How to Play Guitar, by David Fair

HAHAHAHAHAHAaaHAHAa

..and then also..
Can't Play Their Instruments
Alternative Tunings

P.S: Fuck you bitch, go suck Ben Fold's asshole.

In a way, it reminds me of what Robert Fripp told a friend of mine who attended his school... that it doesn't matter what notes you play or how many, what matters is playing the right note at the right time.

Yes, that's one of the more cliched bits of guitar advice around, but of course it's true. And it's nothing like what this guy is saying.

I feel very confident that no one has ever been moved to produce worthwhile music as a result of reading this article. The advice is completely worthless and can be entirely summed up by saying "think outside the box." Just like saying "What matters is playing the right note at the right time" or "it's not the notes you play, but the notes you don't play," it may be true in some sense, but it's practically useless.

The most fuck-you stupid parts are these:

"If you want to play fast, move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower."

Wow, how insightful.

"You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that's pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you'd still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day."

One doesn't "take a few years and learn all the chords." That isn't how music works; only a musical novice would conceive of it in those terms.

"I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn't have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same."

The reason for putting 6 different sized strings on a guitar is that each one is meant to accomodate a different amount of tension so you can tune them to different pitches and create chords. Putting six of the same gauge string on a guitar, let alone tuning all 6 strings to the same note, is idiotic.

"If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong."

No, it doesn't imply that at all. That's a ridiculous thing to say.

"it really doesn't matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I've never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you'd feel pretty foolish holding one."

Again, it's really hard to believe that this guy is being serious. It's not just that the advice is worthless, it's the way it completely misunderstands the way music and guitars work and then tries to recast that ignorance as "stick it to the man" wisdom.

I guess? I mean, if you want to expand on that maybe we could reach some common ground. How do you figure any of the advice in that article would be helpful to anyone beyond repeating a cliche like "think outside the box?"

And I agree Curt1s, but my problem is more the fundamental misconceptions which underlie the article, like the idea that "tuning your strings to a specific pitch means that all other pitches are wrong." You can't get much more sophomoric. Tuning standards exist so that multiple musicians can play together. But hey, don't take my word for it, put 6 of the same gauge string on your guitar and turn the pegs until you feel like stopping. But I guarantee you it'll sound like shit.

And the notion that learning music involves some kind of rote memorization of chords. It's like saying "Yeah, you could learn English the normal way, by going through a dictionary and trying to memorize all the words, or you can make up your own words and master English in a day!"

is it?

i would argue that it's not faux anything. i've played guitar for 15 years and can't play a C chord. or i probably do play one but i don't know it.

he's being naive about traditional technical music language/notation.

but i agree that he's not naive about what rock/blues/folk sounds like.

the important lesson is to not constrict your music to the language with which you encode it.

knowing a C-chord doesn't make you any less likely to play something that's worth playing. art is about ideas though, and if you're stuck in languages and modes defined by someone else, you're always going to be underneath their heel. don't get locked up by blues scales, not unless those chains bruise you up good and you've got something to say.

m.

xpost: heh. nice.

Yes, I'm sure the latter is true. Anyone who says that learning terminology or notation is restricting simply doesn't know what they're talking about. I think the language analogy is a good one; is it better to be able to speak English but not be able to read and write it? Does that make you more unrestricted or creative? No, it doesn't.

Some people get by and manage to do great things without ever learning things traditionally, and that's great for them, but that isn't a good reason to celebrate/promote ignorance.

see, he's not talking about english, he's talking about Talking. if you have a language that you can communicate, then use it. fuck the standards and syntax.

sure, learn standards and syntax, but you can't keep people from being masters of their own personal modes of communication. a guitar = a mouth.
m.

mechanisms are restrictive. all languages are inherently flawed/inconsistent or incomplete. (Godel)

sure, some ideas can be communicated and communicated beautifully... that's why the academy/institutional system has so much power in our society... but there are blessed things we can only bark at in futility. thank the heavens for that too. mystery rules.

m.

m, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if it's English, Spanish, C++, or music, we're talking about a language, and communication requires both parties to agree on meaning. If you don't know what chords or notes you're playing, you're going to have a trouble playing with other musicians. Likewise if you don't tune your instrument to standard pitches.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with saying "think outside the box." Sure, be original, be innovative. It's just that all of the specific advice he offers is unadulterated BS and betrays a complete misunderstanding of the concepts at work, so I think that it's not just useless but would in fact be detrimental advice to someone trying to learn music for the first time.

learn english. learn guitar. but learn to also apply ideas outside of the rule book. that's his point. that's why i like it.

i understand where you're coming from, i just disagree.
m.

But this is the crux of it, I think (although I wouldn't use the word "rule book," because that doesn't eflect reality - there is no musical rule book) - I say you have to learn the language, study the traditions, and then decide to go against them. This guy seems to be saying don't bother with that stuff, it isn't worth your time. Which is bad advice. That's not how it works. Picasso learned to paint in a traditional style before he invented cubism. Beethoven studied the classical style before he developed his own idiom and segued into the Romantic era, etc. I'm confident that the vast majority of the great pre-20th century musicians would've found the sentiment here risible. It just strikes me as both anti-intellectual, anti-collaboration, and useless in any practical sense.

So how exactly do music and guitars work?

http://poisonpie.com/sounds/haino/

I've explained the specific misconstruals in several posts now, Chris. Let me know if you need anything specific clarified.

I never claimed to have layed out "how music and guitar works." I've mentioned several specific points on which I think the article is full of crap. Let me know if I wasn't clear about any of them.

Why don't we just bring it back to something like Keiji Haino. Does he make "worthwhile music"? Can he play the guitar?

though it is truthful and does reflect their approach as a goofy, avant-garde racket band. OTM

http://www.instantmayhem.com/New%20Images/halfjap.greatesthits.jpg

And yet you declared that the article is shit because it "misunderstands how music works"...

No, I haven't heard his music. That's why I asked in the beginning if this article was sincere, and if people took it seriously, because I really have no idea.

Why don't we just bring it back to something like Keiji Haino. Does he make "worthwhile music"? Can he play the guitar?

That's not the point at all. I find the way you're trying to hijack this discussion to be pretty bizarre. It's not an issue of whether what this or that person does is worthwhile music. It's an issue of what's going to help a hypothetical person learn to express himself on an instrument. I submit that someone with a philosophy like that laid out in the article is going to be extremely limited, isolated, and disadvantaged as a musician; and all in the name of being unrestricted and creative.

And yet you declared that the article is shit because it "misunderstands how music works"...

Yes Chris. I've gotta say, I find you're being pretty obnoxious here. As I explained, talking about "spending a few years learning all the chords," as well as the other things I focused on, are a complete misrepresentation of what studying music is.

I keep citing Keiji Haino b/c he's one of my favorite musicians and his approach to the guitar feels similar to the one outlined in the article

Another one of my problems with it is that you just can't do that many different things with a guitar. Everyone playing the guitar has 12 semitones in their octave, if you know what I mean. A guitar is a versatile instrument, but it was designed to be played a certain way, and just about everything that people do on it are variations on basic guitar playing. You can flip a guitar upside down and bang on it, but it's never going to be as good a percussion instrument as, say, a drum. I'm not saying people shouldn't be innovative and try to make the guitar fresh; I'm saying I think taking the "ignorance is bliss" attitude is a detrimental approach to being creative.

We have a fundamental disagreement about the nature of music, I do believe.

but it was designed to be played a certain way

I don't really care what it was originally "designed for"

posing irrelevant questions and derailing the discussion

I don't think I've posed any irrevelant questions.
This article is about "strange" and "avant-garde" guitar techniques, essentially.
You've stated that someone using that approach won't "make very worthwhile music"

Well I think you're doing a very poor job of articulating your position.

I don't really care what it was originally "designed for"

I think you missed my point. The article agrees with me in this respect. The operation of a guitar is very simple: make sound by vibrating a string. Shorten or lengthen the string to change pitches. The point is, guitar technique has evolved over time, but there aren't really any radically new ways to play the guitar. Everyone is just making those strings vibrate.

This article is about "strange" and "avant-garde" guitar techniques, essentially.

Just because the philosophies in this article could be classified as "strange" or "avant-garde" doesn't suddenly make anything I say about the article apply to all things that are also "strange" or "avant-garde." Stop being so disingenuous.

You've stated that someone using that approach won't "make very worthwhile music"

I read the article as saying "If you want to learn music, don't bother studying, just fuck around and hope you get lucky." I think that's a very poor approach. The issue isn't whether you or I think person X or Y succeeded with that philosophy. The point is that I think it's a fundamentally disadvantaged approach which provides zero benefits over a traditional music education.

I think that you haven't responded at all to the substance of this critique, choosing instead to take the whole thing personally as an insult to your favorite music and arguing with a straw man version of my statements.

See, I didn't read the article that way.

Technology has evolved over time though. A small pluck of a string can summon light years of distorted delay

My hope is that kids will take the advice of the article to heart, and use it in addition to whatever other advice they pick up along the way

And that may work for some people. It probably won't work too well if you're aiming to compose classical baroque music.

I'm saying that I don't think that the philosophy expressed in the article is a good one to have if one is trying to make good music

Some people make "good music" by completely rethinking the idea of "playing the guitar", in ways similar to what the article suggests. No Wave music being one example.

But it probably won't work well at all, no matter what kind of music you're making.

Some people make "good music" by completely rethinking the idea of "playing the guitar", in ways similar to what the article suggests.

Are you even reading what I'm writing? I didn't say it's a bad idea to try and rethink the idea of playing the guitar. I'm saying that deciding to completely ignore the conventions, history, and established technique of the instrument is a very bad path towards doing something original or interesting on it. Major innovations in art are rarely made by people who are completely ignorant of conventions.

Have you heard No Wave music?!

I don't understand what the matter with this is.

That's a very extreme characterization.

>You can easily guess that almost everyhting they ever made sounds the same.<

No, it doesn't. The early duo recordings are quite different from when they evolved into a larger, skronking band and then they became more of a sort of pop group, I guess. I agree that they did seem to become stuck in the mud at some point, but I'm not sure when, exactly.

but they knew what they were doing in the first place.

Taking your statement "But it probably won't work well at all, no matter what kind of music you're making." and calling it bullshit, is not a "straw man", b/c this kind of approach to the guitar is the *essence* of some kinds of music

And you're still missing the point. It's like I'm saying "Pregnant women shouldn't smoke" and you're saying "But my friend Bill's mom smoked when she was pregnant, and he turned out ok!" I don't care if you like No Wave! The fact that some people had this philosophy and still made music that you like doesn't disprove my point.

I'm saying that I don't think it offers any benefits over a traditional music education, and that it actually puts a musician at a disadvantage compared to one with a more traditional musical education, and that it is therefore flawed.

* Ans: Steve Goldberg

It's not a matter of me "defending my favorite band". I was citing examples of artists that I happen to like who use the kind of technique that you were calling shit. I also enjoy, for example, traditional classical music. Obviously these kinds of techniques wouldn't work for Bach. They also won't work for people like Belle and Sebastian, whom I don't enjoy.

Actually, I take that back. If Stuart Murdoch would take some of the advice in this article, maybe he could come up with something a *little* more interesting... :)

Steve, you seem to think there are people out there who would actually follow Fair's "advice" to the letter,

I feel like this is an important point. The ideas in the article are something to "keep in mind".

...Or would they?

No, I don't think that. I've been trying to make it clear the whole time that I'm strictly talking about this as a philosophy of music education, and not talking about specific artists or their outpit. I think that it deserves scorn because it tries to come across as irreverent and liberating, while I think it's actually anti-intellectual and restricting.

(note: Belle & Sebastian comes to mind as a band that uses very traditional chord structures, etc, in case you're going to say "We're not talking about Belle & Sebastian here!" It's just an example)

And this is another illustration of the fallacy here; just because Belle and Sebastian are bad doesn't mean that traditional chord structures are bad, does it?

And also, you seem to think that the only way to make unconventional music is to ignore the study of music altogether, which is precisely what I'm saying is totally wrongheaded here. I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of the world's important unconventional music, whatever that happened to mean at that time, was made by people who studied traditional music and understood its conventions.

you seem to think that the only way to make unconventional music is to ignore the study of music altogether

Totally false!!

Well, then? What's the point of rejecting education the way the article advocates? How does someone benefit from not trying to learn about music?

Haha yeah, exactly.

So what's your point? That no one actually follows this as a philosophy education? Well, aside from Chris Bee's favorite bands. But yes, I realize that. You're not being clever or insightful. I can still argue with the ideas in the article whether or not there are people out there following them.

Rowe developed various prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body and pickups in unorthodox ways to produce sounds described as dark, brooding, compelling, expansive and alien. He has been known to employ objects such as a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar. A January, 1997 feature in Guitar Player magazine described a Rowe performance as "resemble a surgeon operating on a patient."

How utterly unorthodox! A total reinvention of the instrument! If only I forget my music education, maybe then I could be that creative!

The sort of thinking displayed in the article is a hindrance, not an asset, to an aspiring musician.

1) It seems to offer no benefits over a traditional music education. I guess you can save time (and possibly money) by going this route, but I don't see any other perks.

2) It isolates the musician by denying him the vocabulary and the skillset to effectively collaborate with other musicians.

3) It cripples the musician by denying him the insights of all of the musicians that came before him.

I just don't see how it's anything other than anti-education and anti-intellectual. It promotes non-conformity while saying that one should remain ignorant, thereby making it more likely that they'll end up conforming unwittingly.

To imply that "traditional music education" is anything more than a product of Western musical/cultural values (which is to say created rather than "discovered") is to imply that there is some kind musical "form" that exists outside of human creation or culture. The "hook" of Fair's article is that it demonstrates the lie that "chords" and "notes" are anything but specifically human (and, for that matter, Western) inventions--a guitar plays sounds; some sounds are higher, some are lower. To me, it's not necessarily advice so much as it is an essay about ridiculous Platonic notions about "music." It is not, as has been said befroe, to be followed to the letter.

Moreover, following his advice doesn't deny any musician the ability to play along with his or her peers. Countless guitarists have learned to play "by ear," and never learned the names of notes or chords. Fair doesn't reject the notion of "playing along" with other musicans or to records you like; nor does he "deny the insights of all the musicians that came before him." He simply points out (somewhat obtusely, I admit) that a C7m chord is just a name we assign to a set of sound waves.

Finally, it's not anti-education or anti-intellectual except in the sense that music education and "music intellectualism" is to a large extent (like all kinds of education and intellecutalism) BS, and without acknowledging that BS you can't really move beyond it.

"You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that's pretty limiting"

I'm guessing this sentence is at the heart of what's got Steve so annoyed? It certainly annoyed the hell out of me. It's one thing to say that you can reject (what you might regard as) convential musical education to produce interesting sounds or indeed music (xpost - like max does). It's another to say that you don't need that education in the first place to do that. It's still another to say you're better off not having learned *anything* from other people. Whatever you think of the music that's a pretty arrogant attitude I think...

To me it's like a poet saying, "You can use rhyme and traditional sonnet form, but that's pretty limiting." I can't say I disagree with him, either; using only Western (or even worldwide traditional) notes or chords is pretty limiting. Note also that he's not proscribing notes or chords, just pointing out that they're only one way of making music.

But in the end I think it's just sort of a throwaway specifically intended to piss people off.

We're talking about different things here; music education involves a lot more than guitar technique. But again, there are only so many things one can do with a guitar. Guitars have frets on them. The frets are spaced in semitones, according to the western system of music. If that's not the music you're trying to make, you're starting off on the wrong foot by picking up the guitar. The instrument has limitations. Because of these limitations, I'm very skeptical of the idea that failing to learn traditional guitar technique is going to make someone seem like anything more than a bad guitar player in the vast majority of instances.

When he says "if you want to play fast, move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower," I think that's useless and incredibly patronizing to the aspiring guitarist.

To imply that "traditional music education" is anything more than a product of Western musical/cultural values (which is to say created rather than "discovered") is to imply that there is some kind musical "form" that exists outside of human creation or culture.

Well, the harmonic series, which our music is based on, is a natural phenonemon, but I don't think that's really relevant to my argument here.

Moreover, following his advice doesn't deny any musician the ability to play along with his or her peers. Countless guitarists have learned to play "by ear," and never learned the names of notes or chords.

Again, just because some people have managed to do something doesn't mean that's the best way to do it. And not everyone is born with the natural talent it takes to compensate for a complete lack of theoretical knowledge. Believe me that it's much easier to collaborate and be creative with a group of musicians if you all speak the same language.

nor does he "deny the insights of all the musicians that came before him."

That's what he's telling people to do. He's saying not to bother learning technique or theory, which represent the accumulated
knowledge and practices of past masters.

Finally, it's not anti-education or anti-intellectual except in the sense that music education and "music intellectualism" is to a large extent (like all kinds of education and intellecutalism) BS

Well, I think that statement is BS. Are you serious? You think education is worthless?

To me it's like a poet saying, "You can use rhyme and traditional sonnet form, but that's pretty limiting."

That's a bad analogy. That would make sense if he were telling people to stop writing pop songs or sonatas or symphonies.

using only Western (or even worldwide traditional) notes or chords is pretty limiting.

No, it's really not. Do you have any basis for what you're saying here? Are you a musician? No matter how you tune your guitar, you're pretty much stuck with using western notes and chords.

Balls are round and some of them bounce to varying degrees. That's all you really need to know. You can learn the rules of a game like soccer or baseball, but that's limiting. You could hit a ball with a stick, but doing that implies that hitting a ball any other way is wrong.

Just take some things that are edible and put them on heat. Or don't. Certain spices might make your food "taste good" but selection of one just negates the validity of another.

A car is just some wheels and an engine. Right pedal is go, left pedal is stop.

eggggzactly

-- sleeve (sleev...), May 29th, 2006.

This is basically the exact opposite of what the Fair article says, thx.

um, you can tune to quarter tones. it's not rocket science.

and if you prefer rocket science, you can refret your guitar.

but, honestly, anyone who seeks out the advice of david fair is not an "aspiring guitarist." all you need to do is listen to some half japanese, and that'll disabuse you.

I have no idea when Fair may have written this, but I believe Half Japanese was formed around 1975 and maybe this was a little more relevant at the time. The entire thing makes a lot more sense after listening to some of the early Half Japanese songs from the period before Jad started recruiting actual musicians.

Ok, this is just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. "In fact I don't prepare meals for taste at all, I just cook everything until it's equally squishy in my hand."

You're right, I didn't mean that.

xpost

-- Abbadavid Berman (Hurtingchie...), May 29th, 2006 5:29 PM. (Hurting) (later)

If it's a given, then why are people apparently so pissed off by it?

What's wrong is that anything is as good as anything else, and that any musical "learning" is limiting, and that guitars shouldn't be played or tuned based on the way they sound.

And you're way off, hot hot heat.

And you lack the language to precisely communicate it to other musicians. If I tell a jazz piano player to play an Edim7 arpeggio in eighth note triplets on beats 3 and 4 of the 4th measure, he knows exactly what I mean. When you've learned everything by trial and error, it's more difficult to communicate things like that.

n/a, I just found it really patronizing and sort of basking in its ignorance, and like I said I feel like it's more likely to produce the opposite of what it claims to advocate.

What makes you think I'm obsessive about it? Because I've reaplied to this thread too much? Maybe I just like to argue about music?

I don't care if someone just bangs on a guitar. I've said several times that I'm just talking about this as an idea. Obviously no one is forcing me to listen to anything. I'm just responding to the content of the article, disagreeing with its advice, and taking exception at some of its misleading statements. Maybe you should stop trying to make this about me?

In late 1998, David was back on WCW TV sitting front row and getting involved in some skirmishes with Eric Bischoff and the nWo. He eventually decided to become a wrestler and teamed with his father in his debut match at WCW/nWo Souled Out in Charleston, West Virginia on January 17, 1999. They wrestled Curt Hennig and Barry Windham and won the match. After the match, the entire nWo came out and Hulk Hogan lashed David with his belt until David's back was full of welts.

xpost
I don't really care if people feel like they can't do anything good their first couple of years. Stick it out. Practice. Don't expect me to come to your crap ass shows that you do after playing guitar for a year and a half. (xpost)

And this is the exact kind of thing that will totally put off almost any beginner from bothering to learn how to play an instrument. If you don't have a problem with that, if you see it as some kind of weeding out the undisciplined or something, good for you, but I think it's counterproductive.

it's all ideas and the implementation.

some implementations using certain techniques are successful for certain ideas.

hardcore punk. raw blues and rock and roll. reggae. lofi/experimental/noise. hip hop. etc... these things learned out of desperation or from church... traditional, pre-music lit music, etc.. does this music require knowledge of scales to be successful? i would say not. you latch onto the sounds of the ground you're walking on or walking away from. you explore without maps.

can those types of music be made with maps? sure. can they be great with maps? sure.

but should a desperate person who finds themselves ostracized from classical training stop making music? FUCK NO.

i can see how someone with music training could be annoyed by someone saying, "eh, you don't NEED training." but by the same token, acknowledge that modern music owes a monster-sized debt to people that probably did some of their best work when they were desperate and had no time to train.

m.

I don't care if someone has "training" or not, I just care that they spent enough time experimenting/learning/listening to figure out what actually sounds good or interesting.

I feel like this:

"The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string farther out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast, move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That's all there is to it."

would be an extremely patronizing thing to tell a beginner guitarist.

but should a desperate person who finds themselves ostracized from classical training stop making music?

What does this mean? Keep in mind I'm not saying everyone should go to a conservatory and get a music degree. I'm saying go on the internet and learn some things about scales and chord structure. It's more likely to make you better than not.

i can see how someone with music training could be annoyed by someone saying, "eh, you don't NEED training."

Of course you don't NEED training; what offends me is the idea that you'll be better for lack of training, or that the training is going to hold you back.

1. The true purpose of David Fair's notes are to get a rise out of the stern likes of Mr. Goldberg.

2. Fair succeeds beautifully.

It would be interesting to hear how someone like Keith Rowe or Tony Conrad or Holger Czukay would respond to these arguments. Certainly all three know more about traditional Western (and non-Western) harmony and composition than Mr. Goldberg does, and all of them have "unlearned" or outright rejected most of those concepts. Yes, this is in line with Goldberg's statement that one must first learn in order to unlearn (I paraphrase), but I wonder if any of the three I've cited would necessarily agree with that. Say, if they were to give advice to the beginning musician, I wonder what they would suggest.

I'm not even a fan of Half Japanese, nor do I necessarily agree with David Fair, although I do think his advice is, as a starting point, probably more "useful" and inspiring to a would-be novice than telling them how much crap he or she is going to have to learn until he/she is able to play "real music".

I say this as one who was classically trained and spent more time than I care to remember at university studying counterpoint.

Oh, and I (and many others) do have a guitar that is decidedly non-Western -- or at least NOT DIATONIC. It has been refretted in order to play in just intonation.

2. Fair succeeds beautifully.

So basically you think he's just trolling, and you think that's awesome. Also, I'm "stern" for thinking that education is a good thing. Right.

Certainly all three know more about traditional Western (and non-Western) harmony and composition than Mr. Goldberg does

Yes, certainly. Do you think that insulting me makes you sound more reasonable?

Yes, this is in line with Goldberg's statement that one must first learn in order to unlearn

Yes, it is. So those examples support my point of view and not Fair's, regardless of your speculation.

I'm not even a fan of Half Japanese, nor do I necessarily agree with David Fair, although I do think his advice is, as a starting point, probably more "useful" and inspiring to a would-be novice than telling them how much crap he or she is going to have to learn until he/she is able to play "real music".

I think you're not bothering to have a real position and you're arguing with things that no one has said. It's all very teenage-rebellion of you.

Oh, and I (and many others) do have a guitar that is decidedly non-Western -- or at least NOT DIATONIC.

A guitar can't be non-diatonic, and just intonation isn't non-western.

but i know where you're coming from Hurting... it's the time spent learning how put something with something. this sounds good when i do this, so i do it. or "this sounds like rock i like, therefore, i do it like this."

that's what i've been trying to say... you create a personal language of how you do what you do. like i said above... the only chord i know by name is an E chord i was taught at one point even though i've played for years and years. is that annoying at band practice? for a couple people i've played with, it certainly has been. for others, they didn't seem to even know exactly what i was playing.

band member #1: what time is that?
band member #2: i don't know.
band member #1: msp, just keep doing that!

of course, i've never done any truly professional gigs. and i think they were just using me for my hot man mojo. (i kid.)

for me, all creativeness is hardcore personal, and therefore, i have deliberately stood in my own personal space even when it's ran against conventions. i'm not that coordinated. i'm not going to elevate music through some modernist athletic prowess.

i have to embrace my blundering self as where i'm at. i want my own ideal of a perfect song and it has to be outside of what some musicians expect.

too much of musician culture is technically-oriented. we're taught that we can't play until we've mastered some set of skills.

i feel that's wrong. probably as wrong as saying technically-oriented music is automatically wrong.
m.

i've heard something similar from one of the chicago free jazzers but i can't remember who.

"you can't subvert if you don't understand what you're subverting against."

which is a point.

to me it's still a question of what kind of music you're making and what you're doing. are you playing jazz? then you're naturally taking a standard or a standard form or note progression and totally blowing it out the window. you'll want some education.

are you just keeping rhythm so you can chase out the blues? well then, bang away!
m.

-- Abbadabba Berman (Hurtingchie...), November 26th, 2005. (Hurting) (link)

He speaks wisely.

to me it's still a question of what kind of music you're making and what you're doing.

You have a point, but if you have a grounding in theory and the fundamentals of music, you can make music in any idiom - so why restrict yourself?

-- Abbadavid Berman (Hurtingchie...), January 21st, 2006. (Hurting) (link)

Obviously Abbadavid was already all over this shit.

I have a bachelor's in computer science, but if a kid were to right an article about "How to program software", and he just wrote stuff like "Well, all you have to do is just go online and search for 'visual basic', and then just type out these commands, and you make these things on your screen do stuff, and you make files and things...", I can't imagine being offended. Reading stuff like this fascinates me. I'm not going to simmer in the corner going "Oh my god, this person knows nothing about memory allocation and pointers. This is preposterous!"

David Fair is totally being a kid about it, in the point of view he's choosing. I don't think he's dictating anything.. he's just rhetorically speaking about what worked for him, and is just giving his tips on how to approach the guitar from as amateurish a point of view as possible. Thanks to you, Steve, Fair's readership of the article has doubled. It was barely a canonical article ever.

Have some tea or something. Christ.

OTM! And I think that's rad!

That's another controversial musical technique that doesn't require music theory. I want to stimulate more intellecual discourse, only. Honestly!

my moustache is better

No type of music "requires music theory."

I just spent about 2 minutes looking for Chaki pics. Couldn't find any, sorry.

amples

See also Jeff Chang's book in which a section focuses on Grandmaster Flash spending all day every day holed up in his room not only experimenting with scratching and breaks but also taking apart turntables and learning about electronics and torque and things like that.

Yes! I heard him say this in an interview

Hurting, the similarity I got around Fair's article w/regard to the Fripp thing was just the concept of "don't WORRY so much about the playing".

At this point Donut is making more sense to me than anybody else.

i taught myself how to post to the internets. it's incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. the little thing below your chest is the keyboard. the little box at the bottom of the screen is the edit box. you just hit the little things on the keyboard, and then you move the mouse symbol on the screen over the button that says "submit" and then you click on the button on the mouse. that's all there is to it. you see other people posting on the internets too. sometimes you see the same names post again and again and again. you can learn how to post in the same way these other internets people post on the internets. even if you took a few years to get a degree in psychology and social ecology, you could learn to post more interesting things to the internets but that's pretty limiting. if you ignore the theory of interacting with other people on the internets, your options are infinite and you master posting to the internets in one day.

traditionally, internets posting boards have annoying people that just want to argue with you and make you angry. sometimes they do it for fun. sometimes they are very serious, and they are not having fun. but the thing to remember is that you probably never met these angry people, and you still have you real life friends, so it doesn't really matter what they post and what you post to the internets. i like to be nice and post a lot of funny things to the internets. other people sometimes like this and respond to my internets post by posting something in response to my internets. other people get annoyed with my posts to the internets, but they usually don't say anything until they get so angry that they go crazy and post really crazy angry things on the internets. but it doesn't matter because every post on the internets is the right post.

changing your posts on the internets is a ridiculous notion. if you have to change your posts to just a certain page on the internets, that implies that your posts on the other pages were wrong. but that's absurd. how could the posts be wrong? it's your keyboard, your page, and your internets, and you're the one having fun. it's completely up to you to decide how the internets should look like. in fact i don't change the way i post to the internets at all. i post to all pages of the internets the same way. i highly recommend pages without registration for a couple of reasons. first of all they don't make you authenticate so it doesn't matter if you post under your own name or any name you want. as also, if you post a lot of pictures on a page, you can create a little chaos on that page of the internets. but even if you're banned, you can just make up a new name, and go back to posting more stuff on that internets.

the first pages I ever posted on the internets to was ilxor. later i joined other pages as well. but it doesn't matter, as long as you are able to post to the internets, and your keyboard is still working, and your mouse is still working. a few years back someone tried to create pages on the internets that posted to you. i never tried it. i guess it's alright but i'd feel pretty foolish going to the page, because i wouldn't be able to post anything. what would i have to gain? the idea isn't to feel foolish. The idea is to put a post on one internets and an idea from your posts in the other persons on the internets with a tiny mouse click that will rule the world.

famous article by donut. please respond.

Donut, I feel like I'm repeating a previous post, but for the sake of recap:

1) It seems to offer no benefits over a traditional internets education. I guess you can save time (and possibly money) by going this route, but I don't see any other perks.

2) It isolates the poster by denying him the vocabulary and the skillset to effectively collaborate with other posters.

3) It cripples the poster by denying him the insights of all of the posters that came before him.

If I tell a jazz piano player to post an Edim7 arpeggio in eighth note triplets on beats 3 and 4 of the 4th measure, he knows exactly what I mean. When you've learned everything by trial and error, it's more difficult to communicate things like that.

What? Jesus, get the fuck over yourself, man.

i just think you're reading it wrong. the whole screed reads slightly tongue-in-cheek, as much as it is passionate. again, contextually, it was a slightly more radical statement than it is now (perhaps not), but it seems to me you're missing a playfulness that makes this passage delightful. Fair isn't seriously proscribing musical research, but he is, humourously, putting forth the credence of his own, anti-theory approach, its equal validity.

i don't know, i get a thrill from The idea isn't to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world; its inspiring. that isn't to say i'm not equally thrilled by believers in musical theory either. i'm enough of a pluralist to be able to engage each side of the equation, and resolve their intractible differences on my own terms.

DJ, I never said that I thought anyone was out there taking this as gospel. Several people have already brought up the fact that no one is out there taking this as gospel and I have ackowledged that. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to engage with an idea whether or not there are actually people putting it into practice.

I'm going to stop replying to this thread. If anyone wants to keep haranguing me about it, feel free to e-mail.

Robert Fripp knows a lot about scales and chords and shit. Playing the "right note at the right time" and not worrying about "what note you play" are two mutually exclusive ideas.

I WUV OO.
-- Ned Raggett (ne...), May 30th, 2006 2:15 AM. (Ned) (later)

^^^ This thread's tootsie roll center.

-- kaygee

Cornflakes and peanuts in the
Milk chocolate

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places which you wouldn't do if you knew better, and sometimes that's just what you need. Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way. This happened the other day in this session, when we were working on a piece and I had this idea for the two guitars to play a very quick question and answer, threenotes-threenotes, just like that, and Fripp said, 'That won't fit over these chords.' He played it slowly, what that meant, and it made this terrible crashing discord. So I said, 'You play it, I bet it'll fit,' and it did, and it sounded really nice, too. But you see I think if you have a grasp of theory you tend to cut out certain possibilities like that. Because when he explained it to me I could see quite plainly that technically it didn't fit at all. Each note was a discord with the chord that was there, not one note fitted, in the whole six notes almost.

It's true :(

david fair is a talented guitarist. i hope the original article was at least partly tongue-in-cheek. if sincere, it shows a severe lack of understanding about what music theory IS. music theory was created so that when you hear a nifty piece of music, you can say "oh cool, that was a sweet riff, i'd love to play that again exactly as i heard
it." so you write it down in a way you can understand. THATS ALL.
music theory is not some kind of exclusive club, nor is it limiting
in any way. it is just a recording system. people who criticize
music theory as limiting remind me of folkx who tout english instead
of spanish, "why dont you talk good so everyone can understand?" or
it's like criticizing math or something.

music theory can be standard notation, guitar tab, or any other system, as long as you can understand it. they say hendrix had a notation system that was totally incomprehensible to anyone else but himself.

now that i really think about it, i believe this article can't
have been 100 percent sincere. for one thing, in it, david fair
takes a dismissive, casual attitude towards tuning. but 1/2 japanese records are mostly in tune, no more or less than any standard punk/oddball album. that's the disconnect: if you truly followed the philosophy of this article, you'd be producing extremely dissonant, asswards music like AMM. as it stands, 1/2 japanese is quirky but still very conventional in most respects.

Not on the early duo recordings where the guitar is more like Arto Lindsay in DNA.

http://www.myspace.com/stevegoldberg

Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to become a gynaecologist. And this week on 'How to do it' we're going to show you how to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, but first, here's Jackie to tell you all how to rid the world of all known diseases.

Jackie: Hello, Alan.

Alan: Hello, Jackie.

Jackie: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again.

Alan: Thanks, Jackie. Great idea. How to play the flute. (picking up a flute) Well here we are. You blow there and you move your fingers up and down here.

*views myspace page*

The Beatles, The Lucksmiths, The Shins, The Decemberists, The Magnetic Fields, weezer, Elliott Smith, Morrissey, Neutral Milk Hotel, John Vanderslice, Camera Obscura, Belle and Sebastian, The Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel

Wait, you like all this and you're NOT a Half Japanese fan.

oooh snap

Isn't it fair to say that Joni Mitchell would agree with much of David Fair's opinion? Isn't it an established fact that she cannot read music notation and used a great number fairly unique guitar tunings?

While it's true that many musicians (including Mitchell herself) have discussed the difficulty in learning her songs due to their unique structure, that hasn't stopped them from being covered time and again. She also appears to have gained the respect and praise of many other highly rated musicians, not only as a singer and songwriter, but also as a guitar player.

As far as whether or not Mitchell learned from Pete Seeger instructional vids, I think were talking semantics. Having said that, if she taught herself to play guitar from Pete Seeger's instructional books on how to play the banjo, she certainly wasn't learning standard guitar tuning was she. Perhaps that's what gave her the idea that she didn't have to follow the norms.

Do you play guitar? I'll bet there was a moment early on where you were playing a C chord and then went to a G chord and you said "Hey, that sounds pretty good." Well, that's music theory. It's also not music theory, it's just what sounds good. Now, let's say a few weeks later you tried playing the G chord, and then when you went to the C, you held one of the notes from the G chord, the one on the 1st string, 3rd fret. Well that's music theory too, and again, it's also just what sounds good.

But all music theory really is is a system of trying to explain and catalogue what sounds good, and not even so much "good" as more or less consonant/dissonant. It happens to be a really useful for this, especially if you want to write complex music, though you certainly don't have to know any theory to write interesting music.

Say you had a progression with a C major chord in it, and you noticed you could put in an A minor in place of the C major and it "worked." Well, if you knew a little basic music theory, you'd know that A minor is the "relative minor" of C major. As a result, you'd also know that you could put a B minor chord in place of a D major chord for the same effect, or a C# minor chord in place of an E major. In fact you'd know the relative minor of every major chord. And you'd also be aware that you didn't just "invent" the idea of playing A minor instead of C, that in fact it's done all the time in all kinds of music. It's just one more tool at your disposal if you happen to want to write a sonorous chord progression. And if you don't, you don't have to follow that idea. It's not a "rule," just a concept you can use as a tool.

Joni Mitchell is brilliant, but most of what she plays "works" quite well and often even follows very traditional chord patterns. And that's probably because she has a good ear and grew up listening to lots of people who either formally or intuitively knew a thing or two about Western harmony.

Composers like Stravinsky, OTOH, have used music theory to make music that strayed much more from "norms" and was much stranger-sounding and harder to learn than anything Joni Mitchell ever wrote, because ultimately there aren't really any "norms" in music theory. Music theory also allowed them to write out parts way too difficult to learn by ear.

The goal of learning guitar is so that when you hear something in your head you can put it out there for people to hear, and to be able to do it in that split-second between when an idea pops into your head and the part of the song where you want to use it comes up. You can't do that if you don't know what note is going to come out when you finger a certain string at a certain fret, and you can't know THAT unless the answer is the same as it was yesterday. So you can tune it to whatever, but you have to tune it to something.

As for theory, you need to learn the theory appropriate to the music you want to play, which could mean gobs of theory of none at all. If you want to sound like Green Day, you have to learn standard tuning and the most common chords. If you want to play jazz, you have to learn a bit more. If you want to sound like 1/2 Japanese, apparently, you don't have to learn any. Whatever.

I don't think the piece is really about playing the guitar or music theory.

"Then don't play the guitar" would be my snarky answer.

I think the piece is about guitar playing and music theory, though. But I don't think it's really worth talking about this much, despite how much I already talked about it. It seems kind of like one of those "have you ever really looked at your hand, man?" kind of things.

He does speak to a certain approach towards music-making that can be freeing for some people, and valuable even to those who know music theory, e.g. the Eno quote above, where Robert Fripp was not even willing to try something because, according to music theory, it wouldn't work.

But see, I don't know Robert Fripp and I wasn't in the room when that anecdote took place, but no musically-educated person I know would think that way. There is nothing that music theory says "won't work." This misunderstanding is at the heart of a lot of these discussions.

OTM.

I think part of the thesis though is that you don't need to sound like anybody.

The electric guitar has been played by millions of people for more than 50 years. You're going to sound like somebody.

xpost:

I think the Fripp think sounds reasonable.. by "won't work" he meant "I think that'll sound like shit and I don't even want to try it." and Eno said, "Just try it you pretentious fuck." and then Eno said, "See? I was right, ya bastard. Wait until I tell everyone at Guitar Player magazine what an ass you are."

I don't get it. Do you mean you don't need to try to sound like anybody? True, but you're going to anyway, and I'd rather know who I sound like and where he/she took it from there.

So I've lost the point in all of this.

Anyway, I play the guitar - I play what I want to play, and I play whatever sounds good to me. I'm not doing it for anyone else's enjoyment. I never tune to standard tuning. I tune to how the strings sound good together. That may be a tuning, and it may not be - I don't know/care. I sometimes play along with records and I like the way it sounds most of the time. But I don't relative-tune to them - I adjust which frets or strings I use to make the sounds I want. I never play the same thing twice.

Would this be easier or more enjoyable if I "knew" how to play the guitar? Maybe.
But I can continue doing it the way I'm doing it because, as David says, it's my guitar.

File under irony, irreverence.

I don't understand - what distinction are you trying to point out here?

please, please, don't...

I'd rather listen to a 3 year old child experimenting with an electric guitar than listen to a Belle and Sebastian record

-- Chris Bee (noaddres...) (webmail), May 29th, 2006 3:01 PM. (Cee Bee) (link)

I'd say Half Japanese sound more like the former than the latter!

I have a moustache too, suuuckas!

― Steve Goldberg

Note to self: every time I get intent on making a "point" on ILM, I'll return to it less than six months later wondering what I was on about.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Wednesday, 4 October 2006 01:20 (4 years ago)

man i missed this thread. that david fair article is <3 and makes me :)

wisest words spoken

god steve goldberg was just the fucking worst, huh

http://songs.stevegoldbergmusic.com/album/steve-goldberg-and-the-arch-enemies

yes

omg i'm listening to that song, god what a shitty song

ctrl-f my username no results :D

omg i'm listening to that song, god what a shitty song

― in my world of Hmong ppl (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 6:45 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

P.S: Fuck you bitch, go suck Ben Fold's asshole.

― squirlplise

http://songs.stevegoldbergmusic.com/album/steve-goldberg-and-the-arch-enemies

yes

― in my world of Hmong ppl (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 6:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kinda mad at you for linking this because otherwise i never would have heard it

I liked your posts on this thread, Hurting 2.

kinda mad at you for linking this because otherwise i never would have heard it

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:13 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

I liked your posts on this thread, Hurting 2.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 8:16 PM Bookmark

thx -- I mostly just think I got a little too serious and stuck on it, especially since I think the article is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

BTW, sup. Don't think I've seen you post in a while.

thx

thx
― St3ve Go1db3rg, Thursday, December 23, 2010 11:09 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Hurting 2: Hey, hope you're well. That's a good sign if I don't seem to be on ILX too often since I do have a dissertation to get done.:P I still feel like I'm on here more than I should be...