# Do you need formal training to be a successful media composer?



## Guy Rowland

Spin off thread from another.


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## RiffWraith

Of course not. It may help, sure. How many successful media composers are there who never had formal training? At least a few.

Still, I cant wait to see how this thread turns out, and how quickly it turns into an absolute shitfest.

o[])


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## TheWillardofOZ

I myself am classically trained and reap the benefits of that every day, but that's what works for me. I know people who play wonderfully by ear and have little to zero training. They don't know music theory and don't care to. Some people just have the gift I think.

The only argument in this area that I disagree with is when someone told me that learning music theory or being formally trained hurts the music. I understand that if you do everything exactly by the book then you'll come out with some pretty stale stuff, but I figure their music would be stale with or without training. I can't see it in any way hurting a composer. 

Just my 2 cents.


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## Daniel James

Personally speaking I havn't been formally trained to compose and as far it hasnt held me back.

I do however think that training in general by studying the music that interests you and practicing is quite important. And as mentioned in the other thread, I don't think one form of training is superior to another it all depends on you as a composer, what interests you, how you learn the best. For some people learning on your own through discovery or Youtube videos is infinitely more effective in allowing you to soak in the information than sitting in a classroom with a professor or reading books. Its all about what works for you.

And yes I agree. Let the shitfest commence. 

-DJ


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## Daniel James

TheWillardofOZ @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> I myself am classically trained and reap the benefits of that every day, but that's what works for me. I know people who play wonderfully by ear and have little to zero training. They don't know music theory and don't care to. Some people just have the gift I think.
> 
> The only argument in this area that I disagree with is when someone told me that learning music theory or being formally trained hurts the music. I understand that if you do everything exactly by the book then you'll come out with some pretty stale stuff, but I figure their music would be stale with or without training. I can't see it in any way hurting a composer.
> 
> Just my 2 cents.



I agree. Any form of training you have can only improve you as a composer and in no way can hurt the music. Learning classically wont harm you. but I do think you can be just as creative by focusing study in other aspects of music.

The more you learn the more you know, the more you can call on. Doesn't matter if you learn it formally or not, just what works for you. Keep exploring, keep looking for something new and keep practicing what you learn.

-DJ


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## Guy Bacos

I find the question too ambiguous.

There are too many different scenarios you could make conclusions from depending on either your formal training or the baggage you picked up on the road, here and there, working with professional etc.

The quick answer is obviously, No! But I just hope nobody will say, one is better than the other.


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## Daniel James

Guy Bacos @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> I find the question too ambiguous.
> 
> There are too many different scenarios you could make conclusions from depending on either your formal training or the baggage you picked up on the road, here and there, working with professional etc.
> 
> The quick answer is obviously, yes! But I just hope nobody will say, one is better than the other.



Can you explain why *formal* training is _essential_ thought. I think thats the point of the thread. You can't just say yes or no without explaining your point of view haha that would make fora very boring thread...without enough shit being flung 

For the record I am not saying formal training is bad. I am just saying you could be equally as successful through self study, listening and practice.

-DJ


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## Guy Bacos

I said yes, but I had the question backwards in my head. My answer is NO, you DON'T need a formal training to be successful. Sorry for the confusion.


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## Daniel James

For those who missed out on the other thread and why It required its own thread came from an issue I took with Jay's statement that trained composer's music on this forum was better than the untrained. 

I think I took issue with that as I don't see the formal training as the key to good music. I have heard fantastic music from untrained musicians on this forum as well as some bad music from trained composers (in my opinion that is). I see the key is the creativity and application how what they have learned and discovered over time, not HOW they learned it (with formal training being implied as making a composers output superior)

-DJ


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## Peter Alexander

I'm balking at the phrases "classical" training and "formal" training. And I'm balking at them because they are so heavily laden with the academic degreed approach of proficiency levels vs skill levels. In short, passing the test so the school meets accreditation standards, but the student failing in life for not knowing the material thoroughly enough to write and create their own music.

I've spent nearly a lifetime (I'm not dead yet, so it's not _yet_ a lifetime...) studying how the great composers taught themselves ranging from Bach to many Hollywood film composers I was able to interview.

Over nearly 400 years the patterns are remarkably consistent and five stand out:

keyboard skills and sight reading;
a highly restrictive set of learning materials that are results driven (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration);
score study
being mentored by only 1-2 individuals, four at the most;
doing the craft daily.

Now that's the music, the craft. Beyond that see:

The War of Art

Talent Is Never Enough
http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Is-Never-Enough-Discover/dp/0785214038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357886803&sr=8-2&keywords=talent+is+not+enough (http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Is-Never-E ... not+enough)


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## Peter Alexander

Daniel James @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> For those who missed out on the other thread and why It required its own thread came from an issue I took with Jay's statement that trained composer's ...



Define "trained" composer. That's another phrase I balk at because most people take it that "trained" means college. 

We operate by skill - to know is to do.


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## Peter Alexander

TheWillardofOZ @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> I myself am classically trained and reap the benefits of that every day, but that's what works for me. I know people who play wonderfully by ear and have little to zero training. They don't know music theory and don't care to. Some people just have the gift I think.



Some do, some don't. See the magic "buzz" word is "theory".

Ray Charles may not have known "theory" via roman numerals et al, but he sure knew a lot of harmony!

Then on the flip side there's Billy Strayhorn much of whose harmonic language came from Debussy.

And for all the Berklee-ites here you can find a drop-3 voicing in Debussy's Prelude to Te Afternoon of a Faune! 1895 BTW.


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## Daniel James

Peter Alexander @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> Daniel James @ Thu Jan 10 said:
> 
> 
> 
> For those who missed out on the other thread and why It required its own thread came from an issue I took with Jay's statement that trained composer's ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Define "trained" composer. That's another phrase I balk at because most people take it that "trained" means college.
> 
> We operate by skill - to know is to do.
Click to expand...


Thats what I took issue with because I felt the implication he made was that _formally _trained composers put out better music here than the untrained.

I could be wrong though....in which case I have been arguing against myself again....wouldn't be the first time.

-DJ


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## Guy Bacos

The one thing I find a bit annoying is that there is this image that people with formal training have been brainwashed and are close minded in terms of trying new things. I think that is a false assumption. Some people are very knowledgeable with no sense of creativeness, some are very creative but with little knowledge, some are both others are none. But I doubt the formal training has anything to do with that, it's just how you are as an individual. 

Of course you could become a successful media composer without formal training, however, I would encourage any form of training, the knowledge is gold, the more, the better.


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## Casey Edwards

I have mixed feelings on the subject. Not that the matter of going to college makes you better, because it doesn't. I definitely agree that it's within the self discipline of the actual person to seek out the knowledge. I do think it's important to state that the academic way of learning to compose is NOT a classroom endeavor. It's an apprenticeship approach where your goals are shaped and aided by that of a mentor in a one on one basis. That is extremely helpful regardless of your style if you have the right teacher (I did). The growing is still up to you, as stated before. 

When it comes to organic music, I have a hard time accepting that if you can't compose without the aid of a computer playback then you aren't a composer at all. You haven't taught yourself to hear your inner ear and that is part of the craft. Not dragging notes until you're happy. I struggle with that thought every so often when it comes up. This is not to be confused with the appreciation of MIDI and sampling technology. I love it and love that I can have a job/fun without worrying about money to hire an orchestra. This is not a lofty approach to composing; it's simply an artistic discovery that I can't explain until you journey that path on your own. It makes you wiser, quicker, more creative, etc. Essentially it heightens your sense of pitch and color and tunes your brain to actually composing/orchestrating. I can't wait until I've reached a higher level of understanding. I'm still pretty novice in this area, but do discipline myself to pencil/paper orchestration or composing when time allows. It's always an eye/ear opener. As is in depth score study.


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## Peter Alexander

A great lesson I learned from Jerry Goldsmith was not to become an "adjective" composer as in film composer, media composer, jazz composer. Instead just focus on being a _composer_.


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## synergy543

Guy Bacos @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> The one thing I find a bit annoying is that there is this image that people with formal training have been brainwashed and are close minded in terms of trying new things. I think that is a false assumption.


I think this image comes from the academia itself and there is some truth to it. When I went to USC, you were 'expected' to write in a certain "modern style". Romantic tonal writing and was looked down upon and highly discouraged. There certainly was a sense of conformity and unspoken guidelines about what was acceptable or not. I called it "academic music" because at the recitals, the only people in the audience were the profs and few students.

I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying though. I myself am doing intensive studying of traditional harmony and orchestration at this moment. I'm finding it valuable to go back to the old classic works at the turn of the last century, a time which I consider one of the richest periods in music history culminating around 1911 for some reason. When you look at what composers such as Stravinsky or Prokofiev studied, its mind-blowingly rigorous and intensive. What Rimsky-Korsakov and Gliere had Prokofiev doing was intensive score study and composition. And they were all highly proficient pianist. This level of study seemed quite common around the early 1900s. I think today we have so many distractions (movies, TV, computers, smartphones, games, vi-control?) that few people have the time to do the same level of intensive study as in the past. We have more powerful tools (DAWS and samples) but what is the result? 

I believe there is no substitute for chops and knowledge from an aesthetic point of view. In terms of success, its clearly not needed. So it all depends upon what you want to achieve.


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## kutai

I'm untrained, If someone asks me to teleport me to past and give me my musical training I know I would say yes in a heartbeat. 

Knowledge provides control and triggers innovation, however institutional training is not the only means of acquiring it, but it is an effective one I have to say. 

There are many many factors affecting success, and I think being trained constitutes a small fraction of that...


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## lux

just read the title. wrong answer


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## ed buller

Your either going to have to get formal training or on the job training. Music production from composing to producing is too complex without. 

Film music has such a variety of styles that without a decent working knowledge of those styles you are going to be doing a lot of catching up....

You wouldn't stay on an aircraft if you saw the pilot with a copy of "flying a jumbo for dummies" under his arm. Likewise your clients are going to need to see concrete evidence of your chops. It's just up to you how you get them. 

Unfortunatley a lot of conventional music education as far as composition goes is quite limited when it comes to film music. And some of the film music specific education can be limiting to. 

I would recommend a small concise study of the basics in conventional music then just focus ( and you can do this on your own) on film music. There are a lot of places on the Internet to get resources for this. Copying cues by ear in your DAW is excellent training. There are lots of good books out there too. 

Of course there're are notable exceptions. But I suspect nearly all the heavy hitters have had some training.

E


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## Caedwallon

Guy Bacos @ 11th January said:


> I find the question too ambiguous.
> 
> There are too many different scenarios you could make conclusions from depending on either your formal training or the baggage you picked up on the road, here and there, working with professional etc.
> 
> The quick answer is obviously, No! But I just hope nobody will say, one is better than the other.


Listen to this man.


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## doctornine

Formal training ?

In what ? 
How to run a business ? How to network and build relationships ? How to develop social skills ? How to find and work with session players ? Self promotion skills ? Understanding how the music business works in relation to sync usage ? Contract negotiation ? Legal knowledge ?

Yes, obviously you need some basic understanding of music theory and some production chops, but all the above ( and probably others I missed out ) all factor into a career as a media composer.

Just remember it's not all about how well you study music, there's a great deal more to it than that. Trust me, I do library.


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## Kejero

Haven't read all replies so sorry if I'm repeating anyone.

My point of view is that it's not the fact of being trained that's relevant, but what the consequence of training is. Training teaches you things that work. Without training, and with only experience, you will get there too. If anything, I think training can be an invaluable kickstart. You'll have a much more powerful arsenal with the combined knowledge of several lifetimes of experience of skilled masters, than you could ever hope to achieve by yourself. 
I'll ignore how "formal" that training is, what's relevant is the knowledge you aqcuire, and the time you spend turning that knowledge into skill by actually writing.

That said, you need at least some talent too. I know a guy who went to Berklee, got his formal training, got to record some stuff with live orchestra and everything, and his work is... simply awful. I'm sure he'll get his gigs, but that's a different discussion


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## Mike Marino

Brian Tyler on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUpIO7hwnE


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## noiseboyuk

Casey Edwards @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> When it comes to organic music, I have a hard time accepting that if you can't compose without the aid of a computer playback then you aren't a composer at all. You haven't taught yourself to hear your inner ear and that is part of the craft. Not dragging notes until you're happy.



Interesting....

It's a slight tangent, but I'm someone who has always struggled with notation. It has pretty much always seemed alien to me. To me it's an artificial construct necessary to advance ideas that arose for necessary historical reasons. Indeed, of course I accept that when it comes to actually having music played by others today, it's the only gig in town - I'm not sure how else you'd communicate effectively.

But composing seems entirely different. I understand a piano keyboard, I understand faders and controllers, so a piano roll editor is natural fit. I don't compose by dragging notes around (unless, as is often the case, I played it wrong), I compose at the keyboard. But it's your phrase "hear your inner ear" that struck a chord (if you will). That's exactly what I do - it's very common for me to hear a melody, harmony, counterpoint, even full arrangement, then figure out the notes on the keyboard. I'd guess I'm 50/50 that and composing by playing and seeing what happens. Lots of trial, lots of error.

I've always struggled with structured learning in any artistic endeavour. I'm a strong believer in nature vs nurture in this, and it's a little frustrating to see how often those who benefit from structured learning assume what has worked for them works for everyone else. It's fascinating to watch my youngest son (11) as it's pretty much what I'd imagine an archive film of me would be like. Very musical, remembers his piano pieces well and plays them with great experession. Hopeless at sight reading.

I do actually understand those who fear that formal learning would ruin what they have... I sort of feel that, even though on the face of it it's not really rational. What I think it is is that formal learning can take the joy out of it, and this I see clear as day in my son. He's someone who rails against exams, the boring pieces he hates to play - a very familiar feeling to me. The problem is that as his teacher is focused on results and passing the next grade, he's gotten to hate playing the piano at all. We asked her to ease back and play more fun stuff, but she was seemingly incapable, so we stopped his lessons and are encouraging him to play for fun instead. So I'd say stuff that takes the fun and the joy out of what you do - if that's what it is to you - is a real threat.

I think these are very interesting times. There's a common view expressed here - which in some senses I share - that things are too easy these days. Construction kits, loops, one note libraries that require virtually no skill to make you sound great. But what really interests me is something a little less obvious. 25 years ago I'd never have dreamed I could compose something orchestral. Someone like me who doesn't get notation at all, never mind the lack of formal learning, made it a non-starter. Or rather... it did. With quality VIs, I do think it's pretty exciting and wonderful that there is now a new way to compose, and even a new way to learn. Not one-note composing either. It was quite something to hear stuff start to come out as a result of listening to orchestral music for 35 years had gone in.

I'm well aware of my shortcomings, some genres are still really out of my reach. But lots IS within grasp (some may disagree...) and as I've played and practiced and made mistakes, the pool of stuff I can pull off is growing. I'm glad a live in a time where it's possible.


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## Ed

A key word is media composer, not concert composer. Most music in the world is not classical, at all!

The most important thing a media composer can have, besides skill, is a deep passion for the medium of film/game and what music can bring to it. No amount of musical training, much less formal training, will give this to you, you just have to FEEL it. So in other words, the more likely you are as a person to become emotionally invested to whatever it is, the better you are going to be as a media composer.


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## Ed

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> I listen to a lot of the Member Compostions posted here. Those posted by the trained people overwhelmingly are, in my subjective opinion, considerably better.
> .



Only because you're cherry picking. Ive heard a lot of people that have been formally trained and they arent very good, whereas others that are not, are. If you're talking about who can write a better John Williams impression, thats totally different, because you need certain knowledge to understand what is going on there. Music encompasses more than classical and people come to it from more than one direction.

edit: Copied this post from the other thread in OT. It relates to composing in general rather than media composition, but figured it was more on topic here.


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## Alex Cuervo

I agree with Ed. I think beyond the basics, a passion for the medium is essential.

Another thought: there are many successful media composers with no formal training, but I bet if you dug around you'd discover that most of them were working musicians (toured in bands, session players etc...) before doing media music. I guess some might have been EDM/IDM producers too (Jon Hopkins, BT...)

In this age of information I bet we'll see the next generation of media composers being largely more self taught, the net result of which being a further shift away from traditional concert orchestration. Not saying this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely the writing on the wall.


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## Daniel James

I wonder if because of the growing quality of samples, over the next few years we start seeing less live orchestras being hired...then once live orchestra stop becoming such a focus people start writing for it less and start replacing with different sounds. I have heard a few scores recently which had very little or no orchestral parts and still made the film work just as well.

Interesting times indeed.

-DJ


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## Casey Edwards

@noiseboyuk - Besides the fact that is a dangerous paraphrase(!!), I get your point. And like I said, I struggle with the thought. I don't deal in absolutes. (Only a sith deals in absolutes!)  It's important to read that I said 'computer PLAYBACK' and not just computers. I use computers all the time, and it's a lot more than I get the chance to use the pencil/paper/piano approach. My point is, if all technology were to shut down, I wouldn't feel my career goals would be in jeopardy. In this day and age, it's quite different. You HAVE to be able to work a computer as if it were an extension of your arm, so I have learned to do that as well. I find joy in both worlds, and my previous point of view in the first post I made comes from the artistic side of my mind that has been able to experience that deep level of meditative writing. I'm not where I want to be, but I recognize its importance and will continue to strive for a better understanding. If you think theory will dumb down your creativity then you're quite wrong. It's a tool, nothing more. How you use it is up to you.

I can also relate to school getting you down and that's coming from someone who graduated with honors and was on the Deans List. After the first 2 years or so I was beginning to really hate it. Still to this day, I look back only smiling at a few things. If I were to give advice to anyone, it would be to skip the 'college experience' and go straight for a good teacher. If I were to do it all over again, that's what I would do.


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## Alex Cuervo

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> I listen to a lot of the Member Compostions posted here. Those posted by the trained people overwhelmingly are, in my subjective opinion, considerably better.
> .



Sorry, I'll add a thought to this as well. 

What this says to me is: "If you want to write music that impresses academically trained musicians, you'll need to pursue the academic study of music".

Personally I'm more interested in pursuing/exploring the types of music that appeal to the kinds of directors/game producers/music editors whose work I admire. One man's garbage is another man's art.


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## Daniel James

Alex Cuervo @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Jan 10 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I listen to a lot of the Member Compostions posted here. Those posted by the trained people overwhelmingly are, in my subjective opinion, considerably better.
> .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry, I'll add a thought to this as well.
> 
> What this says to me is: "If you want to write music that impresses academically trained musicians, you'll need to pursue the academic study of music".
> 
> Personally I'm more interested in pursuing/exploring the types of music that appeal to the kinds of directors/game producers/music editors whose work I admire. One man's garbage is another man's art.
Click to expand...


Unless its dubstep....thats shit to everyone. 

-DJ


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## JohnG

One of our musically gifted forum members, poseur, said once:

"I read & write, & still have some cause to sight-read..... under pressure, with the red-light on. 

it might be seen as important that our paths are founded on the bases of the creation of original works, sincere works that offer our own personal viewpoints and perspectives; I think it can be dangerous to suggest that good composition absolutely requires reading & writing, first & foremost: 
I don't believe that the basic, childlike impulse to compose should be overlooked as an absolutely primary factor worthy of work & development. 

I also think that any instrument that one plays well --- the more, the merrier --- can, indeed, be folded into the approach through which we compose, and can thereby enrich both our understanding of our own writing, as well as its reach & potential: I suggest continuing to use those instruments in one's compositional flow, and pursuing them. 

unlike many, I don't believe there's a fundamental problem with composing-by-ear..... 
if, 
a) you're increasing the capacity of your ear, and 
b) you simultaneously develop various methods of 
intra-musical communication..... 
..... including (but, not limited-to) reading & writing. 

..... seems like what's primary to music of value is that 
1) we actually have something to say, and 
2) we can say it. 

so, yeah: 
do learn to read & write, so that you can study & analyse scores, & comprehend harmony & rhythm..... 
but, listen more & with greater concentration, sing more melodies (alone, without any instrument to hand), and continue to play all your instruments with musical vigor: 
internalise the feelings of isolated pieces of music. everything you learn 
--- no matter how, or in what chronological order --- it's all important."

poseur


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## Alex Cuervo

Daniel James @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> Unless its dubstep....thats shit to everyone.
> 
> -DJ



Oh you Brits and your sly, dry wit. I'll never grow tired of it.

Personally, I prefer D&B, but I'm an old punk rocker, so what do I know?


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## EastWest Lurker

Ed @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Jan 10 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I listen to a lot of the Member Compostions posted here. Those posted by the trained people overwhelmingly are, in my subjective opinion, considerably better.
> .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Only because you're cherry picking. Ive heard a lot of people that have been formally trained and they arent very good, whereas others that are not, are. If you're talking about who can write a better John Williams impression, thats totally different, because you need certain knowledge to understand what is going on there. Music encompasses more than classical and people come to it from more than one direction.
> 
> edit: Copied this post from the other thread in OT. It relates to composing in general rather than media composition, but figured it was more on topic here.
Click to expand...


That is a fair statement. I sometimes forget that I am not only communicating with film/TV/ and concert hall composers here but those who deal in media idioms, like games, thatI know nothing about.

90% of all the most admired film composers in the past and in the present are either formally trained or have studied and practiced traditional skills to the point where for all practical purposes they have that knowledge base, or hire those who do.

So I will augment my original thoughts and call it a day:

1. To get good at anything requires lots of study and practice. WHAT you study and practice may vary depending on what kind of music you wish to produce.

2. That said, in line with my personal standards/aesthetics of what constitutes good and bad composition, when I listen to he Member Compostions posted here, those posted by the trained people overwhelmingly are, in my subjective opinion, considerably better music.


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## mducharme

I have really enjoyed my experience at University studying Composition. I would normally graduate this year, but I'm delaying my final recital until next year.

I don't think it's necessary, but I don't think it hurts either. The big plus in my mind is access to performers who will perform your pieces, which you do not have sitting in a room working on a computer. I have my orchestra piece being played by the student orchestra in a month. I think that the fact that I will have written a piece for orchestra and had it performed will make a director more comfortable if I have the opportunity to write for a live ensemble.

The only negative has been that I have much less opportunity to write film score type stuff. We are strongly encouraged in University to write modern music, in which tertian harmonies (triads, seventh chords, ninth chords, etc) are rare, and atonal techniques are frequent. Still, I think it changes the way I think about tonal music, because prior to university I would evaluate a tonal piece based upon the emotions that it generated, and that is also how I would evaluate my own music. When I started writing modern stuff, it is less emotional and more abstract, and so I could not tell whether what I was writing was good or not, which caused some frustration.

Still, by writing music that is more abstract (thus divorcing emotion from music), it has taught me developmental techniques for taking a motive and doing various things with it to unite a piece, which I perhaps would not have arrived at given the baggage of my previous very tonal musical experience. A lot of those developmental techniques can be applied to tonal music and film scores as a means to extend basic musical ideas, in a way that I don't think would make the piece too complicated or heady or hard to understand (which is bad with film scores) but just provides a second layer underneath music which serves the film and is enjoyable on the surface. I do wish I would have more opportunity to write more overtly emotional music, though.


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## sstern

If you are a curious composer, you won't be able to stop yourself diving into the musical, academic world where there is a maximum concentration of people that do what you do, love doing it and know less/the same/more/much more than you. I wouldn't exchange this kind of experience for anything else


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## Darthmorphling

There is a quote, which I can not find right now, from Joe Satriani. For those unfamiliar with him, before he found success as an artist he taught guitar lessons.

I will paraphrase it here:

Student: Why do I need to learn theory? Stevie Ray Vaughn never learned theory.
Satriani: Can you play like Stevie?
Student: No.
Satriani: You can do like Stevie and spend years learning from the blues greats. It is possible, but will take a lot of work and you will make mistakes along the way. Or I can show you the theory behind what Stevie did. Then when you listen to him, the reason why he chose his chords and scales will be a lot more clear.

I think this sums up this argument quite well. With enough determination you can learn on your own. Stevie Ray did study. He just did it in a much different way. 

Satriani studied Hendrix, on his own, when he was younger. He took music theory in high school and soon immersed himself in learning. 

Both are phenomenal guitar players and both learned in very different ways.

As far as computers making music easier for the non trained musician, I have to agree, but it is simply a tool. History is full of people improving musical tools that have made the craft of writing music easier. It doesn't mean that just anyone can write "good" music.

I am one of those people that finds traditional learning very confining. This is quite ironic since I am a public school teacher. At the beginning of the year I tell my students that my job as a teacher is to teach them the content, but I am also going to help them to become independent learners.

John Petrucci, another phenomenal guitar player, outlined his practice routine in his Rock Discipline DVD. What ever time he had for practice was divided into three equal sections: Warm up, some sort of theory/technique practice, and writing music.

This is the approach that seems to work for me.


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## Guy Rowland

This has been a great thread. Seems like a while since we've batted this one about.



ed buller @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> You wouldn't stay on an aircraft if you saw the pilot with a copy of "flying a jumbo for dummies" under his arm.



I meant to pick up on this earlier (before that bloody noiseboyuk barged back in for a random post I see). I think this comment really well defines where I'm not coming from.

As many of you know, I'm also a TV sound sup / dubbing mixer. People often ask me about training, and how to start in the industry. I invariably tell them that college really doesn't matter. It really doesn't. People look for people who have natural ability and a great attitude. Qualifications are basically irrelevant. If you have the drive to learn by doing, that's far and away the most important thing.

Likewise if you want to direct a movie, going to film school seems pretty irrelevant to me (though of course many famous directors have done it). If you want to direct, start making films, probably badly at first.

So the jumbo jet pilot analogy is seriously flawed. The logic doesn't apply in the arts, in my view. It doesn't mean that formal study is bad, but it does mean that it is not necessary in all cases.

As a teenager, I was madly into U2 (starting in the Boy / October era). I felt an affinity with them as I found out more about them. They started as a Dublin bad punk band, essentially pretty inept. They wanted to play covers, but they weren't good enough to get away with it. They started writing their own songs primarily because it was the only stuff they could actually play.

I loved that. I loved The Edge's simple yet highly unusual guitar parts, sounding far bigger and more complex than they really were (parodied by Bill Bailey) as he embraced effects. And of course they soon developed their own unique sound and idiosyncratic songwriting skills. Eventually of course they all became accomplished musicians - I guess they pretty much had to cos they were just playing all the time.

To me, it's exciting to see this same spirit in action in orchestral and film music. I've never had the conversation with Daniel (James) about what training he got... it sort of doesn't matter. I've always admired the way he stubbornly ploughs ahead with his own way. Every single time he posts a bloody track or tutorial, someone will say "you're a bit heavy with the reverb". Does he ever take it on board? Nope. He knows what he likes, it works for him, and I love that (and I'd be surprised if any client of his has ever mentioned it - they just like the end result).

I think this generation will produce a lot of Daniel James' who come up with really interesting stuff. I'll bet some of them even go for concert music. I do wonder if a lot of the reason most of the main old and modern composers are classically trained is that there wasn't really another way. Technology democratises.

I appreciate I'm stretching a point here, and I want to emphasise I'm not anti-training - I'm just anti the notion that training is essential in all cases. The diversity and complexity of orchestral music is pretty overwhelming. But I still bet you we'll see some phenomenal talents coming through who are entirely self taught.


----------



## germancomponist

The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?


----------



## Casey Edwards

germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?



I don't believe in 'talent.' I believe in discipline.


----------



## Ed

germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?



Of course, look at John Powell. If your mind works that way, it can help you a lot.


----------



## dcoscina

Powell is a great composer.


----------



## germancomponist

Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't believe in 'talent.' I believe in discipline.
Click to expand...


Oopssss, I better had said: The combination between formal training, talent and discipline is the best.

But at least you are right! Discipline is the most important thing... .

But, discipline without talent? No, this doesn't work!


----------



## ed buller

yes the jumbo jet analogy was probably a stretch but....I work with bands...mostly untrained musicians....some ridiculously talented ( Bernard Butler springs to mind ) and yet on many occasions they get frustrated because they will have something in their head and not be able to do it. At first I couldn't help them...but after just a little training I can at least show them some options. My teacher always said teaching composition was about offering choices as to what should come next...i really liked that.

Now in film music i hear so much more going on than rock...in terms of harmony....and to be honest weather you are self taught or go to school you will at some point have to know it. Unless you are never called on to write in a particular style. Of course the holy grail is to invent your own......but why wouldn't you want to get as much knowledge under your belt to help you do it ?

e


----------



## Ed

germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> But, discipline without talent? No, this doesn't work!



I think there's natural talent, then there's learned talent, especially when it comes to art.


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## Daniel James

Sure there are some people in the world who are just good at things. For whatever they are born with a brain that just clicks with something and can just do it.

However talent is a bit of a weird word, You can develop talent I think. If you really want to learn how to do something you can with enough focus and dedication.

How many here have listened to music they wrote when they first started? Think its the music of a talented person? haha. 

With no ego stroke intended here just facts. I have been called talented by a few people who I greatly respect recently and the truth of the matter is I couldn't feel further from being so. I do however know and trust in my own ability to deliver what people say I have the 'talent' to do when in reality I know that is because of the hours I have put in and the techniques I have developed through practice and study. I am sure there are many of you who share similar stories or feelings.

So I think talent, with talent being a natural born ability, is sort of irrelevant. Discipline and dedication however can pass for the illusion of talent and THEY are important.

-DJ


----------



## Kralc

I'm really liking all these discussions the forum's been having! Some really interesting thoughts. 
And hey look, 2 pages in and no absolute shitfest!


----------



## Guy Rowland

I half agree Daniel, but I do believe in the heresy of natural talent also, very much so. I appreciate the movie Amadeus was a fictionalised account, but I think its core ideas are spot on.

And yes, I do know how hard Mozart studied. The key point really is that if a thousand people studied and worked as hard as Mozart, it's highly unlikely any of them would really reflect his genius.

I'm always kind of surprised that this debate keeps cropping up. (not talking to you Daniel here, a general point). It's the nature / nurture debate in essense. The logical conclusion of "there's no such thing as natural talent" is that any of us could equally excel at anything (barring physical or mental handicap). I could be a brilliant sculptor or painter, despite all appearances that I have no apparent ability to do either.

In a sense, nature / nurture is a problem by definition, because it asks an either / or question. It's always seemed obvious to me that the truth is that both are crucial. I agree natural talent is not enough on its own (I'd say other attributes such as discipline and determination are the other key qualities required). But gadzooks the reverse is also the case.

The self-help books of the world thrive on the idea that "you can do this". Anyone can write a novel, anyone can be a great comic, anyone can unify the four elemental forces (ok, I haven't seen this one in Borders). They can't.

My view is that humans are infinitely complex. There is no one-size-fits-all. Every one of us will have a different creative process, every one of us learns differently and discovers differently. Most folks have an aptitude for something - it's a case of finding out what that is, and then finding out the best way of further developing it.

And Kralc - I know! At what page will it fall apart, I wonder?


----------



## Kejero

I know it's just semantics and not the core of the discussion, but I think 'talent' implies that you're born with it, where as 'skill' is the thing you can develop. Having more talent is making development of the skill easier. No?


----------



## germancomponist

Right!


----------



## MichaelL

I think Guy came upon the right word...aptitude:

"An aptitude is a component of a competency to do a certain kind of work at a certain level, which can also be considered "talent". Aptitudes may be physical or mental. Aptitude is not knowledge, understanding, learned or acquired abilities (skills) or attitude. The innate nature of aptitude is in contrast to achievement, which represents knowledge or ability that is gained."

Training results in knowledge and ability gained. Aptitude is the natural starting point, from which we all begin. We are not born with equal amounts of aptitude. I think training helps, but cannot fully compensate for lack of aptitude.


----------



## wst3

call it talent, aptitude, genius, whatever... my personal observations are that there needs to be some spark that you just have, but then it is your responsibility to develop it to it's greatest extent.

If you do not have that spark it really doesn't matter how hard you work. Or perhaps without that initial spark you can't develop the interest or passion required to do the work?

If you have the spark, but do nothing with it... well, that's sad, and maybe even a crime?

Training is essential, as is practice. But I do not think the training has to be formal in the conventional sense, nor does it have to be classical.

I think formal, classical training can be quite valuable - but it is NOT the only path...


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Talent is all well and good and certainly some are born with more than others but good music is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.


----------



## Guy Rowland

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Talent is all well and good and certainly some are born with more than others but good music is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.



I'll take 50/50.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Talent is all well and good and certainly some are born with more than others but good music is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll take 50/50.
Click to expand...


then it is unlikely you will produce music that is as good as another talented guy who works 40% harder.


----------



## Guy Bacos

I'm very confused in this thread. The heading talks about FORMAL TRAINING, but in the course of the thread there is no distinction between Formal training, Non-formal training or simply Informal learning. My early points were specifically about formal training, meaning education in recognized institutions, universities and such, and some people stuck to that, but there is a great confusion in general here. 

So what is this thread about?


----------



## Dan Selby

@Guy: Counterintuitive and contrary to our generally held views about natural talent, the *evidence* doesn't really support your position. Have you read "Bounce" by Matthew Syed? I think you'd enjoy it.


----------



## KEnK

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> So what is this thread about?


I think it's become about literacy vs. illiteracy.

on that note-
Other cultures w/ rich music traditions often have no notation, 
and "harmony" is an incidental byproduct.

However- It does seem that "studying w/ a Master" is an underlying commonality.
Although there is no University, it is "Formal Training."

Seems only in Western Culture do we think it a good idea to continuously
try to reinvent the wheel using only our foreheads and a rock wall.

And the general state of our music shows how productive that philosophy is.

k


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> I'm very confused in this thread. The heading talks about FORMAL TRAINING, but in the course of the thread there is no distinction between Formal training, Non-formal training or simply Informal learning. My early points were specifically about formal training, meaning education in recognized institutions, universities and such, and some people stuck to that, but there is a great confusion in general here.
> 
> So what is this thread about?



It has suffered from thread drift, as most of our threads do 

It seems to me that a consensus seems to have arrived around the following:

1. Talent is necessary but so is the hard work of study and practice.

2. If you want to write traditionally inspired orchestral or hybrid music or concert hall music, formal training may be the best but private study with the right teachers can also get it done.

3. For other genres, a different kind of non-traditional study and practice may work as well or better. I personally consider it a lower art form but that is not what most here believe.

What _everyone_ seems to agree on (thank god) is that to get good at what you do some significant amount of some form of study and practice is necessary, despite the advent of what I call "push button" libraries and loops.


----------



## Guy Bacos

Well, I don't want to sound insulting, but isn't it more than obvious that you need some kind of knowledge to succeed in something, whether it's acquired one way or another? I mean if Beethoven was born in Africa, I doubt very much he would have become the great Beethoven.


----------



## KEnK

Personally- I've noticed a trend that celebrates ignorance in western pop art.
this has been going on for decades now.
Look at what's popular.

A brain is no longer required and it may even be a hindrance.

k


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Well, I don't want to sound insulting, but isn't it more than obvious that you need some kind of knowledge to succeed in something, whether it's acquired one way or another? I mean if Beethoven was born in Africa, I doubt very much he would have become the great Beethoven.



True, but he might have composed polyrhythmic patterns that would have made the European Beethoven's head spin around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist


----------



## Guy Rowland

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Talent is all well and good and certainly some are born with more than others but good music is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll take 50/50.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> then it is unlikely you will produce music that is as good as another talented guy who works 40% harder.
Click to expand...


That depends if that person is 40% less talented than me!

I know that sounds facetious, but I think it's broadly true. If you have something musically competant but uninspired - devoid of life, spark, emotion etc - then I'd pass. Or in the case of media composing, you might have something musically tremendous, but inappropriate for the task, whereas something musically rudimentary and rough-edged might accomplish the storytelling far better. 

This is indeed a pretty wide ranging thread Guy B, but me it's all been interesting and at least slightly relevant. By formal training I guess I meant either an academic course or tuition. Informal study might include listening to a lot of music, reading / listening to interviews with composers etc. I'd say the jury is still out among contributors so far.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Talent is all well and good and certainly some are born with more than others but good music is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll take 50/50.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> then it is unlikely you will produce music that is as good as another talented guy who works 40% harder.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That depends if that person is 40% less talented than me!
Click to expand...


Not possible


----------



## Darthmorphling

Dan Selby @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> @Guy: Counterintuitive and contrary to our generally held views about natural talent, the *evidence* doesn't really support your position.  Have you read "Bounce" by Matthew Syed?  I think you'd enjoy it.



Thanks for the book suggestion. Reading it now. Here is a quote that stands out and highlights the discussion in this thread:

“This is what Ericsson calls the iceberg illusion. When we witness extraordinary feats of memory (or of sporting or artistic prowess), we are witnessing the end product of a process measured in years. What is invisible to us—the submerged evidence, as it were—is the countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer”

The question then becomes if it is possible for an individual with enough discipline and desire to accomplish this level of mastery on their own? I would say yes though it may be harder initially as the beginner may not know the correct way to start. Whereas, someone who is "trained" has the benefit of guidance.


----------



## doctornine

Um, having read this thread, I think you are all missing the point of the OP.

Yes, absolutely you need formal training too be an orchestral composer.

Media composer is not Orchestral Composer.

Sure it's a part of it, but when you get ref tracks that can be anything from dub step to indie rock, or invariably some genius creative's mashup of whatever unrelated genres are currently fashionable, thats a whole different skill set you need to draw on to do the gig.

Just my 10 cents.

~o)


----------



## Darthmorphling

The old saying that practice makes perfect needs to be changed permanently to practice makes permanent.

Which shows that some sort of mentoring is beneficial.


----------



## Darthmorphling

doctornine @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Um, having read this thread, I think you are all missing the point of the OP.
> 
> Yes, absolutely you need formal training too be an orchestral composer.
> 
> Media composer is not Orchestral Composer.
> 
> Sure it's a part of it, but when you get ref tracks that can be anything from dub step to indie rock, or invariably some genius creative's mashup of whatever unrelated genres are currently fashionable, thats a whole different skill set you need to draw on to do the gig.
> 
> Just my 10 cents.
> 
> ~o)



The sense that I am getting from this thread, and Jay expressed it very well a couple of posts up, is that many hours of hard work are needed to catapult someone into being a master at their chosen art/skill. The 10,000 hour rule seems to be the benchmark.

Many here are focused on orchestral composing, but it applies to any kind of composing. Practice is necessary and not just any kind of practice, but intense practice. Guided practice would be better, but I still believe that one can learn on their own as long as they have access to material that shows correct technique.


----------



## Guy Bacos

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I don't want to sound insulting, but isn't it more than obvious that you need some kind of knowledge to succeed in something, whether it's acquired one way or another? I mean if Beethoven was born in Africa, I doubt very much he would have become the great Beethoven.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> True, but he might have composed polyrhythmic patterns that would have made the European Beethoven's head spin around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist
Click to expand...


Jay, you're confusing with his long lost twin brother Zambulu Kinte Beethoven. He was big in Africa. It went bad with his son Kunta Kinte Beethoven, then slavery started.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Darthmorphling @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Dan Selby @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> @Guy: Counterintuitive and contrary to our generally held views about natural talent, the *evidence* doesn't really support your position.  Have you read "Bounce" by Matthew Syed?  I think you'd enjoy it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the book suggestion. Reading it now. Here is a quote that stands out and highlights the discussion in this thread:
> 
> “This is what Ericsson calls the iceberg illusion. When we witness extraordinary feats of memory (or of sporting or artistic prowess), we are witnessing the end product of a process measured in years. What is invisible to us—the submerged evidence, as it were—is the countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer”
> 
> The question then becomes if it is possible for an individual with enough discipline and desire to accomplish this level of mastery on their own? I would say yes though it may be harder initially as the beginner may not know the correct way to start. Whereas, someone who is "trained" has the benefit of guidance.
Click to expand...


I should look into that book - is this really evidence-based or conjecture? I've heard this 10,000 hours figure put about a lot, I'm not sure where it comes from.

And I'm not sure how it directly relates to media composing. I had many years of piano lessons as a kid / teenager. Does that count towards my quota? Then I spent many more hours mastering The School Synthesizer (for there was only one). Does that count? Neither are composing - though I did a lot of that on the side cos that's what's interested me - all self-taught of course.

Doctornine is right to point up the media composer aspect of it, though its a venn diagram. I said to Guy B said in another recent thread that his compositions were really better than film music. I wasn't just trying to be apalling sycophantic - I meant his compositional technical skill exceeded that needed by the vast majority of film music. It's just not needed, it can even be counter productive.

Much (not all) of the orchestral music I enjoy the most is relatively simple. Film music tends to be relatively simple, and there's argument to say that the form somewhat imposes that. If you're competing with dialogue, it really has to be very basic. Even action sequences are in comeptiton with all manner of noise from the sound department. I remember a couple of years ago I tried to spend a week dissecting The Kill Ring from Powell's How To Train Your Dragon, and failed pretty miserably. But when I next watched the movie, the score was all-but inaudible for that section, buried under a wall of sound design noise. All that magnificent orchestration... and for what? He could have bashed it out in 10 minutes on a Symphobia multi, and I probably wouldn't have noticed.

HTTYD is interesting on many levels. It sounds to my ears a very accomplished score, far more than the genre usually gets. It's a throwback in a good way. It also makes an impact on film lovers - kids and adults a like notice it (all the more remarkable given how pitifully low it is in the dub - the movie mix of the magnificent This Is Berk makes me weep). But much of the stuff that really does make it through the mix is some of the simplest - Powell has an incredible gift for melody and hitting the emotion and storytelling bang on (Romantic Flight and Forbidden Friendship spring to mind). This is Berk is more tricksy, mind.

Anyway... where was I going with this... oh yes. The standard of technical skill required of a film / tv / video game composer _in orchestral music_ I think is lower than that of concert music. We point to the greats - Goldsmith, Williams, Korngold - and are rightly in awe of them. But very few scores are like that now (much bemoaned). But I'm a huge fan of simple but effective scores (indeed Powell's super-simple hyrbid score for United 93 I think is a work of genius, immeasurably and invisibly helping that extraordinary movie).

Right, my tea is ready.


----------



## Daniel James

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm very confused in this thread. The heading talks about FORMAL TRAINING, but in the course of the thread there is no distinction between Formal training, Non-formal training or simply Informal learning. My early points were specifically about formal training, meaning education in recognized institutions, universities and such, and some people stuck to that, but there is a great confusion in general here.
> 
> So what is this thread about?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It has suffered from thread drift, as most of our threads do
> 
> It seems to me that a consensus seems to have arrived around the following:
> 
> 1. Talent is necessary but so is the hard work of study and practice.
> 
> 2. If you want to write traditionally inspired orchestral or hybrid music or concert hall music, formal training may be the best but private study with the right teachers can also get it done.
> 
> 3. For other genres, a different kind of non-traditional study and practice may work as well or better. I personally consider it a lower art form but that is not what most here believe.
> 
> What _everyone_ seems to agree on (thank god) is that to get good at what you do some significant amount of some form of study and practice is necessary, despite the advent of what I call "push button" libraries and loops.
Click to expand...


Jay...I don't think I have ever agreed with you quite so much in my life  The little bit about lower art form ALMOST ruined it but not quite as its just your opinion 

Much love.

-DJ


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Daniel James @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm very confused in this thread. The heading talks about FORMAL TRAINING, but in the course of the thread there is no distinction between Formal training, Non-formal training or simply Informal learning. My early points were specifically about formal training, meaning education in recognized institutions, universities and such, and some people stuck to that, but there is a great confusion in general here.
> 
> So what is this thread about?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It has suffered from thread drift, as most of our threads do
> 
> It seems to me that a consensus seems to have arrived around the following:
> 
> 1. Talent is necessary but so is the hard work of study and practice.
> 
> 2. If you want to write traditionally inspired orchestral or hybrid music or concert hall music, formal training may be the best but private study with the right teachers can also get it done.
> 
> 3. For other genres, a different kind of non-traditional study and practice may work as well or better. I personally consider it a lower art form but that is not what most here believe.
> 
> What _everyone_ seems to agree on (thank god) is that to get good at what you do some significant amount of some form of study and practice is necessary, despite the advent of what I call "push button" libraries and loops.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Jay...I don't think I have ever agreed with you quite so much in my life  The little bit about lower art form ALMOST ruined it but not quite as its just your opinion
> 
> Much love.
> 
> -DJ
Click to expand...


Same to you Daniel, and I appreciate that everything you undertake you seem to do with sincerity.


----------



## Alex Cuervo

I think my next tattoo is gonna be "LOW ART" in Old English script.


----------



## snattack

germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:


> Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't believe in 'talent.' I believe in discipline.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Oopssss, I better had said: The combination between formal training, talent and discipline is the best.
> 
> But at least you are right! Discipline is the most important thing... .
> 
> But, discipline without talent? No, this doesn't work!
Click to expand...


Training and dicipline will push your development forward, but the talent decides how far the training and work can push you, and also how fast ("fast" or "slow" learner - which also corresponds to who you're taught by of course).

Nevertheless: there are certain jobs that can't be done without proper training (private or college/university) in orchestration. But there are also plenty of that doesn't require this.


----------



## Guy Bacos

You'd probably get arguments on that jay, maybe not from me, but take this example, and I'm a huge Beatle fan, but I remember hearing Paul McCartney saying in an interview that what's going on today in pop music is the same as what was going on centuries ago in classical music, and shouldn't be considered any lesser. Of course, he said that in the 60s during Beatlemania, would he say the same thing today, seeing what pop music is now? Not sure...And today Lady Gaga and her pop contemporaries including rappers are probably saying the same thing Paul said in the 60s. 
So this will never be unanimous. I love listening to pop music, but when I listen to Gershwin, I know I'm at another level of art which requires deeper knowledge, but some will say that this is shit!


----------



## EastWest Lurker

snattack @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Nevertheless: there are certain jobs that can't be done without proper training (private or college/university) in orchestration. But there are also plenty of that doesn't require this.



But then we reach the thorny issue of whether you are "working" but not "good", "good" but not "working", or "working" AND "good".

Obviously subjective, but for me trying to be both was always as we Trekkers would say "the prime directive".


----------



## doctornine

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> snattack @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Nevertheless: there are certain jobs that can't be done without proper training (private or college/university) in orchestration. But there are also plenty of that doesn't require this.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But then we reach the thorny issue of whether you are "working" but not "good", "good" but not "working", or "working" AND "good".
> 
> Obviously subjective, but for me trying to be both was always as we Trekkers would say "the prime directive".
Click to expand...


hah, I like that.

I'm working and self depreciating. 

o=?


----------



## JohnG

I write media music, some simple, some not. Either way, I have never felt that the formal training I do have -- which I wish were more -- has been anything other than a huge help. Certainly not a hindrance. 

The timing of knowledge is also interesting in music. If you've been trying hard to master a style -- studying, listening, playing -- then getting some tutelage at that point can be extremely helpful, even transformational. Even if it is just a few tips from someone more knowledgeable.

So the timing of knowledge gained can change how useful it is. Points made in a classroom that might go in one ear and out the other at one time can be golden at another time when one is working hard to attain proficiency in a style.


----------



## Guy Bacos

The fact that some people go very far with the little knowledge they have is impressive. Which means, it's not the the amount of knowledge you have that counts but how you can make the best of it.


----------



## germancomponist

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> ... I love listening to pop music, but when I listen to Gershwin, I know I'm at another level of art which requires deeper knowledge, but some will say that this is [email protected]#t!



+1

And, Guy, what you say isn't [email protected]#t!


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> The fact that some people go very far with the little knowledge they have is impressive. Which means, it's not the the amount of knowledge you have that counts but how you can make the best of it.



Ah, but if they go "very far" with little knowledge, imagine how far they possibly could go with MORE knowledge.


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## Casey Edwards

snattack @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> germancomponist @ Fri Jan 11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The combination between formal training and talent is the best. I think nobody will doubt that. ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't believe in 'talent.' I believe in discipline.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Oopssss, I better had said: The combination between formal training, talent and discipline is the best.
> 
> But at least you are right! Discipline is the most important thing... .
> 
> But, discipline without talent? No, this doesn't work!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Training and dicipline will push your development forward, but the talent decides how far the training and work can push you, and also how fast ("fast" or "slow" learner - which also corresponds to who you're taught by of course).
> 
> Nevertheless: there are certain jobs that can't be done without proper training (private or college/university) in orchestration. But there are also plenty of that doesn't require this.
Click to expand...


You guys talk about 'talent' like it's some supernatural force given to us at birth, and that's just not the case. I was raised quite poor, and what little I was able to get, I made the best of it. My family is the exact opposite of musically inclined as well. They care nothing for anything instrumental or between the 1960's and 1980's. My passion came from a curiosity that *I* decided to explore and develop. It was *MY* late hours in the library studying scores because I couldn't afford to buy them. It wasn't because my ADHD was put aside by cupid and Jesus so my love affair with music could take place. Forgive me on this, I usually don't give out opinions like these, but the whole idea behind those phrases with the world 'talent' just really get under my skin. The reason people can do things well, is because they practiced and studied a whole lot and somewhere in there was given the tangible necessities to define their craft.


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## Guy Bacos

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The fact that some people go very far with the little knowledge they have is impressive. Which means, it's not the the amount of knowledge you have that counts but how you can make the best of it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, but if they go "very far" with little knowledge, imagine how far they possibly could go with MORE knowledge.
Click to expand...


I wouldn't advance too far with that. At some point you have to chose between acquiring more knowledge or developing in a creative way with the knowledge you already have. This balance is different from one person to the next. Knowledge is crucial, but I wouldn't say, the more you know, the better you will be.


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## germancomponist

Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> ... It was *MY* late hours in the library studying scores because I couldn't afford to buy them. It wasn't because my ADHD was put aside by cupid and Jesus so my love affair with music could take place. Forgive me on this, I usually don't give out opinions like these, but the whole idea behind those phrases with the world 'talent' just really get under my skin. The reason people can do things well, is because they practiced and studied a whole lot and somewhere in there was given the tangible necessities to define their craft.



So you are talented. o/~ 



http://www.iratde.org/


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## passenger57

> Do you need formal training to be a successful media composer?



Answer: two words: Danny Elfman


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## Guy Rowland

Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> You guys talk about 'talent' like it's some supernatural force given to us at birth, and that's just not the case. I was raised quite poor, and what little I was able to get, I made the best of it. My family is the exact opposite of musically inclined as well. They care nothing for anything instrumental or between the 1960's and 1980's. My passion came from a curiosity that *I* decided to explore and develop. It was *MY* late hours in the library studying scores because I couldn't afford to buy them. It wasn't because my ADHD was put aside by cupid and Jesus so my love affair with music could take place. Forgive me on this, I usually don't give out opinions like these, but the whole idea behind those phrases with the world 'talent' just really get under my skin. The reason people can do things well, is because they practiced and studied a whole lot and somewhere in there was given the tangible necessities to define their craft.



Respectfully, I disagree. My whole argument is that nature and nurture play a part, not just in composition skills but in every aspect of who we are. Just as someone starting with nothing, working tirelessly and going on to achieve greatness is inspirational and wonderful, there's no getting away from the fact that some folks have more natural ability in certain areas than others.

Or if it helps, think of the reverse - we probably all know people who are unable to clap in time. They just ain't got it. And likewise we all probably know of talented people who have thrown their gifts away because they were too lazy / disorganised / etc.

So I wouldn't say talent is a supernatural force (as in the phrase God Given Talent - good lord that is a topic that would reach beyond the scope of this thread). But we are each born with a unique brain. I don't believe any one of us could be Albert Einstein, given identical conditions with which we grew, any more than any of us could be Pele, Mozart or Woody Allen. And before someone points out how much study all of those folks did, it's not the point - the point is that of the millions of diligent hard working people in the world, not all turn into masters or geniuses in their field.

Hey, it's only Wikipedia, but here's a nice paragraph that sums up the academic research in this whole broad area - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_ver ... nd_nurture

I guess all this is a little off the core subject. The harder question to answer is "do we all learn differently?" My own subjective experience would say yes, but I don't know what the research really says.

EDIT - Passenger, I wondered when Danny would make an appearance here!


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## germancomponist

HZ did a good suggestion here elsewhere to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930

I only can underline his suggestion! This is one of the interesting books I ever read! And yeah, you will read something interesting things about "talent"!


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## Ed

Casey Edwards @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> You guys talk about 'talent' like it's some supernatural force given to us at birth, and that's just not the case.



Its not magic, its biology. Some people have a natural propensity towards being good, or bad, at something. 




> Forgive me on this, I usually don't give out opinions like these, but the whole idea behind those phrases with the world 'talent' just really get under my skin. The reason people can do things well, is because they practiced and studied a whole lot and somewhere in there was given the tangible necessities to define their craft.



Thats why I make the distinction, natural talent and learned talent. Some people just find it very easy and effortless to understand certain things, for others it take a lot of work. Sometimes people are so naturally talented that its almost impossible to learn how to get to the same standards


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## germancomponist

Ed @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Thats why I make the distinction, natural talent and learned talent. Some people just find it very easy and effortless to understand certain things, for others it take a lot of work. Sometimes people are so naturally talented that its almost impossible to learn how to get to the same standards



Fact!

And many answers to this you can find in the book I mentioned.


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## Guy Bacos

Pete Sampras, maybe the 2nd greatest tennis player of all time, doesn't like when people talk about this great "talent of his", because he feels he worked his ass off during so many years, sacrificed so many things, to get to that elite status.

I wonder if we'd take a poll, how many of these talented people, for which it comes so easy for them, in all fields, would not say the same thing. Wayne Gretzky, probably spent more time on his little hockey rink in his backyard than any other kids of his age. If he had only occasionally practiced as a kid, then you could say for sure, it's all "talent". So how do we know the real talented ones simply didn't give more effort than the average?


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## germancomponist

Guy, read this book. You'll be surprised! After reading you will see many things completely new.


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## EastWest Lurker

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The fact that some people go very far with the little knowledge they have is impressive. Which means, it's not the the amount of knowledge you have that counts but how you can make the best of it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, but if they go "very far" with little knowledge, imagine how far they possibly could go with MORE knowledge.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I wouldn't advance too far with that. At some point you have to chose between acquiring more knowledge or developing in a creative way with the knowledge you already have. This balance is different from one person to the next. Knowledge is crucial, but I wouldn't say, the more you know, the better you will be.
Click to expand...


I disagree. IMHO acquiring knowledge should be a lifelong activity. It should never stop.


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## EastWest Lurker

passenger57 @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Do you need formal training to be a successful media composer?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Answer: two words: Danny Elfman
Click to expand...


And without Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, who HAD formal training, Danny could not have accomplished the scores that made him famous.


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## Guy Bacos

Jay, don't make it sound like I'm saying shutting down your brain at some point. But for example, I don't have time to listen to as much music as I use to, I wish I could and learn all of Mahler's symphony in details, but I'd have to live 1000 years to learn everything I'd like to learn. At some point you have to make choices. Doesn't mean you can't keep on learning, but just not with the same intensity as you once did.


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## Casey Edwards

You guys make good points about the talent stuff. I still think it has more of a definition to do with passion and love of doing something, rather than talent. But maybe, because of the way our brains are uniquely wired we have that love being sparked, hence, "talent". I don't know. I'm not claiming any absolutes here. Whatever it is, I want some! How about that?


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## Darthmorphling

There are physical aspects of people that simply make their endeavors either easier, or more difficult. I am a stocky 5' 7" man and no amount of practice would allow me to play on the Lakers. However, I could practice a lot, and with training, could become a pretty decent player at a very low level.

My current crop of students range from high performing to very low performing. It is very unlikely that everyone of my students will become world renowned physicists. The difference is that even the kids with learning disabilities are able to accomplish tremendous growth when they also have the desire to learn. I tell them that not all of them will go to college. The ones that do will work hard to get there.


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## Guy Bacos

Darthmorphling @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> There are physical aspects of people that simply make their endeavors either easier, or more difficult. I am a stocky 5' 7" man and no amount of practice would allow me to play on the Lakers. However, I could practice a lot, and with training, could become a pretty decent player at a very low level.



Of course you are right. But I prefer to not make any official attributes about ones achievements or talents, and why they became this, since there is no way of knowing this for sure. We can just suppose.


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## passenger57

> passenger57 @ Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:54 pm wrote:
> Quote:
> Do you need formal training to be a successful media composer?
> 
> 
> Answer: two words: Danny Elfman
> 
> 
> And without Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, who HAD formal training, Danny could not have accomplished the scores that made him famous.



Point taken. I had the honor of working with Shirley in her final years, an amazing composer and musician. 
But it has to be said that Danny's mockups were very similar to the final orchestrations: listen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rai0Z9hcBQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYV6SKpm_fo


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## Ed

Guy Bacos @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> So how do we know the real talented ones simply didn't give more effort than the average?



Maybe we dont, but its not a binary proposition. People dont either have natural talent where its all completely effortless, or have to fight every step of the way to get it.


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## Guy Rowland

If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.

The book looks interesting Gunther. I've scanned the reviews, mostly very positive. However there are a number who say "it's a great read, but ultimately there's very little science in it - it's essentially well argued conjecture". I've not heard of the book before, so it's purely on scanning Amazon reviews.


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## passenger57

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.
> 
> The book looks interesting Gunther. I've scanned the reviews, mostly very positive. However there are a number who say "it's a great read, but ultimately there's very little science in it - it's essentially well argued conjecture". I've not heard of the book before, so it's purely on scanning Amazon reviews.



Wow this is awesome, thanks Guy - pretty much sums up this whole thread from the master himself


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## Kralc

Guy Rowland @ Sun Jan 13 said:


> If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.


That was amazing, I'd love to have seen that Rubenstein guy reading it.


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## Guy Rowland

passenger57 @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Wow this is awesome, thanks Guy - pretty much sums up this whole thread from the master himself



Do you know, I just re-read it myself. I agree 100% - this letter makes me want to stand on the nearest chair and cheer. To think he wrote this 23 years ago, and we're having the exact same conversations today.


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## Ed

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.
> 
> The book looks interesting Gunther. I've scanned the reviews, mostly very positive. However there are a number who say "it's a great read, but ultimately there's very little science in it - it's essentially well argued conjecture". I've not heard of the book before, so it's purely on scanning Amazon reviews.



My favourite quote:



> _" But, having worked my ass off for 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month and a half to write that score and yes, you dumb fuck, I actually wrote it down-I will not sit back passively and allow myself to be discredited for the work I did by an idiot who mistakenly thinks that I lazily hire people to do it for me, or that only a conservatory can produce a real film composer."_



lol! :D


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## EastWest Lurker

Please understand I am not dissing Elfman. But at the time he said he had no idea what the range of a violin was, and when you hand a score to a violinist SOMEBODY damned well better know


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## Kralc

EastWest Lurker @ Sun Jan 13 said:


> and when you hand a score to a violinist SOMEBODY damned well better know


The Orchestrator? :?


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## Guy Rowland

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Please understand I am not dissing Elfman. But at the time he said he had no idea what the range of a violin was, and when you hand a score to a violinist SOMEBODY damned well better know



But Jay, you're missing the whole point.

Why should we all aspire to be Stever Bartek or Shirley Walker? Doesn't it make more sense for those of us who struggle with formal learning to aspire to be, ya know, Danny Elfman? I have no idea of the validity of the violin range quote and I don't much care either. I think the force of his letter, and the strength of his hugely influential scores, speak for themselves.


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## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Please understand I am not dissing Elfman. But at the time he said he had no idea what the range of a violin was, and when you hand a score to a violinist SOMEBODY damned well better know
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But Jay, you're missing the whole point.
> 
> Why should we all aspire to be Stever Bartek or Shirley Walker? Doesn't it make more sense for those of us who struggle with formal learning to aspire to be, ya know, Danny Elfman? I have no idea of the validity of the violin range quote and I don't much care either. I think the force of his letter, and the strength of his hugely influential scores, speak for themselves.
Click to expand...


Fine. Since he said in the letter "I actually wrote it down" that implies a fair amount of training as nobody is born knowing how to do that, unless all he wrote were chord changes and melodies, which I doubt.

Look, I admire Danny, he is a FAR better film composer than me. But I admire guys like James Newton Howard and Tom Newman more, because that is the paradigm I aspired to.

I don't say it is for everyone, I am only saying people should study and practice to be the best they can be and not just listen to trailers/games and just try to manipulate libraries to sound like what they hear in them. Even though their areas of emphasis may have been different from Williams and Goldsmith, Danny did not do that, he practiced hard and studied hard, Hans did not do that, practiced hard and studied hard etc.


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## passenger57

This pretty much sums it up for me, lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMwhZryRUr4


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## Cruciform

Guy Rowland @ Sun Jan 13 said:


> If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.



See Guy, I told you I enjoyed your posts and that I'd miss you!! Thanks for posting. This letter from DE is incredibly well-timed for me personally. The why of it, I won't go into, but reading that from a top Hollywood composer is very encouraging at this point. o-[][]-o


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## Darthmorphling

Guy Rowland @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> Darthmorphling @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dan Selby @ Sat Jan 12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> @Guy: Counterintuitive and contrary to our generally held views about natural talent, the *evidence* doesn't really support your position.  Have you read "Bounce" by Matthew Syed?  I think you'd enjoy it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the book suggestion. Reading it now. Here is a quote that stands out and highlights the discussion in this thread:
> 
> “This is what Ericsson calls the iceberg illusion. When we witness extraordinary feats of memory (or of sporting or artistic prowess), we are witnessing the end product of a process measured in years. What is invisible to us—the submerged evidence, as it were—is the countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer”
> 
> The question then becomes if it is possible for an individual with enough discipline and desire to accomplish this level of mastery on their own? I would say yes though it may be harder initially as the beginner may not know the correct way to start. Whereas, someone who is "trained" has the benefit of guidance.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I should look into that book - is this really evidence-based or conjecture? I've heard this 10,000 hours figure put about a lot, I'm not sure where it comes from.
> 
> And I'm not sure how it directly relates to media composing. I had many years of piano lessons as a kid / teenager. Does that count towards my quota? Then I spent many more hours mastering The School Synthesizer (for there was only one). Does that count? Neither are composing - though I did a lot of that on the side cos that's what's interested me - all self-taught of course.
Click to expand...


I'm about halfway done with the book and there is a lot of evidence presented from various studies. There are quotes from many "top" experts in sports, chess and science. The author also discusses his championship table tennis career, and how his experience mirrors the studies.

As for the 10,000 hour rule. It is really 10,000 hours of what he calls purposeful practice. This is practice that constantly pushes the boundaries of what you can do. Which is not the same thing as just practicing for the sake of practicing.

He uses the example of his mother who learned to type and plateaued at 70 words per minute where she ended up staying for her career as a secretary. This is because that was as fast as she needed to be for the job. He sites a study where typists were given incentives to keep improving and some were able to achieve up to 140 words per minute.

All in all it is a very interesting read.


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## germancomponist

Guy Rowland @ Sun Jan 13 said:


> If we're discussing Elfman, no thread would be complete without a link to this tremendous open letter - http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfma ... dMag90.htm . Personally if I ever got to be as great as Danny and then work with people as talented and Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker, I'd be absolutely delighted.
> 
> The book looks interesting Gunther. I've scanned the reviews, mostly very positive. However there are a number who say "it's a great read, but ultimately there's very little science in it - it's essentially well argued conjecture". I've not heard of the book before, so it's purely on scanning Amazon reviews.



What a good read!

Thanks Guy!


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## Alex Cuervo

That Elfman letter is so good.


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## mark812

Ed @ Sat Jan 12 said:


> My favourite quote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _" But, having worked my ass off for 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month and a half to write that score and yes, you dumb fuck, I actually wrote it down-I will not sit back passively and allow myself to be discredited for the work I did by an idiot who mistakenly thinks that I lazily hire people to do it for me, or that only a conservatory can produce a real film composer."_
Click to expand...


BURN! :lol:


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## Hannes_F

Since the topic of formal training vs. self education pops up so often here ... an additional thought that might help ... or not.

I feel that some here strain themselves with revenge feelings of some sort. Somebody might have given a nasty comment about their work or somebody might have rejected them, all of that possibly long ago. And so some composers seem to grind an axe about that and deeply down hate the musical establishment. Because they were not admitted to 'the club' at some point in their life.

It seems some even rejoice if persons that are part of the 'musical establishment' loose the income to feed themselves and their families. Some comments here about orchestras seem to indicate that.

Well ...

It is brave and honorable to fight your way through the difficulties on your own. Everybody needs to to that more or less, even the 'trained' people. However don't regard everybody else as being an exclusive club. Keep in mind that anybody in this 'club' likewise feels excluded from other 'clubs'. No matter how good or successful you are there will always be a group of people even better and/or more successful. 

Also most of those that are in 'the club' (of formally trained composers) are there because they love music as well as you do but maybe only decided a few years earlier in their life to make it their profession. You could be one of them in another life.

Here comes a suggestion: If revenge feelings haunt you deeply in your soul ... then on one side be thankful. Probably any successful person got disparaging comments at some early point or even carries a rejection trauma of any sort in his baggage. It seems we need some friction sometimes and rejection obviously can be a strong motivation, one of the strongest.

And on the other side there comes a point to let go this sort of feeling. The one or two persons that gave bad comments are not identical to the majority of trained musos. The majority is as struggling as you are, maybe even worse. And revenge feelings will hurt others inevitably, but mainly hurt - yourself.


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## Arbee

Well said Hannes. The other inhibitor that seems to play a big part is peer group approval - your peers don't pay your bills, your "customers" do. It's very tempting to become introspective as a group and rely on those we respect for validation and approval. I'd go so far as to say that some people even promote themselves as "keepers of the realm" in terms of being such peer group approvers and authorities of what is right and proper  

The irony is that many who succeed take peer approval with a grain of salt and just do what they do, as well as they can, and keep getting better at it. My observation is those who succeed focus on building their strengths and individuality, and find others to compensate for their areas of weakness. And that _really_ rubs with some people :mrgreen: 

.


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## Peter Alexander

A teacher's perspective - Nadia Boulanger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW7GiX4-hPc


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## Martin Brannigan

Thanks for the link to the Danny Elfman letter, Guy, it is still fascinating that this topic of conversation rages on today and will continue to do so for many more years to come, I suspect.

I have no "formal" training (apart from Music Theory Grades I and II which I proudly took at the age of 38 - after having written 2 No.1 singles and 10 Top 40 hits !!!) and that may, or may not, have helped or hindered my career - I shall never know BUT what I *can* say is that I put the work in, I listened, I tried, I failed sometimes, other times I succeeded, and I worked long hours because I had set myself a goal (at the age of 25) that I didn't want to get to 40 years old and regret not having a go at trying to make a career in music ... 

So do we need formal training ? ... maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it's "passion" and lots of hard work (oh, and having an older brother teach you how to play the piano when you were 8 :wink: )

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents


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## EastWest Lurker

Well writing songs and doing film scores are essentially two different careers and require different skill sets, although there is some overlap.

Although The Beatles were not trained and were wonderful songwriters, my role models were guys like Burt Bacharach, Randy Newman, and Henry Mancini who could do both. 

Although it is interesting that despite his many hits and Oscar wins for Best Song, Hank never considered himself a songwriter. He said he wrote themes for characters and his wonderful lyricist, Johnny Mercer, turned them into songs.


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## Alex Cuervo

I love Henry Mancini - but the assumption that he could write a pop song as good as one written by the Beatles just because he was musically educated is just absurd. 

Granted, yes, an educated composer could analyze and deconstruct what works about a particular song or genre and recreate a pastiche of it - but beyond a caricature of that song/genre, anything of real substance requires a hell of a lot more than just understanding how it all goes together. I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?


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## MichaelL

I've got a few minutes so I'll toss my "grenade" into the crowded room. 

This discussion reminds me a lot of the current state of politics in the US. 
There are those who take a fairly egalitarian view and want to do what's best for the common good. Then, there are those who just get absolutely p*ssed off and insane at the thought of anyone that THEY consider less deserving getting a break. That should ring a few bells.

I see no difference in this oft repeated discussion. What it really boils down to is _some_ conservatory trained individuals resenting the success of those that they believe are underserving. You don't really hear too many untrained composers complaining because the guy _with_ the Ph.D got the gig. There's no avoiding the obvious pattern to this argument. You can't sugar coat it. 

What formal training does not provide is a guarantee that your music is either good or relevant. Yes, maybe your music follows all of the rules and is academically correct, but if it doesn't resonate with anyone, you are doing no more than talking to yourself. 

What the conservatory doesn't give composers is "life training"....how to connect with the audience, which in the final analysis may be more important when it comes to earning a living than knowing the difference between a Neapolitan 6th and a Neapolitan pizza. 

If the thought of connecting with the audience, rather than force-feeding it your aesthetic makes you bristle, perhaps your only hope that the common man will self-deport, leaving behind a more educated public. :wink:


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## Alex Cuervo

*VERY* well stated, MichaelL. I agree 100%.


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## passenger57

I'm really enjoying this thread. Personally.. I'm conservatory trained, but most of the skills I acquired were from my first year here in LA working very hard and getting crash course with some of the best music copyists, orchestrators and composers in town. 
Talent for writing inspired and original music and having conservatory training are pretty much two completely different things. If you have both, then your training will be an asset to you. Without it, you will need an orchestrator. 
There are plenty of non trained guys out here like John Ottman who can compose a masterful score like The Usual Suspects with synth, but will need someone to transcribe it for orchestra. And even some of the trained composers need an orchestrator because of the crazy deadlines. 
The big irony for me at least is that even though I'm conservatory trained, I do most of my scores with sample libraries on a keyboard without writing most of it down because my music budgets are too low to hire live musicians. The best I can do is play some live instruments myself, and maybe hire a friend or two to play something. But if I were hired to do a live orchestral score, I could orchestrate it myself no problem.
Last l'd like to add (unlike most jobs) everyone that has ever hired me could care less that I went to a conservatory. They just want to know its going to get done and be good. Anyway, just another of my 2cents. I think I may be up to 6cents by now.. hehe


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## EastWest Lurker

Alex Cuervo @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> I love Henry Mancini - but the assumption that he could write a pop song as good as one written by the Beatles just because he was musically educated is just absurd.
> 
> Granted, yes, an educated composer could analyze and deconstruct what works about a particular song or genre and recreate a pastiche of it - but beyond a caricature of that song/genre, anything of real substance requires a hell of a lot more than just understanding how it all goes together. I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?



Who said that? All I said was that one could be a great songwriter and not be a great film composer and vice-versa because they required _some_ different skills, and that my role models were guys who could do both.

Anyway, it may not be your taste but since "Moon River" is one of the most most recorded songs of all time, won the Oscar, won the Grammy, it is arguably as good as any Beatles song. Ditto Burt Bacharach's "Alfie".


----------



## MichaelL

I have a lot of informal training by formally trained individuals, but I'm not conservatory trained. Nonetheless, I've managed to cobble together a living, over the years. 

I've never regretted my lack of conservatory training, because I've run into, and personally know, too many individuals who couldn't get _past_ their training to succeed. It's literally as if they talk to themselves in a vacuum.

I have a very vivid memory of one particularly arrogant clerk at a sheet music store, where I was buying books and score paper, making a fairly rude comment about my purchase, and I thought, "one of us is making a living writing music and the other is behind a cash register selling it." I'm sure that he was a very skilled musician, but clearly not connected to life outside _his_ world.

Maybe the keys to some modicum of success can be found here:

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." ____Charles Darwin

"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." ____Albert Einstein

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." ____George Bernard Shaw


----------



## MichaelL

Alex Cuervo @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?




Because it takes MORE than just knowledge and understanding. To borrow a Hollywood concept it takes "IT." The composer, songwriter...whatever has to have "IT." And here's the scoop, you can't get "IT" from training. Training will only help develop "IT"...if you've got "IT." You can't polish every stone into a diamond. 

Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Lennon and McCartney...boatloads of "IT." 

At some point, you realize that training isn't /wasn't enough, and you either make peace with that and make the best of what you've got, or you waste your time resenting everyone else's success..because it was _meant to be yours_. 

By analogy...it doesn't matter how many guys spent the same number of hours in the pool as Michael Phelps, and/or trained as hard as Michael Phelps, it's obvious that there is only one Michael Phelps. There's something MORE there than just training.

The indescribable "IT" that Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman have is their _perception_, their way of looking at things, which from my perspective is unburdened by the limitations of rigid education.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

MichaelL @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> Alex Cuervo @ Mon Jan 14 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Because it takes MORE than just knowledge and understanding. To borrow a Hollywood concept it takes "IT." The composer, songwriter...whatever has to have "IT." And here's the scoop, you can't get "IT" from training. Training will only help develop "IT"...if you've got "IT." You can't polish every stone into a diamond.
> 
> Danny Elfman, Lennon and McCartney...boatloads of "IT."
> 
> At some point, you realize that training isn't /wasn't enough, and you either make peace with that and make the best of what you've got, or you waste your time resenting everyone else's success..because it was meant to be yours.
> 
> By analogy...it doesn't matter how many guys spent the same number of hours in the pool as Michael Phelps, and/or trained as hard as Michael Phelps, it's obvious that there is only one Michael Phelps. There's something MORE there than just training.
Click to expand...


Absolutely true. My training made me competent. It could not make me Burt Bacharach.

Plus, he was much better looking, proving that life is not fair


----------



## Darthmorphling

MichaelL @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> Alex Cuervo @ Mon Jan 14 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Because it takes MORE than just knowledge and understanding. To borrow a Hollywood concept it takes "IT." The composer, songwriter...whatever has to have "IT." And here's the scoop, you can't get "IT" from training. Training will only help develop "IT"...if you've got "IT." You can't polish every stone into a diamond.
> 
> Danny Elfman, Lennon and McCartney...boatloads of "IT."
> 
> At some point, you realize that training isn't /wasn't enough, and you either make peace with that and make the best of what you've got, or you waste your time resenting everyone else's success..because it was meant to be yours.
> 
> By analogy...it doesn't matter how many guys spent the same number of hours in the pool as Michael Phelps, and/or trained as hard as Michael Phelps, it's obvious that there is only one Michael Phelps. There's something MORE there than just training.
Click to expand...


If you read the book "Bounce", you will find that many people who you would consider to have "IT", only have "IT", due to insane and focused practice. They also have a growth mindset, where failing is not failing, but lessons learned. Most people only learn what they need to accomplish a certain task. Those with "IT" are never satisfied with accomplishments earned, but rather accomplishments that have not been earned.

I did a little experiment with my students this morning. I asked the students who hoestly felt that they worked hard on memorizing their math facts to stand up. My classroom is a very open environment, where kids are not afraid of making mistakes, or being open with their abilities. 

The students who stood up are the ones that the other kids consider "smart". However, they are not smarter, they simply work harder. Some of the students who did not stand up are actually quite good at problem solving, but they do not work as hard as the others and only do enough to get by.

The bell just rang so back to teaching.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Some ace posts today...



Darthmorphling @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> If you read the book "Bounce", you will find that many people who you would consider to have "IT", only have "IT", due to insane and focused practice. They also have a growth mindset, where failing is not failing, but lessons learned. Most people only learn what they need to accomplish a certain task. Those with "IT" are never satisfied with accomplishments earned, but rather accomplishments that have not been earned.
> 
> I did a little experiment with my students this morning. I asked the students who hoestly felt that they worked hard on memorizing their math facts to stand up. My classroom is a very open environment, where kids are not afraid of making mistakes, or being open with their abilities.
> 
> The students who stood up are the ones that the other kids consider "smart". However, they are not smarter, they simply work harder. Some of the students who did not stand up are actually quite good at problem solving, but they do not work as hard as the others and only do enough to get by.
> 
> The bell just rang so back to teaching.



Darth, let me push you some more on this. The logical conclusion of what you say (and presumably the book Bounce) is that we are all created identical. Barring physical or mental disability, any of us can equally do absolutely anything (or at least anything not involving physicality). I could be a rocket scientist, a crime novel writer, a politician, a cosmologist, an architect. As long as I put in 10,000 good hours, I can literally do ANYTHING that does not require physical attributes. And not just anything - I can be the best in the world at it.

Is that what you believe? If not, why not?


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## MichaelL

Darthmorphling @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> They also have a growth mindset, where failing is not failing, but lessons learned.



It's never occurred to me that failure is anything but a lesson to be learned from.

With respect to "Bounce"....another variation on "you can do anything if you put your mind to it."

Here's the problem: I'm 5' 8" and 165 pounds. I could shoot 10,000 baskets and I will NEVER slam dunk a basketball like Shaquille O'Neal...or anyone else for that matter.

I do not have the hand span of Oscar Peterson, so I'll never play 10ths the way he did, even if I tried 10,000 times. 

And alas 10,000 plastic surgeons would not make me look like Bradley Cooper.

We are not all born equal. Mr Syed should stick to ping pong.

I think to tell anyone, especially a child, that they can accomplish anything, if they work hard enough is a slippery slope that sets one up for disappointment and guilt (for not trying hard enough), and potentially even cruel.

But....what the heck...I've only got another 7,991 compositions to go.

I'll let you know how that works out. :lol:


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## Arbee

Slightly digressing but somewhat relevant, one of saddest things (musically) anyone ever said to me was a highly trained concert pianist who said "how do you just sit there and make stuff up like that, I wish I could do that" :shock: 

"Music" is so many things, done so many ways, for so many different reasons and with so many differnt goals e.g. ahall we discuss composition v sound design and does formal sound synthesis training make you a better composer, or was that sound designer, or both.... o[])

.


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## Nick Batzdorf

To me the more important question is whether creating music with a unique point of view can be taught, or whether it's just something you have to develop.

Obviously there are lots of people with the skills to write competent music, and that's often all you need to be a "successful media composer" (leaving aside the job of getting the job). Of course that can be taught, formally or informally, or you can learn on your own.

But what about people like Ry Cooder or Stewart Copeland? Tangerine Dream? Or composers like Danny Elfmann and even Randy Newman? It's not their formal training or lack thereof that anyone cares about.

Same with any great film composer, even the ones who write music that does require a lot of training.


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## Johnny42

"Here's the problem: I'm 5' 8" and 165 pounds. I could shoot 10,000 baskets and I will NEVER slam dunk a basketball like Shaquille O'Neal...or anyone else for that matter."

Muggsy Bogues 5'3'', Earl Boykins 5'5'', Spud Webb 5'7'' had no problem playing and dunking in the NBA.


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## JohnG

Yes Nick, but accepting that one needs "that certain something" doesn't negate needing -- another thing. Whether that other thing is guitar chops or piano (or other instruments), tons of gigging, tons of studying scores, producing records or whatever, I think it might be said that one needs tons of something else besides just the gumption / knack / talent / desire to write great stuff.

Elfman -- tons of playing / producing / songwriting

JNH -- tons of piano playing and study

Ry Cooder -- tons of guitar playing

Put differently, have you ever met a composer who regretted his / her training? (using "training" broadly)


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## Darthmorphling

Guy Rowland @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> Darth, let me push you some more on this. The logical conclusion of what you say (and presumably the book Bounce) is that we are all created identical. Barring physical or mental disability, any of us can equally do absolutely anything (or at least anything not involving physicality). I could be a rocket scientist, a crime novel writer, a politician, a cosmologist, an architect. As long as I put in 10,000 good hours, I can literally do ANYTHING that does not require physical attributes. And not just anything - I can be the best in the world at it.
> 
> Is that what you believe? If not, why not?



I agree with the basic tenants of the book, but there are some things I do not agree with. Not everybody will become a world class physicist if they put forth the work. However, everyone has the ability to learn physics, if they push themselves to do so.

The book's basic premise is that there are many factors that go into someone becoming a master in their chosen endeavour. You have to have the exposure to the task, the desire to do the task, and the focused practice to further your abilities in the task. The individual also needs to have a growth mindset. That is the ability to not consider failure as failing, but rather failure is just what you learn from.

He talks about the iceburg phenomenon. People only see the masters excelling at their tasks, but people do not see all of the hard work that went into becoming great at it.

For example, Anders Ericsson did a study on some Violinists in Germany. Their professors ranked them into three groups:

1. Future soloists.
2. High level orchestral players
3. Violinists that were in school to become teachers.

He conducted extensive interviews. All three groups came from very similar backgrounds, started playing around the same age, decided to be professionals around the same age, and started taking formal lessons around the same age.

There was a difference though. It was in the sheer amount of practice each group put in since they started playing. Group 1 put in 10,000 hours by the age of 20. Group 2 put in nearly 2,000 hours less, and the teacher group put in only around 4,000 hours.

"Purposeful practice was the only factor distinguishing the best from the rest." p. 21

The author also quoted Shaq who actually felt discouraged as the kids at his basketball camp were all better than he was. He was used to being the big shark in a small pond, but when he was the little shark in a big pond he started doubting himself.

He came home and told his mother that he couldn't compete. (I am paraphrasing here as I want to actually eat lunch today, but the gist is the same) His mother told him to try harder. He said I cant right now. She told him that later doesn't always come to everybody. 

That one statement changed him. "Those words snapped me into reality and gave me a plan. You work hard now. You don't wait. If you're lazy or you sit back and you don't want excel, you'll get nothing. If you work hard enough, you'll be given what you deserve. Everything got easier for me after that." p 129. Now granted, being seven feet tall has some advatages for basketball, but we have a 6"7" teacher at my school and he sucks at basketball. Height isn't everything.

There are many other examples given in the book just like this. The chapter on the talent myth is probably the most interesting, but I will save that for you all to read. 

It is a very interesting book. There are a lot of studies cited, but it is not bogged down in academic language.

My personal opinion, as it relates to this thread, is that individuals are capable of learning/doing/excelling on their own, but they might actually accomplish it easier if they had proper guidance.

Don


----------



## Darthmorphling

MichaelL @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> Darthmorphling @ Mon Jan 14 said:
> 
> 
> 
> They also have a growth mindset, where failing is not failing, but lessons learned.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's never occurred to me that failure is anything but a lesson to be learned from.
> 
> With respect to "Bounce"....another variation on "you can do anything if you put your mind to it."
> 
> Here's the problem: I'm 5' 8" and 165 pounds. I could shoot 10,000 baskets and I will NEVER slam dunk a basketball like Shaquille O'Neal...or anyone else for that matter.
Click to expand...


The problem there is you are not doing purposeful practice. You are practicing shooting, but wanting to dunk. Completely different tasks. After shooting that many times I bet your shot percentages will be pretty good.



> I think to tell anyone, especially a child, that they can accomplish anything, if they work hard enough is a slippery slope that sets one up for disappointment and guilt (for not trying hard enough), and potentially even cruel.
> 
> But....what the heck...I've only got another 7,991 compositions to go.
> 
> I'll let you know how that works out. :lol:



I think it is more detrimental to not tell kids that hard work is needed to accomplish greatness. I am not one of those tree hugging teachers that gives every kid student of the month just so all of my kids do not get hurt feelings. My SOMs need to earn it. 

I actually tell my students that not all of them will go to college. I make sure they understand that they are capable of going, but it will require a lot of work to do so. I also point out how there are also people who are quite successful and they have never went to college. Again, those people worked hard to get where they are.

I agree with the basic premise of the book, but like most things it does have its flaws.


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## George Caplan

people shouldnt worry about lack of training but at the same time not wear it like badge. it is as if they are somehow intimidated and that leads to belligerence. dont understand that at all. training in almost anything will make us better at what we do *provided* we want to do it in the first place. without training in most things people do means we are relying on luck to get us through and those are poor odds in the world today. training opens up more areas of imagination. an old saying in warfare says the untrained mind is better off than the one that imagines too much and has stopped men from going mad. one of the reasons we do or indeed not do anything is through fear.


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## Nick Batzdorf

John G: of course we agree. No question. It takes a lot of learned skills to deliver a score, regardless of who you hire to help.

My question - and I really don't know the answer! - is whether you can teach someone to be interesting.


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## Nick Batzdorf

I took some art classes a few years ago just for fun (actually it was more than a few).

One thing that struck me was how every person in the class had his or her own style, and you could look at any drawing and know whose it was. But when I was at Berklee, you couldn't tell which film comp major's writing was whose, at least not most of the time. You could tell who knew what he or she was doing, but not who wrote what.

Now, that could just be because the Berklee students were farther along in music than the art students were in art. After eight semesters of art, all the students' drawings might have looked the same.

But I'm not so sure, even though the same comments about training probably apply to modern art too.

Anyway, I'd be willing to bet that if you listened to music that the same Berklee students wrote today, all the better musicians have their own approach...and some of us would have a unique voice, others would just be competent.


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## germancomponist

Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone gets something taught, or whether he teaches himself . There are many good examples for both sides... .


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## Leosc

In that case, Gunther, please give me a self-taught example for - hmmm... - say, Brahms. I'd love to hear your thoughts.


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## synergy543

Leosc @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> In that case, Gunther, please give me a self-taught example for - hmmm... - say, Brahms. I'd love to hear your thoughts.



I think they're talking only about "modern" media composers... :? 
(Old guys with "chops" don't count :roll: ).

But Rimsky-Korsakov was more or less self-taught, yet he went on to value formal study enough to become a teacher himself. And even wrote a couple of books I hear. :shock:


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## Arbee

Don't forget of course that we have a couple of complete game changers compared to days of old in terms of self-learning:

1 The Internet. If you know how to drive a search engine and/or join a forum like this you can learn just about anything on your own these days (even if it's just which courses, scores and text books might suit you best :D ).

2 Technology and sample libraries. If I want to know how something will sound I can try it, I don't have to find 50 musical friends who'll come around and experiment with me for free ( >8o ).

So, any comparison between self-taught now and self-taught even 30 years ago is IMO irrelevant.

.


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## JohnG

It is surprising to me how insistently some are championing the "self-taught" route. If Danny Elfman (a natural-born musical genius) is the model, then that's a hard act to follow, Internet videos notwithstanding.

When I hear what JNH or JW or Desplat or half the guys out there do for a single chase / battle scene it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck thinking about how much knowledge goes into that music so that it remains effective, personal, original, and musical. 

I find that it's one thing to write a two or four minute cue, and quite another to take that material and bend it all over the place into a coherent score. While perhaps not indispensable, some musical education is very handy when trying to do that, just to get it all done half decently and on time.

I know that orchestrators sometimes arrange and even write cues, for novices and for knowledgeable composers who face an impossible deadline. But how many composers scoring major pictures are helplessly reliant on someone else to arrange everything and just write a tune and chord symbols, or hum? I bet that number could be counted on one hand.


----------



## Peter Alexander

Alex Cuervo @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> I love Henry Mancini - but the assumption that he could write a pop song as good as one written by the Beatles just because he was musically educated is just absurd.
> 
> Granted, yes, an educated composer could analyze and deconstruct what works about a particular song or genre and recreate a pastiche of it - but beyond a caricature of that song/genre, anything of real substance requires a hell of a lot more than just understanding how it all goes together. I mean come on, if it were that easy, then why aren't all you academics capitalizing on this? Would it be that far beneath you to do so?



Sorry, Mate, I worked for Mancini for several years. He had one year at Juilliard before the Army. After WWII instead of returning to Juilliard he came to Los Angeles and studied privately with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco who later recommended him for position of staff composer at Universal. While at Universal he had study access to all the scores in the library stacks. Mancini told me privately that he didn't return to Juilliard because they weren't teaching what he needed. 

His break as a songwriter came with Blake Edwards for Mr. Lucky, then Peter Gunn. 

What is pop music changes over time. Mancini in his time was as successful as the Beatles with 20 Grammy awards - all prominently displayed in the shelf next to the fireplace in his home. 

Up until his death, he had a contract to do an album a year and nearly every album he did eventually went Gold. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mancini


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## Arbee

JohnG @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> It is surprising to me how insistently some are championing the "self-taught" route.


I think this is really just to balance the counter argument that some formal training is mandatory. And I do certainly believe that self learning is much more feasible these days.

While I had less formal training in music than I've had in other areas of endeavour, and managed teams of people along the way, I have one obvservation that seems to stand up to scrutiny. If someone has a real talent and a solid work ethic, you only have to give them a whiff of the tools and techniques and they are immediately off and running on their own. If they don't have the talent you can spoon feed them and stuff them full of every piece of knowledge you can find, and at best they'll be "just OK" at the end of it all.

.


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## EastWest Lurker

[quote="JohnG @ Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:45 pm" But how many composers scoring major pictures are helplessly reliant on someone else to arrange everything and just write a tune and chord symbols, or hum? I bet that number could be counted on one hand.[/quote]

More every day, and the attitudes you see expressed here are part of the reason why. 

The ability of a composer to compose AND orchestrate AND conduct is being de-valued. I see that as a loss, but clearly many here do not. C'est La Vie.


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## Alex Cuervo

Yeah - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross sure do owe a debt of gratitude to their orchestrator. Oh wait...


----------



## Peter Alexander

Arbee @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> JohnG @ Tue Jan 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> It is surprising to me how insistently some are championing the "self-taught" route.
> 
> 
> 
> I think this is really just to balance the counter argument that some formal training is mandatory. And I do certainly believe that self learning is much more feasible these days.
> 
> While I had less formal training in music than I've had in other areas of endeavour, and managed teams of people along the way, I have one obvservation that seems to stand up to scrutiny. If someone has a real talent and a solid work ethic, you only have to give them a whiff of the tools and techniques and they are immediately off and running on their own. If they don't have the talent you can spoon feed them and stuff them full of every piece of knowledge you can find, and at best they'll be "just OK" at the end of it all.
> 
> .
Click to expand...


Folks, at day's end all composers are self taught. You can only sit in class for so long, take lessons for so long etc., before you decide to run with the ball. And when you make that decision, that's when self instruction begins, whether it's score study, doing a take down, attending concerts, writing test pieces, going through a book, et al. 

A key secret of success, in nearly every field, is learning how to teach yourself.


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## passenger57

Watch out fellas, I recently read Lana Del Rey wants to be a film composer too! lol


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## kutai

passenger57 @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Watch out fellas, I recently read Lana Del Rey wants to be a film composer too! lol



Don't lol. If the studio people see something profitable in that, it might become a trend. 
And then people will be discussing do you need training at all to become a successful media composer.


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## snowleopard

This is a cut and paste from the other thread, one which I have not had the time to respond to until now. 



snowleopard @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> Sitting and studying theory, analyzing classical music, practicing scales, it all made me want to run away from music.





EastWest Lurker @ Thu Jan 10 said:


> That is one of the saddest statements I have read here. Studying and practicing is how you get good at anything.



First, back 30+ years ago I studied music in college. Just like many people. It was a lot of classical music. I spent hours learning to play Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook, pieces by Schubert, Beethoven, etc. I distinctly recall toiling for what seemed like weeks trying to play Chopin's Nocturne op.15 n.3 until my brain was fuzzy, and never did master it. I practiced scales upon scales upon scales. I studied counterpoint, 12-Tone. Broke down a Mozart overture, etc. etc. Study, study, study. Practice, practice, practice. And...it ground nearly all the creativity out of me, and I recoiled. Hard. 

Nearly giving up entirely, I ended up buying some old synths, which interested me more all along anyway in my gut, and tried figuring out what they did. I started messing around with found sounds, tape recordings, non-instruments, microtonal sounds. And I didn't look back. Now, 30 years later, I can't play any of the classical pieces I once could. I can't read sheet music worth a crap anymore. Heck, I can't play scales worth a damn, really. I never bother trying, and likely won't much in the future at my age. But I do know a heck of a lot about synthesis, and sound. Learning what I did in school likely did help me, some. Just as learning music synthesis, and non-instruments as well. I freely admit I was exposed to music in college it would have taken me years to find on my own. And yes, perhaps if I had kept at it, I could play better, and would be a better musician. But in whose eyes? I lament I can't ever quite create the music I hear in my head. But I never could no matter what I was studying or practicing. I probably never will be able to. It's just who I am. 

My point is this. I wouldn't tell anyone to not study and practice music. But you need to know in your heart just what kind of music you want to create. Because there's a whole palette of music yet to be created and a huge world out there just waiting to hear it. For one person practicing Chopin until your fingers are bleeding is the answer. For someone else, studying and practice non-instruments, found sounds, and making and mastering highly esoteric music, and making yourself happy and fulfilled in the process is a music life well worth pursuing.


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## Guy Rowland

JohnG @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> If Danny Elfman (a natural-born musical genius) is the model, then that's a hard act to follow, Internet videos notwithstanding.



I think you've hit the nail on the head right there, John. Some folks on this thread, I presume, will disagree with that premise - that there's no such thing as a natural-born musical genius. The only explanation for those who hold that view is that he put in the hours from an early age.

I really liked Nick's description of the art students vs music college students. Perhaps its that perceived conformity that is offputting to some of us.

I have a few friends who are teachers and classroom assistants. It's interesting to hear them talk about how some folks, no matter how much time they spend with them, don't get it.

Another dynamic to all this that perhaps hasn't been explored is that your own personailty, your own individuality, might partly determine your ability to put in the hours _on a given subject_. If you have no affinity with music, you'll never make it to 10,000 hours, so the point is moot. If you do, those hours will come naturally - whether self-taught or not.

Jay - there were some terrific quotes on the previous page about the supreme importance of change. How music is composed (certainly in the world of film) has changed. 100 years ago, composers didn't have to know about computers, midi, sound design, filters, oscillators, scripting - the modern composer does. But what giveth with one hand taketh away with the other... its not necessary to know formal detailed orchestration any more. Is that such a terrible thing? Is a score as influential and inspired as Batman or Edward Scissorhands "bad" because an orchestrator fleshed it out? I fail to see what's wrong with that, but it seems by your words you do. Orchestration will be an in-demand skill for a very long time indeed, and there's real opportunities there for folks that have done that training that can't or don't want to compose themselves.

Snow - terrific post.


----------



## Waywyn

As for the people who know me I am very universe focused, which is actually kind of an oxymoron since you tend to see the big picture it means that you are open to everything ... what I am trying to say is, if you are using this approach by watching how the universe works, by how this solar system works, its planets and for this topic, most important, the beings on THIS planet, you can easily see music as with everything else: Evolution!

As Darwin said: It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

Furthermore, I was very fortunate to learn the job of a type setter. I was involved with printing machines, lots of paper and I even learned about the old fashioned way to create a page with ... well, "those iron stamps and stuff" 

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I heard the same question in this job as you can hear it in any other job/profession/hobby as you hear it in the field of music. "Does one need blabla to be good/successful".

In my opinion it is good to know where something is coming from and what the roots are but it also depends on what you feel comfortable. I had many experiences in where theory and harmony didn't feel right. It was blocking my mind, because I wasn't able to express what I wanted. On the other hand I am pretty thankful that I learned all this theory etc. because it opened a few doors and I had kind of a map for the huge huge house in front of me. Another example is Mark Knopfler. This guy plays guitar like noone does. Everyone who is listening to Brothers in Arms and never shed a tear about this solo is dead! Does that mean, he is not able to create correct music? Isn't this what it is all about? Emotion and adapting?

HOWEVER, ... and this applies to everything. Good ideas, do not come from studying something. It is the will, focus and the actual interest to achieve something and the power to combine. It is also a matter of how fast you are able to USE what you learn. You can learn a C major scale. Some people sitting on the piano and just play the notes up and down while others already start going: "Hey I don't need to play them up and down, I got something in my head which may be a cool melody BASED on this scale." Simply because the person is open minded enough to use the given information and translate it to music!

I once had a guitar student and I just showed him how to play a pentatonic and a major scale (and I don't remember what happened but I wasn't able to instruct him anymore) ... but within weeks he was able to play his first solo and everytime I passed his house (he was living close to us) it got better each day. I was kinda struck on how that guy processed information ... and this is the point. It is not about how MUCH information you can gather, it is, how GOOD you are at processing it!

Another factor is, what music/sound resonates with the most people. It is simply something you can not change asit goes with a flow in evolution. It happens, the same as humans lost the ability to produce Vitamin C at a specific point in evolution. It is over and you simply have to manually get it. No way back.

So I think music theory will never get lost since it more or less applies to essential laws of sound physics and are not only extremely important but also something we cannot change. We could see this planet watch 1.000.000 times the same process until the first "intelligent" being will evolve, it is will create an unlimited amount of myths and theories on the way, but physics will ALWAYS be the same! There may be different numbers, different equations, but in the end it will stay the same.

Therefore I say as I mentioned before. The most important thing is to process information you receive and it doesn't matter if someone puts it in your mouth or if you feed yourself! It is how you adapt, what you create, how focused, interested and eager you are and how it resonates with the people around you!


... or to really go with the short version: Noone gives a fuck, if you had formal training when delivering an album to a client as noone gives a fuck at what age you were able to walk for the first time when you apply for a job!


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## Arbee

Waywyn @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Another example is Mark Knopfler. This guy plays guitar like noone does. Everyone who is listening to Brothers in Arms and never shed a tear about this solo is dead! Does that mean, he is not able to create correct music? Isn't this what it is all about? Emotion and adapting?


Not to mention Local Hero, one of the great melodic themes IMHO 

.


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## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> Jay - there were some terrific quotes on the previous page about the supreme importance of change. How music is composed (certainly in the world of film) has changed. 100 years ago, composers didn't have to know about computers, midi, sound design, filters, oscillators, scripting - the modern composer does. But what giveth with one hand taketh away with the other... its not necessary to know formal detailed orchestration any more. Is that such a terrible thing? Is a score as influential and inspired as Batman or Edward Scissorhands "bad" because an orchestrator fleshed it out? I fail to see what's wrong with that, but it seems by your words you do. Orchestration will be an in-demand skill for a very long time indeed, and there's real opportunities there for folks that have done that training that can't or don't want to compose themselves.



Of course not, and I never said it was.I have said repeatedly that Danny is a great film composer. I said that the people I _personally_ admire most are the ones that can "do it all" because that is what I aspired to be, a guy that could do it all.And I worked hard to the point where I can, although others do it better. On my projects, I have always, composed, orchestrated, conducted AND done the MIDI sequencing.

I just find it sad that fewer and fewer people aspire to that because you cannot learn to be brilliant but you can learn to be a craftsman. And let's be frank here, with exactly the same talents and skills they have, would Danny or Trent ever have been given those opportunities if they were not rock stars? Maybe yes, but maybe no.


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## Alex Cuervo

I don't think anyone is challenging your aim to be able to do it all, it's hard work and it's worthy of respect.

I think where there's a disconnect is that some of you are phrasing the discussion as if orchestral music and media music are exactly the same thing. They are not.


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## Ned Bouhalassa

Don't know if you know this, Alex, but Trent Reznor (bless his amazing heart, ears and balls) started studying piano at age 5, and played tenor sax and tuba in school, amongst many other instruments. I'm not saying he's a full-blown orchestrator, but he's far from self-taught.

FWIW, my opinion in all this is that in order to have a long career, *everything* helps, including having a music theory background. I use my 'instincts' more than my analytical brain when composing, but I know that all the stuff I studied in university is still there, and in many ways, helped me grasp/understand things faster when I read info (tips) in magazines and online afterwards. Some professors' lessons/concepts still ring constructively in my ears 25 years later. Oh, and I also learned in school how to deliver/finish stuff on time for final projects, even if it meant pulling all-nighters.

Also, studying electroacoustic music made me far more comfortable with synthesizers, samplers, editing, processing, and mixing. I can also slice tape, if anyone needs me. :shock:


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## EastWest Lurker

Alex Cuervo @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> I don't think anyone is challenging your aim to be able to do it all, it's hard work and it's worthy of respect.
> 
> I think where there's a disconnect is that some of you are phrasing the discussion as if orchestral music and media music are exactly the same thing. They are not.



I understand. What I am advocating however, studying music and practicing musical skills, is not genre specific. As Ned says in his last thread it ALL helps.


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## Waywyn

Ned Bouhalassa @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Don't know if you know this, Alex, but Trent Reznor (bless his amazing heart, ears and balls) started studying piano at age 5, and played tenor sax and tuba in school, amongst many other instruments. I'm not saying he's a full-blown orchestrator, but he's far from self-taught.
> 
> FWIW, my opinion in all this is that in order to have a long career, *everything* helps, including having a music theory background. I use my 'instincts' more than my analytical brain when composing, but I know that all the stuff I studied in university is still there, and in many ways, helped me grasp/understand things faster when I read info (tips) in magazines and online afterwards. Some professors' lessons/concepts still ring constructively in my ears 25 years later. Oh, and I also learned in school how to deliver/finish stuff on time for final projects, even if it meant pulling all-nighters.
> 
> Also, studying electroacoustic music made me far more comfortable with synthesizers, samplers, editing, processing, and mixing. I can also slice tape, if anyone needs me. :shock:



Hey Ned, yes I know what you saying ... but this is actually what I was also trying to say. Surely everything helps, ... but as another example. I met many of my former schoolmates and especially the ones who had awesome grades all the time (you know those boring, "Ohh, a ´B+, I may have to study harder" guys) didn't know what to do with their life. Some had a bar, another one started at a circus?!?! I was terrible at school, I was just good at art and biology. Besides that I was annoying, I had no discipline, I talked all the time and when I was a kid the corner was my best friend!  ... Now, I am self employed, can care about my family, can work tight and quite made it through some milestone terror 
The same goes for musicians. I knew musicians, especially a guitarist, who was absolutely amazing at technique, sight reading and all that, but he couldn't write a feckin' song. He had it all but didn't know what to do with it. So in the end there we are again, it depends on how you process the given information. For sure, one who processes information well would have been a monster on a university, ... but maybe there was no money or other problems ... but whatever, the guy caught up and learned most part for himself because he knew to digest and process the given information.

So again, formal training gives you lots of info, maps and clues how to open doors, but you have to do it on your own in the end. In the end, where is the difference if you receive a key to a door or knew how to quickly create and built a key (or a similar solution to open the door) for yourself?!  Yes, definitely the formal training guy is much quicker ... but it doesn't mean he writes better songs or is self confident when it comes to e.g. work in a team/speak in front of an audience or a boss of a project!


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## JohnG

Waywyn @ 15th January 2013 said:


> ....In the end, where is the difference if you receive a key to a door or knew how to quickly create and built a key (or a similar solution to open the door) for yourself?!  *Yes, definitely the formal training guy is much quicker* ... but it doesn't mean he writes better songs or is self confident when it comes to e.g. work in a team/speak in front of an audience or a boss of a project!



I added emphasis to, "Yes, definitely the formal training guy is much quicker" because that's one of my main arguments -- possibly my only argument, really. There is not enough time on a major gig to be anything but lightning fast. As Mr. Elfman said in his letter, with all the changes of direction and re-editing that goes on these days you end up writing maybe 100 minutes of score for a 70 minute final result.

So for me, writing trailer music slowly is just fine; I can discover how to do things I didn't know before. Same on in the game world, so far, since the speed is slower. But not for major features. Or even small, independent features!


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## passenger57

Just another off the cuff comment...
One of my friends is one of the top orchestrators in town. I remember once he was complaining about Elfman's voice leading. That reminded me of something I read once about Rimsky Korsakov trying to 'fix' Mussorgsky's voice leading and harmony choices. 
I'm not knocking a good education, but even now when I do something that is considered against the traditional norm like parallel fifths, etc.. I keep hearing that academic voice in my head.
It's like Yoda said - you have to unlearn what you learned - see?


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## George Caplan

anyone here know the greatest orchestrator that ever lived? :lol: :lol:


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## Leosc

George Caplan @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> anyone here know the greatest orchestrator that ever lived? :lol: :lol:



Canofworms.jpeg

(Debussy. Most will answer Stravinsky or Ravel though.)


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## Ned Bouhalassa

Seems that Herbert Spencer did a good job...


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## Waywyn

passenger57 @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> It's like Yoda said - you have to unlearn what you learned - see?



Sorry if I am wrong, but I think you missquoted Yoda here, no? 
This phrase is not about forgetting in the sense of ignoring what you learned ... it is ment to be Bruce Lee-ish in a way. Meaning, you have to simply do what you learned, ... not think about what you learned and could use in the appropriate situation.

E.g. don't think about all the scales, while you play your solo - just play it! Don't think about movements while you fight, just use them.

Besides that: Wow, if some complains about Elfman's voice leading, he certainly should get a life!  ... I am sorry, but I couldn't resist, but this is so nerdy! =o


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## germancomponist

Waywyn @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> This phrase is not about forgetting in the sense of ignoring what you learned ... it is ment to be Bruce Lee-ish in a way. Meaning, you have to simply do what you learned, ... not think about what you learned and could use in the appropriate situation.
> 
> E.g. don't think about all the scales, while you play your solo - just play it! Don't think about movements while you fight, just use them.



Right!


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## passenger57

> Besides that: Wow, if some complains about Elfman's voice leading, he certainly should get a life!  ... I am sorry, but I couldn't resist, but this is so nerdy! =o



I love the Bruce Lee comment - yes thats perfect! 

As for my orchestrator friend, he is the most musically gifted guy I know with an amazing musical intellect, scary actually. That said, he can't write a memorable tune to save his life. Maybe the simplicity of writing something most people could relate to would be beneath him intellectually. Hard to say, but the music he writes for himself looks on paper like Schoenberg meets Miles Davis. I'm sure many folk here would love it but it just doesn't work for most contemporary film music and I think thats why he never had any luck with it.


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## Waywyn

passenger57 @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Besides that: Wow, if some complains about Elfman's voice leading, he certainly should get a life!  ... I am sorry, but I couldn't resist, but this is so nerdy! =o
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I love the Bruce Lee comment - yes thats perfect!
> 
> As for my orchestrator friend, he is the most musically gifted guy I know with an amazing musical intellect, scary actually. That said, he can't write a memorable tune to save his life. Maybe the simplicity of writing something most people could relate to would be beneath him intellectually. Hard to say, but the music he writes for himself looks on paper like Schoenberg meets Miles Davis. I'm sure many folk here would love it but it just doesn't work for most contemporary film music and I think thats why he never had any luck with it.
Click to expand...


It is actually pretty easy. I am not trying to talk this guy down nor narrowing down his skills, ... but this is actually the problem. When a scientist tries to tell a woman who much he loves her with just formulas and equations. Lots of musicians, ESPECIALLY the ones with formal training have a problem switching this off. I've been there regarding guitar playing. I couldn't play the simplest scale anymore because I was too eager to introduce too many jazznotes ... every chord had added 7,9,13 etc. ... this is the point when your knowledge destroys your imagination!


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## passenger57

Well said! I had the same experience learning guitar. When I was young my focus was 100% on being a virtuoso rather than actually playing something heartfelt with melody and soul.


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## EastWest Lurker

Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.

Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.

This is total horse pucky IMHO.


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## Arbee

passenger57 @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> Well said! I had the same experience learning guitar. When I was young my focus was 100% on being a virtuoso rather than actually playing something heartfelt with melody and soul.


+1 how often do you hear something back that just felt so good to play, only to realise it actually sucks to anyone else listening :lol:

Wouldn't it be satisfying if the greatness of a composition was _always_ equal to the amount of effort that went into creating it?!

.


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## George Caplan

Leosc @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> George Caplan @ Tue Jan 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> anyone here know the greatest orchestrator that ever lived? :lol: :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Canofworms.jpeg
> 
> (Debussy. Most will answer Stravinsky or Ravel though.)
Click to expand...


and of course shostakovich.

i accidently reported this to moderation. :oops:


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## passenger57

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.
> 
> Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.
> 
> This is total horse pucky IMHO.



I think you missed my point there bud - lol


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## EastWest Lurker

passenger57 @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Jan 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.
> 
> Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.
> 
> This is total horse pucky IMHO.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think you missed my point there bud - lol
Click to expand...


I was addressing Alex's post, not yours.


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## Waywyn

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.
> 
> Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.
> 
> This is total horse pucky IMHO.



Where did I say that if you have formal training, you can't write a memorable song?
Why do you twist and distort my statements so much?


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## TheUnfinished

Jay, please don't spoil what's a very interesting and polite conversation on both sides with ridiculous strawman arguments.

There's plenty of things people have 'actually' written that are worth addressing. No need to make stuff up.


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## EastWest Lurker

Waywyn @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Jan 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.
> 
> Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.
> 
> This is total horse pucky IMHO.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where did I say that if you have formal training, you can't write a memorable song?
> Why do you twist and distort my statements so much?
Click to expand...


Here is what you wrote: "I knew musicians, especially a guitarist, who was absolutely amazing at technique, sight reading and all that, but he couldn't write a feckin' song. "
The implication I took from that (and maybe you didn't mean this) was there are lots of trained musicians like that. There are NOT. Most well trained players CAN write a "feckin' song". Whether you or anyone else thinks it is a good one is subjective. My guess is more untrained musicians than trained ones cannot write a "feckin' song".

Look, I have one more statement and then I am done with this b.s. The title of the thread is "Do you NEED formal training, etc." Maybe not and presumably you need talent and creativity as well, although you would never know it from some of the junk I hear.. But anyone who thinks formal training is anything other than helpful to have had is kidding themselves.


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## Waywyn

Jay, if someone writes a good song does NOT depend on the formal training! It helps, YES, bigtime! ... but only because you had formal training it means that you can write a good song!

It depends on your imagination, on your emotions, on your ability to process information. YES, LOTS of formal trained musicians write good songs, but also LOTS can NOT write a good song.

Turn it around, every formal trained musician/composer can write a good song?

Does every architect with formal training designs great houses or how many times you have driven through the city saying: Bah, who designed this crap?

Does every industrial designer with formal training designs and created awesome things or how many times you had something in your hands saying: Oh boy, whoever who designed that shit, should be imprisoned

Does every politician with formal training is a well respected man and deserves his country or how many times did you yell at the TV saying: Oh boy, from which planet this guy comes from.

The list is almost ETERNAL!


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## Ed

Leosc @ Mon Jan 14 said:


> In that case, Gunther, please give me a self-taught example for - hmmm... - say, Brahms. I'd love to hear your thoughts.



Hmm, funny how this reminds me of the _classical vs every other music_ thread that went crazy a little while back.

If the claim is that only orchestral classic music counts as valid music then sure, you're going to need some classical training. If only classical music counts as valid music then sure back in the days of Mozart, Brahms or Beethoven you practically couldn't be a composer without formal training. Everyone else either didnt bother with it, it was a upperclass thing, the normal people played in folk bands and no one remembers their music.

Today, there is no reason why you need to have formal training to either write good music, effective music. That also doesnt mean anyone can do it. It just means that today those with other talents can become involved in music in a way that would have just been impossible back in the "classical days."


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## Ed

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Yeah too bad John Williams had so much training both as a pianist and a composer., he cannot write a memorable theme.
> 
> Too bad Burt Bacharach had so much training, he cannot write a memorable song. Ditto for Gershwin. Ditto Bill Evans, how did he manage to come up with "Waltz For Debby" or Michel LeGrand, etc.
> 
> This is total horse pucky IMHO.



Is that why Nick Dodd writes so many memorable tunes, but David Arnold doesnt? Ah, yes thats right, because while Nick Dodd clearly contributes significantly to the orchestration of Arnolds music, in terms of tunes and ideas Arnold is better at it. Anyway the point Alex was making was that people who are formally trained can, but not necessarily, find themselves locked into a way of thinking that isnt productive. Many times Ive heard music from people who are trained which all kinds of crazy runs and so going on, but it sounds terrible, having no soul. The genius of someone like John William is, its technically brilliant, while also having a soul. That doesnt mean that no training is better, but it doesnt mean that training cant potentially have a negative impact in some cases as well.


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## Ed

Waywyn @ Tue Jan 15 said:


> Sorry if I am wrong, but I think you missquoted Yoda here, no?
> This phrase is not about forgetting in the sense of ignoring what you learned ... it is ment to be Bruce Lee-ish in a way. Meaning, you have to simply do what you learned, ... not think about what you learned and could use in the appropriate situation.
> 
> E.g. don't think about all the scales, while you play your solo - just play it! Don't think about movements while you fight, just use them.



Speaking of Lee. OT for a moment, one of favourite quotes.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pc1pbCMRSU


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## Nick Batzdorf

> I really liked Nick's description of the art students vs music college students. Perhaps its that perceived conformity that is offputting to some of us.



Thanks Guy, but actually I didn't really emphasize the tangent I'm on clearly enough.

What I'm saying is that possibly - possibly - unlike art, musicians have to go through a period like that before we get to the stage John G. is talking about:



> When I hear what JNH or JW or Desplat or half the guys out there do for a single chase / battle scene it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck thinking about how much knowledge goes into that music so that it remains effective, personal, original, and musical.



So what I'm asking is whether the part that's not "knowledge" can be taught, or whether it just comes down to how interesting a person you are.

Much as I like compliments, I didn't and don't find it off-putting that I and my classmates at Berklee only sounded competent at that stage. It was an important part of the journey. And it's not like we were taught to be boring, it's the old line about learning the rules before you forget them.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Put another way: is not learning the rules in the first place a shortcut to forgetting them?

When you look at it that way, the answer has to be no.


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## Waywyn

Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> Many times Ive heard music from people who are trained which all kinds of crazy runs and so going on, but it sounds terrible, having no soul. The genius of someone like John William is, its technically brilliant, while also having a soul. That doesnt mean that no training is better, but it doesnt mean that training cant potentially have a negative impact in some cases as well.



Exactly!
Besides the guitar player I talked about before I have of course more examples. We recently had a vocal recording session with a pretty awesome counter tenor guy. He didn't just have a marvelous voice but he also played piano like hell. He was literally a mothership of formal training.
After the recording session he asked our producer if he could play him a song. We listened to it and the more I heard I had no emotional feeling or a picture which I usually quickly connect with (if the song is good). The only thing which came to my mind was: Circle of Fifth training method 2857.

He literally went through all keys, but not to support the track. He did it because HE KNEW HOW!

... and this is the problem. I know it from my studying times as well. You learn something new, a diminished arpeggio, a wholetone lick, you watch Holdsworth play, you study a piece of him, you achieved some tapping technique, someone showed you a trick with triads ... suddenly and I am pretty sure I am speaking for almost everyone who has formal training. You most of the time can NOT hold back. You sometimes if not mostly simply use stuff you learned. You learned your whole life you need to unload, ... and very quickly if you are not paying attention, you are on a point where you are simply not able anymore to appreciate the power and the emotion of a Miles Davis live recording hearing just three note licks (with a gap of two seconds in between each).

A long time ago I watched a documentary about classical trained orchestra musicians. Someone said, can you do a quick improv here over whatever key ... and the guy was like: Uhm, ooo ... what should I play? I don't know what to play.
I am pretty sure you can go to the next orchestra session and a few % (if not even LOTS of %) can NOT improvise ... or - as part of this discussion - can write you a good song!

Yes, you can write brilliant music when having formal training.
Yes, you can write terrible music when having formal training.
Yes, you can write brilliant music when you got no formal training
Yes, you can write terrible music when you had no formal training.

All this formal/autodidact training is NOT connected to being to write a good song!
It just and always depends on how good you are to process and convert the achieved knowledge ... to write a good song ...

... even deeper! Since this topic is generally about being successful.
Formal music training does NOT buy you:
Character, charisma, creativity, showing emotions, patience, holding ones ego back, discipline when it comes to money/spending it ... etc.

In my opinion formal training is just a little part of what you have to do to be successful ... and as you may have noted, I left out relationships and connections since this is a whole different universe


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## Darthmorphling

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> Look, I have one more statement and then I am done with this b.s. The title of the thread is "Do you NEED formal training, etc." Maybe not and presumably you need talent and creativity as well, although you would never know it from some of the junk I hear.. But anyone who thinks formal training is anything other than helpful to have had is kidding themselves.



Having read the entire thread I have yet to hear anyone say that having training is bad. I have heard many say that academics was not for them. I have heard people say that their training was essential for their growth. The world is not black and white. Most people fall in the middle. 

Peter stated that Mancini did not go back to Juilliard as it didn't teach him what he needed. Instead he found mentorship where his needs were met. If I learn something from a Daniel James, or Alex Pfeffer, video that furthers my musical understanding, how is that not learning? If I learn something from studying a Williams' score is that automatically better than a youtube video?

Training does not equal good music. Certainly there are many more trained musicians that write better music than there are untrained musicians, but there is still a lot of technically proficient crap. I have heard lots of phenomenal music from people that have no formal training.

Your version of "junk" may be my version of excellent music. This is a very subjective artform. I personally cannot stand to listen to opera in any form. I love all other forms of classical music. It doesn't make opera bad, just not for me.

Try listening to Steve Vai. The man has had some serious training and is considred a virtuoso, but his music simply does not connect with me. My son is 8 and loves John Williams, but he also likes to listen to minecraft parody songs on Youtube. Music connects with people in many different ways.

My interpretation from this thread is that training isn't as necessary to be a media composer in today's world. I also agree with you that training will make someone a better composer, but training can come in many forms.

The world of Burt Bacharat is long gone.


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## Ed

And TBH I dont think training helps you write a good tune. I think thats abundantly clear. If someone uses a guy like John Williams as an example they are just cherry picking and saying because John Williams writes a good tune, and John Williams is trained, therefore training teaches you how to write a good tune. Logic fail.

Anyway this has wildly drifted off topic, anyway. The people like Jay would be the first person to say that there's a lot of crap music around thats successful, so why on earth would anyone argue you *cant *be a successful media composer without training *even if* they think all the music the person makes will be bad? You can be successful, potentially very successful, without musical training, thats just a demonstrable fact. Success has nothing to do with quality, but at least that measure is more or less completely quantifiable.



> Music connects with people in many different ways.



Some people have a hard time understanding that. Its true both from a listeners and a composers perspective


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## Nick Batzdorf

Sure training can help you write a good tune. It's not going to do it for you, but there are dozens of ways it will help.

I take it you're untrained, right Ed?


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## Ed

Nick Batzdorf @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> Sure training can help you write a good tune. It's not going to do it for you, but there are dozens of ways it will help.
> 
> I take it you're untrained, right Ed?



Yup. But that's irrelevant. I fully agree that training can help you, so no debate from me there. Nick Dodd however is far more musically literate than David Arnold, but his music doesnt have those cool ideas that Arnolds has. Examples like this show that musical literacy wont give you that ability. It may help you do interesting things with it, but if you dont have it, its empty.

I do have to also point out as I did earlier the fact that training doesnt always mean you will be better, it can create mental blocks that makes it harder for people to connect with music in some cases.


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## Guy Rowland

OK, foolhardy questions here. Take JW's Star Wars main theme - the basic melody is a brilliant, simple iconic tune. I think most of us would agree on that, and a lot of us would agree that it's good evidence of what JW can bring over and above mere brilliant technique, writing a theme like that isn't in the manual. I remember hearing him say that he wanted a simple theme with rising large intervals as it tends to work well in terms of sounding rousing - so you could argue that this is learned technique. But my view (and I presume that of many here) is that many formally trained composers would know that and yet fail to deliver a tune as effective and memorable - that's the Williams genius.

BUT - I think when you play the raw melody on a piano, say, it doesn't sound anything like as spectacular. What elevates it is the equally brilliant arrangement. Now, in terms of what's there, it's not outstandingly complex - it is inspired, however. Choosing my words carefully to make me not sound too deluded, but I can imagine myself coming up with something of that level of complexity with no formal training. I can understand and follow it no trouble (unlike some very dense old school action cue, say, which if I'm honest I simply can't adequately de-construct). Note - I'm extremely unsure in practice I'd create anything that good mind, but - in theory - it should be within my reach is what I mean.

So here's the question(s), really to those of us who more readily embrace the "natural talent" end of the spectrum, as well as the value of formal technique. Is an arrangement like that harder for the self-taught to achieve? Does Williams come up with a cracking tune and then just apply a bunch of theory that anyone adequately trained could flesh out? Or is that Williams spark, that Williams genius, every bit as essential to the orchestration? (I'm aware that some believe that the Williams genius is purely as a result of his study and practice, so this question is not relevant to them).

This perhaps leads on to more questions regarding the nature of orchestration. My huge knowledge gap is in the orchestration detail. I can write a piece beyond strings / brass / woods / perc, I can break it down fine into the individual instruments. But I realise that me doing that on a DAW is not the same as an orchestra playing it. Some parts might sound fine to me but be unplayable in practice, there might well be details and flourishes that I'd miss, and - most obviously of all - I couldn't safely translate that to notation. So for me, I'd always need an orchestrator and copyist if I was ever supremely lucky enough to work with the LSO.

To those of us without formal training, there sometimes seems to be a caricature portrayed which the Elfman letter addresses directly. No-one has said it here that the real talent in his scores is all that of his orchestrator, but plenty do - creating the impression that all Elfman does is write a rough melody on a keyboard, hand it over and go down the pub. My view is that all composers - self-tought or otherwise - need to get it to that level of solid orchestration as a starting point - not literally dotting every crotchet, but to a decent stage involving counterpoint, harmony etc and the bones of all the instrumentation. I'm completely comfortable with that, even though I realise someone like Jay wouldn't be. The thousands of hours of study required, and my own perception that it would take the joy out of the whole thing for me, are negatives which are overwhelming.

(these are hard questions and points to phrase adequately, I hope someone at least gets what I'm driving at).


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## Peter Alexander

> But my view (and I presume that of many here) is that many formally trained composers would know that and yet fail to deliver a tune as effective and memorable.



I'm sorry, but your view is incorrect. Formal training doesn't teach composers this.



> So here's the question(s), really to those of us who more readily embrace the "natural talent" end of the spectrum, as well as the value of formal technique. Is an arrangement like that harder for the self-taught to achieve?



The problem here is that none of you want to define what "formal training" means. I gave a definition earlier. Whatever you think formal training is, it's _not_.

To compose there's a core level of knowledge needed to do the job which is a functional mastery of western tonality and harmony. How you learn it is up to you: piano teacher, school, whatever. 

Learning how to write a melody is part of this. Read the bios of top long term successful songwriters and they think and write songs 24/7. Diane Warren is a good example. Diane Warren is in her studio at 9AM and writes until 6PM. It takes her a week to write a song including lyrics and basic MIDI mock-up which is then passed on to someone else in her company to do a full pitch demo.

Having "natural talent" doesn't mean you don't have to practice! Having natural talent means you have to work to develop what you have, otherwise you _will_ hit a brick wall and run out of things to say. When that happens, you start repeating yourself, and then you sound old and stale.

Passing a test and getting a good grade is not a sign of ability in music. It's a sign you passed a test and got a good grade. THAT'S IT! It means nothing more than that.

Yes you DO have to study. But as those in Visual Orchestration know, that means score study, concert going, focused listening, watching concert DVDs, playing in a band. All these things are part of developing your craft. But the ultimate study is taking what you've learned and WRITING! Write it then produce it. Then come back after a few days and critique what you wrote. Then when you have it down produce it. 

If you want THE rule here it is: _the best stuff isn't written, it's *re*-written. _

There are exceptions. But other than the exceptions, what I've given you is *THE ONE RULE TO RULE THEM ALL!*

I also want to point out that there are styles of learning. The core info is the core. But the style in which you learn it can be different from one person to another. 

Want another rule? Here it is. What you're to know is determined by what you want to do, and how good you want to be at it.

I know lots of talented people unwilling to put in the defined work and they go no place while we goal setting hedgehogs just keep movin' right along until we hit the target.

PA


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## Kejero

Nobody can teach you how to write a good melody, but they can teach you "rules" and tricks that can make your melodies more interesting.

Take this article for instance, where Bear McCreary talks about the use of perfect fifths in science fiction theme tunes:
http://io9.com/5883406/the-physics-behind-your-favorite-science-fiction-theme-songs

Then there's plenty of theory on how to use chord or passing notes, (re-)using rhythmic patterns, using variations...

Those are all things that can help write a better melody, and those can all be taught, no?


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## Guy Rowland

Peter Alexander @ Thu Jan 17 said:


> But my view (and I presume that of many here) is that many formally trained composers would know that and yet fail to deliver a tune as effective and memorable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sorry, but your view is incorrect. Formal training doesn't teach composers this.
Click to expand...


Eh? Doesn't teach composers what?

As I said, some have the view that musical genius is nothing more than putting in the hours . So anyone who puts in 10,000 good hours could come up with melodies as good as JW. Some - including I - don't think that's true (in fact I think its absurd). Making a sweeping statement that is false is, er, false - you may have your view, but that's all it is. As is mine.

I agree with Kejero absolutely - you can teach the rules for a good tune (indeed I quoted JW's mentioning one). But - in my view - that doesn't inevitably lead to Raiders, Star Wars, ET. It is more likely to lead to perfectly serviceable but unmemorable tunes (of which there are many, many more examples that examples of truly iconic and brilliant melodies that have the true touch of genius about them).

We're really starting to just go round in circles now. My previous post - for those who don't have the view that it is purely hours - was an attempt to advance the discussion.

EDIT - a challenge to the highly musically trained who do believe it's all just a case of putting in the hours. Why not compose and post a melody that is a triumphant fantare, a la Star Wars, using all the rules for making it as effective as possible.


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## Peter Alexander

It's not purely hours. It's the defined focused purpose of those hours that makes the difference. 

RE: melodies. Those who take the Fux counterpoint class from me learn that the "rules" written by Fux in the opening lessons are guidelines for how to write melodies that amateurs can sing. When top rated songs are evaluated by Fux's guidelines, nearly every one of them follows what he taught. Thus the so-called rules of counterpoint are really about how to write melodies that people can sing. 

But after you've learned that, it's still the same applications process - you have to keep writing and producing melodies. Some people have a gift and a knack for it, while others have to work at it. 

But those who are passionate about, like Dianne Warren, eat/sleep/drink it. They love it. They believe in what they're writing. And they're rock solid dedicated in promoting what they're doing. 

That's far different from mimicking some other composer or songwriter. When someone mimics another composer or songwriter that individual is living in someone elses shadow without stepping out, risking, and casting their own shadow.

A pop melody is not a hymn tune is not an instrumental melody. Instrumental melodies have dramatic purpose behind them and don't always follow the Fux Guidelines for the simple reason that musical instruments have a range greater than octave, which is the average person's vocal range. Violins can do leaps voices can't do. 

Focused practice is work. And if you put the work in, and IF you have an aptitude for it, an d IF you define where you're wanting to go, then you can probably get there, as long as you remember it's not just the notes. There's presentation, copyrights, contract law, et al. 

And you have to be willing to do that, too.

My California chiropractor's mom was also a chiropractor. One of her patients was golf great Gary Player. Gary Player practiced every day. And when he practiced, daily, he took 12,000 swings. 

If you just want to do music for fun, fabulous. Enjoy yourself. Seriously. But if you want to be successful and earn a living in music, then you have a different set of criteria to work with. And the starting point is do you believe in what YOU are writing, and if so, how much? What are you willing to risk?

Again, I suggest these business books:

The War of Art
Talent Is Never Enough by John Maxwell.

PA


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## George Caplan

Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> Nick Batzdorf @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Sure training can help you write a good tune. It's not going to do it for you, but there are dozens of ways it will help.
> 
> I take it you're untrained, right Ed?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yup. But that's irrelevant.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> thats subjective.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I fully agree that training can help you, so no debate from me there.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> thats a contradiction in terms.
> 
> 
> 
> Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Nick Dodd however is far more musically literate than David Arnold, but his music doesnt have those cool ideas that Arnolds has.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> thats subjective.
> 
> 
> 
> Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I do have to also point out as I did earlier the fact that training doesnt always mean you will be better, it can create mental blocks that makes it harder for people to connect with music in some cases.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


until you get training you cant make a comment about any of this subject that makes any sense. get some training and it doesnt have to be formal either and then you can get objective. if you sat down next to a real a player you would be intimidated within 1.783 seconds. the guys i play with find this attitude downright irritating and we re only amateurs. :lol: :lol:


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## Waywyn

Just as a little thought. I found this a few minutes ago:

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/5/4/7/7/7/p547778_index.html?phpsessid=2ca9751a0a9f94bc3071fac4fd0eaeb5



> The process of music improvisation has often been likened to speech (Johnson-Laird, 2002; Gordon, 2007; Dowling 1999). Although both are prodigiously complex tasks, they usually require only our surface consciousness of the process. The way most humans learn speech is through aural recognition skills: hearing sounds, making sense of them and copying them. In this way a small child is able to master formidably complex rules of grammar and pronunciation without knowing how. It has been shown that our ability to make sense of music occurs in a similar way through our ability to distinguish “musical syntax” (Koelsch & Siebel, 2005; Snyder, 2000; Gordon, 2007). *Yet there is a widespread inability of many formally trained musicians to improvise: that is, to create music the way a child improvises speech. This may be partly because the way we learn music is vastly different to the way a child learns language. Most formal music education happens via the visual process of reading notation and technical and theoretical instruction. Very little training happens via aural modeling.* In contrast to this, the main learning practice of informally trained musicians is modeling: copying real music by ear (Green, 2002). This approach has been shown to develop high levels of aural skills and a concomitant ability to improvise. This paper explores the literature on informal learning and research into music cognition and modeling to suggest why copying music by ear is a proven, effective and enjoyable way to teach and learn the art of improvisation.



I think if you in general dig deeper, you find even more evidence that formal training does not automatically let's you write good songs.
I am aware that the upper quote is improvisation, but this goes along with being inventive when it comes to create new melodies.


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## EastWest Lurker

Formal training does not automatically make you good at anything but it helps you to become competent, disciplined and gives you tools. Other forms of training do as well, especially study with guys who have "been there, done that". And to get good at anything requires lots of practice. 

Formal training also does not preclude other kinds of learning. I started piano lessons at 8 1/2. I started writing songs at 12 and playing in rock bands at 13. By the time I entered the conservatory at 17 I had years of experience in the pop/rock world and had written lots of songs, good and bad.

Formal training is a valuable tool, nothing more but nothing less. Beyond that, it is your talent and what you make of it. It does not automatically let you write good songs or any other music but it greatly increases the odds that you can.


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## Vartio

> Yet there is a widespread inability of many badly trained musicians to improvise: that is, to create music the way a child improvises speech. This may be partly because the way we learn music is vastly different to the way a child learns language. Most bad formal music education happens via the visual process of reading notation and technical and theoretical instruction. Very little training happens via aural modeling.


 fixed it..
thats just the teacher not knowing what to teach. a good teacher realizes that improvisation is a essential skill for any good musician. besides i think that a teacher (especially a composer) who drains the spontaneous creative life force out of a student is grossly unqualified do it's job..

and to answer the thread question... Yes you probably can, but having a form of training helps a lot. of course you can make it if you're extremely lucky and well connected (that applies also to the trained ones)
but whats the point of doing anything if you're not going to put your hart into it and do a top notch job at it? why even bother if you think you dont want to learn the craft that goes into doing your job in the fist place? if learning how to do it properly is somehow so repulsive, why would you even want to do it?
So training, I think, is essential if one wants to be good, that being formal or not.. having someone who nows how things are done around and giving you advise helps a lot at it.


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## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Wed Jan 16 said:


> as said it here that the real talent in his scores is all that of his orchestrator, but plenty do - creating the impression that all Elfman does is write a rough melody on a keyboard, hand it over and go down the pub. My view is that all composers - self-tought or otherwise - need to get it to that level of solid orchestration as a starting point - not literally dotting every crotchet, but to a decent stage involving counterpoint, harmony etc and the bones of all the instrumentation. I'm completely comfortable with that, even though I realise someone like Jay wouldn't be. The thousands of hours of study required, and my own perception that it would take the joy out of the whole thing for me, are negatives which are overwhelming.



You;re wrong, I am _totally_ comfortable with that for some people.
What I think is sad is that more and more would be composers feel that "The thousands of hours of study required, and my own perception that it would take the joy out of the whole thing for me, are negatives which are overwhelming."

Because for me and many others who aspired to be composers, it was our _joy_ and _passion_. I never felt more fully alive intellectually and engaged emotionally in music than my 4 years at Boston Conservatory (and 2 years studying orchestration with Albert Harris). Every day learning new things about great music, going for coffee and excitedly discussing it with fellow students and teachers, attending concerts, etc. then going home and tearing my hair out with 5th species counterpoint, practicing piano pieces by Mozart, Debussy, Poulenc, Schiumann, etc. even though I was not a great Classical pianist. 

Even the suffering was _joyous_.


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## Nick Batzdorf

I get the feeling that some people underestimate how good Danny Elfman is and what he actually does!


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## choc0thrax

Nick Batzdorf @ Thu Jan 17 said:


> I get the feeling that some people underestimate how good Danny Elfman is and what he actually does!



Danny was the king of the 90s. These days he scores films where I don't notice the music then see the credits and go "huh, Elfman scored it... any of you guys up for Chinese tonight?"

He's sort of fallen into Desplat territory. The only difference is Desplat scores so much you can have a top 10 Desplat scores at the end of each year.

Oh, and on topic: Talent is important but overrated.


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## Ed

George Caplan @ Thu Jan 17 said:


> Ed @ Wed Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yup. But that's irrelevant.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> thats subjective.
Click to expand...


Not unless you can tell me by what measure I cant make valid observations.



> I fully agree that training can help you, so no debate from me there.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> thats a contradiction in terms.
Click to expand...


How? I can write a decent tune, but that doesnt mean I can use it to its full potential. John Williams wrote a 2 note theme for Jaws, anyone could have come up with that. David Arnold uses Nick Dodd for literally this reason. 



> Nick Dodd however is far more musically literate than David Arnold, but his music doesnt have those cool ideas that Arnolds has.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> thats subjective.
Click to expand...


Is it? Then that means all tunes and melody are just as good any any other. Therefore the whole conversation is pointless to start with. I do find it funny when people start arguing against themselves.



> I do have to also point out as I did earlier the fact that training doesnt always mean you will be better, it can create mental blocks that makes it harder for people to connect with music in some cases.
> 
> 
> 
> until you get training you cant make a comment about any of this subject that makes any sense. get some training and it doesnt have to be formal either and then you can get objective. if you sat down next to a real a player you would be intimidated within 1.783 seconds. the guys i play with find this attitude downright irritating and we re only amateurs. :lol: :lol:
Click to expand...


Of course I feel intimidated, because Im not a musician. But that doesnt mean they can compose or write music anyone wants to listen to, if they write any at all. There is a difference between a musician and a composer.


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## EastWest Lurker

Ed @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> [here is a difference between a musician and a composer.



Ah, beautiful Ed, you have now encapsulated the essential issue in a single statement
This is a statement no working composer in practically any idiom would have made 30 years ago. 

Even the so-called "non-formally trained guys", like Elfman and Reznor, certainly are musicians and consider themselves to be. Heck, even the Ramones were musicians.


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## Ed

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Ah, beautiful Ed, you have now encapsulated the essential issue in a single statement
> This is a statement no working composer in practically any idiom would have made 30 years ago.
> 
> Even the so-called "non-formally trained guys", like Elfman and Reznor, certainly are musicians and consider themselves to be.



Can you give me a single reason why you have to be a brilliant musician to be a brilliant composer?

Also note the context. I was replying to the implication that musicians are better composers than a composer that is not a musician, because they are musicians.



> Heck, even the Ramones were musicians.



uh. they're a a band, of course there musicians. Bizzare example choices. You dont need to be an expert in violin playing to write for violin. When you accept that, now apply that to every instrument.


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## EastWest Lurker

Ed @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, beautiful Ed, you have now encapsulated the essential issue in a single statement
> This is a statement no working composer in practically any idiom would have made 30 years ago.
> 
> Even the so-called "non-formally trained guys", like Elfman and Reznor, certainly are musicians and consider themselves to be. Heck, even the Ramones were musicians.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Can you give me a single reason why you have to be a brilliant musician to be a brilliant composer?
Click to expand...


I didn't say "brilliant" did I? You wrote: "because Im not a musician."


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## rayinstirling

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Even the so-called "non-formally trained guys", like Elfman and Reznor, certainly are musicians and consider themselves to be. Heck, even the Ramones were musicians.



I don't believe it. We can agree on something Jay and I was thinking it was near impossible to comprehend such an event.

Ray


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## Nick Batzdorf

Reminder: Danny Elfman now has three decades of experience. Chances are pretty good that he's picked up a thing or two along the way.


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## Ed

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> I didn't say "brilliant" did I? You wrote: "because Im not a musician."



Same difference. Otherwise what on earth is your point? People couldnt say that 30 years ago? Maybe thats because computers didnt allow people to write music in the same way back then, and no its not because loops and phrases let people press a key and it does it for them.

At what level of skill do you believe someone can call themselves a musician? What is the definition of musician? Now we'll see some interestingly elastic definitions here... Personally I have more respect for musicians than to call me pottering around a keyboard worthy of being called a musician. But you dont have to read a note of music to be a musician, and to prove that all you have to do is consider all the people that have learned to play their instrument by ear to a high standard and better than someone that's still learning but can still read notation.


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## Darthmorphling

Ed @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, beautiful Ed, you have now encapsulated the essential issue in a single statement
> This is a statement no working composer in practically any idiom would have made 30 years ago.
> 
> Even the so-called "non-formally trained guys", like Elfman and Reznor, certainly are musicians and consider themselves to be.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Can you give me a single reason why you have to be a brilliant musician to be a brilliant composer?
> 
> Also note the context. I was replying to the implication that musicians are better composers than a composer that is not a musician, because they are musicians.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Heck, even the Ramones were musicians.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> uh. they're a a band, of course there musicians. Bizzare example choices. You dont need to be an expert in violin playing to write for violin. When you accept that, now apply that to every instrument.
Click to expand...


I actually think you are both agreeing for the most part. I believe Jay was trying to say that to be a composer, you need to be a musician, or at least have an understanding of what makes good music. Where you both differ is the belief in how one can become a "musician". 

I do agree with Jay that learning theory, and craft, can only be a good thing. I also agree with you, in that how one goes about learning their craft needs to be a path that works for them.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Stevie Wonder isn't very good at sight reading.


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## Darthmorphling

This whole thread reminds me of the two extremes for teaching kids to read. You have the whole language group and the phonics group. Both do not work on their own. What works is having a balance between the two philosphies.

Like everything in life, the balance can always be found in the middle.


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## Ed

Darthmorphling @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> I actually think you are both agreeing for the most part. I believe Jay was trying to say that to be a composer, you need to be a musician, or at least have an understanding of what makes good music. Where you both differ is the belief in how one can become a "musician".



Perhaps. I think me asking for what defines a musician and at what point one becomes a "musician" will reveal what he really thinks. I can kinda sort of play the piano by ear, badly, but even if I couldnt so long as I knew what I was doing in the computer thats all that matters from a programming perspective. Does that still make me a musician, of a computer? Maybe, but personally I wouldnt define a musician that way. For me a musician worthy of the name is someone who can play to a high standard (*in real time*)



> I do agree with Jay that learning theory, and craft, can only be a good thing. I also agree with you, in that how one goes about learning their craft needs to be a path that works for them.



I agree, sure. Has to be done right though, not everyone is the same and as I said earlier you can either put people off or you can turn wannabe composers into people unable to compose because they are so locked into a ridged way of thought.


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## Darthmorphling

Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Stevie Wonder isn't very good at sight reading.



+1 :lol: 

Neither is Jeff Healy. He can't even hold the guitar the right way, but can he play!


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## Darthmorphling

[quote="Ed @ Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:07 pm]I agree, sure. Has to be done right though, not everyone is the same and as I said earlier you can either put people off or you can turn wannabe composers into people unable to compose because they are so locked into a ridged way of thought.[/quote]

I have seen teachers in my district that are decent. They do their job, but do not connect with every student. They are considered formally trained.

I have had teacher's aids that could teach circles around the decent teachers. They have simply had years of experience finding ways to connect with struggling learners. Their skillset was quite good at adapting to each student. These would be considered the non-formally trained group.

On one hand you have theory, and the other, you have experience.


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## EastWest Lurker

Ed @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I didn't say "brilliant" did I? You wrote: "because Im not a musician."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Same difference. Otherwise what on earth is your point? People couldnt say that 30 years ago? Maybe thats because computers didnt allow people to write music in the same way back then, and no its not because loops and phrases let people press a key and it does it for them.
> 
> At what level of skill do you believe someone can call themselves a musician? What is the definition of musician? Now we'll see some interestingly elastic definitions here... Personally I have more respect for musicians than to call me pottering around a keyboard worthy of being called a musician. But you dont have to read a note of music to be a musician, and to prove that all you have to do is consider all the people that have learned to play their instrument by ear to a high standard and better than someone that's still learning but can still read notation.
Click to expand...


Well, I already set the bar low by calling The Ramones "musicians", didn't I? :lol: 

How about "someone who plays a musical instrument with a basic degree of proficiency." And of course, there are terrific musicians who don't "read a note of music", never said there wasn't. And there are terrific songwriters who "don't read a note of music", never said there wasn't.

But I do not know any film/TV composers who I consider terrific who "don't read a note of music". They may not be superb readers of musical notation but they have a basic working knowledge.

No idea about the average trailer or game guy, because I don't work in that world and my knowledge of it is limited, The only one I know personally is majorly successful at it and he, who asked me not to name him in this discussion, certainly is a decent musician. 

I just got of the phone with him and he told me that while it is of course possible that there are composers he does not know who work and do not have even a basic level of musicianship, he knows a lot of people doing this work he does not know even a single one who does not have at least a basic working degree of musicianship.


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## George Caplan

Ed @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Of course I feel intimidated, because Im not a musician. But that doesnt mean they can compose or write music anyone wants to listen to, if they write any at all. There is a difference between a musician and a composer.



you mean in a beethoven mozart bach way?


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## Alex Cuervo

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Well, I already set the bar low by calling The Ramones "musicians", didn't I? :lol:



:evil: Those right there are fighting words, bub. :evil:


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## EastWest Lurker

Alex Cuervo @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I already set the bar low by calling The Ramones "musicians", didn't I? :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :evil: Those right there are fighting words, bub. :evil:
Click to expand...


For reasons I cannot, explain, I have always loved the Ramones.


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## Darthmorphling

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> Alex Cuervo @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I already set the bar low by calling The Ramones "musicians", didn't I? :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :evil: Those right there are fighting words, bub. :evil:
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> For reasons I cannot, explain, I have always loved the Ramones.
Click to expand...


Even though I have disagreed with some of your opinions I have always respected your cander. This comment has furthered my respect. =o


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## Alex Cuervo

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Jan 18 said:


> For reasons I cannot, explain, I have always loved the Ramones.
Click to expand...


OK then, all is forgiven. :wink: 

I can explain it for you - the Ramones wrote simple, high energy infectious pop songs with a distinctly American/New York swagger. Joey wrote fantastic, simple, sometimes melancholic vocal melodies and sung them so distinctly and beautifully.

You gotta give it to them for getting so much mileage out of furiously downstroked parallel fifths. The Ramones are proof that simple isn't easy.

God Bless the Ramones!
Gabba Gabba Hey!


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## EastWest Lurker

Now the NY Dolls on the other hand......... :twisted:


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## Arbee

Ed @ Sat Jan 19 said:


> Darthmorphling @ Fri Jan 18 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps. I think me asking for what defines a musician and at what point one becomes a "musician" will reveal what he really thinks. I can kinda sort of play the piano by ear, badly, but even if I couldnt so long as I knew what I was doing in the computer thats all that matters from a programming perspective. Does that still make me a musician, of a computer? Maybe, but personally I wouldnt define a musician that way. For me a musician worthy of the name is someone who can play to a high standard (*in real time*)
Click to expand...

When trying to get my head around this I tend to use a building analogy.

An architect isn't the same as a carpenter or builder. An architect doesn't have to know carpentry to design a great house, but if he does, he'll probably design it a little differently.

,


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## Stiltzkin

Having a formal education will not make or break you - it CAN help you, but it can also hold you back.

Personally I think the best thing a composer can do is start playing instruments as much as possible - while studying scores can help a lot, nothing beats actually playing each instrument, but not in the sense of actually learning it to a high standard, just speak to someone that can play very technical piece, see what the instrument can do if you stretch it etc all the advanced techniques.

I was studying both composition and piano together and they definitely went hand in hand, if you look at some of the finest piano works you can see some truly inspiring ideas coming from so many composers - use of advanced techniques (and understanding them) in my opinion is something that will differentiate a lot of composers apart. Especially when looking at networking, a lot of musicians like to show off (I mean it's all about the performance, showmanship etc) so if you write music that is (at times) technically demanding you will sometimes have performers chasing you for music, which is a great feeling (at least I had it during studying) and a valuable tool for getting inspiration and/or contacts in the future.

I don't use much of my training, or at least I don't think I do - most of my understanding of music comes from playing piano and taking the pieces I learned apart - especially Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

But I know if I hadn't had a teacher I wouldn't have learned about a lot of music that I otherwise wouldn't have listened to - which helped broaden my mind and also gave me new ideas/helped me understand more about how the instruments work, beyond what you could learn through score analysis.

Perhaps you don't need a teacher, but you need some form of guidance with ways to broaden your knowledge - be it a forum, teacher, friend or a community.

At least that's my opinion


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## Nick Batzdorf

If you only learn enough to be dangerous, training can be dangerous. But nobody any good stops at that point.


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## Peter Alexander

Per Hans suggestion, just finished reading Outliers. Well worth it.


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## Arbee

Nick Batzdorf @ Sat Jan 19 said:


> If you only learn enough to be dangerous, training can be dangerous.


If we were flying planes, building bridges or performing brain surgery I'd agree with you, but music? Nah, any training or learning at all is useful IMO.

.


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## drasticmeasures

I personally have no formal training. 
I taught myself piano by trying to figure out parts from my favorite composers by ear, then sometime come up with new counterlines. 

That's worked fine for me. I've never felt like I was in over my head (except occasionally in the deadline department!)
With that said, I HAVE educated myself on an 'as needed' basis with what appeals to me. But personally I have no interest in overexposing music to a rigid academic scrutiny. 

There's an old joke that seem apt here...
A guy goes in for a jazz audition. He's asked "can you read?"
The musician replies "not enough to hurt my playing".


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## Nick Batzdorf

Arbee, the important word is *can* - *can* be dangerous. I'm totally in favor of training!

And Nathan, you've learned the part that I'm not sure can be taught: being interesting. That's what I asked when I first jumped into this thread.

I also say that you wouldn't overexpose music to a rigid academic scrutiny if you had studied formally. It's simply not who you are.


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## David Story

Everyone learns from genius. A good teacher makes that easier. 

But you can learn on the job if you're lucky. And if you're lucky enough you need know nothing to be successful. 

But to remain successful you have to know something. So eventually you have to study. Why not get some help, you're not alone.


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## Markus S

Well, I suppose you need "some" kind of knowledge" to create music. Be it self taught or learned in a school.

However, I believe you can be a genius at any level. There are genius punk or industrial bands, who are very creative and innovative, who probably do not know how write a C on a score.

You have this genius also with very well trained people like the classical masters. They will write an highly innovative string quartet or symphony.

What matters, IMO, is that you write on a level you can control/master. It is better to write a good folk song, if that is what you feel close to and understand, than a bad complex symphony. To me there is no difference objectively between both of them (classical work being superior to songs) and I'd rather listen to a song, I enjoy than a orchestral piece, I don't like and vis versa.

Now do you need formal training to be a successful composer?

It depends how you define success. Earning money? Working with people? Developing you own musical style?

What do you consider "formal"? A school, university, ear training, counterpoint? Guitar lessons?

Without these elements it's kind of hard to answer.


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## drasticmeasures

Nick Batzdorf @ Sun Jan 20 said:


> Arbee, the important word is *can* - *can* be dangerous. I'm totally in favor of training!
> 
> And Nathan, you've learned the part that I'm not sure can be taught: being interesting. That's what I asked when I first jumped into this thread.
> 
> I also say that you wouldn't overexpose music to a rigid academic scrutiny if you had studied formally. It's simply not who you are.



You're too kind. Your checks in the mail! 
It is true that its not who I am anyway, for better or worse!


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## Peter Alexander

More from Boulanger
http://www.musicweb-international.com/c ... rkeley.htm


----------



## passenger57

Frank Zappa:
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”


----------



## EastWest Lurker

passenger57 @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> Frank Zappa:
> “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”



if I had just gone to the library instead of Boston Conservatory, no one would have been there to correct my hand position when I practiced piano, I never would have learned about a composer like Berio, I would not of experienced the indescribable joy and emotion of singing some of the greatest choral pieces of all time in a good chorus under the guidance of a man who taught me so much about the spirit of music and the necessary work ethic, etc.

Of course, the loss of all that would not necessarily stop me from being a "successful media composer" but I would not trade the experience of it for all the money and fame in the world.

Probably would have gotten laid less as well


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## passenger57

Just trying to interject a little humor there - I had similar amazing experiences in conservatory. Some of them musical too, haha


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## George Caplan

passenger57 @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> Frank Zappa:
> “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”



that could easily be the other way round also.

get trained. it doesnt need to be formal.


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## Farkle

George Caplan @ Tue Jan 22 said:


> passenger57 @ Mon Jan 21 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Frank Zappa:
> “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> that could easily be the other way round also.
> 
> get trained. it doesnt need to be formal.
Click to expand...


Reminds me of a great story involving Aaron Copland. (You know, _that_ Aaron Copland).

Aaron was invited to be a visiting lecturer at Hah-vahd U in the 60's or so. So, his dear friend Leonard Bernstein takes him to lunch at the Faculty Club.

(Note: Copland NEVER went to university, but he did do private lessons under several monster instructors, including the legendary Nadia Boulanger. She would make Copland sight-play/sight-reduce full orchestral scores on the fly on piano... total chops training).

So, Copland says something to Bernstein, something to the effect of, "I'm really uncomfortable here, I didn't even go to college and I'm at the Harvard Faculty Club..."

Bernstein jumps right in and says something like, "Aaron, it doesn't matter where you went, you're showing these students where they're going!!"

Long and short is, Copland's formal training was intense, wasn't necessarily through university....

Mike


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## Nick Batzdorf

I prefer to get laid in the library.


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## Uorbit

I glanced through this ever growing thread and want to add this comment. (sorry if it has been said earlier)

When you say successful "media" composer I am assuming that this is a composer that mostly writes music for TV. I have been composing for TV for about 20 years so I feel I have a good understanding of the musical requirements. 

The most important element in writing for TV is speed.

Yes, speed.

You do not need a formal education to compose. But, you will need to purchase product (sound libraries) and learn how to use a computer. No one cares if you can be John Williams if it takes a week to do a cue. The producers want it NOW. That is the nature of the beast.

Learn how to us a computer! Learn how to manipulate sound. There are plenty of composers who don't know how to arraigned for orchestra. In fact, many times I am asked to make the orchestra sound more "naive"...less "good". This is because a composer will be asked to emulate a popular artist's sound. Not many pop artists know how to score for orchestra. Get used to distortion on strings or routing your orchestral snare through a wha wha pedal. Be creative with you sound pallet. Learn how to mix! 

Having a formal education is awesome. Just be prepared for the work force because most of your opportunities to write music for TV will not involve a full orchestra. 

Most of all. Sound unique and love what you do. This is an aggressive business and you will always...always have to learn and grow. What a doctor goes through to keep their license is a joke compared to the work you will do to keep current and fresh.

Master the computer.
Learn how to manipulate sound.
Buy libraries (There are super talented companies making music libraries - it's like standing on the shoulders of giants)
Learn how to mix!
Get fast fast fast because it is due now.
Everything else will fall into place...


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## MikeH

Uorbit @ Tue Jan 22 said:


> There are plenty of composers who don't know how to arraigned for orchestra.



For crimes against Orchestration, no doubt. :D


----------



## Guy Rowland

Here's a terrific article which comes from a much wider perspective on all this, from an academic specialising in education, Ken Robinson and featuring VI Control's very own rctec. First of all, you can see an mesmerising 10 minute animated lecture (yes folks, such things now exist) on creativity, education, ADHD etc:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_c ... digms.html)

Being a British leftie, as soon as I saw this I saw it as an idictment of our current government education secretary, Michael Gove, who is on a one man mission to return Great Britain to 1936. Turns out I was right on the money, and in an op ed piece he's attacked Gove's fundamental inability to understand creativity and education:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... understand

So how does this all apply to us tortured musical souls? Well in the piece above, he discusses Hans Zimmer. I didn't know about Hans' childhood, and it's both revealing and perhaps somewhat predicable that he didn't exactly play it by the book: 



> As a child he loved to play the piano but had no patience for scales and rote learning. Whenever he tried to play or compose, his teacher would stop him and say: "Go and practise your scales!" He admits to being disruptive at school and was actually thrown out of eight of them. Finally, he arrived at number nine.
> 
> The headmaster took him to one side on the first day and said: "Look, I've read all these reports. How are we going to avoid this sort of trouble here? What is it you really want to do?" Hans said that all he really wanted to do was play music. With the head's support, he spent most of the time doing exactly that. Slowly he became engaged in other work too. He remembers a particularly brilliant teacher who took the class for German studies.
> 
> "He'd be sitting on his piano stool and he'd be talking about something and then he'd whip around and play the music of its period. Suddenly all this stuff started to come alive. Learning wasn't about learning things by heart and then regurgitating them like a bad cheese sandwich. He was fantastic."



I can, of course, completely relate to this. The desire to experiment, to learn (and fail) by doing. And it's great to see it in this wider context of how creativity and education flourish together, that what I perceive to be a restrictive model of formal learning is not the only or necessarily best way for talent to nurture.


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## Guy Rowland

Blimey. You won't read a more incredible composition story than this - a man, unable to read music, dreamed an entire symphony in grief. I'd ask him a thousand questions... starting with how the hell did he remember....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... a-symphony

Here's an excerpt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Oy7EQnNAk

Makes my dreamed tune look right shabby.

EDIT - there's a film or documentary in this story.


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## Rctec

...Yesterday's "Guardian"...
That's one answer to the question, I suppose.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... NTCMP=SRCH
-H-


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## mverta

Interesting that use of language was mentioned in the article, the assertion being that one cannot speak creatively without knowing the parts of speech, grammar, and rules of syntax.

I say "interesting" because my 2 year-old recently asked, "Daddy, may I watch some more garbage trucks videos on YouTube, please?" Apparently, he completed high school English class at some point between diaper changes.

Or, perhaps languages - like, say, music, for instance - don't require formal training to speak fluently, articulately, eloquently, and creatively in.

_Mike


----------



## fantasiom

Some composer interviews on the subject of formal training if you are interested.

http://classicalchops.org/interviewsvideos.php?item=28

http://classicalchops.org/interviewsvideos.php?item=45

http://classicalchops.org/interviewsvideos.php?item=4


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## Nick Batzdorf

> Or, perhaps languages - like, say, music, for instance - don't require formal training to speak fluently, articulately, eloquently, and creatively in.



And yet your 2-year-old sucks as a media composer.


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## Guy Rowland

Rctec @ Sun May 19 said:


> ...Yesterday's "Guardian"...
> That's one answer to the question, I suppose.
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... NTCMP=SRCH
> -H-



Indeed- that's the article that made me revive the thread. Amazing story, Hans. If it's not too bold to ask - can you imagine how your life would have gone had you not found a school and teachers who could work with you in such a positive way?

In a tiny, tiny way, I think my own school was vital to my own career (this was secondary school, mind). It owned one synthesizer - the mighty Powertran Transcendent 2000 no less. They let me take over with it, and I used to fight with the thing (no manual) endlessly til I figured it out (by the end, the music teachers would come to me to work out how to use it). They had a couple of reel to reels too, and I'd do the old sound-on-sound bouncing things and make terrible music... they'd just give me the keys to the place and let me get on with it. Ditto sound design, where I'd do all the school plays. That whole experience, and the freedom the teachers gave me for which I'm eternally grateful, directly let to the rest of my life... and it had nothing to do with conventional learning.



Nick Batzdorf @ Sun May 19 said:


> Or, perhaps languages - like, say, music, for instance - don't require formal training to speak fluently, articulately, eloquently, and creatively in.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And yet your 2-year-old sucks as a media composer.
Click to expand...


Well ya know, give him another year or two. That was one of the interesting things in the Ken Robinson lecture (see my post 2 or 3 back - http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_c ... digms.html) . One of his arguments is that young children have far greater capacity for creativity that formal education can rob them of (there's an interesting experiment to do with this that is examined). Young kids make up tunes a dozen times a day without even realising they're doing it. Most adults just hum the latest Lady Gaga tune - they've lost the capacity to invent.

I suspect Ken (or I) would argue that this certainly doesn't equate to having mastered any craft, but it's highly relevant to the discussion.


----------



## Rctec

Dear Guy, honestly, I wish I had gone to music school. I know, it's not too late, but I'm a bit busy . But it's a good excuse... 
As a child, I just had the wrong teacher. I took great personal refuge and comfort in music at a rather difficult time in my life. Music was a place to loose myself in, a very private escape. I loved what'making up' musicdid to me more than anything else. Total ascocial loner. Total Nerd.
When I was asked - as a 6 year old - if I wanted lessons, of course I leapt at the chance. But a six-year old misunderstands that the purpose of the lessons was not to help me get the stuff I was hearing in my head to be better stuff, to compose (not really a concept I had), while the teacher wanted me to learn technique and how to play and interpret - not my, but other people's noise - that I, at the time, had no interest in. I could never explain to him (German piano teachers are not known for their empathy, just The Rules, The Rules!) that, basically, I had a head full of music that I was incapacle of expressing, and that had nothing to do with keyboard technique. So, after two weeks, my formal training ended.
But I come from a family that always listened to music; I went to my first opera at the age of two; we constantly went to concerts and the house was filled with music.
Which brings me to Mike Verta's point. I think I learned a huge vocabulary of classical music the way children learn language. And just like I've never lost my german accent when I speak, I've never quite lost it in my music either - for better or worse. And just like a child learns the words to express themselfs just fundamentally but artlessly, that's pretty much how I see my lack of sohisticated schooling.
Music-school teaches you craftsmanship and technique. O.k., when I stared becoming a "professional" musician, I was working with the first bunch of computer sequencers. There wasn't a school for that, so we just made it up. It's not entirely true that I don't read music. I have a block from a bullying teacher when it comes to sight-reading and playing it on a keyboard (espeially in front of others!). But I can hear it in my head, and I'm still a demon sight-reader when it comes to typing it into a Roland MC8 (may you never have to get good at that...)
The other great source of learning (other than doing) is, of course, YouTube and any recorded music. Why learn from a mediocre teacher if the greatest performances are right there on the internet for us to study?
The rest is aesthetics. 
Ken is addressing creativity in his article, not technique. And, just like he has to over-simplify, I am of course simplifying a lifetime of learning from others, far greater than me... 
-H-


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## Guy Rowland

Hans, it's all fascinating stuff to me. And I agree about Ken's focus here on creativity not technique. Actually (my own bit of over-simplifying) perhaps a lot of it seems to boil down simply to attitude. If the formal thing isn't working out for whatever reason (ie you're 6), rather than keep dragging yourself down an unproductive path that might permanently damage you, find another outlet. In the lecture, Ken alludes to technique - when you have the motivation, when you're ready, when you CARE about the subject, then that's the time for technique. (I may be paraphrasing!)

Also agree about absorbing. I think I never even noticed my most important learning - I thought I was just listening.

If I may be so bold (again) - maybe if you had gone to music school, you might not be composing in the way you do (?) Recently you made a comment in the woodwinds thread about finding new ways to use woodwinds, that (to me) seems to embody your whole approach, you're always seeking out the new, challenging the way things are done, creating new sounds and textues and telling new stories through sheer force of will. I know it could be argued that someone who has spent a lot of time in formal education understands the rules so well that they are more able to break them, but I'm not so convinced by that...


----------



## mverta

Actually, my son isn't a bad composer, for being two. He makes up little melodies and songs about..whatever... all the time when he's playing on his own. 

We're going
We're going
We're going to the store.

Stuff like that, all the time - I swear music is just "in there." My point is that breaking music down into its individual disciplines is like trying to break a walk cycle down to its individual components*: if you tried to think about the million little things you do unconsciously when walking and had to execute them one at a time, it would be far too complex to master, and yet, you walk. Music is the same way. I was self-taught, from a harmony/theory and orchestration standpoint, and only later had formal training. I learned very little from formal training; what it did was help me organize the closet of clothes I already had. In the process, yes, I discovered a couple items that had been buried, but mostly, one can't overestimate the sheer power of playing, being creative, experimenting, and getting the music out in your own way. Your brain will find the patterns, make the relationships, build the understanding. _You_ will make the music - just as your brain has figured out the mechanics of the walk, while you focus on where you want to go. Maybe you even dance.

Of course, like Hans, my son is exposed to music of all sorts constantly. That's key; it gives us something to emulate; shoot for; be inspired by. And while I think formal training is ultimately useful, it is so primarily as a tool to help you organize the tools you've built on your own, in your own unique and creative process of getting the music out. But you can't teach someone to write great music by teaching them theory anymore than you can teach someone to be a great lover by watching a bunch of porn. You gotta get in bed and figure it out on your own. And you know what you're after.


_Mike

*In visual effects, we pretty much gave up on trying to break the walk cycle down into individual components and replicate it; it never looks right. We ended up motion-capturing a real person's walk to get it right. Quod erat demonstrandum.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

It is a common error of logic to point to the exceptions to prove that rules don't apply.
Some smpkers will bring up their 100 year old uncle who smoked and drank every day, etc. as justification for living in denial of the fact that daily smoking is the most effective way to shorten your potential lifespan.

An exceptional talent may succeed without training because they are an exceptional talent. But most people who want to be media composers are not exceptional. They are average, but training can make them above average.

It is simple math. The odds of someone being a Hans Zimmer level talent are very small. The odds of someone thinking that they are a Hans Zimmer level talent when they are not however, sadly, are much higher.

But of course the topic is asking whether one can be successful anyway, not necessarily good, and the two are not always synonymous.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Great post, Mike.


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## daveyjones

god dammit I hate answers, they just bring up more questions.


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## EastWest Lurker

Guy Rowland @ Sun May 19 said:


> Great post, Mike.



The problem with it is that most people are NOT raised in a household where they are exposed to all kinds of music, especially the kind of Classical music that is the basis of much media music.

My Dad was a drummer but he loved big band music, not Classical music. My move played records all day, but they were Broadway musical, Barbra Streisand, etc. The closest thing to Classical music I heard was Mario Lanza and Jan Peerce singing semi-operatic style versions of Italian love songs.

i listened to and played rock and roll; Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Bobby Darin, Elvis etc. and then later The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Animals, etc.

Did I absorb a lot of music from all of that? Sure. But had I not gone to Boston Conservatory, I not only would not have learned how to do 5th species counterpoint, I would not have known it existed. As an auto-didact I may have picked up on Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, etc. but certainly not Varese, Ives, Berio, etc. And I learned more about the spirit and profundity of music from 4 years singing in the chorus with a wonderful choral conductor who also was a terrific human being than I could have ever learned on my own.

The first TV series I got, I co-scored with my friend David Michael Frank. He went out and conducted his cues, and then I did mine. The contractor was the late Jules Chaiken, who contracted for many of the big film composers.

When I came into the booth, David said to me, "You got quite a nice compliment from Jules. He said that for an inexperienced composer, your inner line writing is really good."

Thank you George Brambilla at BC of M for busting my balls with 5th species. Thank you Avram David at BC of M for teaching me that their could be beauty in non-tonal music. And Thank you Rouben Gregorian at BC of M for teaching me about what commitment to music really is. (All are now deceased.)

And finally thank you to my fellow composition majors at BC of M for attending concerts with me and sharing the wonder of discovering all of this together as passionately as we did.

I honestly feel sorry for young people who will not be taught the value of all that because they will be given the advice similar to what I have seen from many here.


----------



## mverta

I didn't grow up in a house with classical music, either; it was Beatles and Stones, with the occasional opera aria for my mom. I was into rock and pop 80's music, played in 80's cover bands, basically, and my first compositions were jazz big band stuff. I learned my orchestral writing the same way I learned everything else, the same way I learned to speak:

1) I heard something I liked and wanted to be able to do.

2) I tried it myself.

3) I was corrected by an authority until I got it right.


When speaking English, our kids hear a word, try the word, and we correct them. To replicate this utterly effective process in music, you hear something you like, you try to transcribe it, and you let a score or mentor be your "corrector." You focus on using the thing you like - that's the music. The "what it is" is an intellectual curiosity. My son doesn't know about grammar or syntax or parts of speech, yet he forms sentences a Harvard professor of English couldn't improve upon.


So, in short, I was never taught 5th species counterpoint, and yet I used it/use it anyway. Turns out, it was in stuff I liked. I merely found out later that I was using it in my work. To this day, my college professor loves deconstructing my orchestral scores and showing me all the ways my work withstands strict academic scrutiny. He'll show me my devices, structural developments, etc. My reaction is always the same: "Huh. How 'bout that."

Academics is largely the art of reverse-engineering rules out of stuff that was created without knowledge of them. I found it useful after the fact. But a student who has composed very little, and is told in a classroom "don't use parallel 5ths*" walks out of the classroom exactly zero wiser than when he arrived. He can follow that arbitrary rule, and has no idea why. 10,000 rules later, he's learned to dutifully stay within the lines, and writes absolutely sterile, pointless, academically perfect music nobody gives a shit about. Then he becomes chair of the department.

Academics and formal training is useful, once you've learned to speak. Just like with English. But if even one of us can learn to write academically sophisticated music prior to receiving academic training (we can), it answers the question, "Do you need...?" with a resounding, "No."

So, "No."


_Mike


*I love parallel 5ths.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

First of all, like I said, I never would have heard some of what I heard because I would not have known it existed! It is not like you turn on the iPod and magically hear Varese.

Also you missed out on all the other stuff I described. Which you apparently don't think people "need" but I am telling you, you are the poorer for not having gone through it, as I did.

And most people are not as inherently auto-didactic and self-disciplined as you are. Most need a teacher to guide and prod them. I would not have practiced piano as much as i did if I did not have to play a recital


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## mverta

Advocating the advantages of having a teacher for a jukebox is very different from advocating for formal theory and counterpoint training. And teachers don't have a corner on the market of exposing you to new things. If you heard Varese from a teacher, great. You might've heard it somewhere else. Like I did. 

I was formally trained, ultimately. After the fact. I use absolutely zero of it in the process of composing. Never have, never will. I manage to get a piece out now and again. If I'm poorer for my path, I'm fortunately ignorant as to how.

And there's nothing special about me. People have all the discipline they need to get what they really want. You ever hear about a guy too lazy to finish jacking off? 


In 2013, and here on this forum as much as anywhere else, you have two amazing things which almost utterly negate the need for university:

1) VI's to practice speaking with

2) Pro's to help you get your pronunciation right.

Stay focused on the music - the whole picture. It is more than the sum of its parts. The individual disciplines of theory, orchestration, etc., are too complex to master. You can use them masterfully, anyway. Let a professor figure out why it's so great after the fact. He has nothing else to do, and little else he is good at.


That's my take, it's what I teach, and what has kept music fun and profitable for me. How could I advocate anything else in good conscience?

_Mike


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## EastWest Lurker

mverta @ Sun May 19 said:


> 1. If you heard Varese from a teacher, great. You might've heard it somewhere else. Like I did.
> 
> 2. I was formally trained, ultimately. After the fact. I use absolutely zero of it in the process of composing. Never have, never will. I manage to get a piece out now and again. If I'm poorer for my path, I'm fortunately ignorant as to how.
> 
> 3. & 4. And there's nothing special about me. People have all the discipline they need to get what they really want. You ever hear about a guy too lazy to finish jacking off?
> 
> In 2013, and here on this forum as much as anywhere else, you have two amazing things which almost utterly negate the need for university:
> 
> 5. VI's to practice speaking with
> 
> 6. Let a professor figure out why it's so great after the fact. He has nothing else to do, and little else he is good at.
> 
> 
> 
> _Mike



1. Take a poll of 20 year old musicians from different socio-economic backgrounds and ask them about Varese or anyone like him.

2. Baloney. Your use your training in every piece you write, whether you acknowledge it or not. And you may ont be the poorer for the lack of it on a _musical_ level, but you are on a _human_ level.

3. I know you a little. You sir, are VERY special.

4. RE: " People have all the discipline they need to get what they really want. " I heard Burt Bacharach speak Friday night,. He disagrees with you. And Randy Newman has said many times that if it were not for Lenny Waronker dragging him out of his bedroom, he would not have become successful.

5. VIs are no substitute for hearing live musicians, any more than looking at naked girls and jacking off teaches you to make love to a woman.

6. Nonsense, My composition teacher was a terrific composer, as well as teacher. My choral conductor was a terrific conductor, as well as teacher My piano teacher was a terrific pianist, as well as teacher. Albert Harris was a brilliant orchestrator, as well as teacher.

Love ya, Mike.


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## Steve W.

Hans, You say you wish you had gone to music school, but maybe it's exactly the learning path you took that finally resulted in you writing the music you write today.
Had you not encountered those negative experiences with formal teaching and enjoyed a traditional teaching at music school, there might be no film composer named Hans Zimmer today.


A German philosopher recently said something along the line of: 'In the German school system the true winners are not those that graduate with a good diploma but those that managed to keep their joy of learning and discovery and creativity alive.




I guess the whole question comes down to what is the best learning environment for a specific person in a specific situation:
a traditional school environment with a guided, streamlined approach or a personal learning path with more meanderings.

Like Jay Asher wrote a school environment can be more beneficial than the household background a person comes from.
But on the other side it can also be less beneficial....

For some people it's easier to learn under the guidance of a teacher in a school environment, others learn better when they are creatively free to concentrate on their way of learning.


I would say the traditional environment is more geared towards technical learning whereas the personal way allows for more subconscious creative development.

In the end of course one needs the technical background either way but the question is does the learning via 'trial and error' (simplified description) like Mike writes offer something that traditional school teaching cannot, namely expanding the horizon and thinking in new ways ( the brain creates a whole lot of structures that way which it does not when learning 'finished results') and therefore increasing the chance of creating something new and unique.



Steve


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## EastWest Lurker

Steve, what you describing is BAD formal training and it seems to be the assumption that it is the norm.

I cannot speak to German schools, past or present. Nor can I speak to present American schools. But in the late 60s when I was at BC of M, I was friendly with students from New England Conservatory, Boston University, and Berklee School of Music. 

Almost all of us I think would agree that if we had 20 teachers:

5-6 would be bad, either unable to communicate their subject matter or not caring if they did or not.

9-10 would run the gamut from just OK to pretty good.

4-5 would not only change our _musical_ lives, they would change us as _human beings _in the process.

And creating music is first and foremost about your _humanity_. It is not just about pushing buttons and programming algorhythms (Oh wait a minute, for some here, it is, I forgot 

If you have not had a wealth of human and emotionally rich musical experiences shared with other passionate people on the same path, you have a fine chance of writing masturbatory and emotionally empty music.

And while it is indeed possible to have those experiences away from a good music school, the odds are lower.

OK, I am done.


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## Lex

EastWest Lurker @ Sun May 19 said:


> But most people who want to be media composers are not exceptional. They are average, but training can make them above average.



This is confusing me, why do they want to become media composers then?

alex


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## Lex

Lex @ Sun May 19 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sun May 19 said:
> 
> 
> 
> But most people who want to be media composers are not exceptional. They are average, but training can make them above average.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is confusing me, why do they want to become media composers then?
> 
> alex
Click to expand...


Actually, forget it, I just remembered we had this exact same discussion months ago.

alex


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## germancomponist

1000 roads lead to Rome. Ultimately it doesn't matter how you get there. The main thing you're there. o/~


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## Nick Batzdorf

> Most adults just hum the latest Lady Gaga tune - they've lost the capacity to invent



They never had it. Most children too. That's why people who are exceptional aren't average, and why most people are average! But I find the idea that it's all downhill from childhood, that everything you learn just gets in the way, borderline retarded (and I'm not making light of mental disabilities, I'm using the right word!).

Gunther is right: of course you don't need *formal* training, but you do need to learn what the f you're doing one way or another. I don't see how anyone could possibly dispute that. The same is true for any field; you can teach yourself nuclear physics if you want, but you're not a very good scientist until you learn the science.

And like most things, nobody is born with the skills to be a composer. My daughter was by far the best kid ever born when she was a 2-year-old too, but she still had a lot to learn (today she's the best 18-year-old ever created, and she's learning a lot!).

...which brings me back to my original question when I jumped into this thread. Lots of people have the skills to write competent music, but very few stand out - because they don't have an interesting point of view.

Can that be taught or is it innate?

I don't have the answer.


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## mverta

Either you guys are missing my point, or arguing a different one. And I certainly disagree with the idea that most adults have never had inherent creativity at some point. There's an awful lot of elitism in that statement, and I've never met an uncreative child.

If there's ever been even one accomplished musician and composer who had no formal training yet whose work was not only widely embraced and effective, but could stand up to academic scrutiny - and there have been many - it proves that formal training is not absolutely necessary. 

That's kind of a fact, and thus, kind of "it." It is true across virtually every discipline. There are no shortage of amazing, untrained painters, sculptors, etc. 

This is not to say that academic/formal training isn't useful, it is. I've said that many times. But learning what I've done, from an analytical standpoint has never been much more than a curiosity to me, as when I finally took English and I learned (and almost immediately then forgot) what the various rules for grammar and syntax were. I'd been using them appropriately already, and I've used them (more or less  ) ever since. 

One can be an effective, eloquent, articulate, even creative speaker with absolutely no knowledge of parts of speech, or the "rules of grammar" - or else I'm legendarily good at faking it, because I remember almost zero of what I was taught. Music is just another language. And while you can dis' on my two-year-old all you like, he proves my point, with his perfect grammatical structure and effortless grasp of rhythmic phrases. He's not a genius; he's not special. He's just also not encumbered by the idea that until he learns the rules, he won't be able to communicate as effectively as a doctoral candidate. It just ain't true.

Thanks to my formal training, sure, I can write you a fugue with "perfect" counterpoint and form. I suppose I could burden myself at every turn in my other writing with attempts to satisfy the myriad arbitrary rules I've been taught, as well. But this has very little to do with writing effective music. Certainly, in 20+ years, I've never once actively thought about the academic devices I was using during the work. That's not where the music is. Music is effortless and demonstrative; it is merely a question of how much we want to get in its way. I have a reputation for being very, very fast in my work. It isn't because I'm talented; it's because one can learn to speak the language of music with the extemporaneous fluidity of one's native tongue; but not if you're too busy trying to manage every subject and predicate, tense, and verb as you go. You just talk. From the heart. It works.


I have noticed, however, many musicians who desperately hope there _are_ binding rules to follow; they are comforted by them. They hold onto the hope that if their music follows the rules, it will be good. They can busy themselves with training for years (which also conveniently postpones their having to enter the competitive real-world), surrounding themselves with like-minded souls and sycophants extolling the superiority of their works. They give themselves awards and posts and accolades - because nobody outside the walls will. 


_Mike


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## Nick Batzdorf

Mike, I for one am neither dissing your beautiful son nor am I particularly disagreeing with most of what you say, just looking at a different side of this.

My only argument is that talking or even writing is not the same thing as composing. Of course they both have vocabularies - as Mr. Rctec says, for both better and worse - but the ability to learn language is an instinct. Knowing what trills will kill a trombonist isn't.


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## mverta

Nick Batzdorf @ Sun May 19 said:


> My only argument is that talking or even writing is not the same thing as composing.



Untrue! Not true. It's exactly the same; exactly, and this is the point! I know we want to think ourselves some sort of special, transcendent creatures, and music a mystical alchemy, but we ain't, and it ain't. When you stop making it more complicated than it is, and realize this sort of fluidity is possible, you open up a world of possibilities, and more to the point, can rescue the pure joy and expression of music from the often plodding, and frustrating world of self-doubt it is usually comprised of.

Learning what will kill a trombonist doesn't require training either, by the way. It requires 5 minutes with a trombonist. Again, 95% of my orchestration chops were formed before I ever heard of Rimsky-Korsakov, simply by having given music to players and heard what happened. It built a much deeper understanding of the dynamics between player and instrument, between notation and performance, and between composer and performer than 20 years in university lecture could have hoped to. And certainly, that's not where the essence of the music is, either. You can write pieces which are effortless for a trombonist to play, which suck nonetheless. Rather, if we focus on the music, find the inherently compelling thing to say, and enjoy crafting the message, then learning slide positions on the trombone is easy. 

How many of us here at one point in our lives saw a musician simply improv a piece - a "real piece!" and thought it was magic; impossible; something we could never do. Certainly I wasn't the only one. And yet, today that seems like child's play. Might not be the most sophisticated of tunes, but, com'on. Or, maybe like me you saw somebody look at a score for music they'd never heard before and could make notes immediately about the orchestration. "Those flutes won't balance." The first time I saw that, I was sure I had no chance in life of having the sound of an orchestra internalized like that. That was for Mozart; people like that.

Of course, that became easy, too. It's just time, experience, but most of all - and this is my overriding point - belief that it is possible, that it takes no great talent or degrees from a university. It takes a love of music, admiration for a goal, and freedom to creatively pursue one's own ideas as to how to get there.



_Mike


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## rgames

Nick Batzdorf @ Sun May 19 said:


> Gunther is right: of course you don't need *formal* training, but you do need to learn what the f you're doing one way or another.


Correct.

The thing that people confuse about music vs., say, science or accounting is that music training is descriptive, not proscriptive. In other words, the "rules" of music describe what people like, but because those rules are based on human behavior, there's no reason to expect them to be the same in 200 years. In other words, it's impossible to prescribe what will be liked at some point in the future.

In science, however, the laws are, in fact, proscriptive. Newtonian mechanics are just as correct today as they were hundreds of years ago when he figured them out. They have no basis in human preference and, therefore, are much more concrete.

However, the fact that the laws of music are not proscriptive doesn't mean they're not worth studying. They are, but only to the extent that you want to mimic what has already been done (or perhaps to avoid it). In music, it seems that education can be obtained almost as easily through individual focus with coaching as through a "formal" university environment. So, I have always agreed with the sentiment expressed above.

Even Tiger Woods has a golf coach.

rgames


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## germancomponist




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## Steve W.

I think we all agree that you need to acquire the theoretical musical knowledge be it by formal teaching or individual learning or a mix of it.


An interesting part of Mike's point is the notion that you use your knowledge without having to think about it at all, like you don't have to 'think' to be able to walk.


You find this in other art forms as well.
To take Mike's favorite topic for non musical examples, visual effects:
Let's say you are working on the sculpture of a human like creature.
To create the knee you need to have the theoretical knowledge of how the bones and muscle work, but if you have to think all the time about the different shapes of muscles and bones while you sculpt it gets tedious and exhausting and takes a lot of time.
Once you are at the point where you don't have to think at all anymore sculpting the knee becomes 'easy' and you can concentrate on what you want to express and not how.



So the interesting question I think is what is the best way to get to that point where it takes almost no effort anymore to use your knowledge, where you compose the way you speak or walk.


The following is an interesting point on what the brain is able to do without the person needing to 'think' about it.

I once heard a person on tv explain how he was able to calculate very large numbers we would have trouble to calculate even on an a calculator extremely fast. His answer was that he didn't calculate. His brain simply gave him the result. Apparently his brain was using the part generally being used for things we don't need to think about like walking, writing,...



From what I understand of Mike's description, he thinks that not learning the theory directly but implicitly by starting to compose so that learning from what works and doesn't expands your knowledge as sort of a side effect, works best and finally results in being able to apply the knowledge without effort.
And then structuring it using theoretical knowledge

Personally I think a mixed approach might work well: you need basic theoretical knowledge to start with and then you combine the practical part Mike describes and the theoretical learning so that from time to time you are able to structure the known and 'unknown' knowledge gathered from your practical experience and can better focus on what you still need to learn.
Instead of leaving the theoretical part until the end.


An interesting point by brain scientists might be that apparently the more senses are being used the better you learn. 

Personally when composing in my head I tend to imagine the notes and instrument parts visually like they would look on paper or on the piano.




Steve


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## gamalataki

Knowing something is good; knowing how to know something is better. Seeking is better than being taught. A good teacher can save you from years of trial and error, but a great teacher will lead you to your own trial and error and thus individual discovery.

Seeking and discovery are what makes people truly learn. How many times have you heard someone say, "I've been doing this for twenty years", as support for an argument? How many times have you felt sorry for these people because it's so obvious that they've been doing it the same way (wrong) for twenty years. If you don't know your teacher sucks, you're not seeking hard enough. Quality is just not that easy to find, whether it's music, film or a teacher.

Music is all the music ever written. Music education is all the rules ever invented and passed down. I've always been a firm believer that if you want to be a composer, you should be exposed to everything ever composed, from Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Ellington, Mingus, Zappa to Willie Nelson; everything. As for the rules, you should learn them all, then forget them and just let it all come out in your music. It's in your head, but don't try and think about it; music isn't about thinking.

Back when I was studying and playing the classics, and making mistakes, my teacher noticed that no matter what era the piece was from, I would make the same type of error. I chalked it up to technique errors, but one day he told me that if I stay with music long enough and create my own music, that I will look back at the errors made while playing other composers' music and realize that those errors were mostly my music trying to come out. He noticed that I heard things a certain way after listening to my playing over a long period of time and I've come to realize that I do favor certain types of intervals and cadences that just seem to resonate with my being. I think the first time I noticed this was listening to McCoy Tyner, then back dating to early Baroque, I could see it in every composer.

If you're a passionate enough seeker, you will find. Add a ton of perspiration and you just might make it.

I have a feeling if you banished Keith Jarrett to a forest without an instrument, you would eventually hear some music.

It's either in you or it isn't.


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## Guy Rowland

Bloody hell what a page of fantastic posts. I am not worthy of writing anything that good (only cos I lack the training  )

One area that is particularly interesting me right now is that of children, of how common it is to be special. Nick and Jay (I think) suggest that someone like Hans is extremely unusual. If so, I wonder what the qualities are that make him so (please forgive me discussing you in your presence, Hans!). Is it an innate gift? Or is it obsessiveness at a young age and a desire to experiment rather than learn by conventional means? I'm not sure either is all that unusual, but perhaps the combination is more rare - add in particular circumstance and - yes - natural ability and you have the illusion of uniqueness.

Nick and Jay, I perhaps wouldn't expect you to agree with it, but it's definitely worth watching the 10 minutes Ken Robinson animation (Ken after all is the one who dragged Hans into all of this, and you can watch the animation here - http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_c ... digms.html) ). There's some science behind the notion of raw childhood genius - indeed, it's so common it is the banality of genius. Mind you, the experiment Robinson alludes to is of creativity in general, not anything specific to music. Anecdotally we can see that many children appear to be gifted at a young age while many others might be tone deaf, but I don't know of any science that has really explored that.

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that creative ability alone is sufficient, since none of us are listening to any of the hundreds of millions of symphonies that have been composed by 5 year olds - our differences centre around what happens next. Robinson argues that conventional learning - by a law of averages - actually _diminishes_ creativity at the _expense_ of craft. It's not saying craft isn't important, but an exclusive focus on it can be damaging. That's a very interesting hypothesis when it comes to music. It is of course unknowable whether or not Hans would have composed a supremely effective piece of music that was just one rising note / texture in TDKR had he been formally trained in childhood rather than what actually happened... or indeed whether his path would have ever led him to Nolan's door in the first place. But even just in his writing here at VI-C I see a restless spirit yearning for new things, always challenging convention and cliche (and right at the heart of the mainstream, which is pretty interesting when you think about it). It's just a pet theory I'll admit, but I'm not sure all those qualities would have survived a conventional musical education intact.


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## Peter Alexander

It's not as mysterious as it appears.I'm working on a short piece I hope to post on my Professional Orchestration blog about this which is a condensation of Lecture 10 for Viz Orch 2.

Essentially, the brain is set up with 7 different thinking processes each with its own location on the brain. These are intrapersonal, interpersonal, linguistic, kinesthetic, visual/spatial, logic/math and music. Thus every individual is born with a music intelligence, it's just stronger in some than others. The 7 Processes loop in an order unique to the individual. 

Music people learn differently from others. Studies by Dr. Caroline Leaf, author of the book The Gift Within (available as a Kindle book), show this. Dr. Leaf and Ken Robinson, from different perspectives, in many ways, mirror the other. You can get the book, take the test, and find your score. With me, music and linguistic were top, while logic/math was near the bottom.

Aside from the obvious need to develop the aural side (ears), music people often learn best with pattern/stepwise learning. 

What Ken Robinson describes as alternative education, when compared to the biographies of consistently successful composers (including film composers I've interviewed over the years), is the way of the composer.

Read enough biographies and you'll find for many the importance of a private instructor with many composers. You must also take into account that as a general trait, successful composers continue to learn by score study, learning new styles through listening, or deciding that part of their technique needs boosting so they either buy a well recommended book or find someone to teach them.

The key factors are desire and directed work effort. Those who wanted to win pushed to do so and worked harder at it then others.


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## EastWest Lurker

@ Guy:

You had to drag me back into this? (Sigh)
OK, just a few points.

1. I have no idea what makes a Hans Zimmer a Hans Zimmer, other than a prodigious intellect. I DO know that for every Hans Zimmer there are 7340 would be media composers who think they are like him who are not. He is a rare bird.

2. Most of us are average because that is what average IS. Formal training, and I count private study of composition, harmony, etc. with a private teacher as formal training, potentially lifts a composer from average to somewhat better and minimally, a craftsman. As a young man, doing so at a conservatory or university however, enriches your development as a _person_ more. Remember, I did both.

3. The idea that acquiring any kind of knowledge somehow makes you more conventional is total idiocy. If you are a conventional person who is not inclined to boldness, like me, then you will indeed be more conventional. Charles Ives studied music formally at Yale. Would anyone in their right mind describe him as conventional?

And while I hugely admire and respect Hans, if I could magically unzip myself and step into the shoes of another more successful and talented composer, I would rather be James Newton Howard, who is also formally trained and IMHO brilliant.

OK, let me be out of this now because I really have nothing else to add.


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## reddognoyz

Musical training is a great shortcut! I have had a LOT of music training, but it was all about guitar and jazz, which i love but haven't made a red cent with. I blew off all my orchestration classes and arraigning classes because I wasn't into it at the time at all. Dumb move, It's been a handicap for me and I have overcome it to a degree through trial and error, but many of the "discoveries" I've made along the way were merely tried and true orchestration techniques that I could've learned in an afternoon, and made my own through the years.


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## Simplesly

John Williams went to UCLA. I also went to UCLA. I ain't no JW... I am not saying that I can't become a better, more successful craftsman, but there are special qualities that these people at the top of their craft have that some of us just don't. I went to school with some really talented people who couldn't dictate even a simple melody to save their lives. Forget about chord and interval recognition. At some point they realized no amount of practice would ever get them there. 

Still, I wouldn't trade my undergrad years for 4 years in the 'real world' - Besides learning a sh*t ton, I treasure the experiences I had and the little bits of insight I gained from all the brilliant people I met while I was there, and I truly believe I am a better composer for them. 

Of course being successful and being JW are totally different...


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## dcoscina

I am not working as a professional musician but did go to university for composition. I'd like to think that those studies allowed me to analyze more, listen better, and hopefully implement some of the techniques I'd studied and observed from the greats to my work. 

I agree with Jay that anyone who poo-poos formal training sounds a bit like sour grapes. Christophe Beck said it the best in his interview which is that technique can help you with a deadline. Falling back on these tools can help one out of a bind. 

But clearly one doesn't need formal training to be a successful anything in the arts these days.


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## Per Lichtman

Rctec @ Sun May 19 said:


> ... when I stared becoming a "professional" musician, I was working with the first bunch of computer sequencers. There wasn't a school for that, so we just made it up. It's not entirely true that I don't read music. I have a block from a bullying teacher when it comes to sight-reading and playing it on a keyboard (espeially in front of others!). But I can hear it in my head, and I'm still a demon sight-reader when it comes to typing it into a Roland MC8 (may you never have to get good at that...)



I already wrote a PM about the more personal side of my shared experience in this area, but on a more positive note, this actually reminded me a lot of an area my father helps others with: breaking through blocks and changing unconscious habit patterns.

http://stuartlichtman.com/changing-self ... ns-post-6/

I don't tend to mention family here very often but a favorite among my father's students was the very talented classical guitarist Aldo Lagrutta. His recent performances exceeded this link in quality but you can get a sense for him from this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6KVpXH_miM

Aldo spoke at length about how much he got out of my father's processes and how they helped him win a concerto performance competition. I post the above link in the hopes that the techniques may be similarly helpful to others here as well.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Mike Verta: I think we're arguing past each other, and I don't disagree with the gist of what you're saying. Of course writing music isn't about knowing the mechanics of the trombone; that was just one example of something you have to lean.



> U Untrue! Not true. It's exactly the same; exactly, and this is the point! I know we want to think ourselves some sort of special, transcendent creatures, and music a mystical alchemy, but we ain't, and it ain't.



This is where we're arguing past each other.

Of course it's not mysterious. It's a skill like anything else. Maybe that's the argument: you say it's innate and I say only some parts of it are innate.

I do disagree that music and speech are exactly the same - I say they have many similarities and many differences - but never mind. One of the things they have in common is that by definition, very few people are exceptional at either one.

And being exceptional is a combination of several elements, some of which you're born with and most of which you have to develop.

It's the X factor, the part that Jay sums up as "prodigious intellect," that's hard to pin down. What I do know is that if every composer - or everyone in every field - went through primal scream therapy or something and were suddenly able to get rid of all this baggage that's supposedly in the way of our creativity...the bar wouldn't be raised.

In other words, sure music is a language. But it's not just creativity that makes some of it worth listening to, it's when it has something interesting to say.


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## JohnG

In reading through this thread I am surprised that anyone would suggest that formal training is not only unhelpful but actually detrimental to career and creativity. 

I can't speak for others, but I use every ounce of training that I have been lucky enough to get, and I wish I had twice as much.


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## Nick Batzdorf

I'll go even farther: I use everything I've learned everywhere!


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## Peter Alexander

Maybe the problem are the words "formal" and "education" since combined they often suggest academia.

Those who become successful do get training! But for many, not all, but many, that training with music has come through this process:

1. starting by learning an instrument usually privately;
2. potentially learning music fundamentals from that early teacher(s);
3. advancing to a "higher level" private teacher and possibly from there to school when the child is showing interest and a desire to continue with training;
4. Working out of selected results driven training guides that function as a mentor in print;
5. developing their hearing;
6. actively attending concerts;
7. studying the music itself;
8. applying what's been learned to their own compositions.

Some music people do better with private instruction where the material can be adapted to how they best learn and in the time frame they best learn. Academia rarely offers this. 

For me, the issue isn't the material, but where the material is best learned. If it's with a private teacher, go there. If it's in school, go there.

But nearly everyone here is an adult with a daily job and cannot go to school. In this case, the mentor model I stepped out above is a good place to start. As I've said more than once, start with piano lessons and learn to play expressively in time. These skills carry directly over to both music and music technology, especially sequencing. Learn and master the core basics from the piano teacher. 

Meanwhile, there's tons of orchestral vids on YouTube plus the Berlin Philharmonic's www.digitalconcerthall.com. Then with over 2,000,000 streaming tracks is the www.naxosmusiclibrary.com. 

Once good fundamental sight reading has been achieved (I choke in front of others playing keyboards, too!) and you're comfortable with it, you have thousands of scores available including the majority of the works most studied by professional composers at www.imslp.org.

After that there score/CD combinations, highly affordable MP3 downloads, etc.

So if you can't get to a concert hall, you can download thousands of concerts to an iPhone, iPod, etc., and bring the concert hall to you.

The tools for adult learners are here, and they're very, very inexpensive for learning music. The cost and time needed for learning music technology is a different matter.


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## Peter Alexander

Interview with Christian Thielemann - conductor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JhkheT126c8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hkheT126c8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RNeDTfjQ8J0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... NeDTfjQ8J0)


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## careyford

Guy Rowland said:


> Spin off thread from another.



Another question could be "what training do you need to be a successful media composer?"


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## careyford

Peter Alexander said:


> Maybe the problem are the words "formal" and "education" since combined they often suggest academia.
> 
> Those who become successful do get training! But for many, not all, but many, that training with music has come through this process:
> 
> 1. starting by learning an instrument usually privately;
> 2. potentially learning music fundamentals from that early teacher(s);
> 3. advancing to a "higher level" private teacher and possibly from there to school when the child is showing interest and a desire to continue with training;
> 4. Working out of selected results driven training guides that function as a mentor in print;
> 5. developing their hearing;
> 6. actively attending concerts;
> 7. studying the music itself;
> 8. applying what's been learned to their own compositions.
> 
> Some music people do better with private instruction where the material can be adapted to how they best learn and in the time frame they best learn. Academia rarely offers this.
> 
> For me, the issue isn't the material, but where the material is best learned. If it's with a private teacher, go there. If it's in school, go there.
> 
> But nearly everyone here is an adult with a daily job and cannot go to school. In this case, the mentor model I stepped out above is a good place to start. As I've said more than once, start with piano lessons and learn to play expressively in time. These skills carry directly over to both music and music technology, especially sequencing. Learn and master the core basics from the piano teacher.
> 
> Meanwhile, there's tons of orchestral vids on YouTube plus the Berlin Philharmonic's www.digitalconcerthall.com. Then with over 2,000,000 streaming tracks is the www.naxosmusiclibrary.com.
> 
> Once good fundamental sight reading has been achieved (I choke in front of others playing keyboards, too!) and you're comfortable with it, you have thousands of scores available including the majority of the works most studied by professional composers at www.imslp.org.
> 
> After that there score/CD combinations, highly affordable MP3 downloads, etc.
> 
> So if you can't get to a concert hall, you can download thousands of concerts to an iPhone, iPod, etc., and bring the concert hall to you.
> 
> The tools for adult learners are here, and they're very, very inexpensive for learning music. The cost and time needed for learning music technology is a different matter.



Really miss this guy and what else he would've created...


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## Maximvs

careyford said:


> Really miss this guy and what else he would've created...


Very well said Richard... I miss him every day, the man was a 'genius' in his own right and I don't use that word lightly. I think he created some of the best music self-teaching material around for us musicians and composers, he always kept up with new technology and incorporated that in his books and video courses. BTW, Alexander Publishing is still running and his material is available for people who want to learn...


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## Guy Rowland

Wow, that was a trip down memory lane. Great, great thread. Those pushed for time, the link to Danny Elfman's letter is on the top of page 6, and VI-C's very own Hans Zimmer gives his thoughts on p13. But really - try and take an hour or so to read as much of the thread as possible, so many terrific contributions.

Five years on, and what strikes me the most on re-reading is the overwhelming bias towards orchestral music in terms of being a successful media composer (whatever that phrase ever really meant). The framing assumption is Concert Music (the real thing) vs Media Music (substandard concert music). I've done lamentably little orchestral music in the past five years, and a ton of other stuff. I'd guess a good percentage of jobbing media composers rarely if ever do orchestral. Orchestral instruments are just a tiny fraction of the overall grammar of music composed today for film, TV and games.

Of course, all the broad questions still apply - good luck doing an entirely synthetic score if you've never sat down in front of a synthesizer nor any other instrument before. It was just interesting to re-read how orchestral-focused the debate became.


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