/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19225131]

Norm MacDonald once told a story about how he once met Bob Dylan, in the story he claims that Bob Dylan made Norm read certain passages in works of classic literature to himself while listening to music. Bob Dylan then told Norm that this was not “real writing” and called it stenography.
Can someone explain what the fuck Bob Dylan meant by this? Norm is pretty vague in his explanation.

[Anonymous No.19225137]

>>19225131
I think norm is just making this up. Also bob Dylan is a failed poet

[Anonymous No.19225139]

>>19225131
sensory overload, it's easier done with drugs

[Anonymous No.19225226]

>>19225131
he is probably a gnostic christian and believes we are just transcribing things that already exist from the pleroma. no new thoughts. finite universe kind of thing.

[Anonymous No.19225304]

>>19225131
Dylan might subscribe to the idea that all writing is really just rewriting.

[Anonymous No.19225353]

>>19225131
Then there is the tweet where Norm let us know that Bob spoke about the original ending of the book of Job. Now, since we will never know if Norm really did stay two days with Bob, could anyone shine a light on this tweet? Can it be retrieved? Does anyone know about the process of the writing of Job?

[Anonymous No.19225373]

>>19225137
Bob Dylan was fucking awful and couldn't even sing

[Anonymous No.19225379]

>>19225373
not knowing how to sing is based.
dylan still sucks despite this.

[Anonymous No.19225384]

>>19225379
No. It isn't. Neither is not knowing basic music theory but still talking about music. Music theory takes about an hour to learn.

[Anonymous No.19225395]

>>19225384
Edgy

[Anonymous No.19225400]

>>19225395
Everyone should know it anon. It only takes an hour to learn and then you aren't completely talking out of your ass when discussing music.

[Anonymous No.19225401]

>>19225353
>the original ending of the book of Job
there's only 1 ending, but there is a part that was added in the middle later on

[Anonymous No.19225416]

>>19225400
Do you have a link for us plebeian mongrels? While you are at it, will you give an example how Bob failed to convey these truths we take as granted? Will you refute this as well?

[Anonymous No.19225430]

>>19225384
How do you learn basic music theory in an hour?

[Anonymous No.19225432]

>>19225131
Who is Bob Dylan to talk shit about what real writing is anyway?

[Anonymous No.19225436]

>>19225416
I like Ted Greene's chord chemistry. Dude I know it sounds intimidating or whatever but it really breaks down to there are only 12 notes, 7 of which are used in the major scale, and in the vast majority of music only 6 notes of those comprise the 6 chords of the song. 3 are major and 3 are minor. The seventh note and vii chord is diminished and very rarely used in popular music. Almost everything we listen to is in major/ionian. Only in modal jazz or classical do you hear a lot more compositions written/played outside of ionian or it's relative minor. Pic related is your friend. Then there are two other common tricks which are secondary dominant and chromatic chords which are really just based on the major scales notes for secondary dominant and walking the half steps between the 7 notes of the scale for chromatics. The vast majority of music is very simple. Even chords are just based on the major scale.

[Anonymous No.19225467]

>>19225436
Should I just buy his (Ted's) book or are there any prerequisites you recommend?

[Anonymous No.19225474]

>>19225432
He's the winner of the Nobel prize in Literature

[Anonymous No.19225475]

>>19225131
I suspect it's a very dry joke, at the end of this typed-out story he quotes Dylan as saying "Don't be fooled by typists"

[Anonymous No.19225490]

>>19225467
Only buy it if you play guitar. Otherwise you can learn all of this from random jazz guys on youtube. Chord chemistry is primarily a chord chart reference book. The theory bit is just like 5 pages at the beginning describing how chords are built around the major scale. All your 'weird' jazz chords that are mystifying as a rock guy make a lot more sense when you find out they are just named after the major scales intervals. Honestly the best instrument to learn for understanding theory is piano because it is a linear instrument with the 12 notes laid out from left to right, all the white keys are whole notes and all the blacks are sharp/flat. Guitar is a matrix instrument and there are 72 positions of the 12 notes to memorize before the pattern recurs as opposed to 12 positions of the 12 notes before it recurs. That is why so many guitarists get stuck in limbo only knowing the pentatonic.

[Anonymous No.19225499]

>>19225490
Not that Anon but thanks for this bro. I play guitar but my gf plays piano and I always found it crazy how much better than me she is at anything music theory. She can listen to something and straight away recreate it and I have to play around essentially brute forcing my way across the fretboard if I don't want to just cheat and use a scale.

[Anonymous No.19225528]

>>19225436
t. doesn't know anything about music

[Anonymous No.19225538]

>>19225436
popular music in america isn't ionian because its not really modal. this was true of classical music also, which went into new territory with 'chords'. modal music of course does not play in terms of 'chords'. but popular music today: it isn't modal, but what does it have in common with classical music? really nothing, since it can hardly be said to explore chord progression and melody along the same lines, but just repeats 'chord progressions' as though a four-bar or twelve-bar 'progression' replaced the modal center. is there not a sort of 'turn' in music, perhaps centered around beethoven and 'romanticism', which wagner followed after, and thereafter schoenberg? which ended in the complete deconstruction of harmony, and left us with something eerie and discontinuous. after schoenberg, music either follows him into new mediums (e.g., tape, computing) or caricatures wagner and schoenberg in film music.

meanwhile, 'popular' chordal music, e.g., in jazz, blues: this is not modal music, although there is a strange 'movement' towards it, e.g., in the west's interest in raga music in the middle of the 20th century. conversely, non-western countries around the world 'tune into' popular music in the west, and begin to try to incorporate it into their modal traditions, thereby undermining them. jazz is remotely modal: there is an interest 'new' sounds (modes), but these are explored rhapsodically, without staying in one mode. at this point, jazz has no 'grounding' -- it either becomes perversely academic ('jazz schools') or it takes after computer music. it searches in vain for the comsic resonance of a 'system' like that of indian raga. the latter of course can only contort itself in all attempts to 'bridge' between east-west.

music 'theory' in our day and age is really some kind of very bad joke. only if one has no experience of music outside of modern popular music can one take it seriously. but what 'is' this popular music? it can serve as no folk tradition, since nothing in the 20th century has or was really able to last. it was less than a century ago that robert johnson was playing guitar. consider how the audience hears music: most of the time it is through the internet on earphones or 'speakers'. the only appropriate music to play through such a medium would be the 'style' which we have no name for, but which is 'produced' by such as curtis roads.

[Anonymous No.19225565]

>>19225538
The modes are just the major scale beginning and ending on different notes anon. Modal jazz was the new thing in the 60s but is passe at this point. I don't think you actually know what the modes are. Modal jazz is named that because rather than those guys writing chord progressions they just write the key, say D Dorian and know the 7 notes of the mode and the chords possible within those bars well enough to simply follow one another.

[Anonymous No.19225597]

>>19225565
on the contrary, modal music has hardly existed on earth for centuries. music was originally modal, i.e., in the ancient systems. there was no such thing as 'chords' progression from one to another under a melody. modal music has a fixed center which resonates throughout the entire performance and modes differ by their melodic contour and by the ratio of the notes. for instance, in india raga, even if different melodies use the same scale, they are called different modes on account of the various contuours that are possible.

if you are familiar with any traditional modal system you would realize that jazz has little in common with it.

[Anonymous No.19225611]

>>19225131
i hate when clowns try to be profound

[Anonymous No.19225624]

>>19225597
So monophonic scale runs are better because of pajeetabu mysticism?

[Anonymous No.19225637]

>>19225624
you may be as racist as you like but you will end up having to denigrate your own, seeing as in ancient greece and in medieval europe polyphony was only a very late invention.

[Anonymous No.19225640]

>>19225474
Good for him. But it was my understanding that he was a musician.

[Anonymous No.19225643]

>>19225640
You know songs can have words, right?
Like, a song can also be a poem?

[Anonymous No.19225658]

>>19225643
>Like, a song can also be a poem?

[Anonymous No.19225681]

>>19225637
There are a ton of recent inventions anon. That doesn't make monophonic scale runs and gay mysticism better or more impressive than chordal music. That argument reduces to muh fee fees just as much as a retard who listens to black flag for le energy.

[Anonymous No.19225730]

>>19225681
furthermore, as i said, to partake of today's music theory is to bask in almost unbelievable ignorance. since the 'popular music' that formulaically follows it occupies so short a term in world history. even early american music, which was full of modal ballads and folk songs descended from folk cultures in europe, today sounds foreign and exotic to our ears. it would be hardly appropriate to describe such music in terms of our current 'theory'; likewise if applied to african music, native american music, etc. so what is this popular music theory? it is descended from our classical tradition, which again has little to do with today's pop songs. no, pop music in america in the 20th and 21st centuries ought to be studied, not in terms inappropriate to it, but with reference to the schematics of the inventions which it now passes through, e.g., the microphone, the radio, turing machines, tape machines, digital computers, etc. what on earth does any musical structure in a modern pop or jazz song have to do with anything? what does it matter that the song you hear on your iphone or on the radio resolves from a fifth to the tonic? what is 'impressive' about modern chord 'progressions'? what 'are' such progressions? they are nothing today but formulae, filled with the batter of whatever noise you like. pop music is always some kind of bastardized orphan which has discovered some minutiae in the musical structure explored centuries ago by bach and mozart and beethoven and mindlessly repeated it in a 'verse' or a 'chorus' for a somnambulistic audience, high off of whatever, caught up in whatever fashion trend, or 'identity'. it has no tradition, no conscious reference to history. it is now lost in cyberspace, completely predictable, fully programmed.

[Anonymous No.19225778]

>>19225730
Traditional scales follow the same rules as modern ones with some half tones or flats in it. If you don't enjoy it, sure, but learning it allows for more and easier creative expression especially in collaboration. If you are to say that constraints do not breed mastery or creativity you are insane. Even rigid ceremony like Japanese tea is said to have infinite subtleties when performed by a master. Besides that it is not a closed system like chess. Also playing an instrument is simply fun, so is learning new techniques. Carving blocks is nice but so is using a lathe or cnc router to build more complex projects. I empathize with you because I'm a bit of a joseph campbell and jung fan but dismissing how jazz or country makes you feel just seems like you are missing something. But then maybe you aren't american and just can't get into it.

[Anonymous No.19225841]

>>19225778
>traditional scales follow the same rules
you are saying that this 'music theory' encompasses the music of, e.g., ancient greece, indian raga, medieval chant, celtic folk, etc. but this is obviously false. anyone who takes a 'music theory' class today actually learns very little about anything. what they learn are cute formulae which have been repeated ad nauseum in a short time span. what can exploration into chord progression or polyphony give us since palestrina and bach and mozart, hmm? and anyone familiar with western music theory who has tried to cross over into raga music for instance either makes a fool of himself or discovers that he has to learn an entirely new system. learning modern music theory leads to myopia. you seem to think little of non-'american' music: could anyone today, equipped with knowledge of music 'theory' compose in counterpoint, or compose a chant or hymn? no, not in the least because they are inside programs and education 'systems' or listening to music 'on' a computer. music 'theory' is now where it belongs, that is, programmed into an artificial intelligence which can now do the work of 'writing' pop songs.

[Anonymous No.19225885]

>>19225841
Since mozart? Rhythm obviously. That is the biggest component that has been popularized in american pop music. Syncopation as well as the variety of timbre is the most fun thing. From swing and bebop to country to blues to jazz, the drums and rhythm have been the driving force of change as well as the diversion of all sorts of timbres. Funk for example is another favorite genre of mine and like classic ountry it is extremely syncopated with a heavy focus on rhythm and percussion and extremely varied timbres. From the wet sounding twang of a tele to the thumping bass to the volume swells and note bends that flow melodically from the steel guitar in mixolydian 3rds. In funk it is the percussive slap of electric bass, galloping and filling with rhythms, the breathy or flat waves of synth pumping out 7ths, 9ths, 13ths, the chime of the rhythm guitar, and the vivacious vocal runs dancing over the syncopated rhythms as animated as the wackiest cartoon. Love me crazy timbres, love me arrangement, love me syncopation, simple as. I don't even need really complex chord progressions if I have me fun timbre, arrangement, and syncopation all on top of a fun rhythm. Samba and bossa nova and cumbia also give me these things. Love me latin percussion.

[Anonymous No.19225915]

>>19225885
i suppose you think that as an american you have access to a plethora of cuisines also. what should we have for dinner?, the american asks the other american -- italian, latin, japanese? etc. etc. in reality, one gets the same 'thing', since all the food, whatever its 'cuisine' is served in the same way according to the same formula. but it seems as though so many dishes are available -- general tso's chicken, bean burritos, chicken carbonara. so many options for the american to choose from. so many things for the american to try. maybe he will try cooking on his own. with only what is available at the local supermarket, and following recipes on the internet, he can put together any exotic or folk dish he likes. a little of this, a new twist on that.

[Anonymous No.19225925]

>>19225915
Well we are historically extremely influenced by french cuisine so yes like the French we do not gatekeep and welcome experimentation.

[Anonymous No.19225965]

>>19225925
Oh also indian sloppa cuisine is a fucking joke. Literally anybody can clarify butter, murder it with spices, then add red onions and whatever liquid coconut milk or tomato sauce. Oh wow you toasted the fenugreek, cumin, coriander how amazing. Anyone into cooking has whole spices. Pajeets are not special. Besides Caribbean curry with scotch bonnets is the best kind.

[Anonymous No.19225971]

>>19225430
Learn the major scale, everything is derived from that. An hour may be an exaggeration but you’d be surprised how simple basic music theory is. Though I would argue having a good ear is more beneficial than knowing the ins and outs of music theory

[Anonymous No.19225996]

>>19225131
Dude, if you read Kerouac, you would know
Come on now

[Anonymous No.19226001]

>>19225971
>Scales
Babby, grade school is that way
Don't come back till you finish

[Anonymous No.19226407]

>>19225841
where and how can i learn the traditional theory of palestrina and mozart rather than the modern 'theory' of beatles or whatever?

[Anonymous No.19226584]

>>19226407
Lmao

[Anonymous No.19226593]

>>19225131
>Can someone explain what the fuck Bob Dylan meant by this?
Basically, oy vey these classic goyimish writers are far superior to use jews, we need to undermine and create a totallt jewish genre of novel.