Let’s Talk About Musical Form

Music is HIGHER than your likes and dislikes....Music is GREATER than all of that shallow nonsense. Music is NOT subjective......

Proglover wrote: cobb wrote: Being educated in Music only means you are trained in analysing music. Don't analyse- just listen. You don't need to understand it to enjoy it. Music is an artform and as such is structured- even if chaotic, but all art forms are composed for the appreciation of the listener/viewer. I get a picture of you carry a notepad with you when listening to music to jot down form and structure. Perhaps your teaching institution has failed in what they had hoped to achieve if all they are turning out is musical snobs. I apologise for anything here you feel is a personal attack- it is not meant to be. I just feel a little saddened by your attitude to music and hope that if you are planning to compose you realise that theory on composition structure and form are there as a platform for you to leap out into the realms of creativity, not a swimming pool for you to dive into and create mediocre works of rehashed past progressions.   OH GOD.....this is what I am talking about. Once again my thoughts are being twisted around. I find your words to be empty and totally not based on reality. You DO NOT know ME, and DO NOT know the school I attend...and YOU DO NOT know the music I create. Please get a clue before you go making huge sweeping generalizations.

Should we be arguing like this about music? I'd rather enjoy the beauty of it. If you are able to compose A LOT of pieces that move A LOT of people (incuding me) I will believe you. Until then...

I tend to agree with Proglover's point that musical knowledge helps to 'tackle' and grasp music in a more profound way for those, who are interested in such an approach to music in the first place. Some people clearly are not, being content to just listen to a piece of music without resorting to any kind of analysing and treating music just as a form of entertainment. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, if that is what makes one happy and fulfilled, but I personally find it just a little bit too passive a way to treat music. Part of the fun for me is to find the structural things that I seem to respond to in a song and compare those things to other songs with a similar structure or to songs with a different structure, and so on, just to become more conscious of the kind of music that appeals to me in general.

I wish I was more educated musically in order to assess things I like and do not like more accurately, with proper terms etc. I rather enjoy being introspective about the music I listen to and I try to pick up musical knowledge while reading reviews, following discussions on messageboards and such. It doesn't take anything away from my actual enjoyment of music by making it less entertaining or spontaneous, though. I think one can be analytically oriented and yet maintain a genuine affection for that more elusive trait in a piece of music, which I think in the end determines whether one loves it or dislikes it with a passion... The mystery of music remains intact for those who respond to it, but to possess tools in order to observe a composition from an academic and theoretical distance is a bonus if you ask me, since it can help one to appreciate things that an uneducated ear might not pick up on.

Right, don't know if that amounted to even two cents of my thoughts, lol, but there you go... Interesting topic! 

A musical education helps you to understand music differently - to listen to music in many different ways. It gives you a set of diverse tools with which you can deconstruct it and gain a greater appreciation of what a composer is trying to do.

Please note the use of "helps", and "can" - no two people use tools the same way, and tools can be used incorrectly.

Form in music is inescapable, and 100% necessary to produce a piece of music. Without form, music is just noise; Music is sound organised in time, and that organisation is it's form. Even John Cage's 4'33" was philosophically in 3 movements.

What makes good form is totally dependent on the music, but a good use of form is to reinterpret the rules - not try to invent new ones. The latter almost always fails and produces meandering drivel, IMO.

The only time I ever get really interested in form is when I am reviewing or comparing compositional styles. Form is one fifth of what makes music, so it's important to consider - but only when the music has anything interesting to offer; for example, if I was reviewing pop music, I wouldn't even bother thinking about the form, I'd only be concerned with subjective things such as "Do I like it?", and qualitative things would only server to underline my opinion.

When reviewing prog rock, however, it's obvious that the best bands pay attention to all 5 of the elements of music (melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, form), and so I duly examine what they are doing in those areas that are a) different to the norm and b) I simply happen to like.

The mediochre bands only concentrate on one or two areas - such as timbre (production) and rhythm (how many wierd time signatures can be crowbarred in). The production aspects tend to be "Emporer's new clothes", and the wearying obsession with rhythm seems to be almost entirely mathematically based, removing most of the art from it:

Where is the art in mathematics? I understand that many mathematicians see a beauty in the subject and love certain sets of numbers and formulae, and that a good appreciation of mathematics is essential to music writing - indeed, to good form construction, but it is not the basis of music, just as painting by numbers is not generally great art.

Music is too abstract for that - but does depend on sets of rules. If only to break them knowledgably.  Otherwise bands should just stick to the A-B-A-B-C-A-B form of "traditional" rock songs, and stop pretending to be artists.

If you don't understand the various painting techniques, you'll never be a master painter.

Anyone can appreciate a painting in their own way without having studied art, but you can appreciate it in more ways if you have taken the time to study.

I tihnk some of your points were correct.

For instance the Too many ideas= bad! Look at When Dream and Day Unite. The probalm witht hat album is that the ideas are all over the place theres not structure to the song. Porg is about braking rules and doing what the musician feels he wants and that usualy means not having that standard verese chorus verse bridge form, but a song needs a form no matter what.

but then you go on to talk about how the people have no idea what theyre talking about, which yes you mught be correct, but if they dont like it they dont like it. You can't convince somone to like music in a debate.

Not everyones opinons will be just as good or correct as yours...

you have to deal with the idiotic and prog snobish people in this world man...You cant change em all

Certified wrote:

Where is the art in mathematics? I understand that many mathematicians see a beauty in the subject and love certain sets of numbers and formulae, and that a good appreciation of mathematics is essential to music writing - indeed, to good form construction, but it is not the basis of music, just as painting by numbers is not generally great art. Music is too abstract for that - but does depend on sets of rules. If only to break them knowledgably.  Otherwise bands should just stick to the A-B-A-B-C-A-B form of "traditional" rock songs, and stop pretending to be artists. If you don't understand the various painting techniques, you'll never be a master painter.

You're right Cert, that's the problem with Art Academics, they believe their opiion is sacred:

In 1905 the Auttumn Exposition of Paris was shaked by a new genration of artists, Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck presented their works, and in the middle of the hall there was a small Donatello suculpture only as background.

The next day the brilliant critics and academics tried to destroy this artists, they even called them animals that broke all the rules of art and the worldwide accepted structures of painting.

One famous and respected academic wrote an article in a Paris Newpaper that had this headlines "Donatello avec les Fauves" (Please French friends correct me if there's some grammar mistakes) something as Donatello among the beasts.

The "brilliant" Academic believed that the only piece woirth to comment was the small Donatello statue used only as background for this exposition.

The artists laughed at this guy and started to call themselves Fauvists (Don't know if the is the translation of Fauvismo, the Spanish word for this style), because their intention was to break the structures from the start.

History showed they were correct (The artists) Fauvism was the fundament of Art Nouveau and today any Antiques dealesr or even Museum would kill for a Matisse work, my mother is an Antique dealer and has a incredibly beautiful Ivory Crucifix by Donatello, but she would gladly exchange it for a Mattise work because it's far more valuable.

So, there are no rules for art, and if they are rules lets break them, art is free, art is not Math, the beauty is in the heart of the artists and in the eyes or ears of the audience.

Iván

this would not be a discussion if I was majoring in medicine or law

Yes it would be, as a lawyer I can say that what for a Diistrict Attorney is murder one, can be not guilty for the defence and negligence for the jury.

Why does Supreme Court revokes entire pocess, because the Judge (A person who know about laws) did something wrong or used a wrong criteria.

Iván