Well, you are not alone. I’ve read that before. I like what annabloom said about it - harmony is relative. For me the “nice” harmonies are all well and good, but, to quote a Roxy Music song “they don’t tell me anything new”.

Definitely not a genius, not even a musician, just a digital dilettante and aural explorer.

I met this guy that gets paid the big bucks by software companies and many major label artists for creating sounds. When I met him he was way into modular synthesis, creating ever-evolving literal patches (The old school way) I asked him if he ever just plays music and he quickly replied “What…you don’t think this is music?” lol
I paid him to restore a fender rhodes for me and when I went to pick it up he was showing me his work, but what he really showed me was that he had some serious “Chops” and a deep knowledge of music theory. The man had soul! I would have never known because he was so wrapped up in the sound discovery in modular synthesis. So, I can definitely see the point of view of “they don’t tell me anything new”. He called it “Pedestrian”

For me, I like to explore sound design as well, but almost all the time it’s more about going back to something familiar. It could be blues, rock, soul, funk, classical, jazz, world…whatever. There’s nothing really new there, nothing that hasn’t been done before, heard before, tried before. Even on an emotional level, it’s all familiar. But creating it is no different than putting on an old record….you play it cuz you want to, that’s all. Almost every indian restaurant I’ve ever gone to has been almost exactly the same and equally delicious…same time, there’s one or two on a whole other level…lol.

That clarifies everything.

So I will go for “genius” :-)

Yeah don’t get me wrong. I like and listen to more “pedestrian” music (well, not too pedestrian) as well as the ‘avant garde’. I think the key exposition in my reply was I’m not a musician. I mean, Grandma Moses might have painted like Rembrandt if she could. But I like it that way. I listen to and enjoy great mixes by many excellent musicians here (yourself for instance) and I think ‘wow that’s really good, very impressive, I like it a lot’. But I never think ‘I wish I could do that’.

Now if you’ll pardon me I’m going to go find one of your jazz samples, hopefully a sax, speed it up a lot and distort it and see how it sounds in something I’m working on with myfreemickey’s latest offering. Because I can. And because it brings me joy.

I will upload the sax later today - currently at work and no option to do so.

I completely got your point - i was just curious about it all - and all the replies make absolutely sense to me.

And I feel motivated to probably leave “mainstream” out of my mind when starting remixing the next one.
I really am impressed of everything here - and I just was very curious about your background. And hey: You are a musician! ;-)

Actually I was replying to/referring to Jeris/Jeris’ sax. But any sample uploads you can offer are always appreciated. It’s the diversity and willingness to share that make this a great site.

lol, yeah you just reminded me of my friend so I thought I would share the story.

I have another story for you, a few days ago I was at a conference and I went to lunch with this guy during the break. He asked me if I could ask any question about music what would it be. I asked whether music was an actual language or not. He proceeded to call one of his friends who happened to be one of the Marsalis brothers. The guy (I think it was Branford) said “Yeah, its a language…if I were to play something like this (He played this quick lick, also means he answered the phone with sax in hand) any jazz musician would understand what I just said…but if I then played something like this (Played another quick lick) the untrained musician would think it sounds pretty much the same, but the jazz musician would think …that makes no sense”

During that, I thought to myself, I totally hear a difference, and I might have even thought man, I need to become a “real” jazz musician and actually study this stuff instead of just picking up random stuff. But, I think if I really wanted to I would have done that by now. BTW, I think he also just described that music is more tradition. I don’t think that proves its a language. What I want to know is if a software program or intelligent life somewhere would recognize it as language. We can already determine if text is a language, but I’m not sure yet about musical notation.

Interesting story and food for thought. I once watched a documentary on Cecil Taylor, one of my favorite jazz musicians, who said he practiced eight hours a day, every day (I only mention that because to me that means he knows what he’s doing). He’s one of the most ‘out there’ cats out there. He also said (paraphrasing) ‘hey, there’s eighty eight keys there, do whatever you want with them’. And he does. They interviewed some more well known jazz musicians. One of them was Branford Marsalis who said, “man, that’s not even music, never mind jazz”. Yeah, them Marsalis boys are very tradition minded.

Is music a language? I think in some respects it is. Or at least it has a language. I mean yeah, notation can be detected by artificial intelligence but really, for me anyway, it’s an expression of ideas and emotions that transcends language and I don’t think they’ll ever make a program that can detect or replicate that.

Cool, yeah there’s algorithms that basically look at how many times characters repeat with a certain amount of text. Apparently, it’s close enough no matter what language that if you try to fake creating a language the software can’t be fooled. What’s really interesting is that DNA sequencing has been shown to be a language. Even more interesting, they’ve found that in string theory equations there’s an embedded coding language. Even a specific type of code; error correction code.

I’ve also seen demonstrations of software that can emulate certain composers. That was like a decade ago, I think in 100 years computers will seem every bit as creative and expressive as humans…dare I say, “soulful” :)

I think you listened to too much Ornette Coleman in your younger daze

Oddly enough I was not a huge Ornette Coleman fan. There was however, when I was young, an overnight ‘free jazz’ radio show called Old And New Dreams (an Ornette Coleman title) on public radio out of Detroit that I regularly fell asleep to. So all that sound was permeating my brain overnight and I’m sure it’s a major influence in my mixes today. And I’m so grateful there was a time when radio could do that and that I was there for it.

well said.