Forum Review: Thursday March 8

This is the first of thousands of forums I will be attending this year, but it will remain the first I wrote my opinion of.

Stepen Whittington raised the question of originality in this forum, and spoke a little about some aspects of what could be considered a fairly debatable topic. He asked us to consider what is really originality, and gave examples of other cultures and how they view the topic. In some traditions, like in the Indian classical music field, one gets allowed to explore further away from the basics of music as they gain more experience, and trully understand what they are doing. This view was enforced by a story about a teacher and a boy who chose he would improvise extensively, only to be tied to a tree (I wonder what the indian teacher would've thought about John Cage, who breaks all the rules; like a rockstar only he breaks even more rules).

This story demonstrates that in some cultures, patience, hard work and gradual improvement is valued more than creativity. When the student is experienced enough to improvise, however, I can't help but wonder if his musical results might be a lot less creative than if he was allowed and encouraged to create early in his life (like it seems we are encouraged to do in our Western society). I think that this might be a sign that classical Indian music is still developing and has a long way to go before reaching its full potential, because I can't help to wonder if Western composers in the Baroque era and earlier might not have been similarly brought up. Slowly, composers started breaking the mould a little, and then came Beethoven, who shatered traditional views and gave way to the rise of real romanticism in music; real freedom. Maybe the Indian Beethoven is still to come? By this I don't in any way mean to disrespect Indian classical music, but raise an interesting question. For some reason, Indian classical music has a similar effect on me to baroque or earlier Western classical music, and I am just wondering whether it will stay the same in the next hundred years or so.

Stephen played some music that also made the class wonder about the effect of musical education on the creativity of a person. He specifically played 3 works by Erik Satie, who had had limited theoretical trainning before creating most of his famous works. However, after attending musical tertiary education later in his life, his works lost some of the innocent flavor that made him original and stand out. I can't help feeling this way sometimes; for some reason, I feel my most original works were done around highschool, with the least sophisticated equipment, and limited musical knowledge. Of course, you need to know a little, but knowing a lot seems to be able to tame the creative nature. Yes, the music might sound better, or more logical, or even more complex, but it is lacking an ellement that makes it unique, or emotional. This could be due to the fact that a lot of commercial music is based around the same tonal structure, and more you know about it, the more you want to explore inside it, rather than venturing out and just playing what "sounds" good. And what sounds good to a musician, I am learning, is different from what sounds good to a random person (except John Cage, who sounds good to everyone).

Another fact that I find affects creativity is the ammount of choice offered to work with. If you have a limited selection/knowledge of chords, you might make more interesting music because you are trying to express something complex through something simple which leads to interest! It is interesting because it is different, yet it is not offensive because both the harmonic language and ideas are valid. It is the same with a choice of instruments; I find that if I have to create a piece for just MIDI instruments, my ideas will be more interesting than when creating for a choice of thousands of synthesizers.

This could be because if you have an idea and say it exactly like you want, it is just boring. There is no tension, therefore no interest. You know what is comming up.

"I am this guy who is really awsome and super rich and make the best music and I'm so cool and probably have my own car but I'm not sure if cars were around when I was living"

is more interesting than:

"I am John Cage."

Capisce?

Then we heard Roadrunner, by John Zorn, which sounded ok for an according piece, but I don't usually like works that are made up of chopped up bits from other works, I just don't think they are interesting or offer anything trully interesting. It also comes down to what originality is, but in my view, taking 50 riffs from 50 places is just not composing. It is researching.


Anyways, a pretty good forum, looking forward to more.




Stephen Whittington, "Music Technology Forum"

Lecture presented at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, 8/03/2007.