[PD] elitism, software and academia (was GEM FTGL Sadness)

[David Powers]

Well, by the same token, everyone should:

1. Know how to conduct an orchestra and jazz big band
2. Know how to arrange for orchestra and jazz big band
3. Know how to play piano
4. Know how to play one wind or string instrument
5. Know how to play at least one percussion instrument
6. Understand classical and jazz harmonic progressions, +
modern/postmodern ways of dealing with harmony and pitch sets
7. Know how to market one's own music, organize a band, and other
applicable business skills

Because those are the kinds of things one learns in composition
school. I also did learn to use an analog moog, and had one acoustics
class where we learned some of the applicable physics.

People need to understand that in most cases DSP and music are rather
separate domains, it's only a few small cases where they come
together.

I certainly can't do differential equations, even though at one point
I learned dif them. I forgot it all long before it was useful to me...
I had no idea that it would ever have a MUSICAL application, it was
learned in general university math class. Nobody was even doing
serious DSP in 1994 except at certain academic research places, and I
don't think the means to do it were available to the average person...
I mean, all I'd ever heard of was FM, sampling, and using a computer
to sequence at that point. I know it existed out there, but to someone
at a state school in the US, midwest, that wasn't cutting edge, it
wasn't taught and nobody knew about it (neither faculty or students).

Anyway, my point is, I've never found that my lack of training back
then in DSP in any way prevented me from being a successful musician
and composer. If I think of my own musical heroes (Mozart, Berg,
Mahler, John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus,
Cecil Taylor, Duke Ellington) I would be highly surprised if any of
them ever knew or needed to know differential equations...

I really think it's just absurd to force all musicians into a model
that may only make sense from the software engineering / DSP side of
things. I usually am arguing more on the pro-technology side of
things, but in this case I think I must remind people : you don't need
a computer to make music.

~David

On 6/7/07, Charles Henry <czhenry at gmail.com> wrote:

> my turn
> [steps up on the soap box]
> Everyone should learn at least calculus and differential equations.
> Elementary concepts of signal processing (not necessarily DSP) are
> grounded in diff eq.  It makes a good jumping off point for looking at
> Fourier Transforms, convolution, filters (of course, these are just
> ordinary 2nd order diff eq with a forcing function (the input)), and
> the list goes on and on.
> 'Elitism' is something to be applied to individuals, not whole
> communities(online or academic or where ever they may reside).  Hey,
> that goes for me too.
> If you think all musicians should learn at least differential
> equations... you might be an elitist.
> [steps down]
>
> Chuck