My musical history and some views on writing music.
The text you are about to read originated from a conversation with a co-worker who asked me if I had any formal musical education and if I “wrote down” the music I make. This co-worker, I found out, knew me – or rather, my musical self – before he actually met me (he found the first Handwrist album online and, according to him, enjoyed it very much – sating, however, that every album after that bored him to death). The text is divided in two sections: my personal history with music and my views on music theory (from the perspective of a composer).
The answer to both of his questions is “no”. I do not possess any formal musical education and I do not “write down” my music. So let's jump to the first part, my musical education, formal and informal: I had music classes from the 1st through the 6th grade. Music classes are a mandatory part of the curriculum for those grades, so naturally I had no particular interest in music during those years. Like any kid, I imagine, I enjoyed music – but I don't recall having any special connection to it. I remember that I took part sometime during the 2nd or 3rd grade in a concert of sorts, playing melodic percussion (xylophone, marimba and vibes). I do not remember what sort of music we were playing. I know I was no young prodigy and the teacher, later found to be of pederast tendencies, paid no special attention to me (he preferred girls).
In 5th and 6th grade (when I went to public school) I was downgraded from melodic percussion to the recorder (an instrument I still enjoy despite its obvious limitations) – the music room where all the “good” instruments were, including xylophones, marimbas and vibes was always locked and the only time I was in there was while accompanying my music teacher there because he had forgotten something. My reasoning is that the school directors did not want the student population (mostly composed of hooligans and “troubled kids”) to damage the valuable instruments – and rightly so.
I learned the rudiments of musical theory and then, naturally, forgot them – as it happens with anything that people force-teach me. I remember, though, that my music teacher from 5th and 6th grade told me once I had “violinist fingers” - something that I kept in my memory all these years, mostly because I still don't know what it means. As I did not show any interest in having private lessons or enrolling in music school I never again had a music class, save for a single episode to which we will get in a second.
So that is the extent of my formal musical education.
I finished 6th grade and again changed schools – to another public school. This one, however, was very different in two ways: first, most of the students were from middle to upper middle class families and, second, ironically, the physical resources of the school were way worse than those of the previous school (this idiotic distribution of resources between public schools is not a new problem, as you see). This meant that there were no musical instruments of any kind (we didn't even have a gym) but the musical awareness of the students was much higher (many of them had had private lessons or music classes as part of the their basic education). Even if you don't pay any special attention to the topic, it still makes a big difference. It was also at this time that my father gave me a classical guitar (that I still have) as a gift for my birthday – even though I had not shown any interest in learning how to play such an instrument.
However, my interest in music did not originate from the contact with other students nor from that serendipitous gift, but from a timely, and if I remember correctly, random act of kindness by an uncle. That uncle lent me four albums (in cds, that I played in my discman – this was a different time) that forever changed my life – and made music a perpetual part of it: Siamese Dream, by Smashing Pumpkins; Bleach, by Nirvana; Superunknown, by Soundgarden; Dirt, by Alice in Chains. I was twelve years old. These albums introduced me to adolescence more than acne or nocturnal boners. I finally found some music that I felt connected to and, to this day, I still enjoy those albums and those bands. From there, picking up the guitar I had received as a gift was a no-brainer (the first song I learned, by the way, was “Nutshell” by Alice in Chains – and I sang it very loudly with my stupid teenage voice, much to my neighbors distress).
So I reasoned (as much as an adolescent can reason, that is, quite stupidly) that I should get guitar lessons. My mom found a teacher for me and paid for ten classes. Luckily, after one class I decided never to attend again. This was fifteen years ago but I still remember the feeling I had after that first class: a feeling of dread that they would take something so beautiful (music) and package it in such an uninteresting and lifeless way. I also realized I could learn all the stuff he was going to teach me in those ten lessons by myself, which I did – probably faster and deeper than I would have. I was twelve years old and never thought of attending music classes again.
Until I was 19.
This time also represented a shift – having listened mostly to Rock music until then I was finally getting interested in other types of music (at the time, mostly classical – but also jazz, which was my failsafe option in case I didn't get in to the conservatory). Another serendipitous event came to the rescue. It turns out I could not get in – I was one year too old to enroll in the conservatory program and jazz school was too expensive (I realize jazz-school-expensive are words that should not be in the same sentence and associated with each other but these are the stupid times we live in).
So I had to approach it, again, my own way. For a while – about six months – I was very much decided to learn music theory, write music and, utopian cherry on top of a fantastical cake, having it played by musicians – I was naively convinced that I would be able to enter the world of classical music through the backdoor if I showed enough resilience and efforts. Those six months (and the huge amount of time and effort it took to gain a very basic understanding of music theory) convinced me of the uselessness of it, however.
This leads me to the second part of this text: writing music. Most established processes are not of a dogmatic nature (except for the people who benefit financially from that illusion) – rather, they are heuristic. Their existence is solely devoted to serving a purpose – and once that purpose is no longer served they are either abandoned or reworked (unless, of course, financial gain is involved in keeping the old heuristic unchanged).
Traditional musical notation dates back from a time when there were no means of recording music, when to hear music you had to have someone play it and when respectable people wore wigs (actually, it is even older than that last part – the period of time when respectable people wore wigs was, thankfully, very short). In order to store musical ideas outside of one's own mind and transmit them without playing them to other people, we had to come up with some sort of code for organizing sounds. That is, basically, all musical notation is. And it is no surprise that the more attached a certain genre (I'm talking to you, classical) is to that heuristic that no longer delivers the goods, the less popular it will be amongst people who have no financial or reputational gain to derive from its use. As we no longer rely (because we don't need to!) on traditional musical notation to transmit musical ideas, classical music – and, to an extent, jazz – who, due to institutional constraints (by which I mean government grants), still cling to this remnant of the past, is year in year out declining in popularity. How could it not? It is completely removed from the reality of the world as it is today. Respectable people have ceased to wear wigs once again, yet classical composers, teachers, theorists and students still wear them on their minds.
The heuristic's purpose now is to guarantee job security to the people who invested their time going through the system – it has nothing to do with music, only tangentially (the same way the high taxes on tobacco have nothing to do with “health concerns”).
Like the study of dead languages will not help you express yourself better, musical notation will not help you conceive musical pieces. It also won't improve your chances of having your music played by any group of musicians (much less a group as large as an orchestra). Try telling a cab driver where you want to go in Latin and see how far that takes you. Very few new pieces are rehearsed and played – as it pays more and takes considerably less effort to play stuff both you and the audience already know. Plus, much of the classical music circles are, in essence, circle jerks, in which the same pieces are learned and played and anything outside the canon (which, to be fair, does change every now and then – I'm not sure at which point we are now but must be somewhere between minimalism and Johnny Cage's 3'15 – with the honorable and obligatory throwbacks like Mozart and Brahms – I chose these two on purpose because I don't like them).
Note that for someone who has no interest in composing music but only in playing it, musical notation still holds some value – even though there are probably improved versions of it already that are not incorporated into the profession yet. But for a composer (specially a young composer), musical notation has practically zero application. Comparatively, writing down music (as opposed to “building” it in MIDI grids) is very time consuming. And once you're finished you will have absolutely nothing to show for it except your beautifully handwritten manuscript, which no one will read, much less play. Plus, the more complex, adventurous and resource heavy, the less likely it is you will hear it played by humans.
The good news is that, government grants or not, the world of classical music will eventually catch up to the real world. It is impossible to tell when, and it is very likely that the interest in classical music will have to drop even more amongst the general population for the change to start happening.
So if you want a career as a classical musician, by all means, join the conservatory and learn all you can about that dead language. But if your aim is to compose music, embrace the digital revolution. Remove that terrible smelling (and worse sounding) wig from your mind.
The answer to both of his questions is “no”. I do not possess any formal musical education and I do not “write down” my music. So let's jump to the first part, my musical education, formal and informal: I had music classes from the 1st through the 6th grade. Music classes are a mandatory part of the curriculum for those grades, so naturally I had no particular interest in music during those years. Like any kid, I imagine, I enjoyed music – but I don't recall having any special connection to it. I remember that I took part sometime during the 2nd or 3rd grade in a concert of sorts, playing melodic percussion (xylophone, marimba and vibes). I do not remember what sort of music we were playing. I know I was no young prodigy and the teacher, later found to be of pederast tendencies, paid no special attention to me (he preferred girls).
In 5th and 6th grade (when I went to public school) I was downgraded from melodic percussion to the recorder (an instrument I still enjoy despite its obvious limitations) – the music room where all the “good” instruments were, including xylophones, marimbas and vibes was always locked and the only time I was in there was while accompanying my music teacher there because he had forgotten something. My reasoning is that the school directors did not want the student population (mostly composed of hooligans and “troubled kids”) to damage the valuable instruments – and rightly so.
I learned the rudiments of musical theory and then, naturally, forgot them – as it happens with anything that people force-teach me. I remember, though, that my music teacher from 5th and 6th grade told me once I had “violinist fingers” - something that I kept in my memory all these years, mostly because I still don't know what it means. As I did not show any interest in having private lessons or enrolling in music school I never again had a music class, save for a single episode to which we will get in a second.
So that is the extent of my formal musical education.
I finished 6th grade and again changed schools – to another public school. This one, however, was very different in two ways: first, most of the students were from middle to upper middle class families and, second, ironically, the physical resources of the school were way worse than those of the previous school (this idiotic distribution of resources between public schools is not a new problem, as you see). This meant that there were no musical instruments of any kind (we didn't even have a gym) but the musical awareness of the students was much higher (many of them had had private lessons or music classes as part of the their basic education). Even if you don't pay any special attention to the topic, it still makes a big difference. It was also at this time that my father gave me a classical guitar (that I still have) as a gift for my birthday – even though I had not shown any interest in learning how to play such an instrument.
However, my interest in music did not originate from the contact with other students nor from that serendipitous gift, but from a timely, and if I remember correctly, random act of kindness by an uncle. That uncle lent me four albums (in cds, that I played in my discman – this was a different time) that forever changed my life – and made music a perpetual part of it: Siamese Dream, by Smashing Pumpkins; Bleach, by Nirvana; Superunknown, by Soundgarden; Dirt, by Alice in Chains. I was twelve years old. These albums introduced me to adolescence more than acne or nocturnal boners. I finally found some music that I felt connected to and, to this day, I still enjoy those albums and those bands. From there, picking up the guitar I had received as a gift was a no-brainer (the first song I learned, by the way, was “Nutshell” by Alice in Chains – and I sang it very loudly with my stupid teenage voice, much to my neighbors distress).
So I reasoned (as much as an adolescent can reason, that is, quite stupidly) that I should get guitar lessons. My mom found a teacher for me and paid for ten classes. Luckily, after one class I decided never to attend again. This was fifteen years ago but I still remember the feeling I had after that first class: a feeling of dread that they would take something so beautiful (music) and package it in such an uninteresting and lifeless way. I also realized I could learn all the stuff he was going to teach me in those ten lessons by myself, which I did – probably faster and deeper than I would have. I was twelve years old and never thought of attending music classes again.
Until I was 19.
This time also represented a shift – having listened mostly to Rock music until then I was finally getting interested in other types of music (at the time, mostly classical – but also jazz, which was my failsafe option in case I didn't get in to the conservatory). Another serendipitous event came to the rescue. It turns out I could not get in – I was one year too old to enroll in the conservatory program and jazz school was too expensive (I realize jazz-school-expensive are words that should not be in the same sentence and associated with each other but these are the stupid times we live in).
So I had to approach it, again, my own way. For a while – about six months – I was very much decided to learn music theory, write music and, utopian cherry on top of a fantastical cake, having it played by musicians – I was naively convinced that I would be able to enter the world of classical music through the backdoor if I showed enough resilience and efforts. Those six months (and the huge amount of time and effort it took to gain a very basic understanding of music theory) convinced me of the uselessness of it, however.
This leads me to the second part of this text: writing music. Most established processes are not of a dogmatic nature (except for the people who benefit financially from that illusion) – rather, they are heuristic. Their existence is solely devoted to serving a purpose – and once that purpose is no longer served they are either abandoned or reworked (unless, of course, financial gain is involved in keeping the old heuristic unchanged).
Traditional musical notation dates back from a time when there were no means of recording music, when to hear music you had to have someone play it and when respectable people wore wigs (actually, it is even older than that last part – the period of time when respectable people wore wigs was, thankfully, very short). In order to store musical ideas outside of one's own mind and transmit them without playing them to other people, we had to come up with some sort of code for organizing sounds. That is, basically, all musical notation is. And it is no surprise that the more attached a certain genre (I'm talking to you, classical) is to that heuristic that no longer delivers the goods, the less popular it will be amongst people who have no financial or reputational gain to derive from its use. As we no longer rely (because we don't need to!) on traditional musical notation to transmit musical ideas, classical music – and, to an extent, jazz – who, due to institutional constraints (by which I mean government grants), still cling to this remnant of the past, is year in year out declining in popularity. How could it not? It is completely removed from the reality of the world as it is today. Respectable people have ceased to wear wigs once again, yet classical composers, teachers, theorists and students still wear them on their minds.
The heuristic's purpose now is to guarantee job security to the people who invested their time going through the system – it has nothing to do with music, only tangentially (the same way the high taxes on tobacco have nothing to do with “health concerns”).
Like the study of dead languages will not help you express yourself better, musical notation will not help you conceive musical pieces. It also won't improve your chances of having your music played by any group of musicians (much less a group as large as an orchestra). Try telling a cab driver where you want to go in Latin and see how far that takes you. Very few new pieces are rehearsed and played – as it pays more and takes considerably less effort to play stuff both you and the audience already know. Plus, much of the classical music circles are, in essence, circle jerks, in which the same pieces are learned and played and anything outside the canon (which, to be fair, does change every now and then – I'm not sure at which point we are now but must be somewhere between minimalism and Johnny Cage's 3'15 – with the honorable and obligatory throwbacks like Mozart and Brahms – I chose these two on purpose because I don't like them).
Note that for someone who has no interest in composing music but only in playing it, musical notation still holds some value – even though there are probably improved versions of it already that are not incorporated into the profession yet. But for a composer (specially a young composer), musical notation has practically zero application. Comparatively, writing down music (as opposed to “building” it in MIDI grids) is very time consuming. And once you're finished you will have absolutely nothing to show for it except your beautifully handwritten manuscript, which no one will read, much less play. Plus, the more complex, adventurous and resource heavy, the less likely it is you will hear it played by humans.
The good news is that, government grants or not, the world of classical music will eventually catch up to the real world. It is impossible to tell when, and it is very likely that the interest in classical music will have to drop even more amongst the general population for the change to start happening.
So if you want a career as a classical musician, by all means, join the conservatory and learn all you can about that dead language. But if your aim is to compose music, embrace the digital revolution. Remove that terrible smelling (and worse sounding) wig from your mind.