source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 22:46:21 -0800 Subject: composing, spirituality... From: bq912@freenet.uchsc.edu (Neil G. Haverstick) Haverstick here...the cool thing about this forum is that there are some sharp folks on board, who get you to thinking...for example, Szanto's comment that kick ass chops are not enough without solid compositions is right on...it made me realize that I have never separated composition from chops because of an interesting fact: in the blues/jazz bag that I developed my style in, EVERYONE is a com- poser. Why? Because improvisation is the name of the game in these styles, so every time you play, it's SUPPOSED to sound different than the last time...there's a saying, "if you're not making mis- takes, you're not playing"...true indeed. Which also got me to realizing, somewhat sadly, that today's "classical" musicians, by and large, are mainly interpreters of other people's music (the composer) rather than creators (improvisors) who have the ability to create spontaneous compositions with substance and style. I have a lot of respect for, especially, the Baroque masters of Germany... they were EXPECTED to be very proficient in many areas, including writing for church services, playing organ, directing the choir, teaching knucklehead kids who coul;dn't sing, and just generally being monster musicians...of course, Bach was legendary for his ability to spin fugues of great genius onm a moment's notice... what's interesting to me is that today's jazz and blues musicians are the inheritors of the art of improvisation... Also, Bruce Kanzelmeyer's post on spiritual values was wonderful; coincidently, I am studying a book by Alain Danielou, "Music and the Power of Sound", which takes a look at ancient Indian and Chinese systems of music, and relates the structures and cycles to the much larger structures of the whole Universe...the Book of the Hopi talks of flute music that healed a body pierced by an arrow, and Danielou's book also mentions musicians who could heal and achieve incredible states of consciousness. So, I hope Bruce's post does get us to looking at the deeper levels of music...it is true that music has some very basic laws, physical correspondences which were CREATED as part of the structure of the Universe...how we work with these primal laws has a great effect on the world around us...Hstick Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 20 Dec 1996 09:21 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA12803; Fri, 20 Dec 1996 09:23:51 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA12807 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id AAA15863; Fri, 20 Dec 1996 00:23:48 -0800 Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 00:23:48 -0800 Message-Id: <199612200322_MC2-DB3-FD40@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu