source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 02:03:12 -0800 Subject: Re: Practice From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@CompuServe.COM> > Gee, Neil, that's a pretty mean thing to say. I like your tape and > appreciate your good guitar skills, but to condemn music as being lousy > because it doesn't "groove" or doesn't fit your _opinion_ of what "good" > music is closed-minded and, if I may speak freely, a very limiting attitude > which is mostly shaped by commercialism and arrogance. I suspect that that's a misinterpretation of Neil's appeal. In particular, I don't see that he's advocating any particular style of music over any other. Here's what I think he's pointing out, and I believe quite accurately and appropriately: Technical, improvisational, and compositional skill of the sort that comes only with untold hours and hours of practice, has a VERY big effect upon the excitement of the music that comes of it. And that, I believe quite firmly, is true of ALMOST every style of music. As I think I mentioned, I've taken up the saxophone recently, with my nominal goal being to improve my WX-11-based MIDI sequencing skills. There can be no doubt that the skills I lost over several years of composing and theorizing instead of performing, have taken a really serious (although not fatal) toll on the quality of my music. And I see that it has on other xenharmonikers' music as well. For example: 1. I have to perform a passage for the sequencer, often twelve or more times before I get it right. The result, when the sequencer glues together all of the pieces, is too mechanistic, because by about the fifth take, all of the sponteneity and vivaciousness in the performance is gone. 2. Lacking technical capability on an instrument, makes it very difficult to conjure up music on the instrument (in those cases where you compose at the instrument that is). The results very often sound contrived or haphazard. 3. Lack of really solid background in ear-training in a new tuning makes it very difficult to reliably devise instrumental parts to a larger work, like devising accompaniment parts to fill in harmony, or accurately notating melodies conjured up in your head. This is clearly important even in traditional tunings as well of course, but it's even more difficult to hunt for food in an alien landscape than in your own back yard. (Xenharmonic Ear Training is one area where I am probably better off than average, but that's largely because the average, or at least the standard, is not nearly high enough. Or that's my opinion anyway.) Now I say that virtuosity is valuable to "almost" every style of music, because I suppose that if you actually WANT to express a feeling of rigidity and clumsiness, then I guess you would actually benefit from lack of virtuosity. But rigidity and clumsiness are certainly a very limited realm of expression. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 6 Dec 1996 17:07 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01970; Fri, 6 Dec 1996 17:09:06 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01973 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA21438; Fri, 6 Dec 1996 08:09:02 -0800 Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 08:09:02 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu