Kole

I think the best (or maybe the worst?) think that happens to self-taught musicians is that they (we) have a completely unique, own style. Instructors unintentionally force their own style into the playing of their "grasshoppers"; I can't say which one is better, it kinda depends on you.

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"Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the ass."
Frank Zappa

GuitarBizarre

Not exactly. it just means they take their style from elsewhere, its not necessarily a good or bad thing, but its just as limiting in the end. And besides, nobody has a 'unique' style on their own. Its kind of pretentious to go around saying 'I am original and unique, a special snowflake', considering a whole bunch of people probably sound very similar to you in the end.

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kouki

Very well said,sir.Its pretty difficult IMO to be original nowadays.So much has been done already.

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It jiggles when he wiggles-Fez

GuitarBizarre

You should read up on postmodern musical theories. I'm studying them at university right now and they basically hold that there is NO original music anymore, only different sounding bric-a-brac made from other bits of music.

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kouki

Ya I figured,theres just so much shi* out there.A lot of songs use the same chord progression too,just different rythm.Plus that one song says it too(forgot the name) but it goes something like this "its all been done, whooo uuuu uuuuu its all been done,its all been doooone beforeeee"LMAO *turns off stupid switch*

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It jiggles when he wiggles-Fez

someonecompletelyrandom

That's rediculously narrow-minded. Theres a bit more to music than pop chord progressions and pretentious modern classical quote unquote avant-garde music, which I'm sure is about as far into "weird" music as the morons who wrote those books have delved.

mr dave

yes and no. even the weird stuff tends to draw from traditional resources in its initial stages. from my perspective it seems that the majority of 'weird' musicians have an idea of where the mainstream flows and where the tributary of weird stuff they like branches off. they're able to recognize the level of deviation between those two elements then tend to apply a similar amount of deviation to their own style from within the established tributary they chose to admire.

as for the recyclability of pop music...

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i am the universe

someonecompletelyrandom

Using just the basic fundimentals of music this theory is disproven.

There are eight commonly accepted note durations

whole note
half note
quarter note
eighth note
sixteenth note
thirty-second note
sixty-fourth note
hundred twenty-eighth note

Using the familular scale we are all used to, there is available to be combined with these particular lengths:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

If we were to make just a four note song using the above accessories...without taking into account time signatures, odd notes, dissonant elements, repetition etc..

there are literally endless combinations. It's bollocks to say there is no "new" music being written! It's like saying all books aren't really new, they are just made up of letters from other books.

mr dave

but when you've spent the better part of a decade working towards a unique sound and you get proper musicians asking you 'no offense, but do you actually know how to play guitar like a normal person?'. i don't think it's pretentious to say you've managed to develop a unique and original style


and in terms of post-modern theories. yes, all styles draw from other elements, then again if you look back enough all music goes back to the first cavedude who tapped rocks on a log to get some cavechick to dance for him. then again we also live in a heavily categorized society so even when you do manage to create something new someone will create a new sub-genre by mashing a few relatively close styles into a new term, like post-hardcore-freejazz-shoegaze-surf rock... but that's only if you tremolo pick single note leads a lot otherwise it's just post-hardcore-freejazz-shoegaze-garage rock. there's a DIFFERENCE... sub-genres are IMPORTANT...

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i am the universe

GuitarBizarre

No, that just means that the person in question hasn't heard anything ELSE that sounds like that. It still more than likely exists.

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