Re: Can't Read Music

>
> Many believe that being trained gives you musical ability but they're
> only half right. You may get the technical know how, but there's a
> chance your artist creativity will be frozen out. You could lose the
> ability to experiment *because* the training told you X is wrong so you
> never try X.
>
> Sometimes (and for some people) it's easier to bend the rules if you
> don't know what the rules are, and if the rules are never bent, then
> art stagnates.

This is repeated so often and really drives me crazy. Musical
education, knowledge and training does not stifle or stagnate
creativity, it enhances it and one's ability to express one's ideas and
emotions musically and communicate with other musicians. Learning the
technical ins and outs of music is not about learning "rules" to be
bent or broken, but rather about concepts and possibilities. It is
learning the language and something of the rich, deep history of music
if that's something you are interested in. The more of them
(concepts and possibilities) you know and the better you understand
them, the more you explore what others have done and learned in the
centuries preceeding you, the more you can think of and the more you
can do with your own musical efforts. Obviously the Beatles and many
others prove that you don't "need" formal training to be creative and
succeed. But the Beatles did not bend or break any "rules" of harmony,
rather, their harmonic vocabulary is relatively simple, small and
limited by their lack of training and education, they obeyed the rules
that seem like rules if you only know the simplest fundamentals of
chords and harmonies.

Studying music definitely increases one's ability to express one's
emotions and ideas musically. The range of emotions and ideas
expressed in the Beatles' music, and the level of detail to which those
emotions and ideas can be felt and heard and experienced through the
music, is minuscule, trivial, tiny, in comparison to those you can hear
explored in, say, Chick Corea's or any other accomplished jazz master.
Not that music has to be complex to convey emotions successfully and
effectively - obviously not. But the greater one's vocabulary and
understanding of what one is doing, the more options one has available
to him, the wider a pallette. It is exactly like saying you could
write more creatively if you never advanced in your reading and writing
beyond an elementary school level because you would be freer to bend
and break the "rules" you would be burdened by if you continued your
education and exploration of language and literature.

richforman

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