Wow a lot of responses.. I'll try to address most of them because I think it's super important that we're all on the same page here. Or at least closer... It seems that a lot of things were taken out of context.
Unlike Zau, I was not born with any type of perfect pitch...Someone like Zau who has perfect pitch would not be able to relate to beginners having shit ears in the first place because he was simply born with it.
Ok, first of all, I NEVER said I was born with perfect pitch, please don't put words in my mouth. I said I was born with strong
relative pitch, or "good ears" as I put it, and as you pointed out, which is totally different. Please go back and read what I posted. I went on to say that 'through practice' I was able to turn that into perfect pitch.
If we're talking about a beginner level then you can teach a guitar player a power chord and a drummer a basic 4/4 rock beat with the bassist playing the root and they can make music that sounds decent. In pop you can teach someone to play 4 chords of a piano and sing over it and they will sound decent.
Haha have you ever actually tried doing this? Most beginners would not be able to play a basic 4/4 beat.. in drumming, you have to deal with coordination and there are a lot of really uncoordinated people out there. I can say this, because I'm a drummer by profession and I have taught lessons to complete beginners in the past. Some of them were really uncoordinated and took a very long time to just play simple 1/8th notes on the hi hat and different rhythms on the bass drum, without messing up. So really, it's not as easy as you're making it sound. "If we're talking about a beginner level then you can teach a guitar player a power chord". Really? I really don't think a complete beginner would be able to fret a power chord properly, especially if they have to 'bar' a whole fret and place their other fingers on the subsequent frets, that's hard to do for a beginner. I tried to teach a friend who is a beginner how to play a power chord and he couldn't do at the first, second, fifth or tenth try. Yes, I play guitar and bass as well.
...annoys the hell out of me.
Wait, what are you getting at exactly? You wrote out a detailed response of how your ears went from sucking to sky rocketing, all because you chose to ditch the tabs and learn/play by ear, so you're actually agreeing with me, what you went through is a testimonial of what I said! I started out playing the piano when I was 5. I played solely by ear and I'm really glad it happened that way... that I learned to play by ear before I even knew what a quarter note was and what an F major chord looked like on a staff. When I grew older, my mom had me take piano lessons because she thought it was 'only right' that I learned to read sheet music. I hated them so much at the time but as I got even older I learned to value them... I learned how to properly execute scales and stuff like that. I didn't continue the piano lessons because I wanted to really focus when I was in high school but I don't regret it either. Going to college for music ended up being a continuation of those piano lessons anyway.
If the original point was that some people should just give up, because they lack "musical ability" at all (represented as "hearing what they're doing"), then I strongly disagree.
Nope, that was not the original point at all. I said it in the original post and I repeated myself again a few posts back. The whole point I'm trying to make is the fact that ear training is as important as learning how to mix and all the other stuff we do in this production thing. When did I ever say that "people should just give up"? I never said that. That's just Lydian hearing what he wants to hear. I even mentioned in the original post that beginners should work on ear training if that's where they're lacking. I never told anyone to give up anything.
I'm arguing against promoting the idea that the music industry (which includes EDM) is in any way "fair". Zau brought up how "anyone with a computer can download a DAW and 'make a track'" and how they don't think it's fair.
Yeah, it's not. I think I mentioned too that I was over it (kinda) and that that topic should be it's own thread.
If you spend too much of your time worrying about how people who aren't as good as you (which is entirely subjective) are doing as well as/better than you, or in some way cheating the system/devaluing your craft, you'll get jaded and cynical and burn yourself out - leading to giant rants like this that probably make it harder for the person going through it to continue following their passions.
Again, this thread is about ear training and how little awareness of it there is, not about that other thing. Maybe I'll start another thread on it.
and there are genres/tracks that won't care too much about musicality at all. Fans don't care as much about that stuff, and we can't forget that while we spend so much time surrounded by other people who care just as much as we do. Most of them won't even notice.
Musicality is one thing. But just straight up clashing notes and everything else I mentioned is something else. As an experiment, I'd actually like to make a track that has all the elements I mentioned and you guys tell me whether you enjoyed listening to the track or not.
"All Buddhism makes a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. In his book What the Buddha Taught, the Buddhist scholar Walpola Rahula wrote,"According to Buddhism there are two sorts of understanding: What we generally call understanding is knowledge, an accumulated memory, an intellectual grasping of a subject according to certain given data. This is called 'knowing accordingly' (anubodhd). It is not very keep. Real deep understanding is called 'penetration' (pativedha), seeing a thing in its true nature, without name and label. This penetration is possible only when the mind is free from all impurities and is fully developed through meditation."
Really great quote there, thanks for sharing Marrow. Again, I love you.
But trying to make this into "If you're not making money off of music you can't understand what it's like to have people also making money off music that DIDN'T WORK AS HARD AS ME!!!!!" just comes off bad.
I didn't make this thread into anything. Other people who read it and interpreted it their way did. Again, the whole point I'm trying to make is the fact that ear training is as important as learning how to mix and all the other stuff we do in this production thing.
So you're ranting because this situation is 'unfair'. How is it harming you? Can you name a specific person who is cheating the system?
It has not harmed me directly, but I do have a close friend who lost his studio of 10 years because all of a sudden went the economy really hit in 2008 he couldn't keep up with the kids with the laptops that charged really low prices and cut everyones throats. I know at least three other people very close to me who went through the same thing.
And since you don't make a living off of music, you would never understand what it's like for a guy like my friend who studied audio engineering, went through years of experience as an intern then as an employee at a big studio, then opened his own studio and made a nice living, all for it to be taken away because the kid with the laptop could do it for much less. I know what it's like too, because like my friend, music is my livelihood.
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Okay you know what now I'm really done with you zauzau.
I cannot wait for Leviathan 2!!