Lawrence Wu wrote:

>This is one of the biggest ironies of the pop music culture.  There are
>those that choose to be musically illiterate for the same reason.  Dr.
>Forney one of my professors in music included a very astute observation
>in one of her published works on music.  It was in the lines that not
>understanding the rules of football will not help someone enjoy the game
>more.  Intentionally being ignorant of music is in the same lines.

The sense I get from observing pop musicians and their audience is that
they choose to be "musically illiterate" because they are following in the
tradition of popular musicians going back to the dawn of the human race.
That is, when you feel like singing a song or beating out a rhythm to dance
to, you just open your mouth and sing away, or grab whatever is handy that
makes a noise and beat away.  This doesn't take any music theory at all,
and people were doing it thousands of years before there was any such thing
(presumably) as music theory.

On the other hand, if you aspire to do anything a bit more elaborate that
than with your music, then it would behoove you to get some theory under
your belt.  One of the big differences between pop music and CM is that
the latter is usually *much* more elaborate.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]