What NOT To Do?

[nickysnd]

But would you agree that some works have more potential value than others? If so, isn't that potential in the piece?

Until I am proved wrong (which I would love to), I remain convinced that a piece of music has only external value, the one given by the listener, and it has no internal value. So, if it has only external subjective value, and no intrinsic objective value, then there is no value inside a piece of music, neither actual nor potential.

But yes, there is no reason to believe that a piece of music will never be liked by someone at some moment. Everything is possible, the future is open. Yet the "potential" you are talking about seem to me equal for every piece of music. For - again: what is that thing inside a piece of music that would make it potentially more likable than another? No such thing. Therefore, each and every piece of music, they are all objectively equal from the artistic value pov.

I know how that sounds, and I'm aware of what that might imply. But I have no reason to think otherwise. The only difference in artistic value between the simple melody that I have written yesterday and Beethoven's Ode to Joy, that difference is outside those two pieces and not inside them - it is the value given by their listeners: my melody has no value, as no one likes it, while that Ode has the external value given by its listeners. No other value difference between them that I can think of.

[zaster]

So, if it has only external subjective value, and no intrinsic objective value, then there is no value inside a piece of music, neither actual nor potential.

Man, this is getting pretty semantic. What the hell has "intrinsic objective value"? Food, oil, and water- not much else. Your sentence also describes a piece of green paper with a president's picture on it. And diamonds. Baseball. In fact, a large part of human culture is related to "meaning-making".

If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around- - I always wonder, how do you determine no one's around? And what about if only a dog is around- doesn't it make a sound then? If I sing a song to my dog and he likes it does my song have value? How about a mother's lullabye to an infant?

[nickysnd]

If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around, does it still make a sound?

I'd say - whenever the air/water vibrates, there is sound. But the artistic value of the sound of that tree is only the one that I would give to it. If I am not there to hear it, then that sound has no artistic value.

Socrates is famous for showing through his pointed questions that people knew less about things than they pretended to. For example, he might ask a respected priest what piety was, and then by his pointed questions show that the priest could not in fact form a coherent definition of piety. Which seems to indicate that the priest doesn••™t in fact have a coherent concept of piety; rather he has an incomplete and contradictory one, which he only pretends is coherent. And I think the same thing can be said about most of our concepts, that they contain contradictions, and are really only rough approximations to reality we have come to have almost haphazardly.

~Anon.

Socrates and Nietzsche are my heroes! I see great benefit in being shown how ignorant I am. It gives me hope.

The one problem I have with notion of objective evaluation being the determining factor of value is that it eliminates the very concept of subjective evaluation. Without subjective evaluation, there would be no objectivity.

The way I understand it, objectivity has nothing to do with the sum of subjectivities. To me, objectivity is a way of thinking that dismisses everything that is subjective. In order to think objectively, I don't need neither my subjectivity, nor do I need others' subjectivities. For example, to say that "three people are more people than two people" is an objective thought. It is not the sum of subjectivities. So objectivity has nothing to do with subjectivity. They are in fact opposite, they never "touch" each other.

There are places on the earth no one has seen (caves, areas of the ocean floor, forests, etc.), but that doesn't mean they do not have value until they can be visually appreciated.

What kind of value are you considering here? I thought we were only talking artistic value. If we mix values, like practical value with artistic value, then we are lost. Let's keep them separately. There is no artistic value in nature. Artistic value refers only to things made by humans, when they are appreciated by humans.

There are likely many great works of music tucked away in a tombs or old chests waiting to be discovered.

What is the reason you are calling them "great" for? How can you assign value judgments to things that, first - you never heard/seen/experienced, and second - you don't even know anything about their very existence? This is my understanding of your above statement: it is more likely that not all the written pieces of music have been performed yet. That is all I can presume. How great those pieces are, that I cannot presume.

Their value or the lack cannot so easily be assigned to human beings who are slow to consciousness.

I beg to differ - people easily assign artistic value to the artistic products that they are experiencing. That is the way it works. There is no other way. But what do you mean by "slow consciousness"?

Seeing and hearing may be associated with believing,

To me, seeing/hearing have absolutely nothing to do with believing. If I see/hear something, then I do have some knowledge about that. Believing starts where seeing/hearing and knowledge stops.

but value (imho) stems from something greater than the sum of all of us.

Again, what kind of value? From my observations, artistic value stems only from one place: the individual who experiences a piece of art. There is no artistic value inside a piece of music, only external artistic value, given by the listener. The "sum of us" can only indicate statistic value, or commercial value. I cannot think of some artistic value amplified-by-the-number-of••“people-that-give-value-to-a-piece-of-music. Artistic value is a personal thing for each of us, you cannot sum us so you can weigh the artistic value of a piece. Artistic value cannot be objective, as it is something derived from personal taste. You cannot point to something inside a piece of art and then to tell me: "See that? That is Artistic Value! There is a whole sum of us that see that value. It is greater than this sum of us. But we do see that value, and we see it in the same way. So if you don't see that value you are either blind, deaf, or of a bad taste!" That would sound sorta fundamentalist, wouldn't it? Of course no one here thinks like that. But that seems to prove that my individualist theory might be healthier than it sounds, for - what's the alternative? Imposing artistic values to each other?

Things that are great are so whether or not we are aware of them or not.

Again, keeping it in the musical domain, I can see only one artistic greatness: the one that I personally am giving to a particular piece of music. A piece of music is great only for one single simple reason: that I say so. Period. If I say it stinks, then it stinks, no matter how many the sum of you are. The sum of *you* have absolutely no authority neither on talking about art's greatness, nor on dictating me what is artistically great and what is not. Music has only the value that I am giving to it, and no other. Objectivity is meaningless when it comes to music. Subjectivity and personal taste is everything. That is what I have observed, or better said - that is what I understand from what I have observed.

As Socrates would say, I am nothing but an ignorant, but I know it! I'm perfectly OK with being just another ignorant, for being bamboozled would be infinitely worse.

Edit -
One of my favorite quotes:
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

[nickysnd]

Man, this is getting pretty semantic. What the hell has "intrinsic objective value"? Food, oil, and water- not much else. Your sentence also describes a piece of green paper with a president's picture on it. And diamonds. Baseball. In fact, a large part of human culture is related to "meaning-making".

I agree with you, but my problem was not with assigning cultural/social meanings in general, but with assigning the same meaning/value to a piece of music. Practical values, surviving values - all these are not at stake here. I was addressing only the artistic value of a piece of music, trying to determine what that artistic value might be, and where it might be. And I reached the conclusion that the artistic value is not inside the piece of music, but outside it. True, that is so about all cultural things. But, in observing a piece music, any of them, I have also observe that external cultural values (like the value of money) do not apply. The only value that applies to a piece of music is my own personal artistic taste. When I like a piece of music, I don't like it because it is part of my culture. I like for example a piece by Ravi Shankar, which, as a musician, he is part of culture that is closed to me. I like some Gypsy folk songs, some Russian folk songs, some Jewish klezmer music, Latino music, which are all cultures that are closed to me. Yet those pieces themselves, they are opening up to me. A piece of music is a personal thing, and not a cultural thing in the social sense. Each and every piece of music have just one single artistic value: the value that I grant them. I can see no other artistic value that they might have. Of course, I have noticed that some pieces of music can have social functions, like ritual functions, mating functions, anthems, etc., and those are cultural things in social sense. But the only artistic value that I can see in a piece of music is only one: the value that I am giving to it. I don't care of the many ways other people may use and abuse it socially and culturally. I am listening to that piece of music and, suddenly, its value, its only value, is revealing to me. And it is not inside the piece - it is the value that I, as an individual, am giving to it.

How about a mother's lullabye to an infant?

That is a perfect example. If the infant hates the song and starts to cry, then that song has a negative value. If the infant loves it and stays awake till the mother stops, then the song has positive value to him. If the song is neutral/boring to him, then possibly he will probably start to play with his fingers, or, if he is sleepy, he will probably get asleep. There is no sleeping value inside the song, in the melody, in that piece of music as music. Any value of that song is related to the value that the infant puts into it. No other value.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

So nickysnd,

Let's assume you LOVE a particular musical work. It has great value to you and a few others. After 150 years, we're all dead.

Does the piece loose its value since we're all dead? Or does it retain its value since we loved until our deaths?

Put another way, is the value you are discussing relate ONLY to living people appreciating it?

Choose wisely.

[nickysnd]

What artistic value has a piece of music from the Ancient Egypt?

As I said, the only artistic value that a piece of music has is the value that I am giving to it. Of course, you will value that piece differently, with no relation to the way I was valuing it. My point is that artistic value cannot be cultural, social, objective, general, and universal. It can only be individual, and it relates to only one individual: me. To each and every person that calls themselves *me*. That is to say, to each and all of them - separately and independently.

From that, comes as a necessity that when I'm dead, all the musical pieces that I was giving artistic value, they will all lose that value. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", remember? No beholder - no beauty. Those pieces will retain nothing from the artistic value that I have put into them. That artistic value is an abstraction that exists only for me, it is purely subjective, it has no objective existence. That's my whole point.

Choose? I see nothing to choose. Wisely? My conclusions did come out somehow "automatically" from my premises, so I am not sure how wise (whatever might it mean) I can be. Living people? The artistic value that I am talking about doesn't have anything to do with any other person, dead or alive. It only exists for one living person, me, and of course will cease to exist the very moment I'm dead. Again - it is a personal abstraction what I am discussing here, it has absolutely no relation with other people. My point was/is - that personal abstraction is the only thing that I can safely call artistic value. There is no other thing that would give me reasons to call it artistic value. None.

But enough with what I think. What would YOU call artistic value in a piece of music?

[blue]

No, I'm not into defamation, but I do have an even stronger appreciation for the thought that goes into people's posts on U-nation.

I don't know. Is it defamation if you're merely quoting someone? At least tell me this: was this little nugget posted on the net somewhere, or was it part of some private correspondence?

Legally speaking, no. Truth is always a defense to libel and slander.

Frodo should be commended for keeping this discussion above board. To be sure, it's not who said it, but what was said that has generated this discussion.

Forgot about this thread. I know it's a little late in the game now, but for the record my question to Frodo regarding defamation was rhetorical.

As for Frodo's above-board behavior, well that's nothing new. I didn't really expect him to reveal the author. I was really just poking around to see what would happen. I mean, the author did post this on the internet after all.

Carry on. Nice discussion, by the way.

[kelldammit]

right. so if a tree falls in the woods, and noone's there to hear it, but noone's there to make SURE there's noone there to hear it, then someone's not getting paid?

or did i miss something?

oh, and as regards the initial quote that brought this thread on, i think i understood exactly what the author was trying to express:
1. choose a piece of music.
2. learn to play it on your instrument (say, guitar)...we're not just talking about melody here...since you're singlehandedly not going to be able to perform all of the parts the orchestra did, you must choose and incorporate the parts you think are most important to recognizably/accurately represent the piece in question.
3. record what you've just learned.
4. take that recording as a starting point, and re-orchestrate it as if it were something you'd written, never having heard the original. i'd think it'd give you a pretty good understanding of what makes the piece tick...and you should be able to tell how well you chose the "important" parts when comparing your piece to the end result. you also get to be creative, have fun and get your hands dirty with the process, without the pressure of writing a piece from the ground up, which could be awfully intimidating for someone who's never done it before...
i could see it as good advice, if i read it correctly.
imma try it with "louie louie" this week.

kell

[Frodo]

oh, and as regards the initial quote that brought this thread on, i think i understood exactly what the author was trying to express:
1. choose a piece of music.
2. learn to play it on your instrument (say, guitar)...we're not just talking about melody here...since you're singlehandedly not going to be able to perform all of the parts the orchestra did, you must choose and incorporate the parts you think are most important to recognizably/accurately represent the piece in question.
3. record what you've just learned.
4. take that recording as a starting point, and re-orchestrate it as if it were something you'd written, never having heard the original. i'd think it'd give you a pretty good understanding of what makes the piece tick...and you should be able to tell how well you chose the "important" parts when comparing your piece to the end result. you also get to be creative, have fun and get your hands dirty with the process, without the pressure of writing a piece from the ground up, which could be awfully intimidating for someone who's never done it before...
i could see it as good advice, if i read it correctly.
imma try it with "louie louie" this week.

kell

Your post again sort of illustrates my point: your explanation is so much clearer as a how-to than the original person offered as instruction for a beginner.

It's so easy to forget what it's like to be a beginner that some people tend to offer instructions that are so oversimplified. What struck me was that the beginner ultimately had more questions as a result of the original instructions than were answered.

Perhaps my posts are way too wordy-- (don't laugh!). But I'm always concerned about the clarity of my posts.

If there is a language barrier, I'll write out full instructions in English and take the time to translate the details into another language (those which I've studied, anyway). Otherwise, if my lack of fluency in a language will do more harm than good, I'll opt to keep quiet and let someone else address the issue.

As I re-read the original set of instructions, it still baffles me how confusing it is. A person wants to learn where to begin orchestrating, but the instruction was to try to make arrangements.

I had one teacher in grade school who'd take a similar approach to teaching. There was nothing more infuriating than mustering the courage to even ask a legit question and getting a dead end answer-- specifically: how the word 'pneumonia' is spelled. The response from this teacher was to look it up in the dictionary. Duh-- it's not listed under the letter 'N', and when you don't know that there is a silent 'P' involved you're worse off than when you started. Had I known how to spell it I wouldn't have needed a dictionary.

Likewise, had the person known *how* to make an orchestration or an arrangement, they would have had no need to ask-- where the answer involves knowing what you don't know before you can even begin.

I just feel that some people's approach to helping others comes across as irresponsible or in some ways inconsiderate. Blaming someone for what they don't know instead of honoring their curiosity is anything but productive.

[Phil O]

Agreed Mr. Frodo. I've embarrassed myself by telling someone, "just go to X in the mini-menu and blah, blah" only to have them respond with, "What's a mini-menu?" Often times I assume the person asking a question knows more than they do...or I don't want them to feel like I'm talking down to them so I don't elaborate enough. Sometimes it's a fine line.

Phil

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I just feel that some people's approach to helping others comes across as irresponsible or in some ways inconsiderate. Blaming someone for what they don't know instead of honoring their curiosity is anything but productive.

Welcome to the world of academia. Precisely why I left!

MM

[Frodo]

Welcome to the world of academia. Precisely why I left!

MM

Ugh-- don't even get me started on this one. I've got stories dating back more than 20 years that wreak of hopelessness. Along comes the internet and help sites are loaded with posts telling other people how dumb they are for not knowing or even how wrong it was for them to even inquire. It would have taken less energy to just answer the question politely and move on-- or simply to not answer the question and then move on anyway.

It just deepens my appreciation for this place even more.

Agreed Mr. Frodo. I've embarrassed myself by telling someone, "just go to X in the mini-menu and blah, blah" only to have them respond with, "What's a mini-menu?" Often times I assume the person asking a question knows more than they do...or I don't want them to feel like I'm talking down to them so I don't elaborate enough. Sometimes it's a fine line.

Phil

You know, Mr. Phil, that seems a LOT more innocent-- especially when the person asking doesn't always mention their level of experience right off the bat. There's really a nice "vesitbule" (if you will) of protection until you as the helper can have a better understanding of whether or not the person asking might have a pirated copy of the software and is just waiting for someone to hold their hand and walk them through the process with every term, every prompt, every icon, etc.

Sometimes, LOL, a poor newb will ask a question and get an answer like this:

You can accomplish what you want in both the TO and SE, but if you really want to narrow in on details try using the GE or QS. When you're done, try using MW comp on the master, do a LAME bounce and then export your MIDI data as SMF unless you'd prefer to use OMF.



If the question is really about, say, exporting soundbites, then the topic ought not dwell too long on where the most basic prompts and features are located. To me, that's quite a giveaway that either the person has not done a modicum of homework or 'worse'.

I'm going to regret saying this-- but-- this is where those help pop-ups should be encouraged with new users even for as much as veteran users endeavor to deactivate this feature. A term like "mini menu" appears often enough in the manual that anyone who's even glanced at the manual for a few minutes might be encouraged to revisit those pages without having to be reminded to do so. Heck-- just letting the cursor rest almost anywhere on the screen for long enough will reveal tons of info. Saves a lot of embarrassment on all sides.

But, from another point of view-- working with any new app can make for very lonely work. It's so much more comforting to go online and interact with real people in a time of need. It's easy to forget that this part of it, isolated from all else, is something we all have grown to appreciate to one degree or another. Maybe I just have a weakness for some aspects of the human condition. That's no excuse for not doing one's homework, but just knowing you are not alone with a paticular hurdle and establishing an association within a community of like-minded users is great therapy.

[nickysnd]

I just feel that some people's approach to helping others comes across as irresponsible or in some ways inconsiderate. Blaming someone for what they don't know instead of honoring their curiosity is anything but productive.

Welcome to the world of academia. Precisely why I left!

MM

Questioning and answering is common practice in everyday life, and trying to be effective at that is just a normal (not exclusively academic) attitude. Actually, I don't understand what academia has to do at all with this topic. In your experience with academia, were there some people trying to help in irresponsible and inconsiderate ways? Or were they blaming others for what they don't know? Or were they not honoring the curiosity of others? If that is what happened, then I fully understand why you left. But, IMO, trying to ask the right questions and trying to give the right answers is something related to everyday life, not to academia.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I just feel that some people's approach to helping others comes across as irresponsible or in some ways inconsiderate. Blaming someone for what they don't know instead of honoring their curiosity is anything but productive.

Welcome to the world of academia. Precisely why I left!

MM

Questioning and answering is common practice in everyday life, and trying to be effective at that is just a normal (not exclusively academic) attitude. Actually, I don't understand what academia has to do at all with this topic. In your experience with academia, were there some people trying to help in irresponsible and inconsiderate ways? Or were they blaming others for what they don't know? Or were they not honoring the curiosity of others? If that is what happened, then I fully understand why you left. But, IMO, trying to answer the right questions and trying to give the right answers is something related to everyday life, not to academia.

Too deep for me.

[Frodo]

And therin rests the problem. Where so-called academia ought to equip a person for dealing with certain practicalities of every day life (as such issues pertain to the skill or vocation in question), I don't find the two all that exclusive of one another. Bad info by any other name is bad info.