Music universities
- Thread starter Hellhounds On My Trail
- Start date
Leandro
¬¬
Musical theory is kinda pathetic. I see no reason why it holds so much status if it doesn't cover all possible "good-sounding" possibilities... it's just a set of heuristic guidelines... and well, fuck heuristics.
Mapexdrums
Member
I guess you play guitar ? Well you have to SOUND good.....tone over speed. Be clean when you play, have good licks and ideas when you improvise, prepare yourself for ear training exams like others said. The one I did at the University of Montreal was quite hard, especially the second exam. I had to write down what the guy played on the piano. It was 4 voices moving in ``contrepoint`` (dunno in english) and well....it was especially made to sort the exceptionnal students from the good students.
Anyways good luck man !
Anyways good luck man !
StoneWoman
Member
Actually, I don't know. I will have to ask my friend whenever I get the chance to talk to her again.
Anyway, from what I know, here in Bucharest, where I live, the guitar classes are included in the chords instruments section. But I assume those are classical guitar lessons, not modern music, improvisation or whatever. So, if shitty Bucharest Conservatoire has this section, I guess Florence has them too. Or any decent Music University out there.
SteveMCsteve
Member
vikk
Member
- Nov 29, 2005
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because no pro will sit down with you and teach you how to play something, they will just give you the sheet.
Leandro
¬¬
Mystique1721
bass solo, take one
lol no. I was talking to DJ British Motard, or whatever he used to call himself.Fetzer?
wtf!!! I can't believe you just said that. Music theory is fucking wonderful. I love studying it. It does so much for composition.
Exactly but I don't think it's that difficult it just requires love and dedication for what you are doing...Anyway are there any universities who don't require any grades in an instrument for example or something like that...I think this uni doesn't require any:
http://music.york.ac.uk/international.php or this:
http://www.city.ac.uk/music/undergraduate/entrance.html or am I wrong??
innuenDO
Pottwahl
I often get the impression that you have to be a semi professional musician even before you go to university. A lawyer needn't posses years of experience in his future job when he wants to sign in to the university.
Leandro
¬¬
I exaggerate of course. But it does disappoint me that the theory is severely incomplete.
Lowberg
Member
CliffBurton
Member
No. Theory is fucking huge. It gets you to practice every single chord, and interval. You should study theory with your instrument in front of you playing everything you do, so you can hear it as well as see it on paper. It REALLY helps you when writing, because you will be infinitely better at being able to properly write out whatever melody you may have floating in your head.
Edit:
Not to mention in live improv. If you have every mode and arpeggio memorized you'll know what mode/arpegio will sound good chord everyone else is playing. It doesn't instantly grant you musical creativity and song writing ability, no, but it takes away a lot of the thinking involved, which you don't have much time to do when soloing on stage.
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Lead sheets, brah. Very little sight reading is involved in a lead sheet, especially for rythm players.
All schools will have different requirements. Chose the school that is best for you, and aim for their standards. Generally, you should know your modes, minor, and pentatonic scales, as well as how to form chords from these scales.
Leandro
¬¬
Huge and incomplete... don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one needs not study musical theory, far from it! The problem lies with the fact that there is much that sounds good that is not covered and there is much that sounds bad that IS covered. It's undesirable from a mathematical point of view.
If you had a more comprehensive set of theoretical tools, a lead sheet would be even more playable.
CliffBurton
Member
What sound's good is purely personal taste. Theory basically lets you know tense or loose (best way to describe it) what you are going to play, will sound like. A huge part of music is tension and release. Some people like crazy fucking odd times, with massive sound clusterfucks, some don't. I don't see how you can bring up mathematical view in an argument clearly having to do with personal taste.
Technically, theory is a cookbook telling you what spices go well together with what foods. Its up to you to progress beyond the basic knowledge of what works with what, in order to come up with something unique and interesting.
Learning the theory is a way of improving the way your hands and mind communicate.
Leandro
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JayWalker
The Village n00b
If it wasnt based around some logical mathematic rules it wouldnt make any sense at all and would be infinitely harder to understand...
Its just a way of know what sounds good and what doesnt easily, without sitting and noodling with every possible frequency combination under the sun. Its not saying that there arent other possible good combinations of sounds, it just helps you to know what DOES sound good. Yes there are things that sound good that arent directly covered in theory, but chances are if you find something that sounds good, you can relate it back to theory in one way or another.
Also, without music theory there would be no universal way to share/write music. A song would be unique to the instrument it was played on, and someone would have to sit down and show you how to play something, rather than handing you a piece of paper
Its just a way of know what sounds good and what doesnt easily, without sitting and noodling with every possible frequency combination under the sun. Its not saying that there arent other possible good combinations of sounds, it just helps you to know what DOES sound good. Yes there are things that sound good that arent directly covered in theory, but chances are if you find something that sounds good, you can relate it back to theory in one way or another.
Also, without music theory there would be no universal way to share/write music. A song would be unique to the instrument it was played on, and someone would have to sit down and show you how to play something, rather than handing you a piece of paper
Leandro
¬¬
Actually, now that you mention it, music theory is so inconceivably trapped in old conventions. For example, diatonic scales... who says there are 12 notes? Eastern music uses a different set of frequencies. As a matter of fact, who says there need to be octaves? Why favour powers of two when counting times? And even within the framework we do have... modes are completely symmetrical, but aren't treated as such. Ionian is "jolly", phrygian is "sad"... musical theory is useful, to be certain, but damn, is it irreparably bound in its own old ways. It needs urgent reversal to fundamentals (as in... what is fundamental to sound and music, and not what is historically preferred - as is currently the case).
Mystique1721
bass solo, take one
and this is why it is so interesting to study. the mathematics behind it.
and by the "bad" sounds that music theory provides for, I'm assuming you're talking about things like dissonant chords? I guess that's just useful if you're going to be writing in that style, like all those avant-garde writers do (which I really dislike actually). But I guess the theory is still there to justify them writing horrible music, lol.
and this.
Leandro, could you give an example of something that you think sounds good, but yet is not justified by theory, one way or another? I haven't personally looked for any such thing, but it seems like you've found such things, and I'm just curious to see what you came up with.
eveningninja
Skull Kid
^^ There is nothing about understanding music theory that is bounding. If you want to take a different approach to writing music and disregard all "rules," by all means do so, but simply knowing the theory isn't going to stop or limit you in any way. You wouldn't even know to think that theory is bounding if you didn't understand it.
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