We disscussed this point and I wanted to raise it as a comment on other posts but it did not follow completely. When I sit down to play guitar, more specifically to write a song, I may already have a melody in my head that I want to figure out the notes for it on guitar. So I find the root note of the melody, and use the relative pitch in my mind and play notes on the guitar until the pitches match up–relative pitch is where given two notes you can hear how far they are apart, say a third, a fifth, or an octave. I now have a root note and the next note of the melody, which is still fresh in my mind. From there it is usually pretty easy to match up the rest of the melody with the notes on the guitar using relative pitch. Viola, the melody in my head is now one that I can play on guitar, move it up an octave, and even tease it when I am soloing over a chord progression. Then there are other times where I may be soloing or just messing around on the guitar and I play a string of notes that sound good together, repeat them, decide I like the sound, and turn that into a melody. Can you say that in the first instance I wrote the melody and in the latter situation the guitar wrote a melody? If the mind is the homefront of all ideas, and I hear something after I have played it, without really thinking about what I was playing, and decide that I like this new sound, did I actually create this sound myself or does the guitar deserve credit?
12.31.06
Ryan Dixon | 07-Dec-06 at 4:23 pm | Permalink
I think that “sharing” the credit with the guitar would be valid in this case. However, skewing off onto my own tangent - (Yes, I am aware that alot of my comments pertain to technology and human interaction with it) BUT - one of my good friends here has Guitar Hero. Personally, I have never been able to succeed at DDR or Guitar Hero, but the sheer idea of these games is so intriguing. My friend has learned to play a couple of songs while not even looking at the screen. It is hilarious seeing him concentrate while loking like it is effortless. This gaming technology is so fascinating - in that, it semi-teaches us to perform actual talents i.e. dancing or playing the guitar. Now, I know that Guitar Hero is not really playing a guitar- but I know it takes talent, becasue I can’t do it. Ok, so I know I completely rambled just now- but I think it is really cool where gaming technology is being taken to concerning certain talents. In the future, what will games be teaching us?
Kenneth Sullivan | 07-Dec-06 at 6:17 pm | Permalink
Well the future has arrived as far as games teaching us new things. This Nintendo Wii gaming system may be America’s answer to obese adolescents. Instead of being a couch potato and playing video games without moving from your seat for hours on end, Wii requires the player to act out the functions of the character in the game. In a baseball game you swing the controller through the air in order to swing the bat, in a tennis game same goes for swinging your racket. In a mission type game, such as Zelda, you slash the controller to make Link’s sword slash an enemy. Although this pales in comparison to actually playing baseball or tennis and really working out, it is a step in the right direction and a step away from couch potato-ness.
Charlotte Miles | 07-Dec-06 at 6:28 pm | Permalink
I think the idea of making music on a guitar and giving credit to the guitar is absurd! While reading many different posts, I am tying this one in with machines caring. I don’t belive your guitar cares if you give it credit. I don’t think it will play any worse the next time because it is mad at you for not giving it credit. It is a basic machine with no “programing” beyond making sound. You are the puppeteer of the instrument. Even in the second case, you struck those chords and liked them. The guitar didn’t just play on its own and say “how does that sound?”. Your mind told your hands to strum and your hands did the strumming, so the credit is all yours.
Jeff Chwa | 07-Dec-06 at 6:59 pm | Permalink
I would have to agree with Charlotte because as the musician you are the one who is actually exhibiting the skill in performing the song, so most of the credit should belong to the person. But credit must be given to the instrument because without the instrument the musician would not be able to produce their music. Also, different brands of instruments can offer different qualities of sound. So credit must be given to the craftsmanship of the instrument because the instrument is what is producing the actually sound of the music.
Lindsey Schwartz | 07-Dec-06 at 7:09 pm | Permalink
To some point I agree with Charlotte - the guitar isn’t making the music, you are. However I think I agree with Jeff, because although the musician is the one using the strings and playing music, the musician could not do this without the guitar. I think he brings up a really good point about different brands and different qualities - If a musician were to play the same way on two different guitars, but it sounds better on one, the musician would probably give credit to the better one and want to use the better sounding guitar.
Miguel Guzman | 07-Dec-06 at 7:13 pm | Permalink
I think that the whole giving credit to a guitar for a melody is crazy. I absolutely think that the mind is the one that makes that melody. So as for what comes first I definitely think the mind comes. Yeah you are able to make a melody without even thinking about it but at the end it a melody because your mind thinks it sounds good. Not because the guitar has any thoughts after all you are the one using the guitar.
Teresa Hernandez | 07-Dec-06 at 9:13 pm | Permalink
I totally agree with Charlotte. I mean you can give credit to the machine if you want to, but there is really no reason to. I imagine the guitar as being a machine, and as I believe with all machines, it does not have the ability to care. The guitar did not write the second melody because it is not capable of doing so. You wrote the first melody, then adjusted it to create the second one. Your guitar was merely the instrument that you used to help you. Kind of like if you were a programmer and used the computer to work a problem out on it…you wouldn’t give credit to the computer would you?
Jeff Chwa | 07-Dec-06 at 9:18 pm | Permalink
Miguel and Teresa- I don’t think we should give credit to the guitar as if the guitar was an animate object that thought about the music and moved its strings all by itself. I was refering preiviously to the fact that we should give some credit to the person that made the guitar because their craftmanship aided in the production of the music and that is something that should be recognized. The majority of the credit though, I do agree should go to the musician.
Kenneth Sullivan | 07-Dec-06 at 9:50 pm | Permalink
A major part of playing guitar or any instrument is practicing scales and arpeggios until they become second nature. I can and do pick up a guitar and go up and down the major scale and be thinking about it but it comes with ease because of practice. The pentatonic scale (major scale with only the 5 main notes), however, I have practiced so much that it is second nature to me and I can go up and down and bounce around the scale while holding a conversation and having zero concentration on the guitar. This is what I was trying to portray in this post but it might be hard for non-musicians to grasp. Teresa, I did not adjust the first melody to obtain the second. The second melody was one in which I had all of my concentration on something else (say television) and only after I had played a series of notes from an almost instinctive scale, did I hear the notes and process that I enjoyed the sound. I agree that the guitar did not write the second melody, but it did not appear to come from my conscious level since I was paying no attention when I played it. The difference I see in the two melodies is that the first I thought of in my head and formulated on the guitar. The second seemed to have come from an unconscious level or may have just occurred by accident.
Greg Frazier | 10-Dec-06 at 1:03 am | Permalink
Since the whole creativity thing seems to upset people and makes this conversation some what of a dead end, I would like to explore another situation. Currently in number theory there is a search for Mercenne Primes. I won’t go into the details of what one is, but it is just important to understand that it takes some computing to find one.
Now, in the Great Internet Mercenne Primes Search (GIMPS), people are able to download software that searches for Mercenne Primes when their computer isn’t doing anything else. In the event that the computer finds a Mercenne Prime, credit would go to the owner of the computer, and not the computer itself. But how can we justify this? The owner of the computer did nothing but download some software and maintain the computer, which assuming the owner of the computer uses the computer, maintainance would have happened regardless.
At what point do we stop looking at technology from the human point of view? Whether it is the interaction of a scientist and lab equipment to solve problems or someone fiddling with a guitar to create new melodies, why must the technology always be disregarded? If it were not for Kenneth’s interaction with the guitar, the second melody would have never occured. Even though the guitar can’t write a melody on its own, Kenneth could not play the melody on the guitar if there was no guitar.
Technology is not a one way street. If technology was not so involved with our interaction with it, then there would be no need for advancements. Instead, technology gives us feedback. It tells us how we can improve it. Technology without humans is nothing; But humans without technology are extinct. Think about where man would be without even the simplist of technology. There would be no clothes, no language, food would have to be hand fought or small enough to catch without the aide of tools, there would be no America, no cities, no religion, etc. These are all forms of technology we depend on.
Does it make us so inferior to give some credit to a tool for helping us accomplish something?
Paul D Miller wrote about how not only do we manipulate tools, but the tools manipulate us. In short, this basically means that when we use a tool to accompish a task, the tool is also using us to fulfill its purpose.