xRisingForce

Haha, good to know I'm not a fool anymore. This really raises some interesting questions that I've been wanting to segue into. According to your argument, I could write, in the span of one minute, a near impossible piece to play, but really now, difficulty isn't what makes a piece good. While we're all engaged in this argument, can we all use songs that we actually like as referential material? Please? "Melody is music, music is melody." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart I, too think the most important dimension is melody, and then harmony because it primarily serves to accentuate the melody. Iffor some reason, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wanted to express a radical emotion and the only possible way to do it was through this specific, complicated phrasing, the depth of that kind of insane expression would completely transcend anything I've ever heard. And throughout this endeavor, if Sorabji composed (you know, since this is music) musically rather than technically, any level of technicality would be pure consequence since he composed with the melody primarily in mind. At any rate, I think the real point to be noted here is that Sorabji performed his work. And here's something you might've overlooked from earlier: This is fallacious because what dictates the actions of the media is, naturally, what sells. Hollywood stars are stars because they're hotter than Peter Jackson. Because sex sells, and you know this. After Playboy, there is no industry more synonymous with sex than Hollywood. I mean, just look at some of the recent cinematic archetypes (i.e. obligatory sex scene). And it's unfair to say that as well, because there are a ton of great actors in Hollywood as well. Using Hollywood to draw a comparison doesn't work in that the success of Hollywood plays off of the same audience of sheeple that make mainstream music what it is. The same people make Greenday, Blink 182, Dashboard Confessional, Fallout Boy, and the like famous. Another subtle fallacy: thinking that there's a direct correlation between fame and the quality of a composer's music. There is no clear connection between Hollywood actors' success and their ability to express themselves as actors because 1, Sex clouds the industry, and 2, The same sheeple audience are fans of bands like Linkin Park who are lyrically driven. Modern music is simplistic in that it takes away primarily from what makes music unique (pitch), and shifts emphasis to something that has quite possibly nothing to do with music, lyrics. Without someone singing, modern music loses all value not by an absence of melody, but an absence of words, because the instrumentation simply isn't good enough to function on its own. As such, the melody, harmony, and general polyphony are usually very weak. There's no musical emotion because the appeal is almost entirely lyrical, and when a song's strength is built on lyrics, then it's not music. It's poetry. Both are important, of course. They can accentuate a song and make it better, sort of like how icing compliments cake, and who eats just icing? The thing people seem to get confused is that although lyrics are crafted for music, music wasn't crafted for lyrics. Poetry is expression through words. Music is expression through pitch. The reason Linkin Park's music sold like water is because the world's vast amount of teenagers could lyrically connect through the messages so relevant to their puberty. For example, the teenage "nobody understands me" mindset is pretty much the entire creative spark behind "Crawling." Let's also keep in mind that Peter Jackson profited the most from Lord of the Rings. Well, that's not so much catering to the performer as it is having to deal with the simple limitations found in any instrument. In writing for guitar you generally include a lot less apreggios because it's extremely difficult to phrase them fluidly, whereas on piano it's a lot more doable, in fact, elementary. In terms of voice, I wouldn't rewrite the melody lower so that Anthony could sing it- I'd hire a soprano. You wanna check out the two main posts now? They're more recent long ones.

It was in response to Phijayy's post, and now I see where the misconception could've arise, but I still think that he was mocking me. I've wanted to put my view of performers up there anyway.

Since when was attacking a person's ideology so different from attacking the person himself? To be honest it's not really of concern to me but you, who has offered an empty point and have consequently been invited to clarify, because so far as I know, I'm not aware of composers who don't play their own compositions. Ball's in your park. Sheesh, looks like I'm stepping on some toes here. I only have more respect for you in that you defend your friends at the drop of a penny. Since you asked, I'll tell you what I did. I first read this: Now that I reread it, I see the error of my ways. The sarcastic tone is reflective of his good sense of humor, and he's actually in agreement with me. Funny, I was under the impression that he was indirectly, albeit obviously, making fun of me. Which, what do I know, might qualify as a character attack. I guess that depends what country you're in though (joke). And with that, this thread is on its way to derailment again. You wanna restore some order, Wolf? Such a shame, since I put so much effort into responding to you and Tensai. ; Seriously though, stop cluttering the thread. I'm here for some hardcore musical discussion, not to hear anyone complain about the way I spell. If you're just gonna say something stupid, get out.

How could you feel that snide towards me when I've done absolutely nothing to provoke you? I'm sorry man, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that says volumes about your personality. Let's hear some of those reasons, and some examples that enforce your highly likely statistic.

I like how I delivered my stance clearly and concisely, and you segue into a discussion with me by quoting someone else. Your comparison almost seems like the comparison between composer and performer (sharing some common characteristics but being fundamentally different), no? And the matter of what's being compared through your vague notions of difficulty is another story; it's something you didn't even state. Remixing Corridors of Time is maybe harder than writing a little jig about going to the nearest grocery store, but I will wager my life that writing something like Corridors of Time, a piece that has the depth of an abyss, is on a completely different level than that of remixing it. Remixing isn't the wonder drug you prescribe- in fact, without knowing what makes a good harmony and how to transcribe for orchestra (correct me if I'm wrong), you'll be fumbling everywhere because the you'll have the sense of direction of a blind man with down syndrome. Funnily enough, how you, or anyone else for that matter know what's good is largely guided by composition. The artists you listen to should display a degree of uniformity because they should define your unique, "Genius-san" sense of musical aesthetics. For Christ's sake you don't learn how to orchestrate better by simply doing it- all that does is teach you to program in Fruity Loops more efficiently. Ways to get better at orchestration are realizing what makes good orchestration for yourself or having someone teach you, whether that be a friend or professor. Though I'll concede that remixing is an art form, since art wholly exists because of our human need for self-expression remixing is an extremely limiting art in that music (or any art, really) aims to do so through composition, and by definition, there isn't really any true composition going on through remixing. The drawbacks: 1. You have to stick to the source material. Doesn't it say volumes that you're working with material that you yourself *probably* wouldn't have come up with? 2. You have to stick to a relevant context to the song. Otherwise the remix, not as a remix but as art, is completely purposeless in that it conveys something impossible. 3. You don't learn to fully compose because the source material acts as a stepping stool, giving you the meat of the song. Now what's left is cooking the side dishes. Check it out, he agrees with me. And I agree with him to an extent, because again, the context of difficulty is unspecified making any sort of comparison impossible. To express anything through composition is easier than making a remix, because you have to follow the standard criterion laid above such that your remix can be called a remix. They're not guidelines I've made up, just obvious and observable criteria, essential if a song is to be a "remix". Before I go on I want to asses the rather trivial nature of music being difficult. The creation of a piece, no matter how simplistic, no matter how difficult, is simply inconsequential because the only thing that matters with any art is the finished product. The finished product is what's observable, what's audible, what's visible. You can't appreciate something just because you're more aware of the complex technicality behind it- that's an inconsequential reason because musicality doesn't stem from technicality, the relationship is quite reverse. I'm not saying you shouldn't appreciate the work behind something, letting that sway your predilection however is fallacious. For the count, I'm not denouncing remixing, all I'm saying is that the hardest part about remixing is analyzing to determine what elements need to be changed so the song's melody and harmony (at least, in terms of the pitch) remain pretty much intact, what voicing to change, what phrasing to change, and what rhythmic overcoat to give it so that it's a really changed piece yet it's intrinsically reflective of an emotion related to the original. What is vital here is consciously recognizing those elements paves the way for a better understanding of yourself and what you specifically like about a certain song you happen to be remixing. And that's definitely not an easy feat, irrelevant to the comparison. That awareness of what guides your own sense of musical aesthetics is the very foundation of the "Joren De Bruin" style of composition, because nobody else on on Earth has that specific set of what's cool and what's not. You're a snowflake, man. Most of your "vital" areas are trivial in acquisition, purely technical things that can be learned through a simple process of reading and learning. The beauty of composition is that it's something which can't be acquired or taught, no matter how artificially, mechanically, or scientifically you try. You are yourself- that is to say nobody's going to "learn" to compose like Mitsuda because if something's incongruent with your special philosophy towards music and its aesthetics, you're not likely to be incorporating it in your repertoire anytime soon. I swear, the thought process by which you come to your conclusions is just so.. mechanical. Your defense of remixing by its exercisable nature and vague, unspecified level of difficulty is a joke enough if that's what you're using put it above composition. Remixing is more difficult than composing? In what sense, bro?? But what in the world is the point of exercising those technical skills if you're never going to use them to create something new? Let's also keep in mind that the reason you're remixing is because someone composed it first. And experience my friend, means nothing without stating the quality of it. And don't give me that "How the heck am I supposed to judge myself objectively" crap. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. As far as I know the amount you're actually benefiting from your training could be on the level of a paraplegic practicing for the 400 meter dash.

The way you so arrogantly paraphrased my argument makes the incorrect presumption that the role of performance is vacant, when realistically the composer should be fully capable of doing both. This is of course with the omission of classical, fullscale-orchestral music. There are two types of performers in the music world: 1. Studio musicians 2. Classical musicians I don't really mind the former, because they know their role: as an actor. To fill a role that the band leader can't play, because: 1. They're onstage 2. He's simply unable, but that certainly doesn't mean he can't compose for the instrument Maybe I don't like classical musicians. Maybe what I don't like is how they think they're important. Maybe they don't, maybe others think they're important. However.. The most pronounced testament to an actor's unimportance is the relative ease of their replacement.

Sounds tight man, you gotta make sure to upload it to WiP if you ever follow through with it. And, I don't really want to say anything because I DON'T want people to start new arguments, but yeah, it seems completely logical that composition is comparatively easier because there are no real rules. So long as your piece conveys the message you instilled within it. The reason why I said it might be hard for Wolf is because probably unlike you, he's not overly familiar with the chromatic scale aka the notes at his disposal.

Well, it's clear that the main difference in our thought is that what I view as cardinal sin, you view as divine right. I think it's great that you have the creativity to come up with such unique interpretations. I think it wouldn't be so great if I showed you one of my compositions about the sensation of driving down a Tokyo street at night with summer wind in hair, streets illuminated by the orange glow of streetlamps and you told me it was about skiing on a European mountain. I'd definitely be glad you could connect with it, but I'd either be 1, frustrated at myself for being an inadequate composer in relaying my message, or 2, angry at you for bastardizing (for lack of a better word) the meaning of my song. Think back to a time when light bulbs were the most beautiful, mindblowing things man had ever known. And imagine if his wife disregarded the value of Thomas's invention, and used his precious light bulbs as house decoration. Inventors expect their inventions to be used in the vein of their intention. Also, I don't think you as a non-musician is any less fit to understand music's depth than the rest of us- your learning curve's just a lot slower, because you have no way of actively interacting with the 12 tones. Having never painted doesn't make me inadequate to appreciate painting, but I'm oblivious to most of the subtlety. I suppose I could just scrutinize the complete portfolios of Monet and Picasso and maybe even derive the same conclusions as seasoned art professionals, but my creative ability.. well, there'll be none to speak of. Since you don't play an instrument, you don't compose your own pieces, correct? It's like us men trying to understand that magical bond that forms between mother and child, that 70% of all mothers will give their lives to deliver children they haven't even met. Perhaps when you start composing (because I'm pretty sure you'd be good at it) you'll come to understand the connection between a composer and his respective works. It's not cool when you construct with explicitly specific intent and that intent isn't relayed to the listener. Well the precondition of the shame was that the remix completely outdid the original. Receiving praise from the composer as a token of gratitude for their love of his/her music isn't really incongruent with what you're trying to refute. The paradox in this situation is that fulfilling the precondition is not only absurd but impossible, because how could anyone express the underlying ideology behind a song better than its composer? Rationally speaking, how can another woman claim a more profound understanding of a child than his or her mother? Receiving praise doesn't even work towards denying the sense of shame that would dominate any mother's being if a complete stranger had a better understanding of her children. And another thing, don't you think that whatever voicing and structure the composer chose was out of reason? In creating the depth of a song's end, he chose everything that he did because purely objectively, his actions work toward what he was trying to convey. As the composer, his decisions are the most suited just by virtue of circumstance. What's this mystic logic that I'm so ignorant to? Is anyone under the notion that a composer involuntarily relinquishes all creative control over his pieces upon completion? That all consequences stemming from the undeniable connection between potter and jar are deniable? Somehow it feels to me that because free music is something so synonymous with our generation, that we live in a society where public release entails free circulation, music's value not only as a market but as something personal and sacred to the composer has been utterly depreciated. We act, many times, as if our actions were inconsequential. In no way am I belittling the double edged sword of curiosity, I'm just aware that it killed the cat. Rather than manipulating the work of an artist, why don't you try composing a crazy industrial rock song yourself? I'm sure the challenge would be even greater, as you'd have no source material to footstool off of. Luna Umegaki is in my humble opinion one of the greatest videogame composers of all time. Three of her songs, "Holy Land," "Esperanto," and "Freesia," are all entirely based off of a single developed idea. Each incarnation of the melody is only affected subtly, and the chord progression remains unchanged. The cool thing is, even with this consistency what each song represents is very different from the next; arrangements I'd be very curious to hear. "Holy Land" is a lament on the oppressive and persecutory nature of the government, "Esperanto" is an embodiment of a hero's indomitable determination, and "Freesia" is about the death of a friend, a hero, and loved one. The cool thing about this is that every piece is driven by the same feeling of sadness and oppression extremely specific to Rockman Zero, but the difference in the songs is reflective of how that single emotion could lead and did lead to different actions. That shows tremendous adeptness as a composer on Umegaki's part. My point is that they're all similarly linked through expressing derivative emotions of that initial emotion, and if you can work with a context like that, interpretation is extremely appropriate. The drive behind your arrangement however, seems to be aimless and more a satisfaction of uninspired curiosity than anything else. If your drive is aimless, the resulting piece is going to be as such. You seem to know well what "To Zanarkand" is about, and it's extremely relevant when it does play, because you can view the song's message through the eyes of every party member and the resultant understanding would make perfect sense. It's about the intense struggle it took for the group to surmount their obstacles to get to that point. It's about Tidus's state of mind as he has to register the huge sacrifice required to get the final aeon. These are feelings of trying to maintain sanity when the current atmosphere is dominated by anxiety and unrest. To Zanarkand is about that, and more specifically, the success in finally achieving a mental state of calmness as everyone is gathered around the crackling fire, silently meditating upon the unearthly trials of tomorrow. The overbearing tone here is sadness. It's not an emotion metal really expresses well. Haven't you heard the Black Mages version? Corridors of Time is much about sadness also, but it's not from any observable character's point of view. It's written from an anonymous third person perspective, and what's sad is his realization of the ignorance and infantile mentality that so summarizes the mentality of Zeal's inhabitants. Those who have can't appreciate like those who haven't, but the way they say the most obscure things so nonchalantly is both disturbing and upsetting. And all that, believe it or not, is expressed within the Corridors of Time. What if you gave Corridors of Time a reggae mix? Would that relaxed, chill feeling so characteristic of it be at all congruent? At any rate, this is a video of Esperanto (with my embellishments): Well, I think we can draw the line of bastardization with changing a song so it hasn't the vaguest hint of derivation from the source. It's like drinking soup with chopsticks. You're using "different" very generically. You have to specify a context, because well, yeah, of course being different isn't bad. I'd much rather be of a world characteristic of identity rather than uniformity, but I want extremes of neither, you know? I don't want identity to the point of irrationality, where bastardizing works is seen as proper social decorum. "I think under the single condition that the aim and purpose of all art is self-expression, and consequently, to convey emotion. As an art, I came to the conclusion that the purpose behind music was to express emotion as well, and as a musician, what bothered me was the notion that music as an expressive outlet is limited. Take Star Wars. George Lucas created Bespin from the ground up. Being associated with the sky, there's a certain surreal, elated feeling you get from it that any existing city in the world couldn't provide. Everything about it from its original architecture to its exclusive culture is a pure brainchild of Lucas. The point I'm trying to state here is that Lucas basically invented a new emotion through inventing a completely new world. Williams, while a fine composer, writes with the purpose of augmenting every thematic niche in Star Wars, and while he too may express a new emotion not yet done through song by writing a theme for Bespin, he has to use Lucas's context as a primary fundament and footstool." What this translates to is music having an overall less creative capacity than other arts because playing off of abstract contexts entails a certain level of dependency on mediums through which these emotions are feasibly expressible. Music plays off of things already known to man. What accounts for difference in music is that you can take 100 composers, have them all write a song about a simple emotion like anger, and get 100 different pieces. Music doesn't create new emotion; that's actually one of its undeniable drawbacks. Perhaps not grammatically, but if anything I want you to know how musically open minded I am. I give everything a chance. Food for thought: If Williams was unaware of Lucas's work and was trying to write a song that conveyed the above outlined emotion of witnessing a floating city, he would have to visualize it first since that emotion is purely a derivative of sight. This means music is not purely auditory! There's a visual aspect as well!

No worries, thanks for all the help. I should be more careful before using a word when I'm not 100% sure of its definition.

Yeah if someone were in my shoes and arguing semantics with numerous people, most of who just want to get a quick hit in, I'm sure he or she'd handle it with more calm and finesse. I'd be willing to learn from their actions.

Albeit negative, I'm glad that you have such a developed opinion of me. If you give me some time to breathe I'll try and respond to you more concisely.

You're a cool guy man.

When someone attacks, the most logical thing to do is defend. Attack, defend, attack, defend. See the pattern?

The purpose of this thread was not and is not to seek literary aid.

I could've preferred the correction another day. Nobody's going to sift through all this garbage.

And with that, this thread has metamorphisized from a guy posing honest questions to an English workshop. /Sigh.

I don't intentionally pick longer words, and I don't pick them to impress people. It's just the way I write. If people are turned off by it, it can't be helped. If you got anything from this thread, I seriously hope it wasn't waving my arguments off as anemic. I guess I'll go back and edit unnecessary verbiage, but I hope you're able to see the main points which are anything but anemic.

Here, "deceivably" is listed as an adverbial form of "to deceive." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deceive Is "deceitfully" a better word here? Lol, I don't know too many words. And with that, can we get this topic back on track?

Well, "deceivably" comes from "to deceive," and not from "deceivable." The first definition of "to deceive" is "to mislead by a false appearance or statement," so "deceivably" would mean "characterized by misleading through false appearance or statement." So, what I meant by "deceivably veracious suppositions" is "something supposed that has correctness but is misleading," in that it is mistaken for the cause when it is a result of the cause. Haha, fair enough. I'm getting a bit tired of arguing the quality (or lack thereof) of my writing. The point here isn't to sell a novel, but to convey my point, and the only way I know how to do that is just to do what I've been doing. Is my writing that hard to comprehend? You're a veteran member here, and I'd love for you to put in your two cents.

Thanks a lot for the great criticism. I'm definitely not using this as a scapegoat or anything, but I've been responding to these posts since 8:00 AM and as you can obviously see, they're lengthy. I slipped up with the preposition usage, so thanks for pointing that out. Just for the record, the first definition of "deceptively" means "tending to deceive." Either make sense here because blaming a situation on the side-effects of a condition rather than the condition itself is a subtle fallacy that people commit every day. And the veracity of analyzing such a situation and coming to the conclusion that a side-effect was the primary cause is deceptive, because it appears to be perfectly correct. For the record: I don't use a thesaurus. The essence of synonyms lie in similarity, so it's wrong to simply replace words because they don't carry explicitly identical connotations. I know that. Maybe it's that a forum isn't as formal as I thought. Would you have the same disposition towards my writing if it were presented in a more formal fashion?

Hahaha, sounds awesome. Link me when you do?

Oh no my friend, they are inseparably linked in that your own sense of musical aesthetics primarily accounts for your own unique sense of them. Why would you ever play or compose something that sounds bad to you, lol. You're supposed to do that with improvisation. You're supposed to hear it in your mind first, because your mind's the only asset you have that's infinite. And that is the key link between composition and improvisation. Thinking in singular terms of an instrument puts a considerable constraint on what you can express and how you will express it. Haven't you ever heard "Think, before you speak."? It's the same way with music!! If a rock guitarist writes music, he will have a severely bent predilection towards use of the boxed scale, the banal transitions from shape to shape, and an absence of arpeggios. A pianist writing in the vein of a piano will think differently because of what's more easily expressible, like how arpeggios on piano are rudimentary in execution. That's why guitar playing sounds very scalar and piano playing very chordal. It's that one-dimensional mindset that plagues the pursuance of composition that so many are ignorant to. That's why you come up with the melody independent of the instrument, and then express it through the voicing of your desire. And for the record, a good composer always improvises exceptionally. That's where my entire analysis comes from! They're two sides of the same coin.

**NOTE** I just want to make clear the usage of the word interpretation. Because the direction of classical music is outlined so explicitly, I constrained the word's definition to "Control over fluctuations in speed, dynamic, and articulation." Because interpreting videogame music is by nature more lax due to the lack of classical teaching and conditioning, the far more liberal restrictions have ultimately given birth to what we refer to as remixing. So for the sake of clarity, please don't use remixing within a classical context and please don't use interpretation within a videogame music context. First off I just need to say that you have an amazingly rich opinion, and that I believe we have congruency. I actually have no formal training either, and have never read a single theory book in my life. I have a self-taught, or rather, self-invented sense of music theory. My theory is really just a collective realization of what makes the clock of my own auditory aesthetics tick. Whenever I think I come up with a new concept, I dig around to see if there's a universally accepted term for it; just for the sake of being able to communicate my ideas through understood terminology. It's the coolest thing to be able to say that you've reinvented the wheel- that is, discovering that your own musical ideology is correct, and you have the stamp of conventional theory and its rules that have been refined for centuries to prove it. I think you're pretty close to stating what I've stated. Like I said before, although they're so different, the two arts of composing and performing are so inextricably linked people carelessly use words that denote one position to encapsulate both. If you're a composer, then performance is just the other side of the coin. Thing is, when you're a performer, the inverse of the prior statement isn't so true, simply because of the fundamentally different necessities of execution. The process behind the creation of a piece is just so different than that of learning it, in that a good sense of aesthetics, creativity, being very in touch with emotion, and most importantly, connecting all of them are all integral to composition. Interpreting a piece requires firstly the technicality to learn it, and the next step is where many deviate. The difference in how people deviate is to what magnitude they do so. I agree with what you've said regarding the emotional connection between performer and piece. Needless to say, that's the only way to really perform a piece. Where your wrong is when you champion someone trying to marry a different perception of the song with the already existing, and by virtue of composer more important one. I personally think that a great composer composes with specific intent regarding every subtlety and emotive emanation, so if your emotions are different from what the composer intended, suffice to say you felt wrong. The very concept of interpretation is flawed because ideally, there should be room for none. And if there is, well, then what's the point of the composition? The biggest failures in cinematography are those with intentional open-endings. Why in the world would I paint a beautiful foreground just to make mass prints of it so millions around the world could draw their own backgrounds? In fact, I have seen that, and those are art books which capitalize on the insatiable market for instruction. It's funny because in this vein of realizing what a composer wants to convey, submissions are criticized here for making generous use of the "source material." After removing the bias towards hi-fidelity music, how many of you have heard remixes that you've liked more than the actual song itself? And incredulously, if for some odd reason the remix is better, that's the most tremendous shame for the composer. It's a slap in the face to tell the composer, "Hey, I can express exactly what you want, better than you." That's impossible, which is a bit contradictory and humorous because that's is the only way you can feasibly draw a direct comparison between remixing and composing. Because the essence of remixing is to tailor a song to suit a personal sense of musical aesthetics, and that aesthetic is what guides improvisation, one can argue that remixing does require a certain amount of compositional skill. I saw a Stairway to Heaven flamenco remix. Think about that for a bit. The entire reason flamenco is played is to induce that wild, animalistic lust for rhythmic movement. Why the hell would you ever put Stairway to Heaven in such a context? There's a very fine line between interpretation and bastardization. So many "remixes" on this site have crossed that line. But, since we're on OCReMix.. so long as you stay within the boundaries of what emotion(s) the original is supposed to evoke, then remixing is alright. Doing so while retaining enough of the original to warrant a "remixed" status is quite difficult because the melody is what primarily dictates the mood, and the harmony a more specific declaration of it, so it's the only possible way to change the melody would be through subtle note choices and embellishments. This would be very similar to turning a shade of blue lighter, or darker. I don't particularly like the term "remix" because it carries a connotation of changing a song entirely, while staying the same. That's a friggin' paradox. Remixing is taking blue, mixing it with yellow, getting green, and trying to argue that the green product is still blue. Changing anything significant about the song significantly gives it a completely different color- what remixing is is creating a new song entirely, and we need a separate term to reflect that. If we can come to a conscious consensus that what we perceive as remixing flies as an unnamed concept and that there needs to be another word for it, then I think people would be a lot more open minded towards the concept of it, because accusations of bastardization would pretty much be out of the picture. It's not playing the composition that's an achievement, it's understanding everything about the piece and letting that come through as the interpretation, and needless to say, the understanding has to come first. That's why I always try and understand a piece before I perform it, so I can have the deepest knowledge of how the creator understands it.

Thanks for enlightening me, I had no idea about Protoman or the boss, haha. My pre-X knowledge is pretty much.. nonexistent. Now the question is whether the term "Rock and Roll" is indicative of a very specific period of rock and roll (most likely 70s) or whether they're referring to 90s rock as "Rock and Roll" because of Japan's very by the book grasp of English. It was at least, before Westernization become a hot trend, the three East-Asian countries all impregnated it, and it gave birth to Engrish.

Well, I can say I almost agree with you. Think about it: emotions are the genesis of art; it's our purely human need for self-expression which has led to the inventions of all these different arts. What makes music fundamentally unique is that it aims to do so primarily through pitch, and then rhythm. So the essence of art is self-expression, and consequently, creation is the necessitation to realize any art. What I don't agree with is your basic assesment. I absolutely agree on all points made about interpretation's value but interpretation is not in the same vein as improvisation and composition. I strongly believe that improvisation is the genesis of composition, and they both stem from the same inner inspiration (because think about it, the essence of composition is organized improvisation). Interpretation in terms of classical music is extremely limiting in that composers like Vivaldi had explicit constraints on freedom which were not to be broken, and rightfully so as the piece is his. When you interpret videogame music, you give birth to OCRemix, which is basically an amalgamation of videogame songs the people have tailored to suit their own sense of musical aesthetics. And that aesthetic, is what guides improvisation.