Why gear doesn’t matter (or theory for that matter)

I must agree. I know a lot of theory, but until I have done enough…well, it just won’t happen.

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:open_mouth: what the f* … this is a thing? I thought that when I draw a draft of a song on a paper with brown bass, yellow pads, red strings, blue percussion etc. that it’s just my way how to explain music … and it actually has a name

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It is a thing. Pharrel Williams has it, Franz List, George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue)

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I have no illusion that I am in the same league like these guys. But I always thought that pulsing brown line and blinking red flashes when I am thinking/listening to bass, percussion is just universal sensation.

That’s probably why I am most comfortable playing with my eyes closed…

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A lot of artists perform with their eyes closed. And people close their eyes when they listen. I wonder if there’s a correlation.

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You had to pick that one… that’s one of the most useful scales :laughing: you can use it for improvising over a dominant 7th (V7) chord :slight_smile: but it’s not like you have to study it much to use it… it’s a major scale with a flat 7.

You’re right though and that’s why there are so many forums full of people asking “how do i use modes?” It kills me when people talk about how much time they spend just practicing scales/modes but never experiment with playing them over a drone or chord progression.

For me, learning to improvise walking bass lines over a chord progression has been tremendously helpful in learning a lot of concepts. It really helps connect keys, scales, chords and modes all together.

It’s like when i was working on improving my phototgraphy, i spent a year going out pretty much every day and shooting for at least an hour. Sometimes i wouldn’t even look at what i’d shot but it allowed me to become proficient enough with the camera that i could use more of my brain for seeing what was in front of me instead of using it to operate the camera.

Sometimes you look at things but don’t see… sometimes you listen to things but don’t hear… especially if you’ve been married for a long time :smiley:

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I think a lot of the time it’s to block out visual stimuli so they can concentrate on the auditory; the brain only has so much capacity to process information. Like the reverse of how you turn down the radio in the car when you’re trying to find the address of a house :slight_smile:

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I experience this thing when I am playing/writing that when everything sounds like it should, my vision is translucent with a little bit of dominant color overlay. But when I try to fit in some tone/instrument that doesn’t fit in … the whole overlay goes haywire and when I have my eyes open I am lost. When I have my eyes closed, the whole reset after a wrong note is much, much faster.

Damn.Why I have never heard about this before. Because I thought it’s normal, I guess. But I have to find out more about this.

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It’s funny, the majority of the time that i sit down to compose something, it turns out as EDM. :joy:

One day I’ll write some jazz…

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Just make sure you don’t go into a Jazz trance.

“No one listens to Jazz. Science teachers and the mentally Ill, that’s who Jazz is for”

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Love Mixolydian :slight_smile:

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This is where I fundamentally and completely disagree. Both ways lead to good results, but one is a metric f*ckton easier and more efficient of yout time, effort, and frustration.

A relatively small amount of learning can save literal years of effort and trial and error frustration here, by providing a framework for understanding and describing what you are doing.

There are of course musicians for who this is not true and they can just do it. They are called prodigies and make up a really small percentage of the population. I am definitely not one, don’t know about you. Not everyone is Deadmau5.

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All true! As long as you know your sound and what you are playing. The rest is just academic. If you are popular and famous you have someone doing all of that for you. He’d probably knows more about the theory than the people who’s putting his music in a “proper context”.

I hardly tell anyone in person that I can read music, because aside from the fact that I can read music like I read a book in English, I know very little about music theory, mode or scales. We’ll, worse is some I encountered that can play just about anything on the sheets but when asked to transcribe a song they don’t know where to start.

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Love when people think EDM isn’t complex music. If you actually start taking apart the different sub-genres you can see the complexities. Of course everyone thinks of house when then think EMD, which house is really a summation of many things. Trance has tons of jazz influence, if you just listen a bit. DnB is full of great drum beats from the classics, sped up and then overlaid in a way that is cohesive.

I do think some basic theory is a good thing, you shouldn’t let it drive everything with you do, as ultimately its what sounds good to your ears that matter. I agree with @howard, theory does make things easier and quicker to get to the end state of what you are going for, but there are exceptions to everything in life…save death and taxes :stuck_out_tongue:

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Any genre people don’t understand is generally dismissed.
Has been that way throughout the history of music.
Jazz, Rock-n-Roll, Hip-Hop, EDM, the list goes on.
If it ain’t singable Top-40 the masses are gonna poo-poo it until it reaches some form of critical mass.
After many many years each genre solidifies itself in music history and the ongoing evolution of music.

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I love classical music, disco and funk atm. … but in the past I went maybe through all the genres there are. … Right from top of my head when someone asks me, show me EDM which is not dull and boring musically I always remember songs and artists like these below:

BComplex … Slovakian D’N’B producer

Andy Blueman … Slovenian Trance producer

Dj Fresh from England

Vitalic … French techno master

almost forget to mention one of my favourite producers for a long time, Todd Terje

and many, many, many more genres and subgenres of endless sonical pallette.

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To me music is like the 80/20 rule. 80% of the music (in any genre) is cliche for that genre. 20% is either really bad, or really good. And like 5% is memorable.

Only a few artists transcend this, like the Beatles.

So it’s really easy to dismiss almost any genre because the ratio of meh to memorable is always really high.

And I find the discussion on music theory moot. Can you tune your bass? Then you have music theory. You know the scales, and can name the notes. That’s theory. You need some theory to play.

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Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen that, it always makes me laugh :smiley:

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This song always amuses me