OnMusic

Quora Answer : Composers: what is your music philosophy?

Feb 10, 2014

1) What Ethan Hein said.

Except I'm not sure it's that we forceably grind music out of people as much as music, like any skill, DOES take time / energy to become competent at, and many people get diverted from the path of exploring / developing that competency.

2) My own particular philosophy is that, like all art, music needs to find a balance between rule-breaking and rule-following, between conservatism and revolutionism, between respecting a tradition and searching for the future.

Music which fails to balance these two will always fail. Music which is too attentive to tradition is boring and unnecessary. We could just listen to its precursors.

Music which is too concerned with breaking rules and has no dialogue with the tradition or the audience's taste is simply incomprehensible. Its only value would be if it embodies a really interesting theory of rule-breaking. And most theories of rule-breaking aren't that interesting.

3) What I said on Phil Jones' answer to What is 'real' music?

"Real music is when you share the joy of the musician's naivety.

Fake music is where you get to share the misery of the musician's cynicism."

Music is real, for me, when you sense that the musician is playing and exploring. Having fun. It's a sham when it feels like the musician is going through the motions. Making music as a chore.

4) Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to Which music band would you want your kids to listen to? And why?

5) Writing music is a challenge. But writing lyrics is 100 times harder. For every 100 musicians who can delight me with their music, there's only one song-writer who's words aren't dull, perfunctory or embarrassingly bad.

5a) The human voice is nice, though. Which is why it's more pleasurable to listen to songs in languages I don't understand than languages I do.

6) Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to Why do some people say they don't like or listen to mainstream music?

6a) The future of musical style is SeaPunk!

7) Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to How do composers write intellectual electronic music?

7a) Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to Why do most young people like electronic music? Is it because people are more into computers than into humans?

8) Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to Pop Music: I know there are exceptions, but why do lots of song writers write their best tunes when they are young?

9) My answer to Dubstep: Is dubstep easier or more difficult to produce compared to other types of electronic music? which discusses the challenges of making "good" electronic music (how to mediate between listening to what the machine wants and how to break free of the conventions it embodies)

10) There are basically three sorts of singing : whispering, shouting and whining. I like the first two, and dislike the third.

... more as I think of them ...

n) Melody is utterly mysterious and transcendent. It trumps everything else in philosophy of music.

There is good music, even great music, which doesn't have melody but has other virtues. But there's no BAD music with a good tune. All music with a good tune is good music.