mwalker wrote:just ask any streetball player if they want to play in the nba. most streetball players are streetball player because they did not follow the rules. like going to practice, being on time, that there are 4 other players on his team and the list goes on.
plus you know how stupid this sounds, the aveage nba player is a millionaire. the aveage streetball player is a streetball player. alton (skip to my loe) who plays for the miami heat is one of the best streetball players. he went to college to playball, did not get drafted, went over seas to get his games together and now in the nba.
my point being if you just want to make beats in your bedroom for your friends, just smoke a few bowl and make your beats. BUT IF YOU WANT MORE THAN MAKING BEATS IN YOUR BED ROOM THE MORE YOU LEARN THE MORE YOU EARN.
I think that as a metaphor, the street ball player vs pro is kinda flawed, cause it assumes what it is trying to prove: music theory is the only game and cats who dont know music theory dont know how to play the game (they are too lasy to learn). But music ain't basketball: there are no rules, only thoeries of tonality and harmony that can be different for different cultures or time periods.
A better metaphor, I think, is to think of the producer as the director in a film. Some directors write the script, direct, do the cinematography, and star in the movie themselves. Other directors just tell the actors where to stand and tell the cinematographer when to start filming. These directors dont know anything about the technical aspects of film writing or acting, but they have a vision and know what looks good (what they want from a script, thier actors, etc.).
greg and mwalker seem to argue that the producer must know theory: he must be a muscian. That's like arguing that the director must know how to operate the camera and how to act. Should directors know these things?
Maybe, maybe not.
Some of the best directors (Hitchcock, Welles) were involved in every aspect of thier films, from the script to the editing. Other directors (like John Huston) don't do much at all with these technical aspects, they just step back and delegate. Does this mean they aren't any good? Nah, man. Just different.
How does this relate to music, you ask? Well the prodcuer, bedroom or otherwise, works like a director in that he takes raw material (samples, other people's songs) and arranges them and controls them to create his own expression of the art.
Firm knowledge of music theory can be important for a producer, but some producers don't work this way: they couldn't care less about the key of the song, they care about the feel and the sound.
In the 70s film theory was created (the film version of music theory). It was a method saying where certain elemenets of the plot should fall in a film. You know what? It took over! I studied it when I was in film school and it disgusted me when I started seeing just how predictable most films are. I would watch a movie I'd never seen before, and by looking at my watch, tell you exactly when things were about to happen. Say I was watching a thriller (like "The Usual Suspects"). I knew the ending 20 minutes intot he film simply by how Kevin Spacy's character was introduced!
This really ruined film for me for a few years. I'm over it now as I've trained myself not to look for these things, but what upsets me is that there were some great movies in the 70's (the Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Mean Streets, the Wild Bunch) that didn't follow the thoery.
Now it seems like even "independent" films follow that stupid theory.
My point is, over reliance on thoery, sticking theory onto your creation as if its a f*cking road map, gets rid of the elements that make the art "living." It ends the room in composition for happy accidents.
Again, there is nothing wrong with theory, and I'm cool with whoever is down with it, but we should all remain realistic about what we want from the theory before claiming that those who do not subscribe to it are second rate producers who will be stuck in the bedroom.
Good music is good music, and there are all types of producers: Quincy Jones and David Axlerod create work that is equally as valid as the bedroom cat who can't read music but puts soul into every thing he does, the cat that flips signiture samples in ways that no one has thought of before, the cat that is going to push hip-hop as art form forward through experiementation and not having an pre-concieved ideas about harmony or song-structure.
Please understand that I'm not trying to invalidate what mwalker or greg is saying, they are right too. Knowing your theory can be important for a certain type of producer. But it should never be the
only type of producer. [/quote]
