I thought about doing an essay, a reflection, or a serie of explanatory paragraphs.
But to innovate, I will make free phrases. The guiding thread of these phrases is not only the title “the rules and creativity” (although not all of them are about both) but they have been things that I have discovered practicing music and that all are true from this perspective.
1- Music is free and does not require rules
2 – The rules are to break them, so the more you study how they work the better you will know how to break them based on what you want to achieve.
3- Music is relational
4- A melody is made of intervals.
5- If you don’t know history, the chances of making history will decrease
6- You are not inventing the wheel, that was Bach.
7- Creativity is essential for human life.
8- Life without music would be a mistake (Nietzche actually said this)
9- Any major chord can have an 11th: Thinking about a chord is a mistake: music is both horizontal and vertical.
10- Schools lie
11- If you study music you study the rules, how to respect and deploy them and then do what you want consistently
12- Not studying music or its rules does not imply drifting
13- Studying music and knowing how to use the rules does not mean that you know how to interpret or compose.
14- Generally what you think matters, nobody cares
15- The musical expression overcomes prejudices, unless they are subject to what articulates us as human beings.
16- It’s not about what it sounds like, it’s what it means.
Photo & Text: Danilo Dawson
July, 2019
