The Batlord

How? It's claiming to have created something when you haven't actually done anything. You can't compose silence. It's common sense. That's just called sitting on your ass.

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Frownland

Many of those compositions are written, so they did do something. And since when does compositional skill equate to something being music or a composition? Don't you listen to Manowar?

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

The Batlord

Wrote what? Rests? Pauses? If there isn't any sound to pause from then you may as well be clapping with one hand.

And I wasn't criticizing anybody's compositional skill, or even a silent "song"'s relevance as art, just the idea that silence can be a composition.

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Frownland

And you were saying that it's not a composition because it supposedly doesn't take any compositional skill. You also seem to think that "rest" means "stop," which isn't the case. A rest is where the instrument is silent. A composition (discounting free form music and real time composition) is a guide for the performer to use in a piece as to what to do. Since a silent piece dictates what the performer should do (which in this case is nothing), doesn't that make it a composition?

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

The Batlord

First of all, no, I did not say anything about skill, that's a strawman. I know nothing about John Cage's ability as a composer, but I certainly am not going to count a non-composition against his skill as one.

If there isn't any sound being made, then does the difference between a stop or a rest or falling asleep in your chair make any ****ing difference? Whatever the musicians may or may not be doing with their instruments has nothing to do with the silence, anymore than a tiger-repelling rock has to do with repelling tigers. They just happen to be there. So, if you want to call a bunch of pointlessly written down notes and rhythms and time signatures a composition, then go right ahead. But you get exactly the same silence without it.

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Frownland

I took your "doing nothing" idea as being about skill. My bad.

It'd be quite different, actually, because generally this disparity between notes would result in pieces of different lengths. Also, from the performer's perspective, it's obviously a very different piece. If you want to be true to the piece (assuming it's written using conventional rests instead of time stamps) you'll be counting the beats still, and this would widely change the experience for the performer. It may still be the same idea that silence is being used, but it is still different if only because of the sheet music alone.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

So if I put a picture of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of someone it somehow equates to the same experience as actually eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Pet_Sounds

Especially if you're trying to decipher that sheet music. I mean, the bass clef is above the treble clef, ffs.

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Everybody's dying just to get the disease

The Batlord

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