Apologies. I have deleted a few messages, it should be working now.

Anand: Thank you, I'm glad you found the post valuable. 

Even a musical genius absolutely needs craft for art-music for there are many aspects and parameters that have nothing to do with inspiration and talent. It's exactly like being a genius in physics. Even if you have the best and most original ideas, how exactly are you going to document them if you are unfamiliar with the relevant symbology?.. Let alone the fact that you have to know what the great physicists before you have achieved. How are you going to learn that? By watching Feynman interviews on YouTube?... Even Wagner, the most self-taught and perhaps the most original of the 4-5 greatest musical geniuses, had all the craft preceding him before inventing his own.

Do you need such craft in order to compose 30-second septic trailers and 2-minute ostinato cues? Of course not. You can do that with "inspiration" patches. Can one call himself an orchestral composer with these particular skills? One can call themselves anything.

And we can laugh to our hearts' content.

Macker: Thank you for the much appreciated hyperbole. Incidentally, I cannot even imagine how people get degrees in philosophy these days, but if it is anything like what happens with music...

I am also touched you remembered my recent proclivity to writing I mentioned scantily some time ago. Since it is a collection of short stories I am penning together, perhaps you'd care to glance at one or two, once they are finished...

Thank you Mike. I don't even know whether it is worthwhile posting all this, whether it makes a difference to anyone's musical life. 

FedericoAsc, Anand, William, Macker: How is everybody? Long time no read...

I love inspired popular music (according to my taste of course), and I would rather spend hours listening to countless such tracks than spending the same amount of time listening to run of the mill art-music - especially those endless, uninspired, muddy, bloated "romantic" chimeras by third raters. Or worse, the insect cum factory noise imitations of the run of the mill experimentalists. Ugh!! I say this just to clarify that I do not consider art-music to be the only good music.

Now,

What does talent have to do with music theory? Nothing! Let's not conflate them. Talent, you are either born with or you are not. And if you are, with how much? Same goes for capacity for original thought. There is no substitute for those, and they demarcate the Elysian fields of the masters from those of the journeymen by barbed wire.

However, lack of talent and original thought can, and is habitually screened by craft. The more craft that is thrown into a composition, the more opaque that screen becomes. This craft can be acquired to a good degree by hard work in the disciplines of composition, which also include theory and instrumentation. Craft alone has not, and will never yield a masterpiece, but it can certainly yield something pleasant (and professional!) to listen to, if form and length do not exceed the limits of the -by definition- mediocre material.

On the other hand, what good can be reaped by talent alone, bereft of any craft, in music for traditional forces? How can you write for instruments about which you know little and expect masterworks? How could you begin to combine them effectively? Maybe you could in popular music (all genres), as band members and producers will fill in the huge gaps left by an inspired, but otherwise bare tune. However, this would be a collaborative effort that has little in common with the output of the art-music composer who has to determine all details in a score on his own.

Why did I learn music theory? Because I wanted to? No, it was imposed on me early on, and thank God it was! Craft is the vessel upon which ideas can sail the turbulent and inclement seas of music history and competition. The more knowledge and facility increase, the safer and farther the journey in deeper, maybe uncharted, and hence more enthralling waters. As an audience, wouldn't you rather engross yourself into the oceanic periplus of an experienced mariner, rather than drown yourself over the computer-assisted infantilisms of an ignoramus on the shore?

In the greatest of cases, you cannot tell where ideas end and craft begins, for they are intertwined; for craft itself is enriched and advanced. 

I hope that people don't think the greats composed with textbooks open on the table for reference... Everything I mention only applies to beginners to intermediates. The more one knows the less one thinks about it. Craft becomes ingrained and part of the subconscious. Often, innovation disregards knowledge, but this act is conscious. Nobody would find pleasure in composition if for every chord they voiced they would have to rifle through a manual for justification (except for those who write with crosswords). Everything becomes as automatic as driving a car does. How many times have I travelled a couple of kilometres lost in thought without realising I stopped for lights, made turns, etc.? I am an experienced driver however with well over a million kilometres under my belt. I couldn't do this at 17. I am therefore saying that not only does craft not impede one's flow of ideas, it contrarily precipitates and opens the right vistas for the development of these ideas.

Amassing knowledge and cultivating taste are so important, vital in fact, to composition. I am sorry I cannot remember who said this, I only heard it a few days ago, but in essence he said, "It was easy to consider myself a perfectionist in the past. The bar was that low."

I am addressing not the forum members I named at the start of this post, but anyone reading this that is interested in improving their compositional calibre: Whatever time you spend watching whatever vloggers, spend listening to the masterworks of the last 200 years or so, following the scores where you can. You will not become a composer by watching so-called "Tips" on YouTube! Stop listening to so much film music. Immerse yourself in the truly inspired, superbly crafted works of the real masters.

Given enough time, your bar will eventually rise.

I don't mean this to sound arrogant. There are so many musicians -and not- that know a lot more repertoire than I do, and better. I too keep augmenting my skills and knowledge, practically daily.

William: That was my point exactly. Jazz is a genre where variation on a given composition is mandatory. The original composition is given as a guide for extemporaneous explorations; a point of departure. Art-music is very different in that regard. As far as complexity is concerned, I would say that apart from the aspect of rhythm jazz does not begin to compare with art-music. As sophisticated as it can get melodically and harmonically, and as many sub-genres of jazz as there are, and as much as it has evolved, it ultimately is based on specific patterns. I am certainly not saying that they all sound the same; far from that. However, I don't see anything in the same universe as the variety existing in art-music. I don't hear anything as disparate as I do in art-music. Shostakovich's, Poulenc's, and Varese's lives for example heavily overlap.

You are right, of course. I was referring to art-music in my post, but a lot that applies to other musics as well. These blues artists, the ones with great ears, did arrive at some of the same theoretical conventions as well. But not one individual did. They were learning from each other, exchanging ideas with one another, slowly reaching a consensus similar to that of the art-composers of the distant past, and it took a lot of time for their conventions to become 'rules'.

The blues artists created something similar without a textbook, but the art-music composer could not do this as art-music is incomparably more complex than blues and even jazz music (not that jazz cannot get highly sophisticated). Huge ensembles and complex harmonies that often modulate a lot faster, and do so chromatically, instead of mostly in parallel motion.

In addition, art-music's legacy and veneration lies on the written page. This I have tried to explain to jazz aficionados as one of the great differences between the two kinds of music. In blues and jazz the performance is much more important than the piece itself (hence all the improvisations or singing styles where the real magic in the genres happen). They are music of the moment (I don't mean that derogatorily). In art-music, no performance by any conductor will ever be greater than the work itself as it lies, skeletally, on the page; the bare instructions of its potential realisation. It is like a Platonic ideal. Rigid in its formal and notational content (no matter what some conductors used to do 100 years ago as to the latter). So, since it is the score that is more important than any single performance, orthography and correctness became equally important. It is one reason that composers and publishers go to the expense of publishing revisions.

Hi guys,

My more than 2 cents worth (but not much more...) on this discussion:

I am talking from personal experience, the experience of colleagues known to me personally and whom I respect, and plenty of music history and biographies of the greats (not Wikipedia pages).

I can hear the level of schooling and music knowledge within seconds in somebody's music (under a minute if it is a really slow track). This is not an extraordinary ability. Everybody with the same schooling and knowledge as me or higher can do as well or a lot better. It is as simple as that. Seasoned professors (or great and learned ears) will even hear disparities in correct harmonic procedures. I am not talking about parallel 5ths and 8ves, something that every unschooled person brings up as an example in order to dismiss theory by citing composers that flouted this particular rule... There are so many conventions! And would you follow the German or the French school regarding them, for example?

Music Theory is not the be all and end all in art-music composition but it is a study of its own, with its own Bachelors, Masters degrees, etc. It does not merely form a part of an instrumentalist's or a composer's studies. I say to those who diss music theory - because they never studied it to an advanced degree; I personally don't know anybody that knows theory to ridicule it - have you noticed that most (if not all) great composers knew theory backwards before deliberately eschewing some of its rules? Ergo, methodically eschewing them? Ergo, not simply making inadvertent errors?

And I say to those who say -laughably- that learning theory is useless as it dampens the imagination: Is your music freer and more imaginative than the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Lutoslawcki, Penderecki, Schnittke? By the way, if you want to ascertain how much theory you know (ballpark experiment of course), listen to Mozart's Musical Joke -use the score too- and see if you can discover all the places where you are supposed to laugh, and why. That work was composed by the great man for the entertainment of connoisseurs. A lay audience (= those who don't know music theory) would take it as a normal piece of music save for knowing the title and a few very crude passages.

Now, as to which music theory to learn in order to compose. Macker referred to a few great but antiquated manuals. He also said that he is very much interested in intonation issues. If that is the case, manuals contextualising musical conventions from the Gregorian to Baroque eras would be useful, but I would suggest more recent ones that incorporate the information found in those classics. For those who wish to write equal-tempered music, tonal or atonal, they should learn theory that applies to Bach's music onwards. 

Like any serious skill, music theory cannot be acquired by watching a few videos, no matter what those videos claim. It takes years, and it took years for the aforementioned geniuses, for they didn't just learn I-IV-V-I with all the 7ths, 13ths and sus4s included. Plus, it is not a skill that you can learn by yourself. You can read and memorise all you want. If you don't put that knowledge to the test by harmonising Bach chorales, composing inventions, canons, fugues, sonatas, etc. and have somebody look them over, you are wasting your time! It is yours to waste of course.

Will knowledge of music theory (university level) make you a great composer? Please...

Will knowledge of music theory (university level) make you a better composer? Infinitely. 

At this belated point, I must confess that I personally HATED studying Music Theory almost as much as I HATED Analysis assignments.

Do I use theory when I compose? Do you mean do I comb my scores for all the rules of harmony?... Do you actually know how many there are?! Are you asking me whether I look through an entire work to see whether my upward leaps of major 7ths in the bass are resolved correctly, or whether I have any downward such leaps, which are not allowed unless there is at least one other note in between (it might actually be the other way around, I don't remember anymore...)?

Are you serious?

However, I am not Brahms, am I? Let's compare our scores to his and see who has the most mistakes, and how many more... (Let's not actually)

As with languages, it all has to do with sum of knowledge and fluency, which comes from practice as well as talent.

You might say that such considerations are ludicrous when one writes at an advanced chromatic idiom. Well, yes and no. Somehow, composers that know their theory (theory that does not apply to their harmonic systems), they still write better sounding music. Better balanced. Better voiced. You see, theory was determined by compositional conventions that most talented musicians more than less agreed on. They agreed that music sounded better that way, and it seems to be the case. Somehow, proficiency in this knowledge transposes favourably to more advanced harmonic systems, and Schoenberg insisted upon very sound traditional theoretical training for his students, even though he was the proponent of a compositional system that had nothing in common with classical theory. He "threw" John Cage out of his class because he realised the man had no interest and/or capacity for harmony. And Cage found a way to not need it. But he barely composed for instruments as we know them, did he?..

P.S.: Thomas Adès, Macker? Why? What possessed you?

agitato: Done. Please re-send.

agitato: You might want to clean your Inbox Anand, messages are being denied.

agitato: Hi Anand. Thank you for that link, I look forward to perceiving new vistas in our universe. Only last night I was looking at the pictures of Pluto and Charon, as well as Arrakoth (? - if I remember right, it sounded like a character from the Lord of the Rings) from Horizon's mission.

mh-7635: Mike! Very long time, no see...

All is well enough as can be, thank you. How are you? One of the very top programmers of orchestral simulations I have ever heard here. Your Holmside, but the way, sounds like a veritable tour de force. I so enjoyed a few minutes of it, I am going to find time to listen to the whole, and I recommend it to everybody here so they can clear their H.Z.-besmeared palettes with some real music by an actual forum member.

As far as Bond songs go, there is hardly one I don't really like up to (and including) The Living Daylights. Not the A-ha song, of course, but Barry's last contribution to the franchise - If there was a man (see end credits).

Happy composing Mike!

agitato: Thanks for this.I was not aware of that exchange between Elfman and that professor. It is a contentious issue. There is an old video (in B&W) of the young Sondheim being featured/promoted on some talk show of that time, where some of his music was also presented. The conductor of the music was also called for comment, and he lamented the state of affairs on Broadway back then! Early'60s I think. The conductor derided those composers that regarded themselves as such, when they only whistled melodies to their pianists/arrangers, and ended up with the credits of whole shows. He was praising Sondheim (and Bernstein, if memory serves) for being scholastically trained in music et cetera.
After talent, the important thing in music composition, in my view, is whether onesomehowhas managed to acquirethe immense technical knowledge and necessary repertoire in order to write something I want to hear. Whether they went to university, conservatoire, or taught themselves is immaterial. After all, a minor composer - Wagner (Richard, if memory serves) was self taught. For the most part, so was Beethoven. Schoenberg prided himself for being so as well, citing the previously mentioned, placinghimself in their company.
Now, there are really countless composers with degrees out there, with more being added every year. Even if wesubtract the ones that serve the branches of the modernist schools, there are still many that wish to compose tonally and forge a career in film or musical theatre, as well as the concert industry. You would not want to hear music by the vast majority of them. The reason for this? They are untalented. Completely bereft of inspiration and originality.
However, they differ from the untrained non-entities of Hollywood in that their orchestral music will sound likeorchestral music. It won't be a collage of layers of patches and articulations. Because they have technique! And they have knowledge of music history and repertoire! They have studied scores of scores! Most of the time you will findthem workingas composers' assistants trying to make heads and tails ofthe crap handed to them by those others that haven't gone to college AND never bothered to self-study eeeeverything you learn in college. And Elfman says exactly that in his reply, when one reads it properly. It is due to his deficiencies in musical schooling that he had to workso very hardin order to be able to compose the soundtracks he has. And despite the hard work, he still has to entrust his sketches to his orchestrator, but that also has to do with the pitiless deadlines of the commercial film industry.
Having heard a lot of his music, believe me, I can tell he has done a lot of proper work (talent is granted), and remember that he made his marklong before the technology that allows for simian careers was available.

agitato: There is a symphony, and tons of concerti for almost every instrument, the most recent of which was a violin concerto (his 2nd) for Anne Sophie Mutter. However, prepare yourself for their not being anything like Star Wars or Harry Potter.

William: As overly plagiaristic Horner was in a genre where it is even expected -you're right of course and I could add to your list (ex. Glory - Carmina Burana)- I would take him any day over the current frauds. At least he knew his music, and his Aliens soundtrack was powerful! Other scores of his I enjoyed as a teenager were those of Brainstorm and Cocoon, although I don't know how I would react to them today. I haven't listened to those vinyls for decades...

Macker: The ostinati are not so much a 'Simon says' effect. It is really very simple. Those provide the substratum upon which the orchestral ignorami can build a track. They all come from the rock/pop music world, where the drums and bass provide that substratum, and they know not any different. A constant beat or a pattern has to be there for their music (sic) to stand on (I think it was Debney who compared Hans' strings treatment to a rhythm guitar). They have no clue how one builds a proper orchestral score linearly.

I spent about a month at Cambridge University assisting my sister with her final post-graduate dissertation. I had a uniquely magnificent time exploring the grounds, the colleges, the bookshops, the music shops, and the lady students! I even went to see Dr. Holloway, armed with some scores, and while he suggested that I did my Masters there, the expense was prohibitive...

I am happy you don't feel you wasted your time with Good Will Hunting (cheesy title considering...). As far as the screenplay is concerned, I do believe some of the gossip that William Goldman ghostwrote the thing, or a big chunk of it. Somehow I doubt Affleck and Damon came up with lines, such as "A mathematical proof is like a symphony", at age 27 or so, among other things. And as for the films that Elfman has worked on, I mostly agree with your position, although I suggest you might also enjoy Big Fish (with "your own" Ewan McGregor in the starring role) or Dolores Clairborne, a fine, non-preternatural Stephen King crime fiction, and starring the great Kathy Bates.

There are a lot of movies with superlative soundtracks that it would be impossible for me to sit through from beginning to end, including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas, E.T., Superman, Gremlins(!), Evil Dead(!!), or series like The Simpsons, of which I have not watched one complete episode. I tend to disunite the scores from the films. It comes naturally to me as a musician. In that respect, I listen to quite a number of soundtracks happily away from the silliness they enveloped. I also grew up in a family with similar musical tastes to your own. I do not call this snobbishness at all. Snobbishness would be to deny someone their deserved artistic merit due to an irrelevant factor, social status for example. You certainly have not done that.

I also would never compare Elfman to Williams or Herrmann. The latter have/had an enormous arsenal wherefrom they mine/d their astounding musical resources. It seems to me that Elfman is one of the very few exceptions of people who so transcended their academic indigence and inadequacies, as to be doubtlessly recognised as talented. I wish I could say the same about a band keyboard player that has been so revered during the past few decades in Hollywood (it seems I can't post in a thread anymore without mentioning him. It's an obsession!)

Actually, I have respect for Elfman as a composer. His Herrmannian influences are there to be discerned, but no more than in other first rate film composers (ex. Goldenthal), and not to any degree that they compete with his own style and voice - a Herrmann with humour perhaps. I should say voices, actually. From Beetlejuice to Edward Scissorhands, but then to Good Will Hunting and Big Fish, and Midnight Run and Dolores Claiborne in between. The man has range, he is seldom boring, so many of his themes somehow stick to your head it cannot be a coincidence (The Simpsons, Men in Black, Batman, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Scrooged, the above and many others).

Although an A-lister Hollywood composer told me that "Danny gets a lot of help" - which I believe, for you cannot get to where he is from Boingo-Boingo without it - I know enough music myself to recognise a genuine composer with his own ideas (i.e. one that doesn't need layered "inspiration" patches from today's libraries) when I hear him. One of the ways you can 'tell' it's a Composer you're listening to is that his music flows (without ostinati). The ideas and moments follow one another naturally, effortlessly, Williams-like, Herrmann-like. And since I mentioned him, it takes a Composer to become an influence to Williams, and Harry Potter series would have sounded very different if Elfman did not exist.

I don't know whether you have seen this film, but if you had to score Good Will Hunting - and I am not privy to the director's brief - how would you go about it? How do you score for a supernatural genius character? Left to my own devices, I would probably create a massive fugal construct, at least for the appropriate moments, reflecting the intricacies of the depicted massive, manifold brain. Elfman takes a very different, minimal approach, throwing some Irish elements into his mix too (I think), but listen to what he does at the moment of recognition of Hunting's genius by the faculty (thereby confirming this attribute for us). He hangs that confusion dissonance in the air while the professor and his lackey are trying to wrap their brains around the mystery mathematician being a janitor. Hear how beautifully Elfman resolves -or blends- this dissonance to the tutti as the film cuts to Hunting on the bus. That is the moment where the brain is scored for the first time in "full glory". You may think it was understated, but that was the litmus test for me and I think it took genuine musical sensitivity. It's different to what he is usually associated with, which is good too, a lot of the time. Finally, I got a CD with his violin concerto. Not too impressed. I liked the piano quartet enough though...

P.S.: I admit I have no idea how he's scoring these days. You can tell my examples are all from the distant past...

Macker: Well, we claim who we can. There aren't many of us there, sadly - including me!.. One whom you wouldn't expect us to claim -due to his surname- is Alexandre Desplat. I agree with your approach to Conan.

 

P.S.: The soundtracks to The Blue Lagoon and The Hunt for Red October were good too. I only enjoyed one of those movies, of course. Several times.

I was about 14 when I went to see that with friends. I didn't pay much attention to film music back then, but this score made me notice it. I remember going out of the theatre during the intermission awed by it.

Macker: I still have the full Siedlaczek loaded up in one of my hard drives. I don't recall ever having used it commercially, but I had a soft spot for some of its offerings. You could say I never got my money back on it, but I don't regret the purchase. 

On the other hand, if we take the original flagship complete VSL with Performance Set thrown in of 2003/4(?) -which I own, a lot of the orchestral simulations that made the demo and forum areas back then still sound astounding! That is, they sound infinitely better than many an offering today, even with all the extra microphones, all the extra articulations and key switches, all the extra features in the DAWs, all the modern reverbs etc. That is where the point "skill beats tech every time" shines.

As far as the young lady is concerned, I believe I hinted that her music does not interest me at all (run of the mill if we're feeling generous). However, contrary to a lot of other YouTubers she is regularly working in the B and C grade Hollywood industry, so there are things other than composition she talks about that are of interest to me. Plus, she IS conservatory trained, so I know that whatever she says, she does so with a similar background to my own - i.e. not that of someone that doesn't know what scales are... (see other thread).

agitato: I finally saw a few portions of the 'elitism' video; the girl is clearly out of her gourd in that one...

William: Yes, I know that you, me and a few others here would know immediately the library used in the example would be older but, as she said, a lot of people could not tell the difference - skill n.1, knowing what an orchestra should sound like. And "skill beats tech every time", as she said. I do hope that were true of course but it's not, as we know. If it were, Hollywood scores would sound very different...

agitato: I did notice the video you refer to, and did not waste my time watching it. If she said the things you wrote here, she is hypocritical for she is very well conservatory trained. As such, she is not the best person to aver that one can "make it" without knowing music proper. I look at her videos for technical tips on equipment and workflow as she is working in the industry (not just a hopeful). However, there are videos where she does very clearly remark how ludicrous it is to believe that one can become a composer through an Internet course or by just mocking about with libraries. 

It's not just the envious, spiteful, presumably unable-to-keep-up-with-the-Jones' unknown composer that scoffs at the musical vulgati.

Here is one of the beloved YouTube gurus on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9763KDgqslw

She doesn't exactly use my phraseology or sentiment but, if you listen properly, the message is essentially the same. And that's what counts...

I have only heard half the suite so far, I don't know how it could have been much darker... Bill is dangerous!...

It is the same reason that, for as long as I can remember, there is music(!!) during the first few minutes of the news where they are showcasing the latest events. Music during the detonation of buildings during the Iraqi or Serbo-Bosnian wars. Music during the airliner darting into the World Trade Centre or somebody jumping off it! Music!!!!

I finished school in Greece (before I went abroad for studies), where we didn't have this. I am referring to back then of course, now we ape almost everything from our superiors from outside our borders...

When, as a student, was first exposed to "news-music" I was appalled. As if the real life terrors and misery were not enough on their own, apparently they needed scoring in order for the desired emotion to be elicited? For me, it fictionalised real people's predicaments, I was offended on their behalf. Perhaps if I were raised in an English speaking country I also would not have noticed. It was the same with commercials between programs. I found them so incredibly loud, much louder than the actual programs they were interrupting. When I mentioned this during class in the Music department(!), nobody else had noticed it, and it is still an ongoing practice.

Those panderers are smart. It seems that loud, tawdry, vulgar sells - to loud, tawdry, and vulgar of course... Back to Roman bread and spectacles. Or is it that they have never stopped?