Most people don’t realize simplification and economy of stroke is orders of magnitude more difficult, and takes a true lifetime to master. Capturing a complex subject in 3 perfect strokes which uses visual language to convey what it is.
Nothing wrong with either, but the amount of sackriding for the former just gets tiring.
What we're seeing is a sea of people using Expressionism as a veil for lack of training.
A virtuoso at the piano may experiment with discordant notes. A novice banging on the piano keys and calling it music is not the same thing.
That's why I always chuckle at people scowling at learning music theory because of "originality, like, if you don't you'd just reinvent most of it on your own...
They always play a variation of something you can trace back to one of their favourite songs. A blind copy. No doubt by someone who actually does understand the theory.
So, "theory holds you back" should be followed by "from copying your heroes and knowing why they make the musical choices they make."
You might be right about a certain western bias toward [western] theory, but it has no bearing on theory in general. Especially how it applies to each culture's distinct music. The same bias appears in the other direction, because Indians regularly say they think Western music sounds out of tune and lacking expression. I don't think anybody brought that up as an issue though.
The difference, pertaining to this thread, is understanding music, versus merely aping riffs you learned from your heroes, with no regard to the underlying music and how things that fit, fit.
For the record I am very much in favor of musicians learning music theory (of whatever sort). However it seems odd to say that a musician can not learn music without first learning theory. Did we have music theory before musicians?
Perhaps you can make the case that given the systemic biases in our modern taste for music it is _hard_ to break away from modern music theory, but that doesn't make it impossible.
See the extended technique of Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bob Ostertag, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, etc as an example.
Except nobody said that ? Just that by learning theory you will learn faster than reverse engineering the songs you like into bases components (conciously or not). And, well, nothing stops anyone from learning more than just western music theory
> Did we have music theory before musicians?
We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics...
Ksaj claimed that a musician who learned to make music without music theory will inevitably end up producing music which is actually derivative of the music of someone else who did study theory. I reject that claim.
> We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics...
I do not think you can reasonably compare something as subject as music with mechanical engineering. Yes you can make music which has as much structure as the Golden Gate bridge but no that is not the only way to make music.
Simply copying someone and saying theory isn't needed is akin to using Dall-E to generate a drawing and calling yourself an artist for having done so.
And that's the distinction being made here.
That also drives me crazy is when its super obvious artists on instagram (where btw it's quite difficult to find very good inspiration) all have a very dark moody or "weird" style when its obvious it's covering up lack of drawing skills. You cant mess up a nose when you draw a 3 foot long nose and call it your style!