Music Terms That Make You Laugh

Unless of course, such instructions are designed to elicit particular associations for the performer(s) which lead to an individuated (while still tempo-appropriate) performance. I mean, to any Western-Music-educated performer, the instruction 'Fly!' will always elicit some variation of a similar tempo/style of articulation, due to common sonic cultural markers.

Well, that's like saying that any Western-music-educated performer would improvise something in a minor key if he were told to play something "sad". Sure, there are some stereotypes and cliches to the abstract concept but I don't think you should say "any" performer would do something like that... even in a relatively small, singular culture sample. I've meant to write pieces that were evocative of such concepts as flying and most people never got them as such. Takemitsu wrote nothing but evocative music and I'd say the large majority of the public, even within his own culture, probably wouldn't understand what he was going for. And, as mentioned before, Scriabin had some bizarre (for the time) instructions in his later sonatas and I've heard it interpreted in various ways.

Anything musicians do is inherently potentially bad.

Fixed for you.

Oh yeah, and jamming is something guitar players do. Anything guitar players do is inherently potentially bad.

OOOOOH!... You went there... :)

Unless of course, such instructions are designed to elicit particular associations for the performer(s) which lead to an individuated (while still tempo-appropriate) performance. I mean, to any Western-Music-educated performer, the instruction 'Fly!' will always elicit some variation of a similar tempo/style of articulation, due to common sonic cultural markers.

Forgive my Robert W. Smith-bashing, I have a particular objection to many facets of his music beside expressive instructions. But my point was that such words are effectively musical tautology. If it is obvious from the sound what the music is supposed to make you feel like, then such markings are a repetition of what the performer is feeling anyway; if the character of the music is not obvious, then unconventional instructions won't really help either because the composer has failed to express them adequately in the notes. It's a silly word to use anyway - how do we express a feeling of flying with only our interpretation? I don't need to go through, say, Elgar scores writing in 'Feel big and grand and romantic here!' because that emotion is obvious to both performer and listener when playing. Elgar supplies only a tempo marking and lets the notes do the rest.

Speaking of the expression fly, a speed was once given on a song I played that said "Fly (As fast as possible but no faster)"

I will bet that harmony first happened by "accident" during one of these gregorian chants

If by 'harmony' we understand the sound of two or more tones together, then for me, harmony happened the time the first tone happened because of it's overtones, ;) which means harmony actually precedes melody. Only tone generators, either hardware or software, produce bare sine waves. And I am pretty sure tone generators appeared long after that. :P

Ah. I see what you mean. But, since we are in the realm of HUMAN discussion, do you believe that humans recognized this property of music? Because for my discussion, that's the only thing that counts.

Yeah, really. Let's not get technical. Plainchant in the 5th century was not conceived as parallel triads (or dominant ninth chords... or however far you want to go up). And by extension, if all the harmony ever written includes the overtones, I'd love to see a full harmonic analysis of the St. Matthew Passion by JSB.

Well, it looks like you got my half-joking post far too literaly. But if you try analyzing music the way you mentioned, it's very likely to point you to something you haven't thought much about before.

As for 'getting technical', it is a matter of approach. I've been in a tech school and was involved with such matters since an early age - signals, laws, etc. Curiosity and looking for explanations are more or less natural for me. Music isn't an exception. And if one wants to understand better how it works as well as its development, one cannot avoid getting technical. Choices of keys, baroque ornamentation and medieval consonance and dissonance also have their acoustical justifications, being related to the tuning systems of the time. All this requires to get technical to a certain degree - involved with acoustics and mathematics. Especially if you want to explore alternate tunings, make your own, program your FM synthesizer, etc.

Uh, sure, you can list reasons why you would want to get technical, but was it really necessary at this time in this topic?

And I couldn't tell that you were half joking, so I take back half of the seriousness in my post.

Thank you, this is good news for other visitors

This is an interesting discussion. thank you for sharing

However I think you should vary more examples to your writing much more interesting !

What about "ritard"? xD