Re: Spectrum of Musicianship
Posted: 29 Jul 2023
Retired and never made a penny out of music. Never received any training either. I play the guitar and often compose on keyboard which I cannot really play but I find easier to use to "see" chorrds.
I first wrote music to express my anxiety as a teenager (50 years ago) and continue to express my feelings about the problems I see around me using composition and performance. I have played in front of many including performing my own songs which have proven popular. That means I am closer to a performing poet than a musician. I'm not interested in musicianship and music is simplhy my medium, not my purpose.
I bought Reason because I was astonished that a keyboard attached to a PC could act like a synthesiser for a price I could live with. At the time I had struggled with other DAWs, I was always asking questions that no-one else seemed to be asking. Reason's cables instantly made sense to me and I was hooked. I still am; Reason works the way i think.
My preferences are for ballads / pop / rock and blues in the form of protest and explanation of the world around. As I'm more interested in evolving harmony and discord (rather than evolving sound) then sequences of chords are the core of my music, rather than forms of automation driving filters and other sound modifier techniques. The sound needs to be acceptable but is much less significant than the harmony and harmonic sequence. Also using an automatic system to produce ideas is the exact opposite of trying to transfer what has appeared in my head to a system which can introduce it to the world. I don't need new ideas I need help to get the inew deas I have into the DAW. This means note by note composition lies at the heart of what I do. Its painful to do but I am not a professional so I only have a deadline when I have promised a performance. We're back to sequencer advances I guess.
For the future I would like to co-operate with others in music performance again as I've had much band related disappointment over the years. The people I know loose interest in getting good at what they do and that is not me. Oh well, it's just Reason instruments, my guitars and me for the near future.
I first wrote music to express my anxiety as a teenager (50 years ago) and continue to express my feelings about the problems I see around me using composition and performance. I have played in front of many including performing my own songs which have proven popular. That means I am closer to a performing poet than a musician. I'm not interested in musicianship and music is simplhy my medium, not my purpose.
I bought Reason because I was astonished that a keyboard attached to a PC could act like a synthesiser for a price I could live with. At the time I had struggled with other DAWs, I was always asking questions that no-one else seemed to be asking. Reason's cables instantly made sense to me and I was hooked. I still am; Reason works the way i think.
My preferences are for ballads / pop / rock and blues in the form of protest and explanation of the world around. As I'm more interested in evolving harmony and discord (rather than evolving sound) then sequences of chords are the core of my music, rather than forms of automation driving filters and other sound modifier techniques. The sound needs to be acceptable but is much less significant than the harmony and harmonic sequence. Also using an automatic system to produce ideas is the exact opposite of trying to transfer what has appeared in my head to a system which can introduce it to the world. I don't need new ideas I need help to get the inew deas I have into the DAW. This means note by note composition lies at the heart of what I do. Its painful to do but I am not a professional so I only have a deadline when I have promised a performance. We're back to sequencer advances I guess.
For the future I would like to co-operate with others in music performance again as I've had much band related disappointment over the years. The people I know loose interest in getting good at what they do and that is not me. Oh well, it's just Reason instruments, my guitars and me for the near future.
