Kind of philosophical question about making music.

LastMantra

OK, let's imagine that you wrote, learned to play and recorded the "perfect" tune.

Could you be happy to just destroy the recording and never play it again or let anyone hear it, knowing that you, and, if you believe, God, have heard it, or do you think it wouldn't be complete until you let other people hear it?

I suppose it's a bit of a twist on the tree falling with no-one around thing. 

Sporky

It'd seem mean not to let other people hear it if it's that good. 

CoffeeAndTV

A lot of the time, in fact all the time, the reason I write is to stop my own tune being an ear worm for myself.  

I’ve a load of tunes that I’ve written that maybe I should record and put out, but it’s the time and effort verses who actually gives a shit and wants to hear it.

LastMantra

Sporky said:

It'd seem mean not to let other people hear it if it's that good. 

That's a nice way of looking at it. Especially if it spread a bit of happiness and brought people together. 

Sporky

Though, rethinking, what if it was genuinely, unarguably "perfect"?

Would everyone else stop writing and recording, knowing without doubt that they'd never reach that pinnacle? 

Roland

Surely “perfect” is a relevant term? Bach may have written a fugue which was perfect by 18th century criteria. 

Habanero

Beauty is the eye of the beholder. Ask on this forum 'what is the best track by' some artist and you'll normally get several different answers. Let other people hear your 'perfect tune', and someone will say it's rubbish.

LastMantra

CoffeeAndTV said:

A lot of the time, in fact all the time, the reason I write is to stop my own tune being an ear worm for myself.  

I’ve a load of tunes that I’ve written that maybe I should record and put out, but it’s the time and effort verses who actually gives a shit and wants to hear it.

That's kind of what I'm like. 

I can be jamming away myself and come up with a riff or lick or melody or whatever. Play it until I get it sounding about as good as I can, then just forget about it and next time play something different.

Maybe I'm just lazy. I did get into recording for a while some years ago and really enjoyed the experience of learning how to do it. Not that I ever got very good at recording and mixing but it was fun at the time. There was a group of people on the MR forum that got quite friendly and I started collaborating with a few of them.
A lot of it ended up on soundcloud, but there seemed to be quite a lot of people on there that were pretty transparently more interested in getting followers than anything else, which I couldn't be bothered with. 

LastMantra

To be clear it was very much a hypothetical idea 

It started out as a painting, I just changed it to guitar tune for here. It could be any artist endeavour. 

LastMantra

Sporky said:

Though, rethinking, what if it was genuinely, unarguably "perfect"?

Would everyone else stop writing and recording, knowing without doubt that they'd never reach that pinnacle? 

Hmm, I hadn't thought about it like that.
Maybe that would be a reason for keeping it to yourself?

The question then might be COULD you? 

digitalkettle

LastMantra said:

OK, let's imagine that you wrote, learned to play and recorded the "perfect" tune.

Could you be happy to just destroy the recording and never play it again or let anyone hear it, knowing that you, and, if you believe, God, have heard it, or do you think it wouldn't be complete until you let other people hear it?

I suppose it's a bit of a twist on the tree falling with no-one around thing. 

Got tabz?

Sporky

LastMantra said:

Sporky said:

Though, rethinking, what if it was genuinely, unarguably "perfect"?

Would everyone else stop writing and recording, knowing without doubt that they'd never reach that pinnacle? 

Hmm, I hadn't thought about it like that.
Maybe that would be a reason for keeping it to yourself?

The question then might be COULD you? 

Maybe. But you'd have won at music. 

It does require a very literal and pretty much nonsensical interpretation of the original post though. 

LastMantra

Sporky said:

LastMantra said:

Sporky said:

Though, rethinking, what if it was genuinely, unarguably "perfect"?

Would everyone else stop writing and recording, knowing without doubt that they'd never reach that pinnacle? 

Hmm, I hadn't thought about it like that.
Maybe that would be a reason for keeping it to yourself?

The question then might be COULD you? 

Maybe. But you'd have won at music. 

It does require a very literal and pretty much nonsensical interpretation of the original post though. 

I guess that's what it comes down to. 

That's OK it was pretty nonsensical to begin with 

LastMantra

digitalkettle said:

LastMantra said:

OK, let's imagine that you wrote, learned to play and recorded the "perfect" tune.

Could you be happy to just destroy the recording and never play it again or let anyone hear it, knowing that you, and, if you believe, God, have heard it, or do you think it wouldn't be complete until you let other people hear it?

I suppose it's a bit of a twist on the tree falling with no-one around thing. 

Got tabz?

Nope, sorry, I'm afraid you've lost me there 

Supportact

LastMantra said:

OK, let's imagine that you wrote, learned to play and recorded the "perfect" tune.

Could you be happy to just destroy the recording and never play it again or let anyone hear it, knowing that you, and, if you believe, God, have heard it, or do you think it wouldn't be complete until you let other people hear it?

I suppose it's a bit of a twist on the tree falling with no-one around thing. 

Probably do what i do with all the other music i write: Think it's the best thing I've ever done, then release it to pretty much universal indifference, then move on to the next thing. 

TTony

Sporky said:

It'd seem mean not to let other people hear it if it's that good. 

That would make me “mean”.



(Fair enough).

Kilgore

LastMantra said:

OK, let's imagine that you wrote, learned to play and recorded the "perfect" tune.

Could you be happy to just destroy the recording and never play it again or let anyone hear it, knowing that you, and, if you believe, God, have heard it, or do you think it wouldn't be complete until you let other people hear it?

I suppose it's a bit of a twist on the tree falling with no-one around thing. 

If God exists then it wouldn't be possible to compose the perfect tune as God, the perfect being, could invariably compose a better one. Rendering your own less than perfect.

Although God would probably have get the devil to play the solo.




 

Petepassion

Sporky said:

Though, rethinking, what if it was genuinely, unarguably "perfect"?

Would everyone else stop writing and recording, knowing without doubt that they'd never reach that pinnacle? 

I know there are countless better songwriters than me, but makes no difference as I enjoy the process and release

Petepassion

The main reason I write is for self expression and the buzz I get when it comes out well. But I also seek appraisal sometimes, it boosts the ego and makes you feel good. Little better than a belter of a gig and everyone coming up to you afterwards singing your praises. Yet I've also written songs I think are really good, but played to hardly anyone 

flying_pie

Consider that most human abilities have normal (Gaussian) distribution within the population - 2 standard deviations in either direction from the mean with 5% outlying. Assuming musical appreciation follows the same  pattern then that means that most people would be unable to truly appreciate the extremes of music and prefer popular (aka averae) music - we're looking at all you Coldplay and Killers fans. It also means 2.5% have an utterly abysmal taste in music and 2.5% have excellent taste, however everyone will disagree so one person's abysmal is another's genius. Cultural differences, or preferences for specific genres will complicate it further but for simplicity let's ignore that.

It's almost certain that if you wrote the perfect tune will then it would be utter shite to 97.5% of the population.

And if you try to blend elements of all music and preferences into a "perfect" single track to speak to all then you end up diluting the best parts of each and just end up with utter rubbish (although the 2.5% who love shit music night go for it).

In the same way there could never be a perfect porn film there can never be a perfect song. Which is a shame because I just wrote it before destroying it due to an existential crisis 

Sporky

Flying pie's excellent post has reminded me of the old truism; everyone has appalling taste in music, including me. If everyone remembered that, the world would be a better place. Or at least a bit quieter.