The rules of music

[Topiness]

When I was doing my music GCSE exam at school, We were always being told about 'the rules of music'... like, use contrary rather than parallel motion... try to minimise jumps in the pitch of individual instruments... modulate from this key to another via this chord when you go to this section, and so on.

I was frustrated as it seemed that these rules, and even the concepts they were based on, did not relate at all to the music I liked (well, i just thought they were a load of crap). Eventually I realised that these weren't 'the rules of music' - but they were the method by which you produced 18th centuary classical music. And that music from different times, styles, and places all had different 'rules'...


There was a guy called Fux, who wrote down a lot of detailed rules in his 'Gradus ad Parnassum' - e.g.

- From on PERFECT consonance to another PERFECT consonance must proceed in contrary or oblique motion.

- ‘Fa’ leads up / ‘Mi’ leads down – adjust Fa by # if
movement ascends.

etc....


He was talking about the specifics of what made good melodic / harmonic movement, to his ear. and there are the oblique strategies by Eno...

- Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element

- Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

- Don't stress one thing more than another


So, does anyone else find that following rules can be useful, maybe when inspiration fails to strike, or when collaborating with someone else? Or do you just load up some instruments, hit some notes and see where it takes you?

Cheeuz
T

[Ildon]

Of course not all of these rules can apply to modern music. Modern music is taking a more avant garde approach to music creation. Those rules can be useful in certain situations, like, if you begin a song with a melody and need to harmonize it, turning the melody into a rhythm can help make the process easier.

Don't look at these as "rules," think of them as guidelines, but honestly, you'll only probably end up using about 2%-15% of your music theory unless you're writing classical.

I don't agree with abandoning "recipes." As Shamann once told me, "it's good to begin in a similar ballpark each time and work your way out of it." I'll never forget that.

And no amount of theory will make up for a lack of inspiration! I learned this first hand.

Edit: Spelled his name wrong.

Edit 2: Hehe, misread.

Anyway, certain guidelines are useful, yeah. Like, I generally start out with an eighth note arpeggio and go from there, switch it up, etc., but what counts is inspiration. Find what kinds of things inspire you and go to them when you want to make music. For me, it's people, my friends and oddly one of my ex girlfriends.

Edit 3: I had Shamann's name spelled right the first time! Damn you, Vurt.

[daGuru]

Order within chaos has always been my approach

ps. It helps to know the rules first, in order to break them.... hehe

[vurt]

depends on what it is im after.
for my ambient/g;itch/noise stuff the rules are completely different to the stuff i do for say college where i have to produce trance/pop and that kind of stuff.

the "rule" i use in my own stuff may not be any rules that say the likes of normal,shamman,dystonia or mystahr(examples off other ambient artists here at kvr) but even my own rules are there to be broken lest i start just releasing the same things

so rules are indeed useful for everything,even if you use them as a breaking point ie take a c minor scale and use every note that isnt in it or whatever,let rules be more of a guide.

[Topiness]

"it's good to begin in a similar ballpark each time and work your way out of it."

I like that. draws my attention to the fact that wherever I start, I always seem to end up in the same ballpark!

[chagzuki]

MUSIC RULES.

[Amberience]

Thanks for mentioning me Vurt.

Just so you know, oblique strategies was never intended as a collection of rules. Rather a collection of inspiration cards.

Totally different thing to what you're talking about here.

Music sucks.

[CypherOne]

I was lost after the second sentence of the first post.

[Topiness]

Strangely, the set of oblique strategy cards is actually subtitled "One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas"... I don't know how thery're 'dilemmas' - unless "WTF am I going to do now" is a dilemma...

[Ildon]

"it's good to begin in a similar ballpark each time and work your way out of it."

I like that. draws my attention to the fact that wherever I start, I always seem to end up in the same ballpark!

Yeah, me too. Some people just work that way. One of my favorite composers, Naoshi Mizuta, is like that. He's even criticized for sounding the same sometimes.

I always did hate music critics.

[james0tucson]

When I was doing my music GCSE exam at school, We were always being told about 'the rules of music'... like, use contrary rather than parallel motion... try to minimise jumps in the pitch of individual instruments... modulate from this key to another via this chord when you go to this section, and so on.

The music came first, instinctively, and the rules followed as a science to measure what had been happening in the musical development, and also, so that everybody did not have to re-invent the wheel, but could communicate between each other (and across generations), what "worked" and what "didn't".

Some of the rules are completely arbitrary. Others are guidelines that help composers write things that are not unplayable by instrumentalists. Other rules steer the composer away from making mistakes that really go badly when intonation or temperament isn't perfect, or when the acoustics of the room are unkind.

Now I've been studying Atonal Music, and the writings of Allen Forte. He turns the concept of atonal music into a set theory problem. It shows that while you may not *think* you are composing on a set of rules, you just might be.

[vurt]

Thanks for mentioning me Vurt.

.

had i mentioned everybody id have been here still typing

and anyway i think of you less as an ambient artist and more of a psyche artist.you know already i like your stuff,just our stuff tends to be worlds apart,the people i mentioned i have in the past been likened too musically

[Amberience]

So lets f**k.

[gravehill]

I turn to rules when I have a problem. Not sooner, not later. I feel it's hard for me to be creative when I'm trying to follow rules in the first place, but in the event I don't know where to go or what to do I find it useful to restrict some options.

[Andywanders]

Rule No.1

"Just pick it up and blow it man."