Getting increasingly frustrated...

[jbc]

listening to music.

I don't understand music. There's some kind of grammar that it conforms to - I build these huge parse trees in my head, separating out melodic progressions, periodicity, 'interactions' (whatever the hell that means) between separate threads... so I am obviously hanging it on some pre-defined mental structure.

I can tell when a piece 'works', I can spot a note out of place, I grin like an idiot listening to Bach (for instance), because it's like reading the most fiendishly elegant Perl ever written while watching Argentina vs. Germany.

But I have no clue what this grammar looks like. I couldn't compose a single phrase of it to save my life, and I couldn't tell you what someone's doing right or wrong. My analysis is all strictly intuitive - and I just can't leave it at that. I'm reduced to using incompetent metaphors to describe what I'm talking about.

The general effect is rather like being amazed at the elegance and style of a skilled orator, when you don't understand a single word of the language they're speaking, or trying to understand a huge DB schema with no articulated concept of an E-R diagram. It's disturbing as all hell, and makes my head hurt. I keep trying to visualise the shape of the music, only I have no form to put it in - and I end up turning the stupid noise off so I can think about this...

I don't even have a decent word for the quality I appreciate in music. 'Complexity' doesn't really cut it; anyone can blather unintelligibly in long tortuous sentences. It certainly isn't simplicity - we all hate simple, repetitive filler. What I look for is, I suppose, that which gives the illusion of simplicity, while having no trivially-describable structure. (rather like exam questions that you leave 'til last, then panic because on inspection they turn out to be a right bitch).

Does anyone else grok this? Can anyone explain it back to me without all this flailing around that I'm doing?

Has anyone come up with a descriptive or prescriptive formal grammar for (even selected styles of) music, so I would have at least *something* for non-intuitive layers to process?

Has anyone come up with a visual representation of musical structure (looking at a score is almost completely useless afaics), so that I would have a way to mentally represent all the structures I'm parsing, and somewhere to put them?

Am I just horribly naive? Is the whole issue greatly more involved than I'm assuming? Will I be forced to do it properly and stuff a hundred, dry, impenetrable music-theory textbooks into my skull?

[distraction tactics]

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I definitely think you're approaching it in the wrong many. Music is just 7 notes in their natural and sharp/flat form... They follow certain rules in regards to each other, none which are difficult to comprehend. A lot of 'good music' is simply clever arrangements to make it sound more impressive than it actually is.

[Claverhouse]

Moved to Creative Theory


Claverhouse http://intpcentral.com/forums/images/smilies/ninja.gif

[Hexchild]

It's hard to summarize all the aspects of music making in a single post (I just made a feeble attempt and gave up), and in any case when I compose music I mostly go by my intuition anyway, comparing what I hear to what I think I'd like to hear as I go. But there is little doubt in my mind that I follow some sort of "grammar" as I do it, and I also follow mathematical rules a lot. I've also seen while using miscellaneous music software that many of those programs provide some system or other that aids in structuring the music, each from a unique point of view.

That's all I can muster for now. I might have a go at detailing some examples later.

[cjs55]

Have you tried listening to the romantics? Beethoven, Schubert, Grieg? It seems that your current problems may be the result of overzealously listening to that master of beauty and theory, Bach. I could easily understand your frustration with him, because he is as you stated one of the greatest 'programmers' to ever live, and his programming may be causing you to try to decipher what probably shouldn't be attempted on anything but the most basic level of reaction.

But many people compose in ways that are very different than Bach.

All description of a work of art will be incomplete, because if one could describe it, why do we need art at all? In music this is even more true. Let yourself be swept away or don't listen at all. You can listen with a technically critical ear if you wish, but if that's the only thing you listen with you will never understand any music, or even any art in general.

[lexiphanic]

Music is simply expectation, satiation, melody/harmony, and dissonance. Rhythm builds expectation, and the end of dissonance in a chord brings relief. (of sorts)

[abathur]

Perhaps some sedatives, so you can just lay back and enjoy the music? ;)

Sure, it's a system--but it isn't the rules and math that make it what it is. Sorry, ignore me... I'm far too tired to be useful atm.

[lexiphanic]

Perhaps some sedatives, so you can just lay back and enjoy the music? ;)

Sure, it's a system--but it isn't the rules and math that make it what it is. Sorry, ignore me... I'm far too tired to be useful atm.

*uses you regardless*

It is. I quickly can replicate any myriad of sounds, but having the stubbornness to turn them into a song is what makes an artist.

[Serotonin]

With me and music, I lose all sense of logic and structure, and just let the emotion and "essence" take over, rather than trying to parse it out. With the sort of concentration that is needed to parse out music, no wonder you're frustrated. Immerse yourself in it, and then try and swim to shore and figure it out afterwards. The love comes first.