Saul's Music Space

[karlhenning]

I find OFFENSIVE that you equate grammar and spelling with real human inspiration, writing is in one's blood or it's not! 

Poor, Teresa. The world must be full of insult for you.

[Florestan]

A writer is a writer, it comes from flashes of inspiration. 

Nonsense. It comes from genius / talent and hard, even agonizing work over the blank paper. 

Spelling and grammar are skills that a very small percentage of the population is good at

Spelling and grammar are not skills, but rules. They are taught in the elementary school and everyone with a modicum of intelligence can master them. I grant you though that an etymological ortography such as the English one is more difficult than a phonetic one (as my own, Romanian) but a college-level educated person should have no hard times with it. FWIW, I never use the spell-checker yet I am confident that my writing is correct in 99% of my posts.

, thus tools were developed for EVERYONE to use, including writers.

I think very poorly of a writer who depends on tools for writing correctly.

It is more important that a writer write!

I don't remember right now what writer (one of the greats) said that the most important tool for a writer was not the pencil but the eraser.

Not true! Writing is about content NOT window dressing, would you deny the contributions of proof-readers and editors?

Not at all, but their job is to detect the occasional errors scattered here and there, not to re-write a whole manuscript according to the spelling and grammar rules.

[Teresa]

The way you read gives no one any confidence in how you write, Teresa. (Interesting that you observe no distinction between poor spelling and abysmal spelling, BTW.) Giving a simile for Saul's notational shortcomings, is not changing the topic from Saul's notational shortcomings. The topic is still those notational shortcomings.

My objection was your simile for Saul's notational shortcomings was at the expense of writers with poor spelling and grammar stills.  As long as the inspirational content is there and the writing is compelling, spelling and grammar can be fixed.   

[Florestan]

NEWS FLASH
"I AM A WRITER" Besides hundreds of published articles, tons of poetry, I also have an eBook. 

Shouldn't you have said: together with my spell-checkers and editors I have co-authored hundreds of articles, tons of poetry and an e-book?

[Teresa]

. . . a freighter full laden with hyperbole?

Karl you are very mean, why? 

[karlhenning]

Not at all, but their job is to detect the occasional errors scattered here and there, not to re-write a whole manuscript according to the spelling and grammar rules.

Well, now Teresa is going to find it HIGHLY INSULTING that you are reducing the workload of the world's proofreaders and editors! ; )

[(poco) Sforzando]

NEWS FLASH
"I AM A WRITER." Besides hundreds of published articles and tons of poetry, I also have an eBook.  You cannot take that away from me! Why are you so mean spirited in everything you post?  Just curious.

I find OFFENSIVE that you equate grammar and spelling with real human inspiration. Writing is in one's blood or it's not! 

Please point us to any of these "hundreds" of published articles. Half a ton of the poetry will suffice.

(Edited the quotation for errors in punctuation.)

[Saul]

No, Saul, this attitude will never get you anywhere, the fact that I thought you achieved a modest success with your G minor piece notwithstanding. You may say you listen to criticism, but in reality you absorb none of it and you only believe the compliments. You say some pianist six years ago told you to study with a teacher; you obviously never followed through. Since you dismiss all comments intended to help you see your weak points, and you only believe the fawning praise, I don't see how you will ever develop as a composer.

Sorry, can't waste my time on this further.

Why did you have to go back to this, I have taken your critic about the notation, and even thanked you. But I guess you're too afraid to stay with the compliment that's why you had to say something negative just so people wouldn't think that you really liked my music that much?


The way you did this was incongruous.

[Teresa]

Nonsense. It comes from genius / talent and hard, even agonizing work over the blank paper. 

I know full well, just where do you think that comes  from: flashes of inspiration.  Before you can use your genius, talent and hard work you must first get inspiration.

Do you keep paper by your bed in case you wake-up with a river of ideas in your head?  You know you have to write them down as fast as possible or they are lost forever.   Have you ever went through a long dry spell where inspiration DOES NOT come.  All the talent and genius will not help without inspiration. 

Spelling and grammar are not skills, but rules. 

I agree they are a set of rules, however in English it does take a certain skill to master them.  I will give you an example in Grammar I made a "C", however in Composition I made an "A", was one of seven students chosen for the Journalism class and my writing won awards.  Being poor at both spelling and grammar, means I had to work harder!!!

FWIW, I never use the spell-checker yet I am confident that my writing is correct in 99% of my posts.
I think very poorly of a writer who depends on tools for writing correctly.

Good for you, not everyone is so talented at spelling, with spell check you would NEVER know which writers are poor spellers?  So your statement cannot be supported. 

I don't remember right now what writer (one of the greats) said that the most important tool for a writer was not the pencil but the eraser.

I agree with this 100%!

Not at all, but their job is to detect the occasional errors scattered here and there, not to re-write a whole manuscript according to the spelling and grammar rules.

Sorry perhaps I lead you to believe my grammatical errors are worse than they actually are?

[karlhenning]

(Edited the quotation for errors in punctuation.)

Dude, you are so encroaching on Teresa's "freedom of thought"! ; )

[Teresa]

Shouldn't you have said: together with my spell-checkers and editors I have co-authored hundreds of articles, tons of poetry and an e-book?

All the content is MINE, all I needed was a few grammatical corrections here and there.   I use both spell check and a dictionary but I still do not catch everything.   

[karlhenning]

I agree they are a set of rules, however in English it does take a certain skill to master them.

Skill? No. Just takes paying attention while one is attending grammar school. Curious fact, that we even call that level of education grammar school, is it not?

[springrite]

I just passed by a bookstore that is selling their overstocked books for $1 per kg. That makes it $1000 per ton. So I guess writings do come by the ton, literally.

Well, all jokes aside, writers don't have to be literary geniuses to be called a writer. There are lots of dancers who are not the lead at Boshoi, but they are still dancers.

Well, then again, what do I know.

[Luke]

I just find this whole area tricky to talk about because the obvious retort for the Sauls of this world (I'm talking about Saul but this applies to Teresa and her writing too...to Saul's writing as well, come to that) is - it doesn't matter if it reads badly and has notation/spelling/grammar errors, it only matters that it sounds nice and that people like it (never mind that many don't.....)

On the surface that seems hard to respond to. Aren't we being nit-picky pedants stifling the creative flow of intuitive genius by insisting on writing the stuff down correctly? Well, bluntly, no, we aren't, and no, it isn't enough that people who happen to hear the music in passing like the sounds. (If that were all that made great music, the world would be considerably more full of great music than it is, because making pretty sounds as Saul does on his computer is not really very difficult.)

No, if you are going to write music, and expect people to play it, and expect them to take you seriously in turn, you need to have respect for their musical intelligence, and respect for the art itself. Writing as Saul does shows no respect for the musicians who might play his work (and who have to go through it carefully to work out what he actually means rather than what he writes), no respect for the thousands of composers, including the ones he claims to venerate above all others, who have taken the time to master the craft, and who understood it fully, from the inside, as Saul and his youtube fans don't, I feel. And no respect for himself either, in the long run - because despite his claims to spend ages on each note (!) Saul's attitude towards his craft is complacent and lazy, self-satisfied and unwilling to listen to advice when he badly needs it: doesn't matter if my notation is shoddy - that's real lack of self-respect.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I find notation like Saul's actually insulting, to my intelligence, and to the complexities and subtleties and beauties that are hidden within the art form I love so much. It's vapid, it shows no understanding of music theory and history, it's insulting in its implicit claim to musicality when none is on show. Surely the audience you really want to engage with are not people who click on a youtube video whilst out looking for heaven-knows-what, but people who will take time with the music, examine it, treasure it, live with it - and that audience is going to be utterly alienated before even playing a note by the lack of care and craft implicit in poor notation.

[karlhenning]

Well, all jokes aside, writers don't have to be literary geniuses to be called a writer.

Perfectly true. One corollary must be, that not all writers are necessarily geniuses.

[springrite]

Perfectly true. One corollary must be, that not all writers are necessarily geniuses.

Send me a few thousand bucks and I can buy you tons of poetry. 

[karlhenning]

On Wall Street today, a sharp uptick in poetry futures . . . .

[Teresa]

Please point us to any of these "hundreds" of published articles. Half a ton of the poetry will suffice.

(Edited the quotation for errors in punctuation.)

I haven't finished my eBook of Poetry yet.  However here is the ordering information for the PDF of my eBook  An Analog Lovers Survival Guide and the Kindle edition

At my Blog SACD Lives? you will find links to some of my Positive Feedback Online articles as well as links to my other three blogs.  Besides the 4 blogs I also have 2 forums and they have links as well. 

[Luke]

I just find this whole area tricky to talk about because the obvious retort for the Sauls of this world (I'm talking about Saul but this applies to Teresa and her writing too...to Saul's writing as well, come to that) is - it doesn't matter if it reads badly and has notation/spelling/grammar errors, it only matters that it sounds nice and that people like it (never mind that many don't.....)

My own view, FWIW, as a composer, would be pretty much the opposite - it doesn't really matter if, on a person-by-person basis, some dislike my music whilst some like it (though it's nice when it gives pleasure, and thankfully mine seems to have done so pretty consistently over the years). What really matters is that I know that the work, on its own merits, is as good as I could make it from every angle, that it is coherent, consistent, and so on. That I can feel pride in it, and feel that I have written it with respect for other musicians who might play it, for other composers without whose music mine could not exist, and for myself in doing as good a job as I can.

[Saul]

I want to ask  why did Bernstein attack Beethoven so hard saying that even though he was 'the greatest composer ever' he was a terrible orchestrator?

I guess by this standards, Beethoven didn't know how to compose a work of art without any flaws and without breaking the rules of orchestration, therefore he just didn't know what he was doing as a composer.

Following your logic, this is the only conclusion I reach.

Knowing this, Beethoven would have been shredded by some perfectionists here attacking his banalistic and disorganized way of orchestrating a piece of music.
http://www.youtube.com/v/wNi1_kGC9dg