Non-Classical Influences?

Hey

I was wondering if people here had any non-classical influences that effected their "classical" based compositions...

I know for me, I grew up listening to the "folkies" Bob Dylan, Ani Difranco, James Taylor, the list goes on... and I feel much more akin to some of their mindsets then any compositional ideology (minimalism, 12 tone, etc)... I actually didn't really start listening to classical music until I went to college (for music) and had to... I've since fallen in love with it and have become a total classical music nerd... but i still feel akin to the folkies i grew up on and have been trying to figure out ways to incorporate these sounds/influences into my composition...

anyway, i was just curious as to what people had to say...

Never any non-classical influences. Don't want to dirty my work with some plebeian trash.

all things are influences

Any "popular" influences are just going to be common practice harmony, for the most part, anyway...

"Garbage" mainly ... (is not joke, that's the name of the Band)

YouTube - Garbage, Metal Heart

Any "popular" influences are just going to be common practice harmony, for the most part, anyway...

i disagree, there is plenty of "pop" music that utilizes more that common practice harmony (Bjork is the aforementioned example...Radiohead has done some cool things...though personally i can't stand thom yorke's voice)

also i think there are musical ideas in pop music that are valuable. rhythms, the ability to create something from a simple point of view rather than overly complex (while not making a judgement statement about either)

also i think there are musical ideas in pop music that are valuable. rhythms, the ability to create something from a simple point of view rather than overly complex (while not making a judgement statement about either)

Whether something is simple or complex is irrelevant if the writer isn't educated enough to know the difference either way.

You have to take into account that many, if not most pop "musicians" don't have any significant musical training (particularly singers, who frequently don't know SQUAT about music)... so a lot of these "non-common practice" effects are the product of "O HAI GUYS, DURR, DOES THIS SOUND AWWWSUM OR WAT?" jerking around.

Whether something is simple or complex is irrelevant if the writer isn't educated enough to know the difference either way.

As to the common practice-stuff -- the riff mentality kind of wipes clean even functional harmony...

But as to the education -- I'd point to prog rock, but the first major wave of that was filled with cross-over artists... At any rate I don't think you can compare the sniveling masses of suburbia garage bands (either of the 40-year-old or the 14-year-old type) to actual bands. Even grunge like Soundgarden has some real interesting moments (I Awake, Jesus Christ Pose)...

I think that punk music has affected me more compositionally than any other music, and that's taking into account that I only like certain punk and haven't ever considered myself in that subculture.

But I mean, stuff like some the the later Misfits (like Green Hell or Wolfsblood) really allowed my ears to open to "higher" music like Ascensions-era Coltrane and Br

Pop/Rock-music that influenced me:

-early Pink Floyd

-Gabriel-era Genesis

- Early Yes

- Gentle Giant

-a few songs by radiohead

- Mike Oldfield, especially "Ommadawn"

is an education necessary for great music? why? if something sounds cool, it sound cool, doesn't matter whether or not the guy (or gal) who wrote it had a PhD from Harvard... good music is good music...

Since my first piano teacher was a free jazzer and I often improvised with her (even though not specifically jazz), I was exposed to this kind of music early on, and it certainly had some influence on me. But free jazz isn't really that much of an opposite pole to classical music anyways, with all its similarities to other ideas that come from a more classical background, such as Fluxus. And many of the musicians I heard then were much more just "improvisers" than proponents of a specific style.

So I guess I was more influenced by the "free" aspect of it than the "jazz" aspect.

Other than that, I do like quite a lot of popular music, but I can't say it has specifically influenced me as a musician. But hey, I can't really say what has specifically influenced me in certain ways anyways. I guess I'm automatically influenced by anything I hear - or as Ferkungamabooboo said: "all things are influences".

I listen to many many types of music and feel influenced by all of it. I tend to go through phases in my listening and it really shows in my composition. I enjoy most jazz, alot of electronic music, alot of prog rock, hard rock/ metal, folk/country and alot of stuff that usually falls under 'indie'. I often listen to music and analyze whats going on in order to apply what i find to my own composition, so pretty much anything that i listen to and enjoy becomes a real influence to me.

I also feel like other media influences my composition as well.. visual art, poetry, novels etc.

All Music is the same. All Music has evolved from the same energy that is present within all sounds, and it is still evolving despite the classification and categorization of different "types" of Music. This evolutionary process is enhanced by breaking through the barriers that seperate different "types" or "kinds" of Music. It can be very difficult to percieve Music this way, and this is only one of the many points of view that I have found.

All of the Music that I write is heavily influenced by all other Music that I write, listen to, and feel within me. It is hard for me to define with any form of verbal language what "kinds" of Music I write.

I played video games constantly for most of my life and now people frequently tell me that my compositions remind them of video game music even thought I don't intend it to. And I think every other music that I devote a reasonable amount of time to listening to is an influence; especially ones I listened to in my youth or the ones I consciously endeavor to absorb into my arsenal.

Frank Zappa took many popular music forms to a whole other level. I often look to him as the role model for how all music styles have aspects worth emulating or employing in other contexts.

There are some very unique rhythmic things that pop music has to offer us...but that's about it.

I'm not saying all popular music is just common-practice harmony garbage, but the collection of popular music as a whole is loads less complex than the pool of "classical" music.

The truth is, any classically trained composer should be able to improvise a great piece of popular music in his sleep.

That pop (by that I mean folk) music is inextricably connected to our commercial music (at least to the popularization of recordings) is something to think about.

Does this blanket statement about pop extend to all "low" musics (assuming the culture's the same)?

thats a lot of parentheses...

Never any non-classical influences. Don't want to dirty my work with some plebeian trash.

I think that punk music has affected me more compositionally than any other music, and that's taking into account that I only like certain punk and haven't ever considered myself in that subculture.

But I mean, stuff like some the the later Misfits (like Green Hell or Wolfsblood) really allowed my ears to open to "higher" music like Ascensions-era Coltrane and Br

Is that not a complete contradiction in terms?

Learn sarcasm.

Any "popular" influences are just going to be common practice harmony, for the most part, anyway...

Even though this is wrong in many cases...

In cases where it IS true, often it's less about the harmony and more about rhythm and texture anyway, so lawl.

Otherwise, guess what pop music would sound like? I bet you can tell me, but I'm going to answer anyway- it would sound just like everyone from the baroque to the romantic period, harhar.

And kids wouldn't be saying "I hate this" about Mozart and "I love this" about Fall Out Boy :/

ALSO:

I'm not saying all popular music is just common-practice harmony garbage, but the collection of popular music as a whole is loads less complex than the pool of "classical" music.

complex =/= better.

Does harmonic complexity equate with quality? If so should 12 tone still be popular? Or shouldn't it have been popular at one point? What about minimalism?

Also, there's something to be said for the fact that popular music is popular... its easy to dismiss it as crass commercialism, that the songs are popular because thats what the radio plays and people are too apathetic to change the station, but there is a solid amount of audience that is connecting with a large amount of this pop music...

isn't there something to be said for a piece of music that connects with people? Isn't there some worth in that music?

And what do you do with people like Brian Eno?

Heh, indeed.

Brian Eno is like quantum mechanics. If you think you understand Brian Eno, you don't understand Brian Eno.

Flint, you should educate yourself a little on the mentality behind pop music production. The fact that it is very largely technologically mediated, for one. Much of what technology is capable of doing to sound nowadays is not expressible in terms of traditional Western notation. "Harmony" is, in a very real sense, just an academic concept when you take into account the myriad possibilities afforded by technology in terms of how sound itself - not notes - may be manipulated. Listen to Boards of Canada or something.

How do you reconcile Eno's hand in all those pop records with ambient music, visual art installations etc.? His activities have been very varied, in much the same way that Cage's career consisted of more than just 4'33". Incidentally, Eno also pioneered the use of Cageiean aleatoric techniques in generating pop material: set up the parameters, capture what occurs, mix it all together afterwards.

As for influences, I'm inclined to agree that all music heard is potentially influential to a composer, whether or not he/she is directly conscious of it.

There's one thing I've thought for some time classical musicians (from composers over performers to sound engineers) could learn from Pop music: That a CD is something different than a live concert and should also be approached differently.

In classical recordings, the demand that it should sound "as authentic as possible" and "like an actual performance" still seems to be dominant, regardless of the fact that this is a futile effort to begin with, since obviously, a CD will never be comparable to a live performance in this respect. I find most Pop music much more consequential in this respect, with its CDs that are often highly artificial products, where the sound is technically enhanced to achieve exactly the sound you want on the CD, instead of trying to imitate a concert.

Live recordings have their place too, certainly, and I'm definitely not saying there may not be any imperfections on a CD. But trying to make CDs and concerts always sound the same without question hurts -both- those medias, since you'll expect a concert to sound as on the CD, flawless, which of course never works out, and you'll expect a CD to give you the feeling to be actually "where the music plays", which also can't really work without the actual concert environment.

To actually "play their strengths", I think people producing classical CDs should consider some of the practices used in a Pop production (with care, of course), to make CDs an artistic product on their own instead of just a good copy of the "real thing".

At the end of the day, any music student could write an ok rap song. But if you were to ask Lil' Wayne to write a classical symphony, I'll bet you the result would be much more hilarious.

I half-agreed with you to here, though I'll admit the dialectic of high and low is something that I don't see as existing...

But here -- I'll challenge anyone on this site to make something of the same quality as respected rap albums. [EDIT: oh snap. you said "ok...." That blunts this diatribe a bit]

But another issue, and this is coming from my warped Spenglerian view of music history, is that American (and by shift of cultural center around 1850 [the beginning of Civilization], the rest of the west) popular music is not inherently Western. So you're in part, especially with the demography of classical composers, asking people to "cross over" cultures when you ask a classical student to write pop music.

I dunno. Just something to think about.

When I started to pay attention to every single thing I hear, It's when I began learning from almost everything, even that I used to (and sometimes still) consider "crap-music".

I used to be very radical, (about 15 years ago) I used to listen ONLY messiaen, stockhausen ... stravinsky, shostakovich was the "older" music, ... not even bach, brahms etc, nothing of that.

Then I discovered that the universe of music is as huge as the cosmos... now my music "diet" is much more complete.

I'm not trying to say that a simple pop music has more musical content that a Mahler Symphony, (no no no..that would heresy)... but from time to time you may learn a tiny thing from music you don't like. ... and the learned things can be used in "your" style ... not necessarily to create a similar music, let's say you hear something in a rock song but you use it in s Symphony.

There is only as much of one type of music as there is demand in a lot of cases, hence the relatively low comparative amount of contemporary classical music or even more "artistic" popular music. Instead, the radio plays stuff like Lady GaGa and Lil John the most, because people care more about a beat that will make them move than anything else.

Oh wtfever. All music is inherently artistic, whether the lyrics are are "gloria in excelsis deo" or "mami toot dat thangg up," whether it's super-complex total serialism or a single drum beat.

To actually "play their strengths", I think people producing classical CDs should consider some of the practices used in a Pop production (with care, of course), to make CDs an artistic product on their own instead of just a good copy of the "real thing".

Nevermind that with stuff like electronic music, there's quite a LOT you can do to really take advantage of digital media beyond just "recording a live performance," which really goes without saying by now.

I don't personally care much if they NOW decide to change their CD-making practices since practically I haven't listened to an actual CD in maybe five or so years. But, I'm all for everything else you said + more.

And now the real reason I'm posting (since obviously agreeing with what Gardner says is boring...)

Music's purposes fall into two major sections: entertainment and art. Popular music aims way more to entertain, while "classical" music cares much less about what people think.

1) Nice that to you music has such clean and cut purposes! But, obviously...

2) Let's ignore that a whole load of composers wrote for money (and therefore for PEOPLE of their time, which indeed makes their opinion rather important.) Let's also then ignore the huge amount of musicians in general who genuinely don't care about what the audience thinks on occasion, including pop/rock/jazz/other pointless divisions. Isn't the line between your purposes completely irrelevant if it changes so violently from composer to composer/piece to piece?

Instead, the radio plays stuff like Lady GaGa and Lil John the most, because people care more about a beat that will make them move than anything else. Anyone that is old enough to understand the concept of music (which is not old), could create a beat that people could dance to. Whereas, to write a good fugue, one has to have talent, or, in some cases, years of training. Even people who listen to this music normally agree with me that it's garbage. Not to say there isn't any good non-classical music, in which there are grand exceptions to the admittedly dangerous generalizations I'm making, which I've said before, but I'll repeat to save myself scrutiny.

1) You can't really backpedal like that, either you seriously believe in some of the generalizations you're making or you wouldn't be posting at all. Judging by the tone of the whole thing you probably realized halfway that you were evidently pushing a view that you can't defend. Oh well, you still posted it so no crying about it now.

2) Cuz comparing writing a 4/4 beat that anyone can "dance" to writing a fugue (presumably you mean "in old style" fugues, don't you) is not in any way a completely insane comparison. As for it requiring talent or years of training, who knows? It's entirely subjective what a "good fugue" is anyway and it could as well amount to following a simple formula much like writing a danceable beat (oh, it's another baseless assumption that a beat is all that there is to most of the music besides your precious Mozart.)

Besides, this all stinks of the typical fallacy that "difficult to write equals better music" which is just bullshit. We can already tell what your tastes are, but they are only yours and yours alone.

Now, this isn't to say classical music isn't entertaining. And it's perfectly possible to listen to Mozart without having to think about it. But if you wanted to, you could. Whereas trying to analyze the harmonic relevance to the words "Lolli, lolli, lolli, lolli, lemme see you rock dat body", would lead you nowhere. Which is FINE, because the people who wrote and listen to this music could give 2 sh*ts about any level of "quality" in the music, just appeal.

1) Because harmonic relevance = better music, right? Again, you're saying a car is bad at being a car because it can't fly like an airplane and then saying "it's ok because those idiots who like and build cars think that's fine." I'm freely adding the word idiot because from the tone of what you're saying you might as well have said it yourself.

After all, you ARE telling a huge group of people (hey me included) that we couldn't give two poo poos about any level of quality in the music. Good job.

2) Likewise, it may not be interesting to you, but I really like the blunt simplicity of having only 3 chords and an entire song built on that, lyrics and all. It isn't that much different from building an entire sonata on primary triads, except probably easier to "dance to," ha ha ha. Your standards are, again, not absolute.

At the end of the day, any music student could write an ok rap song. But if you were to ask Lil' Wayne to write a classical symphony, I'll bet you the result would be much more hilarious.

1) OK rap song by your standards or by X or Y actual musician involved in that genre who isn't just doing it out of "being able to" or "proving a point." Otherwise, the same stupidity goes for people who write "an atonal piece" for poo poos and giggles and miss the point by lightyears. This, again, equates to the stupid "harder to write = better."

Yes it may take more research to copy the classical style symphony writing than it may take to copy rap (ignoring for a moment that these are enormous categories on their own) but this means absolutely nothing except you're using this comparison to pretend that Lil' Wayne is simply "not as good" as you probably think you are, or claiming people who are "on your side" are.

2) As for it being more hilarious; I'd really want to hear you write a rap song in that case cuz I'm pretty sure the LOLtastic factor is going to shoot through the roof. Hell, it's shooting through the roof right now just at the thought of it.

Nico's post should be printed, hung on any music (specially COMPOSITION) classroom and have a large red X across it. It's the EXACT type of thing education is supposed to prevent and what you'd pretty much hear out of a kid who's had no real exposure to the actual diversity of the things he's generalizing (and of course believes that what he does is infinitely superior to what "the others" do.)

Nevermind that the opinions there ("Oh he can't write a Bach-style fugue, poor peasant with his primitive dance beats") are nothing new or interesting, they just make me want to punch babies all the same.

There is still the difference between a non-answer, and an answer.

Ponder.