The Sound Board

I sometimes wished that newbie composers would (and could) modulate at all and if such a software gives them a playful approach to it, why not!

There you go Udo,
Hannes throws in a grenade

Raymond_Kemp wrote: <buncha good stuff snipped> For them, no dots, no go. I'm not envious of that less than enlightened position.

This might be picking nits, but I think we are over-simplifying things here, to our detriment.

In my 30 plus years playing music I've run across lots of different musical characters:
- I've known three, maybe four folks with no formal training whatsoever who could play whatever crossed their minds, and 19 times out of 20 it was pretty darned interesting.
- I've known lots of folks with lots of formal training, and remarkable chops, that could not improvise - in the conventional sense. But the could interpret, and they could react to others. They just could not come up with an original musical thought that fit - and probably not for lack of talent, but rather largely because they were either discouraged, or just plain never tried. It isn't "no dots no go", but it is close I guess.
- The majority of musicians I know have a reasonable depth of knowledge of music theory and history, and good to great chops, and they can improvise.

How is this possible?

I think there are two factors - one is innate ability, and the other is training. Most folks have some of each, but the balance will be different.

The thing that got me thinking about this - my best friend and his wife are uber-talented players, and both are exceptional music teachers. They have two kids. The older child could play cello, in tune, no scratchies, from some ungodly early age. She can not improvise, in spite of much encouragement from her parents, me, and probably others. She simply does not understand why one would improvise. She can interpret, she really is quite good. But she can't make the leap from interpretation to improvisation.

Then there is their younger child. He does not quite have that same level of talent, but he's always improvised. Don't get me wrong, he is still well above the average in terms of talent, and knowledge, he just uses it differently. Same parents, two very different results (which will come as no surprise to any parent I suppose).

Tis odd!

It isn't about talent and it isn't about training, for me. It is about the strong desire for many people nowadays to make development of craft not have to be hard, tedious, and time consuming; about constantly trying to find shortcuts to a good end result at the expense of having to learn.

It isn't supposed to be easy to create something that sounds really good. It isn't supposed to be quick to create something that sounds really good. It is supposed to be the reward for hard and sometimes tedious work. When it becomes not like that, you open the floodgates to all the dilletantes to crank out the horrible stuff we are besieged with.

I know, this is Jay doing his, "You kids get off my lawn" bit.

Hey, I'm no dilettante, and I can pump out horrible stuff at a startling clip.

Ashermusic wrote:It isn't about talent and it isn't about training, for me. It is about the strong desire for many people nowadays to make development of craft not have to be hard, tedious, and time consuming; about constantly trying to find shortcuts to a good end result at the expense of having to learn...

I agree with you Jay. We used to call it paying your dues (which I am still doing, by the way - hope to never stop)