posted 05-25-2002 04:36 PM              

The only difference between improvisation and compositionn is time factor.

I think that was said by David Grisman in an interview with him and Jerry Garcia a few years back in AG.[/B][/QUOTE]

Anton,

David Grisman is not the Goliath issue of this debate.It is the two central figures that hold centre stage in this calamity of conflict.Therefore,it`s worth pondering both sides of the equation,for a balanced outcome.Each contributor has thoughful views, each contender has a point to score,for a result that will yield a formulae that creates a successful resolution. Further, who is the referee in this musical arena?Public taste,social scrutiny,the entourage of notable fingerstylists whose names appear in this brief interlude of writings.Or are there other things to consider when one regards a creative process,dealing with composition versus `noodling`,standard versus open tunings,emotions versus reason,the intellectual versus the practical, in this `colossus cakewalk of the non-Golliwogs`. Firstly,a guitarist who exploits standards tunings to its limits with barr chords,will in the end be capable of producing more tone colours and music of a higher calibre than a player who with one or two finger-chords noodles in DADGAD or CGCGCD or any other tunings.The success formulae is simple.The relationships of the strings in standard tuning with the use of barr chords, allow a guitarist the ability to weave in an out of more keys to extend the range of melodies beyond the hundrum,to attain a richer myriads of chords,to create a music and dynamics more than`a noddler`is capable of,or impossible in open tunings.The professional noodler in open tunings who claims to have a command of the fretboard may arrive at interesting creations,but this is the exception rather than the rule.Moving music may start from a catchy phrase, that you are building, but there arrives a moment when the passion of the heart will take control and depending on your experiences, your values and beliefs and your innerself a greater force will dominate your creations.The power of the ability to create music relies more on the spirit which in combinations with your senses and perceptions will yield your fruits of labour.It is this higher nature in our existence that makes others turn their heads with our music, that like drama, is a form of entertainment,that is both tragic and comical.Our music is both pathetic and grand,it can make us cry or plunge us into dooms of despair, or it may even laugh at our foible attempts,our own failings as individuals.The ultimate goal with music is to brake out of this imprisonment to greater heights to reach levels of attainments in good quality art that gives us happiness, peace of mind, and makes us care for one another through respect and brotherhood of humanity.When we achieve this outcome,then the adventures and journeys are the start of better things to come in our on-going life, and well-being in our world.
This is the soundtrack that the seasons sing and the best music that an audience loves to listen to, at the movies. Yours cordially,Gaetano.

posted 05-25-2002 05:37 PM               

You make some interesting points there.

For now, tho', I'd like to talk about the mecanics of posting. This board, or maybe the web or your browser, will hang up sometimes and appear not to take a post. If you get to the point where it says "Thank you Gazza Bevilacqua for posting your message" the message was added.

Sometimes it doesn't display. Try using your browser's refresh button; that fixes things for most persons.

If you still feel a little mistrustful of the software, try composing your longer messages in Word or Notepad or similar text editor. Then you can do a copy and paste into the little response box, and if anything goes wrong, you still have the original message.

posted 05-29-2002 03:40 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by frailerdude:

If those riffs become the basis of your composition, you have deprived your listener of a connection to your musical essence, and provided instead only a series of notes that your fingers discovered.
c.u.
steve baughman

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I've often felt as I play that I can strongly differentiate between right brain playing and left brain playing. Right brain finds odd/weird combinations and rhythmic devices; left brain demands a clean, clear music theory base for it all.

I believe that the most complete pieces I've made have created a link between the two. They both have something important to say. My musical essence is comprised of both lobes as much as it requires both hands to make the sounds.

posted 06-04-2002 11:35 AM               

I am inclined to disagree. I view the Yellow Pages process as kittens walking on the piano keys. Walk around enough and something nice will eventually sound, like monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare. So can fingers can find pleasant stuff without a meaningful connection with the musical essence of the composer. That, I submit, is exactly what happens in so much open tuning guitar composing. The fingers find the riffs while the soul is disengaged.

I suspect that YOU may have been able to avoid this result because you're clearly aware of and sensitive to the issue. Thus you don't simply disengage your brain and let your fingers do the walking. Good for you.

On another note, (pun intended), an earlier poster asked what the definition of a riff is. This has stumped me (hence my avoidance of this thread for a couple weeks.) I now sheepishly confess that I must resort to the Justice Potter Stewart defense and say "I can't define it, but I know it when I hear it." On a more depthful level of analysis, however, I imagine there IS a way to define a guitar "riff," one that embodies the elements of predictability, convenient availibility of notes, and lack of connectedness to the whole. But I've not been able to come up with one yet.

posted 06-06-2002 09:07 AM               

The soul of a composer might be disengaged the first time your fingers find these musical sentences but what I think you object to the overuse of free-form art in which the player creates by experimentation and then repeats that experimentation as a "composed piece" of music. I agree that I have heard some of this in open tuning playing but I have heard more cliche "riffing" in standard tuning, especially by jazz and blues players. These riff's aren't found by experimentation, they are taught to students of this form of music and then repeated note for note and inserted into compositions, then thrown out there are orginal music. That's the tellow pages method -- IMHO -- and it's not the tuning that causing it.

My point is don't blame the tuning. Blame the composer's heavy reliance on physical rather auditory cues in developing orginal music.

Swapping riffs, experimenting over chord changes and finding "nuggets" is what we fingertsyle guitar players do, largely because unlike the piano we are limited in polyphony -- only six note can play at any one time -- no more. And often the notes separated by a half step can not be played at the same moment simply because of reach required in standard tuning.

Opening tuning (DADGAD/CGDGAD) permits the development compositions in which simple, non-strenuous finger movements can create half step note fluctuation without large finger span reaches across the fretboard.

posted 06-07-2002 07:23 AM              

I don't disagree with my friend Mr. Baughman, because there is an awful lot of guitar music that I have heard that doesn't much move me, musically or emotionally. And it is fairly easy to see that the "composition" of this kind of thing happens on the guitar, and without much (if any) musical direction....and maybe not a whole lot of thinking, either. This has been stated pretty clearly by Steve, and I believe that he couldn't be more correcton this!

But I also know, as Camalex has mentioned, that very few of us (ahem...if any!) are Pierre Bensusan. I have watched Pierre work out passages of music that have been in his head for awhile. The themes and rhythms, the counterpoint, the whole flow of a piece seems firmly implanted before he even touches the guitar.

The important thing to me is that once a musical idea is started (wherever it comes from), is to do something with it that develops in a musical fashion. I can state with a certainty that I have never had an entire piece worked out in my head in advance, but once I have a musical idea it can often "come together" on the guitar. It is a hard thing to describe. Not as random noodling; the process would be playing a developed melody line or a complete phrase (perhaps many times), and then working out variations, changes in register, tempo, or even new parts entirely...but all as a part of what hopes to be a cohesive musical statement that goes somewhere, and says something interesting.

So I originally looked into this thread because of the DADGAD title, but I see that a far more interesting musical conversation has evolved.

posted 06-07-2002 08:12 AM            

This thinking disregards the basis of 20th century art. Freud established that nothing involving the human mind happens by accident. What may seem like thoughtless wandering over the keyboard actually does use the brain. And this type free-association is a true representation of someone's "musical soul" and individuality.
The process you describe is exactly the same DaVinci advised young painters to use to become more creative with their artwork. It was the process used by the Romantics in the 19th Century and Surrealists in the 20th Century.

It is thought to be a PROCESS of producing unique, creative works. Anything else is a METHOD more likely to produce stale, cliche works.

The idea is that our unique individuality is a chain of associations established over our lifetime. Free-association, wandering over the keyboard "thoughtlessly" like a kitten discovers these chains of associations. They are not meaningless, although the meaning may be hidden from the musician, and they are chosen for their effect.

It doesn't matter if it's open tuning or standard. You'll notice that the best painters, although they have a full chromatic range to choose from, will hold themselves to a very limited pallet.

posted 06-07-2002 12:21 PM               

Hmmm. . . lots there to think about. Stand by.

posted 06-07-2002 02:51 PM            

Your quote:

In listening to guitar music, it is usually very easy to tell an original composition from a cover. The originals TEND to be largely comprised of riffs, (sometimes very cool ones, but riffs nonetheless). Those riffs are easy to identify because they are a series of notes that one will inevitably happen upon if one starts noodling in that tuning. Whether you're a good, bad, medium or non-musician, your fingers WILL find those riffs.

If those riffs become the basis of your composition, you have deprived yourlistener of a connection to your musical essence, and provided instead only a series of notes that your fingers discovered.

: made me think that you were actually describing a formula or method. I agree that taking learned riffs and putting them together is poor composition. It can end up as a parody of style. But noodling and free-association is the creative process.

Fingers only discover what resonates to the mind. A connection and choice is made consciously or not.

Adding a modulation to another key, just because it's possible, may make a work more sophisticated, but it may just devitalize the main effect and "soul" of the work too.

posted 06-07-2002 04:27 PM               

Glad you pointed that out because I think this is exactly where the fundamental disagreement lies. I believe that fingers discover whatever they happen to land on. If it just happens to resonate with the mind, the player remembers what the fingers just found and uses it in a later "composition." This discovery process is independent of the musical mind.

Artists throwing paint at canvas from across the room will eventually find something that "resonates with the mind." But do not be mistaken into believing that the way the paint landed on the canvas had much (if anything)to do with the creative soul of the artist. It was a random discovery that the artist happened to like, and therefore retained for later display.

posted 06-07-2002 05:07 PM               

As it relates to tunings - well sometimes I want an open tuning that is dark, sometimes happy, sometimes just plain weird and usually I'll modify the tunning so I can get a good bass line going heheh.

posted 06-08-2002 09:41 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by lpattis:
...I have watched Pierre work out passages of music that have been in his head for awhile. The themes and rhythms, the counterpoint, the whole flow of a piece seems firmly implanted before he even touches the guitar.

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Pierre said in the interview in AG 110

quote:

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...A lot of people who play DADGAD sound like each other at the beginning because they don't deepen in it. When you start deepening in a tuning, you realize the difficulty is not playing the tuning. The difficulty is playing the guitar. So the tuning is not the emphasis.

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I began playing in DADGAD for pretty much the same reasons as Pierre did, although I didn't discover his music until much later. I came to DADGAD via Al Petteway.

I think if you are using DADGAD (or any tuning) as a tool, that is a good thing. If you are using it as a crutch, that is definitely not a good thing.

As far as composition goes, if it is coming from your heart and soul, that is composition. If your fingers are simply falling wherever they may, that is noodling. Nothing wrong with noodling, we all do it. But it is what it is.

JW