Musicality...

It's a fact that no matter how good you are at stuff, there's always someone better. And if there isn't, there soon will be.

I've never seen composing as something to learn, just something to acquire more tools for: I've always had millions of ideas running through my head, or I'll pick on a tune I like and vary it a bit until I like it even more, then play with it some more - I might even go and find an instrument to doodle away on.

Tunes are great places to start - but learning basic harmony allows you to flesh the tunes out into pieces of music. Learning advanced harmony gives you more ways to do the same thing, and studying other composers' methods is the ultimate - when you see the kinds of things that Messiaen used as foundations for composition, you wonder how people coped with the old creaky diatonic system that composers used for centuries - not to mention stuffy old Sonata form.

It's sometimes painfully easy to spot those who harmonise with no actual grounding in the art (because harmonisation and counterpoint are art forms in themselves) - it's always where sets of learned rules are applied that it works best. My favourite method is Barbershop quartet harmony, but there you go.

A professor at a college I went to said to me as his parting words; "If you are a composer, then compose".

That is the key - composition isn't something you can be taught, it is something you study, in order to improve the composition that you already do (more or less what you just said, Pastasauce).

maidenrulez wrote: Just to add some thoughts.... i know several musical school geeks wich has studied guitars for 3 years  and so on and can play several Dream Theater songs by note perfect although they cant compose a single original idea of their own... They have just learned to compose songs and how to improvise and everything and have gotten into being this mindless guitarist which in reality knows nothing about music...

Sounds just like Dream Theater...

(Ducks and runs from all the angry Dream Theater fans)

^^^That's true to an extent.

However, there are two main forms of music; Art music and Folk music.

Folk music relies almost entirely on "feeling", and one of the whole points of it is that anyone can play or write it. The only way to measure the quality of folk music is through the subjective ear - although it is possible to apply principles from Art Music.

Art music is a different ball game - it's rooted in folk music, of course, but is crafted, with attention to detail and skill. The techinques can be identified and quantified, and the result can be used to make an objective measurement of how good the music or musician is - does the musician fumble whilst playing scales? Does the musician play scales at an impressive speed, and so on. 

Just as Folk music can be measured using Art music criteria, Art music can be appreciated entirely from a Folk music perspective - that's one of the great things about music - you don't have to know anything to appreciate it.

As to whether music is crap or not, the most convincing argument is that no music can be crap. If someone created it, then almost always, there will be someone else that likes it.

You can apply measuring criteria to it if you like - and when discussing music, such criteria are very helpful, as they help to provide a path into the music for someone who might not have appreciated it before.

If you just say "Genesis are great", then that's not really helpful to someone who doesn't think they are. If you're describing an album, and you just say "I like it", then that's not helpful - why do you like it? If you say "Peter Gabriel is a great singer", similarly, why is he a great singer? Why not, if that's your take?

The whole "X is crap, Y is fab" line of contradictions and bickering belongs on pop music forums, IMO. On ProgArchives, we have a whole new level of bickering