Comment by ciconia

16 hours ago

A while ago I took under my wing so to speak the neighbor's kid who plays the clarinet at the local music school, but apparently has listened to very little music (at music school he only gets instrument lessons and some music theory.) I had him listen to a wide range of classical music, just to give him a taste, and see what interests him. I told him: a musician who doesn't listen to music is like a writer who doesn't read books. It's not only the craft, it's also the culture that those works embody, and the feeling of belonging to a tradition.

I recommend the thought-provoking short story, "Unaccompanied Sonata" by Orson Scott Card. It's a story about music craft but it's also a brilliant example of story-telling.

Music and writing will change. The markets for both certainly have changed. It seems that music has proven to be more durable.

Thanks, I was going to make that analogy. Somehow, you can always tell when a compositor (or a band of them) hasn't explored music enough to develop their taste; and no, I don't mean that they should make ridiculous "music" like Jacob Collier's, but it does show in other ways, like a childish focus on virtuosity and improvisation.

Very similar to those "I'm making my own language with blackjack and hookers" announcements where it's obvious that the author has only known the Algol family (Python, JS, C/C++/C#/Java and maybe a bit of ML flavour through Rust or TS) without exploring the other ways of thinking (https://madhadron.com/programming/seven_ur_languages.html).