Composer's Corner

• Sep 8, 2020 - 14:31

http://musicnotation.org/

A transcriber's nightmare? A composer's delight? I know that our notation system has gone through revisions since it's inception. Stockhausen made a strange departure in notation. I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of addressing foundational weaknesses in our system and how it might be improved by degrees.

https://clairnote.org/
The Clairnote system seems to do this, with it's more accurate distancing of pitches on the staff. The modification to the staff is only slight. Clairnote might be a good system to get children started on reading and writing music. Can the two programs (Musescore and Clairnote) be merged? They are both open source, but someone said that it's foundational system, Lilypond, is not compatible. How long would it take to develop an interface?

To put my interest in context, Steve jobs once said that he thought that the Microsoft Word program was competitive because he designed it with a selection of fonts. For me, the inclusion of different systems is like the choice of fonts. To be able to view and work with your music in an alternative universe, yet with translation between those worlds. I think such options would give Musescore a competitive edge over even the commercial products out there.

And, no, I don't expect the masses to pop up say "Oh Yeah!" in unison. What are the advantages and disadvantages? What groups does one or the other option benefit?

Transcribers can still preserve the works of the past in the traditional system. I alert you that we are in a transition from transcriber to composer software, so expect many issues to arise that come from composers and for different ways of thinking about this program in the years to come.

Comments

• Jan 19, 2022 - 17:06

"classical" music did not exist in Bach's lifetime. The term "classical" was introduced later. So how could he write classical music? The styles in Bach's time were not consistent with each other but quite distinctive to the 18th century ear. It's just a fact that all of the composers played contemporary styles. The waltz was the punk of the day. They didn't slam dance to it, though. It's simply dance music. What dance music can you find in classical music today? Hiphop.

The waltz is as inane as punk. Oomp pah pah Oomp pah pah. I I V I I V. Ha!

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• Jan 20, 2022 - 15:01

John Gessner • Jan 19, 2022 - 17:47
"Popular music to me is music that is short in duration and has a singular emotional and musical goal. It's intent is a hearing for one purpose and one meaning. Classical certainly has an academician meaning referring to history but in the sense of "serious" music each classical or serious piece of music has many purposes and each hearing should reveal more and more of its substance. That's not true with popular music... generally. Maybe a good comparison is a great news summary compared to a novel."

John - If we make just comparisons I think we will run into other and opposite conclusions. How would you compare the two? Take some popular piece and compare it to some classical piece and show us the criteria you employ to arrive at your conclusions. Give us a demonstration. Show me!

Take a song by John Dowland and tell me how it compares in depth and meaning to Touch Me by The Doors. Take a couple of Beethoven's sonatas and compare them to your favorite Beatles album. To be fair, let's have an A side and a B side for Beethoven. So, Sonata No. 15 in D major is about 20 minutes of music and you can select another 20 minute sonata. Then we should compare this selection with a 40 minute Beatles album, and it should be one of their best. Help! is a starter. The A side to Help! is a just comparison to no. 15. Let's just limit ourselves to these 20 minutes.

I know both of these selections very well. I come back to no 15 as often as I return to Help! I find great depth in both of these 20 minute selection.

You see, you have to make just comparisons. We can compare song for song.  or suite for album - the 20 minute Nutcracker Suite can be compared to a 20 minute side of a supreme ly selected popular music album. Hard to do? Yes, it is. That is because the time it takes to make this selection amounts to decades, perhaps a century.

I am working with two theories here. 1) The Selection hypothesis 2) The Collection or Classification hypothesis.

"That's not true with popular music... generally. Maybe a good comparison is a great news summary compared to a novel."

Good. But news summaries are discarded over time and lost and so are novels. I don't see a just comparison. We are talking about music. I think a better, more just comparison is to talk about bestseller books and great books. A great book is one that I return to over and over and can get something from. It has something new for me each time. A great book is one that is recommended over time by generations of qualified reader - reader who read great books.

Imagine if we could resurrect all of the music that was ever made. Certainly there were more than four composers in Leipzig at the time that the four churches were presenting music. Think about all of the music that has gone out over the air since humans began humming and singing. It's all extinct. We have to imagine that 99% was horrible sounding stuff. It got honed and processed down the ages. So, to compare say a great folk song from centuries ago that was selected by generation after generation and turned and crafted by each person and generation that communicated to the next, with a common pop song is not fair. The fortunate thing for classical aficionados is that the very great majority of classical music has been completely and irrevocably lost. If only this had not occurred immediately to the music of the present day!

If we could automatically put all of the pop music created today through this whole process in a moment and rid it of all inferior specimens we would have a tiny selection of music that stands up to any other previous period and therefore it is classical.

Elton John was complaining that people don't say anything in their songs today. Well, he never said anything in his songs to begin with, but he's just making an unfair comparison. He is comparing every song that creeps up on the charts to 98 and falls down and then those that get to the top only for a week, he's comparing a generation of music that has yet to be processed by selection to a highly select list of artists and songs. It is unfair to compare the greatest Dylan songs to the best songs this year. His music is the best of a longer time span. It's only after very long time spans that the margin of quality narrows down.

But, if after 50 years you cannot understand how great In the Court of the Crimson King is or how classical 21st Century Schizoid Man is, you just lack education. We need educated listeners to appreciate the finer things. Really, if you can't understand that popular music is classical, then it's a failure on the part of educational institutions. If I were teaching the courses, you would graduate knowing how to listen to and understand this music properly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Schizoid_Man  

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• Jan 20, 2022 - 16:17

Also, there are not many larger works in classical music. A Cantata is just a collection of popular genres. A sonata is a colection of about 4 movements each averaging about 5 minutes. These are short pieces. Although sometimes that matching can result in a masterpiece like Beethoven's sonata no 15 or Crimson's In the Court... the parts of larger works are smaller units. Even the symphony will have a 10 or 15 minute average to it's parts. So, I invite comparisons but make them just.

I don't know about making classical into a genre with sub-genres. You seem to to be transposing the problem if the relationship between the classes and the individuals among the classes remains the same.

So what are your sub-genres? I am reminded of whan I had a vinyl collection. First I sorted it all out by artsis from A to Z, wasn't quite happy, shuffled it all around into genres, that didn't work either. Wasn't ever really happy. Been doing this all my life "What are your sub-genres? Probably the same folders as you had when it was split into genres. I think that it is very hard to claim classical as a genre. It does not fit the history since there was no classical music in Bach's, nor in Beethoven's time, and I think of genre as something that arises from the common fabric of the music floating about. the music gathers some sort of form in a community while they are oblivious to it and therefore cannot label it. That incipient genre then gets communicated far enough away into another context and is heard and identified as foreign, then it has to be labeled. Genres have short life spans of 5 or 10 years. Disco hung on for 15 years. You can still hear a modern waltz, but the waltz peaked long ago and is not ever to become the rage again.

Anyway, if you make your list of sub-genres I believe you won't even post it, because you will see how disposable it is. I'm curious, but I think I will be disappointed. We can all do this as a thought experiment. Classical is a genre. Waltz is a sub-genre. Then Strauss is classical because of sub-genre waltz and Cat Stevens is classical because Morning has Broken is a waltz and a waltz is a sub-genre of classical. Then it has to hold for Sousa also that a march is classical and Sousa wrote marches therefore Sousa is classical. Actually, I'm very happy with your suggestion.

I really wish that someone would come up with a complete thought here. I think I understand what each one of you ahs in common. It's this logic that you have in common which i shall paraphrase "Everybody knows that there is a difference between classical and popular music, and since everybody knows it, I don't have to have an answer to the question. I'll try, but as long as my answer conforms to the premise that everybody knows then I will not face any opposition."

However, I think that position lacks integrity. I know that everybody knows it and I used to be one of those until I realized that nobody could explain it so nobody really knows it. I spose if JoJo says it, it must be true? well, that's logical. If JoJo holds the buttons around here, who can argue with that? It reminds me of something that Jerry Lee Lewis once said, again paraphrasing something like "He said he was the king of rock & roll and I told 'im I'm the king, then he busted me on the jaw and I said well by golly he IS the king of rock & roll!"

I understand your position perfectly. If everybody says something you don't want to go against that so you don't need to prove anything and you don't need to do your homework.

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• Jan 20, 2022 - 18:53

OK.These two posts explain everything I need to know. Especially this:

"But, if after 50 years you cannot understand how great In the Court of the Crimson King is or how classical 21st Century Schizoid Man is, you just lack education. We need educated listeners to appreciate the finer things. Really, if you can't understand that popular music is classical, then it's a failure on the part of educational institutions. If I were teaching the courses, you would graduate knowing how to listen to and understand this music properly."

It may shock you to know that I have never heard those to things. Nor am I interested in doing so. They may indeed be great. So what. That doesn't mean I lack education. I know exactly how to listen to music. I know exactly how to tell you why I like or dislike something. I have a music education degree. So what. It may shock you to know that my record collection was quite small and not organized at all. My E. Power Biggs album was probably next to Moody Blues. Didn't matter to me. I knew how to find what I wanted. I am not the least bit interested in formally comparing any two pieces. I do that as I hear something. Then it is done, over, move on.

What specifically is to be gained by a blow by blow comparison of two different pieces? Does everyone have to formally dissect something in order to enjoy? Sure, there are those that enjoy the process. Some people don't care to do that. Are they uneducated?

You want people to listen to music the way you do. You want people to like the music you like. You want people to like In the Court of the Crimson King because you think it is great. Music doesn't work that way. People don't work that way. Music is a highly personal thing. You and I might think that a particular piece is great. But might have totally different reasons for doing so. Because my reasons don't match your reasons, does that mean one of us is uneducated? Because we might not agree that a piece is great at all, does that mean that one of us is uneducated? This is dangerous ground on which to tread.
Speaking of music education, I never was able to get a teaching job because the year I got my credential was the year the state I lived in took music education out of public schools. High School bands were the only thing not cut. Gotta have a halftime show. Barbaric? I don't know. I don't think most kids paid any attention anyway.

But as I said, these two post explain your position perfectly. They explain why you are interested in a new classification system. You go right ahead and do you.

I write music for the fun of it. It's like therapy. Even so, I take every note seriously. There are no throwaway or filler notes. I know what I am writing, and why. I don't really care how anyone would classify what I write. I listen to music the same way. I don't care how it is classified. Come to think of it, I'm not sure any composer cares that much. They write what they write. Some are paid to write what they write. Some are not. Some write a particular style. Some do not. Other people come along and try to pigeonhole everything. I have no problem understanding classifications as they are now. Does that mean I am uneducated? Or does it mean that I view music as something to be enjoyed. Not because someone classified it a certain way, but because I enjoy it for what I get out of it. Not because someone told me a particular piece is great, but because I enjoy listening to something. I could write about why I think Focus by Hocus Pocus is a great tune. But they would be my reasons. Who cares. It doesn't mean that someone who doesn't like that tune is somehow uneducated.

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• Jan 21, 2022 - 03:56

I didn't invent the idea of identifying sub-genres of genres, so they aren't "my" sub-genres. The ones I'd discuss are the same any book on the history of Western would discuss. If you're looking for recommendations, try the Norton guide.

If you're looking for an education on the specific differences between classical and popular music as genres, you'd want to study musicology. I don't have any specific recommendations for resources there.

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• Mar 30, 2022 - 18:45

I realise I haven't helped any. Rockhoven wants to redefine genres. He doesn't like the way things are defined now. Fine. He's bouncing ideas off folks here. Again, fine. I keep waiting for him to post something that is actually important. I read somewhere that some person thought that Paul McCartney was the greatest musician that ever lived. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I guess.

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• May 30, 2022 - 17:52

Composer's Corner is brought to you by JeeTee Plugins. Get plugged in with JeeTee. I been usin' 'em an' they work! You can get 'em at yer local hardware store. The name is JeeTee. Fine product. Now let's have a song.

Speaking of songs, folks, I have been looking at some of the titles of Beatles songs.
These great composers produced such outstanding titles as:
We Can Work Tomorrow
Mean Mr. Yellow Matter Mustard
Rocky was a Man who Thought He Was a Jojo
I Should Have Known Better Than Your Mother Should Know

That's classical music!

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