Does Music Theory REALLY Kill Creativity?

[craigb]

1 hour ago, Tim Smith said:

Having creativity and not being able to use it is a lot like trying to make love to your wife when you have company in the house.

Not that I have any, but I can't even try right now.

No, no...  Having creativity and not being able to use it is a lot like trying to make love to someone else's wife when you have company in the house! ?

.

.

(YES, I'm just kidding!  *Sheesh!* ?)

[ptheisen]

I will admit that it feels like there is significantly more drama on this forum than on the forum of the other DAW I use.

[craigb]

[Tim Smith]

22 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

There was a similar discussion on another forum about not making music because of forums, having to update software, looking for new products.

These Cakewalk forums are like a woman's knitting circle.   

Since I am at my job until April 12th and it's a bland and very boring job, this is about the only thing I can do. I mean I will still probably drop by later but the dynamic will be different.  I will no longer feel compelled to sit in a small office for the whole day looking out the window at a nice day. I stop my several other forums and am mod on one. It's still like being a goalie waiting for a ball with a team of 80 year olds. But we tend to rush life along. I guess I still haven't learned that lesson.

Even though I know I'm as different as night and day from a lot here, I liked coming here, and if we all stayed in safe little circles we would never branch out. This forum has staying power. Not sure why? Maybe because the same people keep coming back. I don't think the product itself is anything enough in and of itself to keep anyone here, but I'm just an opinion.  I was "starise" here with many thousands of posts and when they transferred something went wrong and I lost that and just decided to use my name.

I do like looking at new products and getting updates to old ones. In fact, they were not initially going to allow a deals area. I'm glad they allowed it and cclarry has done a great job among others there. 

22 hours ago, ptheisen said:

I will admit that it feels like there is significantly more drama on this forum than on the forum of the other DAW I use.

I like safe riff raff, drama, well not so much. Trollery? I guess we have Wookie for that.  TBH I haven't found any fun forums with any of the other DAW software I have that are anything more than half empty doctor's offices. Boooooooring.

22 hours ago, craigb said:

No, no...  Having creativity and not being able to use it is a lot like trying to make love to someone else's wife when you have company in the house! ?

.

I'll have to take your word for that one. I had a guy going after my first wife and I could have ended up in prison for killing him. He wouldn't come out to confront me.

 

[kitekrazy]

22 hours ago, ptheisen said:

I will admit that it feels like there is significantly more drama on this forum than on the forum of the other DAW I use.

You must not have heard of Vi Control.

Drama often happens when a DAW is criticized on a company forum.  There's no shortage of fanboys.

[ptheisen]

I am aware of VI Control and the drama that sometimes exists there, though I only go on it if I'm interested in a particular product that is being discussed there. VI Control is not specific to any single DAW or any other type product, so it is not relevant to the statement I made comparing the Cakewalk forum with another DAW specific forum.

[Shane_B.]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:44 PM, craigb said:

Thank you. I was just thinking I could use some 'drama-meme' because this thread was making me nauseous.

??

[paulo]

On 3/21/2024 at 5:11 PM, kitekrazy said:

These Cakewalk forums are like a woman's knitting circle.   

The Cakewalk Stitch and B itch ?

[craigb]

Maybe they need to create a new sub-forum called The Hair Salon? ?

[Starship Krupa]

I think the term "underlying principles" would be a better one, but "Theory" is the one we're stuck with.

I have rock 'n' roller friends who write songs, have made albums, etc., who claim that they don't know "theory."

Then I point out to them that they can hear "bad" notes and tell when a chord doesn't fit. And that's "theory."

"Theory" is just a way of writing that down and being able to talk about it. It's the nuts and bolts of what we can already hear, what we know instinctively.

It's the same as what native English speakers are taught in English class. Breaking down sentence structures and all that. People learn to speak English "by ear," then we learn the theory later. Even in literature class, with themes and the like, if someone tells a long story, it will have a theme, a protagonist, etc. without the storyteller being consciously aware that they're doing that.

For me it's not a matter of whether learning theory "does" hinder creativity, but rather "can" it. I have also known some musicians who had a hard time improvising because they were thinking too hard about whether what they were going to play fit whatever rules they had learned. How exactly you're supposed to play across changes and so forth.

When I write lyrics, even if I start out trying to just free verse it, it always ends up having a metre and rhyme scheme. I put this down to learning those things in English class in high school. It's nuts, there were decades between when I learned that and when I started to write lyrics, but it's there. Does it hinder my creativity? Maybe. Some part of my brain is sorting out the words and fitting them into a metre and rhyme scheme.

It goes the other way, too. I can improvise like crazy on keyboards because I know the scales better. Once I figure out what key the song is in, I just rip modally, playing whatever feels good. Just let go and don't play any bum notes. Harder on guitar because after all these decades, I still haven't memorized the fretboard higher than fret 5, and haven't committed the scales to muscle memory.

[msmcleod]

Anyone who has had to study Bach chorales will have had the "classical rules of harmony" ingrained into them, e.g.  don't double the 3rd, don't move intervals of 4ths or 5ths 'cos it sounds modal (so power chords are out), 7ths have to be prepared and must be resolved... there's a bunch of them.   Then there's rules of counterpoint harmony... again a bunch of them.

Knowing these rules can actually be advantageous, as applying them, say, to a string quartet sounds way better than not using them - assuming of course you want a "classical" sound, and by that I mean both classical genre and classical period.

However like any rules you need to know when and how to break them, and more importantly you've got to let yourself break them too.  If you've had strict classical training, this can be difficult as some people really do see them as rules.  Certain chord progressions can sound wrong because you've been taught to recognise them as wrong, and this can kill creativity (I'm speaking from personal experience here).

The way I got around this was to apply the same analytical techniques to modern pop/rock music (as well as jazz fusion and more modern orchestral music) as I did in my classes when studying classical music.  Anything that sounded cool that was "wrong" according to my training, I analysed and worked out what was going on.  It then got added to my toolbox.

However I suspect the vast majority of people don't get forced into harmonising several chorales a week for years on end, and for those learning more theory can be a huge benefit to creativity.  Just knowing scales, keys, how chords are formed, relative major/minor keys, different modes etc can broaden your understanding incredibly.  Simple things like changing modes, or chord substitution can make your music way more interesting.

 

[craigb]

[57Gregy]

I saw this movie a few years ago, Whiplash. In it, music students fought for positions in this particular instructor's (J. K. Simmons) class.
But he was a tyrant, ruthless in his criticism of any mistakes or deviation from the charts. But it was jazz. His strict regimentation killed any feel and denied any improvisation.
A percussionist (Miles Teller) grew tired of this treatment and rebelled. 
It was a good flick and, in this case, music theory did kill creativity.
Simmons won an Oscar for his performance.

[Tim Smith]

On 4/5/2024 at 5:21 PM, msmcleod said:

Anyone who has had to study Bach chorales will have had the "classical rules of harmony" ingrained into them, e.g.  don't double the 3rd, don't move intervals of 4ths or 5ths 'cos it sounds modal (so power chords are out), 7ths have to be prepared and must be resolved... there's a bunch of them.   Then there's rules of counterpoint harmony... again a bunch of them.

Knowing these rules can actually be advantageous, as applying them, say, to a string quartet sounds way better than not using them - assuming of course you want a "classical" sound, and by that I mean both classical genre and classical period.

However like any rules you need to know when and how to break them, and more importantly you've got to let yourself break them too.  If you've had strict classical training, this can be difficult as some people really do see them as rules.  Certain chord progressions can sound wrong because you've been taught to recognise them as wrong, and this can kill creativity (I'm speaking from personal experience here).

The way I got around this was to apply the same analytical techniques to modern pop/rock music (as well as jazz fusion and more modern orchestral music) as I did in my classes when studying classical music.  Anything that sounded cool that was "wrong" according to my training, I analysed and worked out what was going on.  It then got added to my toolbox.

However I suspect the vast majority of people don't get forced into harmonising several chorales a week for years on end, and for those learning more theory can be a huge benefit to creativity.  Just knowing scales, keys, how chords are formed, relative major/minor keys, different modes etc can broaden your understanding incredibly.  Simple things like changing modes, or chord substitution can make your music way more interesting.

 

Rules? You mean there are rules?

[Tim Smith]

Thumpety bumpety walllladawalo. Wawawawa depo beppo blingedy blong. 

How did that sound? Can you guess the instrument?

[57Gregy]

ARP 2600?

[Gswitz]

Patterns help give a back drop on which to create surprise. 

Patterns that humans recognize create a place where surprise can be recognized. 

[Notes_Norton]

Does music theory really kill creativity?

one word answer.

NO

 

We wouldn't have had Beethoven, Shostakovitch, Dvorak, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Respighi, and so many others who created some of the best music that has ever graced this planet.

[Mr No Name]

On 4/10/2024 at 2:03 PM, Notes_Norton said:

Does music theory really kill creativity?

one word answer.

NO

 

We wouldn't have had Beethoven, Shostakovitch, Dvorak, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Respighi, and so many others who created some of the best music that has ever graced this planet.

 

then came along Phillip Glass and stuck his middle finger up at them.

sometimes I listen to Radio 3, and they play some very strange avant garde classical music, sounds like they got the "rule book" and tore it up.

probably like Bach was 300 years ago when everyone was still playing Lutes,

his experimentalism forged a way forward and became the new "music theory"  

break the rules.

[T Boog]

I think the only creativity killer is not using ur emotions and ur inner ear. Someone with creative passion will compose with or without theory. Either way, that music will have emotional substance.

But creativity that comes from the brain only, using theory alone, is kind of like A.I. It'll prob leave u feeling pretty empty. 

To make music worth hearing, one needs to follow the muse even more than they follow theoretical maps. 

Note: I think technology is a much bigger killer of creativity than theory. Too many people seem more concerned with collecting plugins, mics, amps, rack gear, etc than growing as musicians and writers. 

I also think many people are developing computer-like thinking. Where visuals and mathmatic type thinking are at the forefront and the heart & emotions seem to shrink from lack of use. (It's the geek disease! 😄)

I think we'd all be better off using minimal gear and working harder on the music than on acquiring new toys. (It def helps prevent 'option anxiety' 😵‍💫)

Edited December 8 by T Boog