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Comment by jimt1234 | Hacker News Reader

Back in college I took "History of jazz music". I hated it. Nothing against jazz music; it's great. And the history is fascinating. But I hated dissecting all the songs, over and over, trying to understand them and what makes them so good.

I just want to listen to the music and feel it; I don't want to understand it. And that's what makes it so great.

"If you can feel what I'm feeling then it's a musical masterpiece." [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpsvBvwRuf0

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Oh yeah, I have to give props to Professor Cecil Lytle, without a doubt, the nicest prof I ever met at UCSD. I asked to meet with him because I was struggling with the class. We sat and talked in his office for 3 hours. He asked me all about my family, told me about his, and even played stuff for me on his piano. It was surreal how nice and sincere he was. Truly a great human.

https://music-cms.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/emeritus_faculty/c...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbEje902h-Q

i'd say i'm quite the opposite!

i can find myself listening to a part of song or a tone over and over again until i can tell what's going on and reproduce it

i'll go as far as downloading original stems on pirate sites just so i could hear each track isolated

this is a bit like when i was a kid i used to play with Dev Tools in the browser

>downloading original stems

I had no idea this was a thing! Can you find most music like this or is it a select few?

personally, i can find stems of most of the songs i'm looking for

most of the time though, you won't be able to obtain them legally

the reason i need them is so i can use a certain sound as reference to recreate it on a synthesiser

that's an unusual way to spend your time i guess...

you can just watch Rick Beato's series "What Makes This Song Great" on YouTube where he explains each part for you

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW0NGgv1qnfzb1klL6Vw9...

fun fact: once you hear all the hidden sounds in a song you can't unhear them

It's great because you don't want to understand it? That's echoing the same argument that people have against studying science--nature is beautiful, and somehow understanding nature makes it less so.

To be honest I don't think you'll get as much out of theory if you don't personally write songs. Despite what so many people say about music theory (they say "it explains music, it's not a set of rules to follow"), music theory is a fantastic tool to help write songs, kind of like how perspective is a fantastic tool for drawing pictures. Not a tool anyone is forcing you to use, but a tool nonetheless.

I'm no expert, but I've dissected a few songs. There are some songs that you might think, "Oh, damn, that's cool!" So you transcribe it or get a transcription or even just a chord chart, try to figure out what you liked about it or explain what you heard. And then, down the line, when you're writing a song, you might try to use one of these devices you found in a song you analyzed. At some point, the things that you hear in your favorite songs become a part of your repertoire for making your own songs, something you can build upon, and analysis is not strictly necessary but it sure as hell facilitates things.

i've studied piano for 5 years and i didn’t write songs

but i think understanding how the song is made will makes you appreciate the song on a much much deeper level than just hearing and forgetting it

dissecting the songs like Rick Beato does, shows you how the work is made down to every note

Rick feeds my curiosity and explains how things are done in a way even a baby can understand

Try writing a song!

i'm trying almost every day for 3 years now

https://imgur.com/a/MMLUjv1

Art is so much better when you understand it.

I don’t have much music knowledge, but I’d imagine the same is true for music as well.

What I do suspect will happen is that a lot of music you currently enjoy, because it’s played in our environments all the time, or is popular, will start sounding terrible once you start realizing how uninteresting and/or derivative many of the popular songs are.

yeah, but sometimes the effect is completely opposite

for me it was these pop songs you hear on the radio

i used to hate them universally, but once i've started listening more to the tone/melody rather that just the song i found myself hooked

all these great pop songs, and i mean all of them are made by a group of people around the Swedish producer Max Martin

Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, the list goes on and nobody even knows the man behind the show (which i find quite fascinating)

Rick Beato has a video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBDJDZAo41c

As Richard Feynman says, "Knowing how something works only adds to its beauty, doesn't take it away".

Completely disagree with you on this.

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