Re: improving/the sky is crying

[Mike Curtis <wd6ehr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

<"No rules" in music??>

I certainly hope music never comes to anarchy, where there are "no rules". 
We used to have "avant garde" jazz, where there were supposedly no rules,
and it stank on ice.  We have rules of harmony, disharmony, rhythm, metre,
logical note sequence, and MANY other things.

However, a good musician is not inflexibly BOUND to rules du jour.  (S)he
will stretch the "acceptable" bounds, try new ideas - even bad ones - and
see what works.  And music aficionados everywhere applaud this.  We like
Little Walter - because he STRETCHED the (then) accepted bounds of harmonica
and did things one was not _supposed_ to do on harp.  Coltrane STRETCHED the
(then) accepted rules of jazz and sax.  Hendrix did it with rock and guitar. 
and even the Beatles stretched the accepted bounds of music by actually
writing realistic songs about love (I want to hold your hand) instead of the
pablum-mush that was popular pre-Beatles.

And ALL of these "broke rules" in the process.  But did they operate totally
FREE of rules?  Of course not.  In fact, in certain respects, all of these
were heavily bound by rules they accepted as "part of music".

The discussion about language reminds me of a couple of 2 or 3 year old
twins.  They had developed their own language and communicated fluently (for
3 year olds!) between each other - but no one else could decipher their
"dialect".  Turns out their granparents spoke a Germanic language, and their
parents spoke only English.  The wunderkinder had constructed their own
language from these two.

As musicians, we usually want to innovate rather than ape, although I'm sure
there are those on the list whose sole goal in harmonica life is to copy
<fill-in-favourite-artist> note for note, solo for solo, and perspiration
bead for perspiration bead.  This does not apply to these.

If we can combine other "musical languages" into our own style, we're
successful in this.  If we can create from scratch our own music, ditto.

What I've seen is that innovators usually do a combination of these, taking
a little from here, a little from there, and a lot from inside.  Sometimes
more of one and less of the other.  But they do have rules.  They may not be
the same rules we've been accustomed to, but they're rules nonetheless.

I'm reminded of the high school prom "Band" scene from Back To The Future,
when Michael J Fox sat in with the band and played some metal-style guitar
to a (not yet written) Chuck Berry tune.  It would have been really cool
today, but back in the 50's, I think the movies portrayal of the teenagers
reaction was right on the money.  He "broke the rules" in an unacceptable
manner.  In fact, he probably would have gottem himself beaten up afterward
for "being wierd".  Today, those rules have changed - but they're still
rules.  As radical as many musicians feel they are today, there are still
plenty of things that are unacceptable.  If you doubt me, try playing a
Mexican polka at a blues gig :-)

Sometimes we like to think of ourselves in a grandiose way as living without
rules, but it simply isn't so.  Even nonconformists have to conform to the
standard of nonconformism :-)

Who's right?  Who's wrong?  Who cares....


 -- mike