Are there rules to writing prose similiar to those of music? In music you have a key, a tempo, and notes. Ofcourse there are similiar rules for poems, but I am interested in prose. As far as I can tell, there are no such rules, and you basically write and combine words as you want.
NO.PROSE IS TEXT WITH NO VERSE; IF YOU WANT RHYTHM, WRITE VERSE.
>>23821231Music theory is descriptive.
Some baroque theorists used aristotle's poetics and the whole corpus of rhetorics for analogous constructions in music. At the time the pros were acquainted with it because many of the baroque composers were law students where it was a required skill. Beethoven's sketchbrooks show that he still took prosody very seriously.There were occasional treatises in each generation that sought to define all kinds of original laws for good melodies, well balanced periods and of course sonata form, usually deriving such principles from things they observed in undisputed masterpieces. But the pros treated them as entertaining curiosities, never relied on a single theory.
>>23821231Music and prose often have much in common, depends on the author. Theme in both is often handled much the same and we can find a great deal of parallel in the larger structures but beat and rhythm are very different things between music and prose, prose lacks beat in the sense of a defined or easily identified metrical structure but a writer can still develop beat and rhythm through sentence structure, word choice and idea. The rhythms in prose tend to be quite slow compared to music and we may only get a dozen beats a page but they are generally there, it is how a writer controls flow while maintaining style and make some passages read incredibly fast while others seem to drag along despite being of roughly the same length. We can find parallels to music in prose but they are not so concretely defined and the author must define them. For most authors the parallels probably arise just because of the human tendency towards patterns but some are directly informed by music and its structures. It is a massive topic. Picrel might be of interest, have yet to read it so can't comment, just a book I have been meaning to get around too for awhile now. Maybe I will go on more later but it is a difficult thing to write about in a layman sense. >>23821333So is prose but being descriptive does not mean there are no rules, they both have well defined ideas which are essentially rules and conventions. We don't have to use key just as we don't have to use sentence but we need to be aware that the reader/listener is going to listen for key and look for sentence.
>>23821231Music has a mathematical structure which is absent from prose. There's really no comparison.
>>23821693>>23821663>>23821428>>23821333>>23821326>>23821231/mu/ is not a good place to ask this question so I ask here, are there any good books on composing beautiful music? Most books are just about teaching music theory, which I already understand.
>>23821700IF YOU HAVE THE SKILL, BUT STILL CANNOT CREATE SOMETHING GOOD, YOU ARE NOT GIFTED WITH THE TALENT.THERE IS NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL ON HOW TO CREATE A GENIAL ARTIFACT.
>>23821663I'm interested if there are books trying to describe rules and patterns of the prose similar to describing music theory. Tempo, phonology et cetera. There must have been someone in history, who thought he can "game" the writing to achieve something groundbreaking.
>>23821700Arnold Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony has lots of neurotic schizo food for thought
>>23821722This is false, I was not born a good writer, I learnt it. You can learn art 100% but the study of it is too esoteric for most.
>>23821700Trust your artistic judgement. I usually don't agree with cumgenius but he's right in this case. You know the theory, applying it is up to you. If you can't do that then you may as well give up
>>23821722You are not gifted with the talent.
>>23821700>which I already understand.You either don't actually understand theory or have not put in the time doing analysis, most likely both. Everyone I have met who said they understand theory had a simplistic understanding of harmony which reduced it to some rules with no real comprehension, theory is much much more than that. >>23821743I don't think you can game the system this way. We can apply the concept of key to prose in as many ways as there are to use key within music where modulations happen in a mostly logical and predictable fashion informed by content all working towards resolution; we can apply that methodology to most any literary device but to do it while maintaining a cohesive style and be subtle enough that it is not so obvious that it gives away the game is the real trick and where all the hard work is.A good chunk (if not all) of the parallels between music and prose is ultimately style and developing a cohesive, unique and characteristic style can not really be gamed, you still have to put in the time to understand that style to know that it is cohesive. The bigger problem is that style would be disconnected from you, it is not an accident that most writers speak and think like they write, their style is developed and built off of what is innate too them, it is why authors can maintain their style through very different works and even write in a period style while maintaining their own style. The way you are trying to game the system is ultimately putting in the time and work to understand these things so you can better develop your own writing. Study music, it will inform your understanding of literature and your own writing. But many books have been written to those ends, pretty much every book on writing written by a best selling author. They all fail miserably. >>23821764What is schizo or neurotic about that? I would not use either term to describe Theory of Harmony. What makes it great and also makes it terrible for learning Harmony is that he tries to explain things which can not really be explained in written language in any concrete way without being massively reductive, so the language becomes figurative and he translates the effect as much as the idea. Theory of Harmony is the most lit theory book ever written.
>>23821834>have not put in the time doing analysisI don't know what to see, it's an issue of discernment. I don't have this issue with prose and poetry, where I'm able to pick apart the underlying reasons and tricks which make a sentence effective. With music, nothing makes sense (beyond the obvious, like >>23821764 picrel was indeed something I came to realize).
>>23821802TALENT IS INNATE; SKILL IS LEARNT; STYLE IS CONSTRUCTED.
>>23821849Right, you don't actually understand theory. Best is to get a good teacher, second best is get The Complete Musician and its work books and scores, work through it all and use something like the music theory stack exchange to ask questions, discourse is important. Analysis starts by just sitting down with a score and a red pen, mark it up to sort out how it works harmonically, repeat. Eventually you will do it as you read. The scores which can be bought to go along with The Complete Musician will help greatly since they are chosen to work with the book and you will be able to apply what you learn as you go without being bogged down by a pile of other stuff.
>>23821834>What's schizo about tracing the human aural affection for unstable tones in a harmonic sequence to the innate notion of "possession" speculatively ascribed to predator species?I'm not saying it's not interesting, because it is, which is why I screencapped it months ago to begin with, and why I posted it just now, but come on Anon, it's extremely tenuous at best.Tell me, what do you make of pic related?>>23821872Is typing in all capitals all the time innate or discovered?
>>23821891>extremely tenuous at bestYou seem to be fixating on the meaning and ignoring the effect and completely ignoring that he is being figurative, not literal.
>>23821877>sort out how it works harmonically,what does this mean beyond counting intervals?
>>23821928>You seem to be fixating on the meaningBro come off it>he's being figurativeHe's pulling it out of his ass
>>23821946How the vertical relates to the horizontal. Sort of a glib response but you are pretty much asking me to teach you harmony. Like language music is not linear even if we experience it that way; the last word of a sentence can completely change everything before it in ways far more complex than just simple negation or qualification, it can pull in a context from anywhere within the paragraph or even story and may seem meaningless in isolation but profound in context. Reading is more than just understanding definitions of words, we must add up all the definitions of the words in a sentence, find the proper definition or definitions for each word, see how they effect the meaning of each other and the whole, add it to the paragraph and any other external contexts which were brought in and then understand. Harmony works much the same but we have some concrete (not always concrete) external contexts like key which includes the keys we have been through already in the piece and the keys we will get to later in the piece. Did that help? You asked quite the question and a difficult one to sum up concisely short of reducing it to a dictionary definition. >>23821955Perhaps try reading the book, you clearly don't know what the context is.
>>23822000>Perhaps try reading the book, you clearly don't know what the context is.There is no fuller context you dumb pseud. If it's just a metaphor, then it's not a particularly good one. It's not, not was it intended to be. The best phrase for it is schizo food for thought. You only assumed it to be figurative because you refuse to accept he can't possibly be serious.
>>23822037>There is no fuller context you dumb pseud. How would you know? So you think Schoenberg literally thought the notes where beasts of prey? Do you not know what figurative means? Do you not know what he means by "the phenomena of dissonance itself?"
>>23822180Could you explain it in retard?
>>23821231>Are there rules to writing prose similiar to those of music?I think so but I don't think anyone knows what they are. Beauty needs structure and structure relies on rules of some sort.
so is sex just better
>>23821955>Bro come off itZoomer checkHardly is it tenuous and it is not difficult. Dissonances are new stimuli. The nature of possession - ownership, property, to /have/ - repeat stimuli. (therewith related to impulses in an animal) Likewise equal temperament is a form of possession. Please read the book or at least the excerpt again
>>23821722Every post you make, you just make the board that much worse.
>>23822180>So you think SchoenbergAlready fucking told you what I thought you illiterate twatViz. >>23821891>tracing [evolutionarily linking] the human aural affection for unstable tones in a harmonic sequence to the innate notion of "possession" speculatively ascribed to predator speciesLike what's so hard to understand about this? Just read his own words, they're posted IN FULL
>>23822814So were you going to substantiate any of that or just relist each assertion and stamp your little foot down? IQ check, broseph
I can't read any music, and don't know any theory, but I can make beautiful music. I wish I had taught myself some theory when my brain was still young and pliable.
>>23821231Read Don Paterson's "The Poem". It's grasping after what you're after anagogically. Development of the IPA has made notation like you have in mind more feasible. Scansion as such is very primitive. QRD>vowel White Keyes>consonants Black Keys>opening and closing processions of vowel morphemes/sounds>melody vowels borne, percussion consonant borne>sibilance and SCHWA buzzing/lisping has to be economized severely as the most salient - and potentially grating - sounds>to the extent functional grammar-only words and syntax can be eliminated, it generally should; playing with this for 'ghost notes' [e.g. "the" as THEE vs. thUH]>>23821764One more tool for the manipulation of Time and its perception. Prosody at its highest facility is playing with it on command-- it's not enough to be easy on the eyes, there must be movement and colour.
>>23822880>but I can make beautiful musicYeah, right. Post it.
>>23823047My YouTube channel is under my actual name. You don't have to believe me that's okay. Subjective anyhow. Just pretend I said there are musicians who can make beautiful music without knowing any theory instead.
>>23822384Two notes sounding together create a beat frequency and will either work with or against the notes. If it works with the notes they are consonance, if it works against them it is dissonant. Outside of the few perfect intervals the beat frequency always works against or with the notes differently, it takes power from one note more than the other so one note dies more quickly and the other becomes dominant; Schoenberg's beasts of prey fighting for dominance. Passing tones are a single note played between two chords, chord one, passing tone, chord two. The passing tone is a note which belongs to neither chord and is dissonant with both of the them, they are nonchord tones. We hear the first chord, then the passing tone stops it since it does not logically follow the chord harmonically speaking which means we don't really know where things will go next, the progression was broken, then the second chord is played which resumed the progression. Even if you don't understand how this works you pick up on it intuitively and they are probably the easiest form of serial dissonance to hear and most can learn to spot them with fairly good accuracy without any theory. >>23822872Those were rhetorical questions, I am perfectly aware you don't have clue.
>>23822905>Don Paterson's "The Poemwhere does meter fit into this equation? I also thought of that as the percussion
>>23821722WHY ARE YOU YELLING?
>>23821231Both yes and no? The simplest way to put it is that there are certain tendencies that might be better appreciated in one period over another (for example, today, Strunk & White would appear to be more widely accepted than the canons of writing that Thomas Browne adherred to).Historically, there used to be thought to be certain rules to prose that you ought to follow, and those rules amounted to the various "figures" of classical rhetoric. If you're curious about what that might look like, check out Ward Farnsworth's four books (on Classical English Rhetoric, Metaphor, Style, and Arguments; that last one isn't a book of logic, just to be clear, but snappy, memorable rhetorical arguments).A few suggested readings that might be worth looking into, going from modern to more ancient accounts of prose style:Gregory Ulmer - Text Book (3rd Edition)Richard Lanham - Analyzing Prose; Style: An Anti-Textbook; Revising ProseDemetrius - On StyleHermogenes of Tarsus - On Types of StyleDionysius of Halicarnassus - Ars Rhetorica, Commentaries on Attic Orators, On Literary CompositionThe key more or less seems to be being clear to yourself about your intended effect and your intended audience. That gives you quite a bit more leeway.
>>23823098>I am perfectly awareMethinkin that "awareness" is more diminished than you're able to admit.
>>23821722>never got good at anything >has to cope by saying everything is either something you can do or can't do>all so he can justify his lack of practice or focus on anything in his life
>>23821700Wagner's prose works. See particularly his Beethoven essay.
>>23824740?
There are no rules. You do what sounds good to you and you follow your gut instinct. The intellectualization of art as you are in the process of it as in thinking there are "rules" you need to follow to metaphorically "win" will get you nowhere. Do what you want to do and let analysis of whatever you did at that moment follow after you've actually done it.
>>23825141I disagree, there are rules, and you have to learn them. The difference is those rules are made to be broken. I used to think like you, but that mentality can only carry you so far. I'm a musician, not a writer, but I feel this basic premise applies to all art forms. I used to just write what I thought sounded good, I didn't care if it matched up with theory, and I wrote good songs as a result. But I lacked a certain something that prevents me from taking my music to the next level. And that certain something was an understanding of theory. There are many musicians who have written phenomenal music without "knowing" theory, but they knew what worked from what didn't, which is essentially the same thing as knowing theory. They just had a more instinctual/subconscious understanding of it rather than formal knowledge. I'm glad that I started writing music the way that I did because I developed my taste and a sense of freedom, but it wasn't until I started to learn theory, developing my ear, and analysing other music that I liked that I was able to take my music to the next level. Now when I break the rules, it's because I decided to do it purposefully rather than because I didn't even realise I was breaking a rule.Reliance on theory creates stagnant art, ignorance of it creates inelegant art. The ability to know that something shouldn't work but that it does anyway in a certain situation is what seperates good artists from great artists.
