How much of music is theory and how much is just copying someone elses sound and changing a few things here and there to make it your own?
>>127962448depends on the genre and/or the artist
>>127962448First of all, "how much of music is theory" is a nonsense question because music theory is descriptive. That's what the word "theory" means: to describe. Composition is another thing entirely. Sure, to a degree, theory can influence what composers do, but not nearly as much as people who don't understand theory think. If you're copying someone else's ideas, you already have the ears and the mental ability to analyze their music and then consciously use or transform it. That means you do have some knowledge about music that could be described as theoretical, whether you can put it into words or not.Sometimes theory actively shapes composition: Schoenberg built the twelve-tone method from his study of late Romantic chromaticism, jazz musicians use chord-scale theory and advanced reharmonization to create new sounds, modern composers sometimes use set theory to organize pitch, etc. So theory isn't just dead paperwork, but it's mostly a tool that comes after practice.Even if you don't know any music theory whatsoever, you're always copying someone else's ideas to some degree. Unless you're consciously trying to avoid everything you know or have ever heard in your life (which ironically requires you to know theory), you're always borrowing from somewhere, even if it's unconscious. You can't just make music out of nowhere. Even the most reactionary or progressive movements in history have always been in conscious opposition to something previous. This stuff simply can't exist in a vacuum. The question is how well you develop or transform the ideas you borrow. Stravinsky said: "Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."The real issue is that music theory turned into a separate discipline. You now have faggot theory nerds who obsess over numbers, graphs and abstract concepts, and who can't really play, improvise or compose. That wasn't how it used to be. Historically, theory was simply one of many tools a great composer had in their kit.
okay, here's another question then.How much of it is musical talent and how much of it is "someone that has more connections or money"and why won't your band make it?
>>127962448>is just copying someone elses sound and changing a few things here and there to make it your own?This is how it works for every art form that has ever existed. Shakespeare stole all of the stories he turned into plays. Have you heard the claim that you can't dream about faces you haven't seen before? It's like that.
>>127962724But somehow it's bad when AI gets inspired by the same things.
"My advice to musicians is always this. If you can't come up with anything, just rip off stuff you like. Chances are it'll end up sounding like its own thing anyway."
>>127963072That's good advice. Plus, people always assume you have to have an idea and then develop it organically like one continuous piece of music or whatever. If I recall correctly, Bowie used to write ideas on paper and then shuffle them around, although I'm not sure where I read that. In any case, this is exactly how Brian Wilson wrote songs for Pet Sounds and Smile, or how Fugazi shuffled random parts around while jamming to see which ones stick together, and even how more "serious" composers like Stravinsky wrote a lot of stuff. Sometimes just writing little fragments and then sticking them together to see what works... works.
>>127962707That question is pointless if you don't specify what kind of music scene we're even talking about and what "making it" even means.>Alternative/underground stuffDoes it even matter?>contemporary classical/jazzConnections and reputation are huge.>popular musicBasically hopeless without either connections or serious money.
>>127963072This is really the way for all art. It's pretty much impossible to create a 1:1 copy of another work unless it's drawing and you trace right over it. Beginners always get discouraged when something other work of art is like their because they think only 1 can exist at any given time, like people can only enjoy 1 work of art at once and forever. "holy shit! two cakes" and all that.
