Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Music Theory Vs. The Real Deal

Hi all

In this post I'm going to talk about another topic that is bugging me for awhile, yeah, I know that recently my posts are just based on topics that bugs me LOL, but anyways I haven't wrote something for a while now so here we go.

Ok, right now I've encountered that a lot of musicians just focus on reading books of music theory, focus in being sort of a like a "music theorist" less than write music and create music on their own, and this for me is just ridiculous! think about it, they study hard, they always talk about complex harmony and theories, for what?? for nothing! because what they usually do is not using any of that at all in the writing of music (which is the main purpose of it I think) and this my friends, is lame, so lame.

This is what happens, they think that they are experts and master of harmony and theory, what you expect is that they become musical geniuses of some sort, but nothing happens, they just play their instrument, practice that, grab the real book or whatever and start to make covers and play them live for the sake of be outside playing, they are commonly teachers too (you know they have a lot of information in their heads so what better thing to do to pass out this info to a beginner and feel like a master of music). For me that doesn't make any sense to me, why? because there is really no artistic enervation, no artistic vision, nothing. You have to WRITE music, have a musical vision beyond what's available in you area or market, try to innovate above all things!

It's kind of rewarding when I encounter some dude on Youtube that writes awesome music, play the hell out of his instrument and he just say: "I don't even know the name of this chords, I don't even know what a melodic minor scale is, I don't know too much of that crap!" THIS my friends is talent, is vision, is passion for music.

And I will tell this one more time, don't get me wrong on this, music theory fundamentals are very important in terms of composition, playing, improvisation, and communication with other musicians, it is, I have read a lot of books and I for sure know my stuff, but why just focus on that?? Why get crazy with all the theories and concepts? is useless, think of it, try to do something else, focus on writing, on production, a vision, etc.

I tell you this, for me, what makes a good musician is not the theoretical background that he have, is the inner ear that he posses, and that is what makes us musicians from people who are not musicians, our EAR, I know a lot of musicians who know every single music theory book, every page of it, but have terrible ear and terrible metronomic precision, and that's for me is a rubbishy type of musician...you know those musicians who really doesn't know yet how to play real tight with a band or how to improvise freely or how to write a simple song!

For you musicians out there who can be identified with this, take this in consideration and begin to puts those books down for a while, focus on other musical stuff, try to think that the more theory that you eat, the more your music at the end will be a product of that, it will be a very mechanical music, dull, loaded with lots of forced time signatures with no sense of feeling at all and your music will be just like a licence card of "I know music theory" and believe me, that's not the goal, Who whats to create music that cannot communicate something? dull and crappy? remember, this is an art form like any other, is expression, is an extension of our souls, is music.

Later

Iros RR

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