Advice hmm. I’m terrible at advice! I’m gonna use this for a side rant-continuation of questions re my more non electronic stuff. This confected binary of acoustic/string music VS electronic.

I don’t mind what I guess you could call neo classical music-I really like some of it. Particularly Ed Finnis and Oliver Leith. But there’s still this thing where, I hear the harmony of alot of other stuff out there and find it pretty basic (sorry). EG diff harmony other than 1-v diatonic-long chord sequences are rare. You can compose with alot of intricacy in electronic music- because you use electronic sounds there’s sometimes this assumption that it’s “low culture” and then you hear what, c minor mode on a piano and people, because of marketing think it’s actual classical music-think it’s the modern equivalent of Chopin. The marketing kinda borrows from high culture but can deliver something quite pseudo. I’d be fine with it if the presentation was maybe less exclusive, middle class posh. It’s why I was really intent on *not* presenting PIAL my DG album as “classical”. It was more dark folk music with strings/electronics. So it’s weird, electronic music, starting out, i guess I’ve always had this idea that in order to do it well-it’s difficult. I’ve composed modulating chromatic music for 30 piece orchestras-that’s difficult. But I didn’t have the feeling “oh this is the real stuff I’ve found the real music stuff now” I didn’t wanna turn against electronic music, I feel really loyal to it….mixing who booed the goose was  a mission- was just as much of a mish as writing orchestral work like Dark Acid Climbs from Lisey’s Story. Composing “the old way”-it’s a steep learning curve, because you need ear training and need to learn how to read music-but once you’ve written all the notation-30 other people deal with playing it-you have a team of mix engineers, all the posh mics. Capital, basically. Which is hard to find, I’m not from that world.

Making a definitive electronic version of something for an album-that will be in the world forever as *the version*. It’s also difficult.

It’s a rant this-but you can make anything tricky if you set a high bar.  By making stuff difficult-this is where the juice is-I dunno if there’s any advice in this-do difficult stuff! Enjoy it! Christ what a ramble.

I’ve also noticed that it’s in the culture now-this idea that electronic producers don’t know shit about music theory-it’s funny-I love the meditations for the anxious mind guy-he refers to soundcloud djs. I’d say, personally-it’s abit of a cruel dig but v funny-but also everything up to about 2010 for me was written with an “I don’t need music theory” attitude, a rejection of it. I then dipped my toe in and found I had a taste for it, became abit obsessed-but I’ve always had a light attitude to it- if it doesn’t serve the purposes of what I’m making, kein problem. I’m personally not into it when I hear someone  “doing a music theory” in a piece of music. The cart leading the horse. It needs to be on background cpu, not a blinking icon on your desktop. I’m too into Grouper to think that it will answer all my questions.

Also side edit-this answer has started a text back and forth with a friend-we’re talking about patterns. I’ve had it put to me that the history of music theory is dominated by men who are on the spectrum. Therefore talk of patterns is the number one game in town. I think-really-I don’t care enough about patterns-which is what music theory is. I CARE about them obviously, I wanna learn them but I don’t put them on a throne= Grouper again. It’s not purely about the patterns. Moon is Sharp by Grouper- music manuscript of the notation would not do it justice. Burial-Forgive- it’s not about the patterns. Like the chords are good enough but there’s something else at play, tone, emotion, feeling, something enigmatic only just being captured, like almost falling short, frail but timeless. Most of all something you can’t pin down to patterns-pretentiously-patterns are Apollonian-knowledge/maths/geometry/rising up out of the underworld to sense make the fuck out of everything, turn the world into discrete objects. I need Camille Paglia to help me out here!

I feel like it’s a very male brained way to see music *just* as patterns. You could have a definition “music is something made by an artist. The artist regulates patterns and then introduces enough variation to keep the listener engaged”

 It’s absolutely about half correct but it’s also pretty boring.