Analysis for Composers # 20 - A checklist for musical quality

[@cabal4171]

Love this! This kind of thing is useful when revising a piece

[@francobonanni3499]

We are quite always make a check list with the criteria of other composers you instead let us free and invite us our own check list this is a great liberty a great growth stimulation....a great responsibility...thank Prof. Belkin....

[@MusicAbio]

I really got a lot of insights out of this. Thank you so much sir!

[@JazzDeth]

I greatly appreciate your content, it has helped me refine and expand my musical expression and knowledge. Merci beaucoup!

[@charlesdtall1954]

Great as always. Do you have a PDF of this list in one place? It would be great to have this tacked to my wall behind my keyboard to remind myself to constantly check my work!

[@cabal4171]

Pen and Paper ..

[@DeGuerre]

Agreed with Cabal. Writing it out yourself, whether with pen or typing, will help you remember it.

[@charlesdtall1954]

@@DeGuerre good point!

[@glennmartin974]

Thanks you so much.! Going though a of of this in evaluating my own pieces and a new one that I am working on.

[@vhollund]

Very interesting Thank you

[@marianoromero2663]

Alan, I love your insights very much but please make something with the audio quality of your voice, it's not coming out good. Thanks.

[@giandomenicolupo372]

What's the name of the music in the beginning of the video?

[@giandomenicolupo372]

@Alan Belkin Thank you. i really enjoyed that!

[@stevenparada8619]

It is objective

[@qwaqwa1960]

intentional/arbitrary: I'm reminded of a study where the Goldberg ordering was randomly rearranged, then presented to listeners unfamiliar with the piece. There was no significant difference in preference between the original, and the various random reorgs :-}

[@jamaicanpianistcomposer]

I don't think that applies intensely to a set of variations... because each is based on a theme and each is self contained. Now let's say you took only one of the variations and rearranged/ removed a couple sections within it? that would be a more salient discovery.

[@dliessmgg]

Honest question: Do you ever apply these questions outside of western classical music? Because it seems to me at least that it's very much geared towards that and applying it to anything else would result in a square peg round hole type of situation. I honestly like your videos but calling this one a "checklist for musical quality" makes it sound like it's supposed to be universal, when it's easy to see that this can't be the case.

[@cabal4171]

@Alan Belkin And even then, a lot of this applies outside of western music unless you get to music that's "way out there"

[@wingflanagan]

Personally, I have a different check list for each kind of music. To me, the single most important factor is probably also the one that applies most broadly - does it sound like the composer had a purpose, that he or she executed a design of some kind? Is it organized in such a way as to elicit an emotional response - even if only the desire to dance for a few minutes? For me, everything else is contingent on that. Under this definition, I suspect just about any kind of music can be classified by relative quality (or lack thereof) because each kind is allowed its own context, be that country of origin, ethnicity, genre, musical tradition, etc. My own attempts at composition are very much in the Western classical tradition, leaning toward early modern (Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev), but I listen to and appreciate just about everything, including minimalism and avant garde. The great thing about Professor Belkin's approach is that it focuses on craft in a fairly style-agnostic way. Though such use might horrify him, the same principles would apply equally to heavy metal, easy listening, jazz, or traditional 19th-century style orchestral film music.

[@giordanopagotto7940]

I found this video extremely useful, and at the same time agree with you. I think maybe the solution is to use these as broad guidelines to what you want to achieve in your piece. For example, thinking about the guidelines towards form in a broader way might take to consciously writing a piece that has no development or no transitions (that intentionally sounds like a "patchwork"). So it becomes not necessarily about checking all of these points. Instead, it is about being conscious of the choices you make regarding them.

[@wingflanagan]

Giordano Pagotti Agreed. I find this video very useful and insightful as well. Professor Belkin's observations are a mixture of objective fact and informed opinion. Notice that he always qualifies his checklist items in the video as how those factors affect his own reactions to the piece. I respect and support that, especially since he knows a great deal more about the subject than I probably ever will. No matter your genre, there are crucial principals to be learned from Common Practice. In other words - at least in terms of Western music - you cannot effectively break the rules unless you are fluent in them to begin with. IMHO, Bach is and probably always will be the gold standard in this regard. His works are an encyclopedia of technique. It's like learning proficiency in standard English, the better to depart from it in the most effective way when writing poetry.

[@hom2fu]

it goes back to human psychology to sound. what do we expect when listen to a piece of music. all music have some sort of pattern, form, shape. up or down.