Photographic technology and making art

I would say a Venn diagram fits. You nailed the technical part. The composition is also great. Nothing extra, nothing missing with a great capture of the powerful locomotive and the engineer nicely framed. Then there is the artistic portion. You have shown the grandeur and fury of a locomotive under power enough that I want to jump out of the way.

To do that you must vocalize what you hear in your head. You must sing the notes you hear. Out loud.

It's difficult at first. But anyone can do it. This is a learned skill. You can learn to do it. You can't get the voice in your head into your instrument, any instrument, until you can vocalize it.

Any good guitar teacher knows this. Not so much piano teachers. Get yourself a good guitar teacher and talk about this. Your piano skills will explode.

Rich

I consider the BIF that you and others capture to be art.
To quote Iliah from the Tech & Artistic Approaches thread:
techno-
word-forming element meaning "art, craft, skill," later "technical, technology," from Latinized form of Greek tekhno-, combining form of tekhnē "art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing," from PIE teks-na- "craft" (of weaving or fabricating), from suffixed form of root teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate."
There is a craft, a skill in the capture, sure, aided by some pretty nifty tech. But I also see nature in the BIF. Some shots catch wing / feather attitude which show the aerodynamics, etc, etc. Art on many levels.

I think your personal preference for the guitar is coloring your observation above. A great deal of musical composition is keyboard-based, and throughout the world there are many musical genres, traditions and styles that have little or no association to the guitar, yet the practitioners of those genres manage to "get it out of their heads and onto a reproducible medium".

As for Alan's observation about a disconnect between what's in his head and the "quality" of his materials, that connection will develop as his piano playing proficiency progresses. Try achieving the tonality of a Steinway or Fazioli concert grand with an old Kimball upright. It's sort of like trying to match the image tonality of a Hasselblad X2D with an old Sony Mavica.

You have completely misunderstood my point. And I may have lead you to that.

I have absolutely no preference between guitar or piano on this subject. There is no difference.

However, the default way that most guitar players learn guitar and the way piano players learn piano is fundamentally different. (Notice I said most, not all).

I would bet that close to 98% of people who learn piano learn to read music as an integral part of the experience. It's just the way piano is taught. Piano learning does not emphasize "hearing the music." At least not for a long time. Formal lessons are the norm. Piano playing and proficiency in reading music are two sides of the same sheet of music. People who learn piano, do not, as a rule try to emulate piano pieces by listening to them. They read the music. They do not try to replicate popular music by listening to it. They get the sheet music and play it.

A very high percentage of guitar players are people who pick up a guitar, and one way or another, learn bits and pieces, good and bad techniques and who strive to replicate popular music by trying to copy it by listening to it. Formal lessons are not the norm. Guitar players tend to believe that learning to read music will "hinder their creativity" (pure nonsense). Trying to emulate solo playing is highly valued. And to do that, the "self-taught" guitar player has to learn to hear the music and to vocalize the music he/she hears inside his/her head, because he/she cannot rely on ability to read music to get the music to come out of the instrument.

I truly think both piano learners and guitar learners would vastly benefit from applying as much of the "other instrument's" way of learning as possible.

My comment that an aspiring piano student would learn a great deal from a guitar teacher about the process of vocalizing the music one hears in one's head, is simply that that process happens earlier and to a greater extent in the guitar-playing world than in the piano-playing world and that guitar teachers focus on it more than do piano teachers. But the ability to do that truly belongs to both worlds to an equal degree.

Rich

You've largely shifted away from differentiating piano teachers and guitar teachers and arguing that their pedagogy differs fundamentally to now claiming that guitar players generally learned to play the instrument differently from how piano players learned to play the piano. I won't argue with this amended observation. The distinction to me is more about formality vs. informality in learning an instrument rather than anything unique about piano vs. guitar or piano teacher vs. guitar teacher. Formal teaching of any instrument generally involves a similar pedagogy as far as I'm aware. With the exception of the Suzuki method (which is not instrument specific by the way), if you take formal instrument lessons you're likely to be exposed to a pedagogy that more closely resembles your characterization of piano "teachers" than guitar "teachers". My piano and violin teachers were very formalistic (none utilized the Suzuki method). However, when I learned to play traditional fiddling, my "teacher" approached things very differently, with much more demonstrating and interactive feedback as you'd expect, with no reading and formal practice lessons involved. And when I learned to compose and play improvisational music on the piano, none of the teaching and teaching methodologies was particularly relevant. That's all about experimentation (at least until you're ready to add in the music theory).

Yes, artists who taught in colleges had to defend themselves against civil servants by generating lots of froth, like the cuckoo-spit insects. They produce the same froth as "artists' statements" for exhibitions. But civil servants have their own kind of froth.

Don

Not true. Not everyone can sing even to within a half-tone of correct pitch, meaning the software might quantize to the wrong note.

While not everyone can consistently get within 50 cents of the right note, I would guess that just about anyone can learn to get there, if the note is within that person's range.

Still not true. More people than you might think have physical damage that prevents good control. I do and my ENT said that what I have is pretty common. Separately from control issues is tone issues with people who are so-called "tone deaf". That's a feedback issue. Putting those two together will get you over 10% of society.

You are much too negative about this subject. And what software?

Rich

I think, Jim, you illustrated this very well here: www.dpreview.com/articles/5816661591/electronic-shutter-rolling-shutter-and-flash-what-you-need-to-know

The rolling shutter effect is usually seen as a damaging defect but even this can be used creatively, with enough imagination.
Photo by Jim Kasson, Fujifilm GFX 50S

I don't know where transcription software got introduced into this discussion, but the basic point is being lost. No software is needed. Using it would be an impediment to learning.

There is an intimate relationship that develops between the musician and instrument as vocalization is practiced. At first, as with all practiced skills, it's a little frustrating. But perseverance is needed. Little by little the sounds in one's mind are expressed aloud, and one attempts to replicate the notes on the instrument. Any instrument.

Hearing the instrument "mimic" the vocalization, the vocalization process improves, which improves the playing. On and on it goes in a positive feedback loop. The ability to sing the music in the mind improves, the playing improves and the musician acquires a knowledge of the instrument that just doesn't happen with any other kind of practice. It never happens as the result of learning by reading music scores.

Eventually, it's possible to "hear" what's in one's head and "feel" exactly what the hands must do to make the music come out of the instrument as though the mind and the instrument are directly connected. And that feels great.

Being a "good singer" has nothing to do with it. Some of the greatest composers had no ability to sing at all. At least not in a way that would have been listenable to an audience. But they could sing every note of every composition. Burt Bacharach and John Coltrane are two who come to mind who have discussed the process.

Rich

Singing while I play the saxophone isn't easy.

I guess. I've never heard of this before and I started in music in about 1979.

Singing while I play the saxophone isn't easy.

[quote]

Aww . . . you're just not trying hard enough! 😅

Rich

Limiting these musings to the visual\plastic arts, the thought in the quote is all well and good so far as it goes. But I've noticed that the artist souls that urgently have "got it in them" to make art will do it with anything that comes to hand. Like a kid in the sandbox. That's not to discount technique, or honing one's craft, or any of that stuff. But creative making starts first with that urge or we could say, that need or compulsion. The comment above is so right that it has little to no connection to yapping about it in the theoretical jargon du jour.