MagicScore Maestro 8, I thank you from the bottom of my mind! To make a composer out of a man that do not play anything but people's nerves is simply priceless!

Not sure I am on the right path in commenting here, but ... you do realize that almost all of the far out and loved "progressive" and "prog" music was done ... without a DAW?

It means, to me, that it was about a feel and touch ... not just thinking about a few notes ... of course, you can twist them later, and everyone has done that ... but I'm not sure that the "original" should even be considered on a DAW, although I am pretty sure that there are composers that are very versatile on their DAW skills and can do this.

Weird consideration ... for me! It's like me as a writer, trying to do this by mouth and microphone ... and not realizing that the completeness is missing, because the stream of consciousness is not capable of sustaining a complete story/concept ... it simply flows without a care in the world, and while I love to do that, a very surrealistic thing to do, it all makes for stuff that too many people (specially here) would consider jibberish!

No surprise there for me, though, Dave thinks only jibberish comes out of me ... and I, at least, appreciate some of his music!

I don't drink ... just water ... and maybe a touch of Diet Coke on my glass full of ice.

I've never been a drinker ... surprisingly enough ... and although the bar thing is sometimes appealing, it would be the "French" stories of the literary and artistic folks getting together that would be a dream for me ... I could, easily, create exercises for Peter Brook, for example ... (experimental director for theater, and sometimes film director) ... catch THE TIGHTROPE ... and notice that it also has a musician in it!

There is a side of "experimentation" that has some freedom and individuality ... and while I won't criticize a DAW, its folks in various places (Sonar, Ableton and others) that really show how they do not specifically understand the "inside" of music as you and I might suggest.

Sure, progressive rock is all about artistic freedom, irony, humor, playing the fool, expressing something very distant from what you've been taught at music schools. 

There's one BUT, though: if you can play music, if you know the theory and implement it in practice. I don't play anything, any musical instrument. So, in my case, what I am doing is just conveying my almost stream of almost consciousness onto the paper on screen. I've even broken my mouse, since I put all those notes chaotically in a fast (writing) tempo. The fact that the melodies sometimes sound great only means that there's nothing spontaneous, nothing truly chaotic in our life...

My stream of consciousness (plus some feeling of what it might be) create things like this one below: 

Yet, of course, if you are a talented skillful player, a composer - then writing prog note-by-note would probably produce a very unfree music. In case of me, such programs give me freedom to express myself. For example, at the end of this tune you can also hear my own voice (well, not my everyday voice, for sure - I am a 36 y.o. male, after all). Unmodified by sound editors voice. But it's all parts of my artistic will, artistic freedom and I thank (this time) MuseScore 3 for such a privilege to be a composer not knowing theory nor practice. 

P.S. Yadu Zloby means "To The Poison Of Anger" in Russian.

I sincerely doubt that many folks were actually "taught" in school, since at the age of 18/19 and 20, not many of us would have had enough music orientation to even be considered or mentioned in that vein when it came to a sentence that would make sense in that discussion.

In many ways, and in the case of a lot of the German music in the late 60's and early 70's, it was not so much about the school, as it was about the freedoms that the schools allowed and perhaps even EXPECTED, when you consider that at least one school actually paid a band to go to various countries to study and learn to play some of its music and even combine it to what they had!

Thus, a lot of this early music, was less about the music schools, although there was a huge one that had many famous composers in it (The Berlin School) and it also ended up bringing up some of the biggest names in electronics and a lot of music ... which is anti-idea ... completely different from the majority of other electronic/keyboard players around, most of which tend to show off their classical music skills and not their ability and composing skills! There is a huge difference there, and I tend to not enjoy the "classic" side of RW, as opposed to the new styled "classic" experience that Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze came up with ... that most of us can not even wrap our heads around it for 5 minutes, because it is so deep and so far developed that all we can do is listen and feel ... alienated ... because it is so different!

Imagine a huge music school, that even had Ravi Shankar teaching there ... teaching you something that would go completely against "music theory", which in some ways makes sense, since music history has been almost about the breaking of the theory and coming up with a new one ... which does not exactly get defined for 50 more years, of course ... 

The DAW is as good a music composing artifice as any instrument ... with one possible interesting note ... it's been hundreds of years, and what brought us to the music was the sound that it could be created by the human hands, or mouth ... and all of a sudden, it is done by neither of them (directly) and the feel is likely to come up a bit lacking on the soul side of things compared to someone playing an instrument, even incorrectly ... at least you can feel a person trying.

I think the DAW is too new right now, but you and I can not deny some of these DJ's that are creating new music and coming up with nice things, even though, its truth can only be ascertained when it is played on stage by a real band, or an orchestra, and I think that we are still about 75 years from that ... we don't consider DJ's, musicians at all and some of them are way better than many well known "progressive" bullsheepdip guy out there ... and have a better sense of composition and music design, than many bands out there that are just showing off little riffs here and there to make sure you see how good and clever they are!

I definitely never learnt music theory nor practice anywhere. Kind of evident in this piece of mine below  : 

I've listened to too much dungeon synth and this was my pervert rendition of that subgenre awhole. Perverted piano dungeon synth.  Alas, none of the piano parts were made in the DAW, it was just some smartphone synth keyboard program. 

The whole fourth album by my one-man music project The NO has been posted on YouTube, by me: 

The NO. Dark Soup [ hint intended, pun intended     ]

Most of that far out and loved music was done in large, expensive recording studios of major record companies. They did multi-track recordings, multiple takes, punch-ins, edits, mixing, envelopes, effects, etc., but it was all done with an AAW (analog audio workstation) -- i.e. the recording studio. Now the same capability is available for a couple hundred bucks to do it digitally on a lap top.  Watch the videos of Wobbler recording, producing, editing, and mixing their Rites of Dawn album with a lap-top. I've not heard anyone complain that the result was inferior to analog. In fact, I'll bet most people didn't even know.

 

 

MuseScore, my friend!.. 

I promise to send you the complete CD box set of my works when they will be published. The special limited edition version. 

You know what's funny is that I always suggest the creators of CD boxes made them with something more stable and strong than paper of any sort or plastic of any sort. I always dream of me creating a new CD Box of Gentle Giant's something, my CD Box is to be made of armoured steel or something that strong. Really! 

So, it looks like you have read my thoughts on the topic. Perhaps, you are my mother, sir?