Music and the lies through which it is held up by the rest of society.

I was recently struck by an extremely interesting event that unfolded before my very eyes, only to my utter distaste.

As I layed back in my chair I listened to my good freind "Joe" talk to three of my other freinds in his basement. Their talks stumbled upon the techno track me and my one freind had worked on all through the previous night. As he clicked the song on to their insistent calls for a listen I sank even deeper into my chair. After the song was over the talk commenced a little like this.

"Wow, thats really cool that you guys made that and all" - One of the Three

"Ya, how do you guys do it?" - Another one of the three

"Well, it just kind of comes to us and then manifests itself." - Joe

"Cool does it just kind of come to you guys in your heads?" - The first one who spoke -

"Sure" - Joe

Well quite to the contrary NONE of the music actually came into our heads. I composed all of it on the computer using strickt just theory and a little bit of some scraggy midi playback which I find to be horriblly gross. Hence the little bit of it.

After that we input it into the computer, get the techno instruments we want, then arrange the form of these parts.

All in all it is the most methodical type of music I have ever made in my life. "Although it sounds quite nice. :D"

My questions for you all...

A. Was it ok for "Joe" to garner the respect he wanted with a little white lie?

B. Have you ever caught yourself "mystifying" your own music in order to get that little bit more of a twist from the audiences collective thought ?

C. Is it ok to let society hold false pretentions about our art in order to garner more respect so that we may continue on in our art?

A. Was it ok for "Joe" to garner the respect he wanted with a little white lie?

I guess it doesn't matter much in the end if the musical product is satisfactory. The "effort" thing is very relative. Maybe he did actually believe what he said.

B. Have you ever caught yourself "mystifying" your own music in order to get that little bit more of a twist from the audiences collective thought ?

Nope, not really. The truth is weird enough as it is for me. I generally don't work long periods of time on a single piece since I'm pretty sure of what I want from the start and most of my work is really just setting out the music like I planned. Sometimes I can change something in between or deviate from what I originally wanted, but it's still all relatively quick and painless.

C. Is it ok to let society hold false pretensions about our art in order to garner more respect so that we may continue on in our art?

... I think that's a non-problem, people who aren't artists don't generally have a clue about art, artists or the creative process so it'll seem to be all mysterious and magical anyways unless they actually try it themselves.

Though, really, I don't really care much about what kind of process or method people had when writing their music since it's a personal thing. If someone says it took 30 years to write 2 measures of music, I have no reason not to believe them. Does it mean anything about the finished product? No, of course not. You can spend years writing a piece which anyone can come and just "not like" all the same, so it's a personal thing more than an objective result-oriented thing like some people who aren't very informed may think.

As a matter of fact, I really don't think the vast majority of composers are even aware of what their creative processes are like at all. But does that really matter? I don't think so since music gets made anyways and that's the important part of the whole deal.

Of interest, this psychology blog post:

PsyBlog: The Hidden Workings of Our Minds

I agree with SSC on the last one. To people who can't compose music, it doesn't matter how you do it, it sees magical. And, as long as your music is good, I don't think those people will care how you did it.

As far as taking the glory for something you didn't really put the effort into... I guess Joe's not harming anyone, but I generally go for the truth. I find that anything I do with my writing always seems so obvious to me, and I sometimes need to be reminded that it's not obvious to everyone else.

As far as "the lies through which it is held up by society..." I don't think that we're really keeping some big secret from society in order to keep them guessing any more than the man who fixes my washing machine is keeping any secrets from me. Sometimes I can say in perfectly plain words how I compose my music. He could tell me in perfectly plain words how he fixes my washing machine, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to do it. Sometimes society assumes things about artists, and some people want to believe those things so badly that no matter how you try to dissuade them, prove that you're not a magician, they won't listen to you.

Oh, well.

My father, an electrical engineer who happened to be a phenomenal guitarist (which was how he paid for his studies), and I had this discussion shortly before he died.

By that point, he had been playing the guitar for nearly 60 years. I had always assumed that he, of all people in my family, would understand what it was that I did when I composed.

And yet!

I was wrong, to him, it was a deep mystery. It had never dawned on him just how analytical composition really was. He also somehow was under this misguided impression that composers sit there and wait for the "muse" to strike and take control of the quill.

I'm really glad I had the chance to speak to him about it.

Because, quite honestly, I put in WAY too much work getting my university degrees to have people thinking that it's some sort of mystical experience! I WANT people to know that I trained for years. HARD! That composition IS analytical, and intellectual.

Composition has about the same percentage of "magical/mystical" involvement as a performance by a soloist. They put hard work into it, hours of practice, years of lessons, all the time to learn the mechanical, technical aspect of the piece of music they will be playing. The little bit of "inspiration" and magic comes at the very moment of performance. It's a minor part of the process. Well, same for composition.

That composition IS analytical, and intellectual.

Quoting because that point needs to be said over and over again.

Because, quite honestly, I put in WAY too much work getting my university degrees to have people thinking that it's some sort of mystical experience! I WANT people to know that I trained for years. HARD! That composition IS analytical, and intellectual.

Composition has about the same percentage of "magical/mystical" involvement as a performance by a soloist. They put hard work into it, hours of practice, years of lessons, all the time to learn the mechanical, technical aspect of the piece of music they will be playing. The little bit of "inspiration" and magic comes at the very moment of performance. It's a minor part of the process. Well, same for composition.

Well, the reality of the situation is that there are millions of ways to approach writing music. Someone who's had 30 years of experience, PhDs, whatever, can just as well throw some dice and write chance music on a whim without much care. Likewise, someone who maybe just started composing or studying can spend four years writing something and struggle all the way. The end product is separate from the process necessary to create it since unless you knew what the process and the anecdotes surrounding it were you really can't tell one from the other in any way other than what the end result is.

I think that the distinction is that the "ideal" attitude to have with composition is to treat it like you'd treat playing piano or cello for a performance like you said, work on it and labor intensively to "get better." But that's far from the only way or attitude, and certainly having it doesn't automatically ensure any measure of "quality" or anything of the like.

Composition can be very intellectual and analytical all you want, but it can also be otherwise. Take improvisation, which can vary greatly in complexity or density, intellectuality, etc. I guess it's the distinction of "Well that doesn't count as a real "piece" which I don't want to make, since anything can as well be a "piece." Composers publishing improvisations isn't unheard of and indeed a lot of baroque pieces depend on improvisation or they'd be monotonous or simply incomplete though that's just one example in a million.

Mostly, what I really want to avoid is trying to justify me having studied years and spent a good deal of my time studying music when the truth is that some kid writing a pop song or improvising on a guitar is just as valid an artist as I am despite all the studies. This scraggy isn't science, it's up to taste at the end of the day so I don't hold any illusions as to my study being anything more than personal interest in an area I love and that it in no way makes anything I produce creatively "better" by DEFAULT than anyone else's creative output just because of pretty papers I may or may not have hanging on my walls.

On the other hand, stuff like music history or musicology which are supposed to further the knowledge of the music as a field in humanistic studies, is an entirely different topic. Just be clear, I'm strictly talking about composition studies and the creative process. Sure as hell someone with a PhD in musicology has all the right in the world to think their opinion counts perhaps slightly more than CrzyGrrl1991's in a debate about french baroque ornament notation tendencies and analysis (favourite topic of mine, lol.)

Not to say composition studies are worthless or any of that, I'm only trying to put into perspective that there are many, MANY ways to get things done and write music and no single method is better than any other. Sure, some are more pedagogic than others (encouraging discipline, organization, etc!) but the finished product is something that can come around through any number of means. Just because something got written through X or Y processes or whatever does not (and should not) discredit the artwork as such. :>

... Which is sadly something I hear very often as an attack against works which are deemed scrafty since "well a monkey can do it!" It may be true that a piece that requires throwing a chair across the room and farting does not take amazing skill to perform (unless the chair is heavy or the room is big,) art is art, taste is taste. I defend people's right to do whatever they want and slap "art" on it because hell I like to have that right too. That's artistic freedom.

So yeah, got that off my chest, thx.

I'd argue there's still some magic in even intellectual writing. You can write a perfect Bach-styled chorale, using all his favourite motifs in the way that he would use them, and it still has the chance of not having the same power an original Bach would. That chance provides a bit of magic.

There's some little spark to composition that makes music able to be at some level "magic."

Getting to the original post, society isn't too into art as a whole. They'll go to an art gallery or what have you, but they don't care what the artist has to say about it, deep down, or the trials he's gone through. If they enjoy the art, they are happy, if not, they might try to redeem it in another way, but they're not going to connect with it. All the explanation simply bores people.

That's what I've run into with people looking at pD patches I've written, or even major papers. They interested in how it sounds, not the process. So a white lie here and there glosses over, not necessarily belittles.

The whole "magical" view of music I think just shows the disconnect between man and the practice of art. When man's main art activity is a much more passive one (such as watching TV or film or play) than creating it, he or she has less of an understanding and therefore the human tendency to mythologize that which he or she does not understand. This of course can reach the state of religion (which is, in part, a mythology of extremely high transpersonal value).

Before I digress further, in regard to the first post, sometimes composers reach a point in their adeptness where they undervalue their efforts because the audience, due to lack of craft or just exposure, improperly value their products.. Therefore, you underestimate the surety of your craft and your friends may be overvaluing the integrity of the product. Your reaction is quite normal as I doubt highly your audience will sit for an hour or two to hear all the theory and mechanics behind the process (I mean I am thankful for central air and the people who maintain and repair it but not too interested in a deep understanding of its workings)

1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

yeah, basically applies to all (great) work, as we composers (should) know....if you really write your music like that ("magically") then it's fine to say so, I guess, but it most cases it's not true. There's usually at least some additional tweaking and changing of our original concepts, and the best works are, I think, well thought and worked out.

Artists use lies to tell the truth.

Politicians use lies to cover it up.

~Kal

Artists use lies to tell the truth.

Politicians use lies to cover it up.

~Kal

Quoted for win and awesome.

I don't think composers who "mystify" their work are necessarily lying. Maybe they've had these concepts drilled in to them so hard in music school/elsewhere that they begin to come naturally to them, and they feel that their music sprang from some unknown source deep in their mind even though it really came from years of training.