The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I have heard arguments from both camps. Personally, I've always felt hindered by my lack of technical knowledge. I can't tell you what key I'm playing in. I can't write anything but TAB and my vocabulary is lacking. On the other hand I have a friend who I respect as an amazing musician who learned music theory very well and has told me that he has actually tried to forget or unlearn everything he learned because he feels it hinders his creative process. What do you think?

I'm a student in the Page Hamilton school. Learn all the theory, learn all the scales and keys and chords and everything. And the second you pick up the guitar to play, forget all of it. You have to learn the rules in order to break them.

I always hated learning theory, but I'm sure that if I had never learned it I'd be 100 times worse than I am. I really forget most about it now though. So pretty much what Luke said.

I love learning music theory, plus I'm not any good at writing songs. So I voted helps.

A double-edged sword this one I think.

It helps you to write music. It hurts your appreciation of other people's music when you start judging how good a song is on an intellectual level.

Furrypedro wrote:A double-edged sword this one I think.

It helps you to write music. It hurts your appreciation of other people's music when you start judging how good a song is on an intellectual level.

Funny you say that. I worked with this girl once who was classically trained and she couldn't stand any of the indie stuff I listened to because she judged it using her knowledge of music. On the other hand, she loved Top 40 pop stuff because most (a lot) of it is written by trained musicians.

WeaselSlayer wrote:You have to learn the rules in order to break them.

That's it in a nutshell.

I don't think there's any practical difference between KMS's question and the question "does grammer knowledge help or hurt a journalist?" Or "does colour knowledge help or hurt a painter?"

Some background knowledge is required in all creative fields.

(Not to mention, if you want to work with other musicians, some theory knowledge is a must.)

KMS wrote:she loved Top 40 pop stuff because most (a lot) of it is written by trained musicians.

Or maybe her taste in music just sucks

I know a lot of people who hate indie music, but they don't have the first bit of music knowledge.

deshead wrote: I don't think there's any practical difference between KMS's question and the question "does grammer knowledge help or hurt a journalist?"

Do you think spelling knowledge is important?

LMAO

Furrypedro wrote:It hurts your appreciation of other people's music when you start judging how good a song is on an intellectual level.

Well, just reviewing songs on SongFight does that!
I voted "helps" because I don't know enough of it, and I've definitely run into blocks where more knowledge would have helped.
A -> B is equal to ~B -> ~A
-bill

I have no knowledge of mah grammer. She done died before I could meet her. But mah gramper, he was a good man.

The more I learn about music, the more I think that musical knowledge (the traditional kind,anyway) hinders rather than helps. The theory that "you have to know the rules in order to break them" doesn't hold up. A person without musical training can fuck stuff up just as well as any trained musician, and there's a good chance that the untrained fucking up will be more interesting because the performer won't have years of training-turned-instinct to wrest with.

I can see how it would go either way, but for me I wouldn't be able to fuck anything up if I didn't have all the training I do. The ability to hear anything in my head and almost exactly recreate it leaves me totally free to do whatever the hell I want.

WeaselSlayer wrote:I can see how it would go either way, but for me I wouldn't be able to fuck anything up if I didn't have all the training I do. The ability to hear anything in my head and almost exactly recreate it leaves me totally free to do whatever the hell I want.

Please do a piano rendition of Eruption in the style of Elton John. Please.

WeaselSlayer wrote:I can see how it would go either way, but for me I wouldn't be able to fuck anything up if I didn't have all the training I do. The ability to hear anything in my head and almost exactly recreate it leaves me totally free to do whatever the hell I want.

Yeah. Like you say, it can go either way. I think that the freedom to do what's not in your head is far superior to the freedom to do what's already in there.

WeaselSlayer wrote:The ability to hear anything in my head and almost exactly recreate it leaves me totally free to do whatever the hell I want.

This is where I feel my lack of knowledge the most. I have sounds in my brain that I want to get out, but don't know how.

I've often described it like this, music is a field of colours, yet I can only get the grey bits down on paper, the more you practise, the more the colours come out!

I'm currently working in yellow!

When your brain's as fucked as mine is, what's in there comes out at the very least entertaining.