Not sure how to title this....

I'm big on philosophical stuff, so indulge me a minute in a hypothetical situation.
(This isn't limited to drumming)
I wonder.....if a great musician such as a John Coltrane or a Miles Davis were raised in isolation without hearing any other music growing up, none, zero....would he still have all those sounds in his head? Would they still have created music on that level without having the benefits of hearing the greatsthat came before him? Would they even have music in their heads? Or does a switch flip when exposed to music that would remain switched off without exposure? See where I'm headed with this? What percentage of a persons total musical output can be attributed to those who came before? I'm thinking a sizeable portion, but wanted other opinions.

I think of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, musical geniuses that lived before any form of recording..These guys created some of the worlds most beautiful music ever composed..without the benefit of radio, CD, Ipods, internet...How much music could they have been exposed to? Certainly less than the average human today, I'm guessing. And how diverse was the music they did hear? To me, that just goes to prove that even a limited amount of exposure, in the right hands can produce great stuff. But what if there were zero exposure? What then? Would Miles have been a genius at something else instead?

In western music, we have 12 notes.

If one were to write music not having ever hear western music before, they wouldn't necessarily know to fit whatever they did into the 12 notes, or know how to tune their instruments in a way that made sense to anyone else.

Granted, standard pitch has always been relative, and A doesn't always equal 440, but the relative spaces of 12 notes is an essential part of western music.

So maybe Miles and Mozart might still have been very creative with sounds but I'd suspect their creations would sound a bit weird to the rest of us if they hadn't heard some thing previously for which to base their creations off of.

But that's just a guess.

I reckon all music created is based on the influence of every sound ever heard previously, no way around it.

larryace said:

I think of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, musical geniuses that lived before any form of recording..These guys created some of the worlds most beautiful music ever composed..without the benefit of radio, CD, Ipods, internet...How much music could they have been exposed to?

Click to expand...

I'd say they were exposed to plenty. Music was still popular back then, just not in the same forms, but people would go to the concert halls, etc.

If you think about it, nearly all music is influenced by other music. Say if Jimi was around the times of Mozart, maybe he would have given us some fantastic Sonatas rather than wailing on the guitar. Creative geniuses are creative geniuses, but the form of their genius will be determined in part by their context.

jer said:

I reckon all music created is based on the influence of every sound ever heard previously, no way around it.

Click to expand...

Right on the money - influenced by what we hear, then we make it our own (or a dead copy if you are a robot :<)))) )

jer said:

I reckon all music created is based on the influence of every sound ever heard previously, no way around it.

Click to expand...

I'm with 720hours .... that's put perfectly.

Larry, we have to boil it down to music being inherent in the sounds around us, a la John Cage. As children we learn through mimicry. Our filters are not perfect, so a child inevitably won't only mimic the adults and their peers, but also bird and insect calls. I'd like to think that "Hey! That sounds good!" was the first musical thought ...

Nature is full of rhythms, starting with our heartbeats and breathing, so we naturally find rhythmic organisation reassuring. That's where it all starts. The first drummer was probably an insect

A bass player in one of my old bands had didgeridoo lessons and taught me a few chops on it. Traditionally, women aren't allowed to play it but I'm a whitey, a progressive and a musician so I don't care Some of the chops I Iearned were the kangaroo hop, the dog growl and bark, the kookaburra and the truck roaring past (that one surprised me - Aboriginal prog?).

The Oz Aboriginal culture is one of the oldest in the world and their approach gives us a hint as to what the processes were IMO