death_by_motorboat Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 (edited) like dissonance, and therefore an entire piece of music is traditionally not intended to be distorted, because contained in the same piece there has to be natural to define the distortion? or is distortion an actual sound musically? can you, by the fundamentals of music, have an entire piece thats distorted? i think, musically, that would be the same as playing a piece that was all feedback. some industrial and punk shit uses feedback as a instrumental sound... isnt that musically incorrect? its okay to do because it sounds cool, but as far as the rules of writing music goes, its not even music. Edited June 14, 2018 by mumbo13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lasty Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 Whatever happens is real. There is no such thing as "unnatural"; whatever you're looking at isn't some extra-dimensional phenomenon that came here from beyond existence itself. The laws of nature dictate that it is possible to use all kinds of audio samples creatively. What you're thinking of as "the rules" of music aren't really the rules, those are the ones humans made up, which is also perfectly natural... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Metal Alchemist Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 Really any sound can be music. A more traditional musical instrument, let's say a trumpet, still has to go through tremendous manipulations by man to be rendered from a hunk of metal to a musical instrument that creates harmonious sounds. I view guitar distortion as no different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lasty Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 1 minute ago, Doom Metal Alchemist said: Really any sound can be music. A more traditional musical instrument, let's say a trumpet, still has to go through tremendous manipulations by man to be rendered from a hunk of metal to a musical instrument that creates harmonious sounds. I view guitar distortion as no different. & man went through tremendous manipulations from our environment to evolve into what we are today. The reason it isn't any different is because it's all the same stuff interacting with itself. Everything humans do and the consequences of what we do are perfectly natural because we are ourselves products and manifestations of nature, the same as everything else and we are bound to it's laws the same as everything else. Stardust swimming in stardust... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wacky1980 Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 can distortion be produced naturally, i.e. without electronic manipulation? i'm pretty sure the answer is no. but distortion is as much a part of modern music as any instrument on its own. so i would hesitate to call distortion "unnatural" by definition. it requires a bit of technology to produce (or rather, re-produce) distortion from an original chunk of audio waves, but it also requires a bit of technology to produce music from pretty much every instrument in existence today. side note, how cool would it have been to be the first guy amplifying an instrument, and discovering distortion by turning up the gain a little too much or playing through a blown speaker. probably scared the shit right out of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lasty Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 9 minutes ago, wacky1980 said: can distortion be produced naturally, i.e. without electronic manipulation? See, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Humans and the stuff we do are not on some separate level than the rest of nature. Electronic manipulation is itself a manifestation of nature generated by humans, which are another manifestation of nature.... No such thing as "unnatural". They put that kind of propaganda out there to stop people from investigating things in way that's actually constructive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Metal Alchemist Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 6 minutes ago, Lasty said: See, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Humans and the stuff we do are not on some separate level than the rest of nature. Electronic manipulation is itself a manifestation of nature generated by humans, which are another manifestation of nature.... No such thing as "unnatural". They put that kind of propaganda out there to stop people from investigating things in way that's actually constructive. I actually have this opinion about how food products are marketed to have "all natural ingredients." If you go back far enough, even those complex synthetic chemicals have all their roots in natural ingredients. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wacky1980 Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 that's a bit nit-picky, imo. there's a very real distinction that can be made between "from nature" and "man-made" in that something man-made simply cannot exist on its own in nature. it must first be manipulated by an intelligent force in order to exist. that doesn't make it any less "real," it just means it was crafted rather than simply existing through a natural process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death_by_motorboat Posted June 14, 2018 Author Share Posted June 14, 2018 okay let me reiterate a little dissonance is a musical sound that requires natural sound in the same piece of music and i was just wondering if the same rule applied to distortion traditionally. i honestly was just curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death_by_motorboat Posted June 14, 2018 Author Share Posted June 14, 2018 i.e. is trent reznor breaking every musical rule ever written? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death_by_motorboat Posted June 14, 2018 Author Share Posted June 14, 2018 the kind of absence in structure can symbolize a lot in culture, the same goes for every genre. as jazz was to big band, and rock and roll was to folk, and now we dont have much traditional to mention, but you know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Metal Alchemist Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 1 minute ago, mumbo13 said: i.e. is trent reznor breaking every musical rule ever written? Really there are no hard and fast rules. Musical "rules" are just social constructs determined by culture. Western music is always taught to consist of these notes and nothing more: A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# (substitute flats for sharps where appropriate). In many Eastern cultures, music consists of many more notes than just those. The point being, there really are no rules, except where dictated by what particular culture, but rules may differ from culture to culture. And even within those specific cultures, you find many artists who break these rules regularly. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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