-Boy.

John

Yes, but, this thread is about progress. So if emotionalism can break new ground, maybe provide us with some examples?

One area I've been working on, which shows great promise in terms of supplying a composer with a vocabulary of some pretty raw emotion, is bimodality, or bimodalism.

Modality is only modality if it comes equipped with its attendant chord vocabulary, otherwise what you have is diatonicism. Bimodality, to be bimodal, therefore has to use the chord vocabularies of two modes.

The resulting effect is that of a highly unsettling moodiness, that in many ways is more emotionally primal than bitonality.

What about throwing some paint onto a written score. That's new.

Here's something I composed last week. I'm influenced by different eras (within the same piece). I also like adding sfx (non-musical elements to jive the emotions further).

Not sure if it's new ground, but it's a new slant on old ground.

John

Peculiar Nightmare
http://schicksville.com/Music/Peculiar%20Nightmare.mp3

You wrote about advancing classical music alone, but I disagree. I do not think it's wise to consider the advancement of "classical" music rather than simply "music" in general. Out of all the pieces of classical music I love listening to, I enjoy them for two reasons: 1) They impact me emotionally, and 2) They make me think. Who are you to say that you can't progress through emotional means? I cannot stand music that lacks emotion. If the focus was on technicality or the science behind the composition, I as well as the majority of modern listeners will simply skip over it. It's BORING. You need emotion to progress in any form of music, and I would in fact argue that "art" music is the only form of composition where sheer technicality truly matters for progression. If popular music consists entirely of static forms that do not progress, then explain why the Beatles do not sound like Lady Gaga. All pop art takes a long time to change because the majority of it is basically just copied and pasted from the few artists in the loop who are willing to try creative things. I know this from the friends I have at USC, who are struggling with pop composition.

You aren't going to consider the thousands of examples of musical progression through primarily emotional means. But I will give you some credit here and say that when music is composed with nothing but emotions considered, it rarely does progress. If you subject yourself entirely to emotion as a composer, you are completely at the mercy of pre-conceived ideas about the art. Some degree of technical consideration is necessary. But what you're talking about with furthering classical music makes it sound like you want to compose as if you're writing down physics problems, and no listener wants to hear that. If you don't want opinions, why did you start this thread? I'm giving relevant feedback concerning my opinions. WHY are you getting so mad???

Just listened and enjoyed! Nice stuff.

If you go back and read the entire thread, you'll find that I tried something similar in terms of randomness.

It sounds like what you'd get if a lounge pianist was asked to write a film score. It's not original by any stretch of the imagination, but it is witty in a campy kind of way, like the movie Betelgeuse.