What Music truly is

[Human Mint]

Below it's a good video on the practical side of learning music. When you're young you're like a sponge and you can learn something, not practice for 2 months and still being able to remember. But as you get older that task becomes harder, but on the other hand you become a better and more conscious student.

The biggest challenge for beginners is going through the long phase of slow progress (everything is a weakness the first years). As you continue you find what you like in the big universe of music, and you work your way that path.

 

 

Edited June 16 by Human Mint

[Joseph Maynor]

@Human Mint  I always hated learning patterns and avoided that.  I was very steadfast that I wanted to completely improvise all the time.  I never enjoyed doing exercises or playing them.  I disliked playing with a metronome and still do.  I read a lot of theory so I understand that well.  Also I listened to a ton of Jazz albums and other music.  I spent a lot of time learning scales by applying them.  I hate practicing scales without playing a song.  So for me, the way I learned Jazz is by playing actual songs and playing on the bandstand, which taught me more about Jazz protocol which is different than practicing playing better Jazz.  For me it is all about sound.  I need to play a 4 bar or 8 bar chord progression and hear how I am sounding.  And it has to be completely improvised and original to me.  I am very uncompromising in that way.  I am jamming over the music to enjoy it myself first always.  Then my own style emerges on its own.  I try not to memorize any licks, even my own.  If I do play the same sort of thing over a tune, it is because of finger memory not because I deliberately decided to play it there.  It is all intuitive.  When I improvise all I'm doing is listening and reacting.
 

 

Edited July 6 by Joseph Maynor

[Human Mint]

@Joseph Maynor I don't particularly like learning scales alone either. I think it is best to quickly try and apply them in your playing. But clearly there is a phase of making sense of the scale too. 

I don't know, it's hard to say what makes you progress and what not. It is always an open question that you have to figure out by yourself.

I always remember Pat Metheny's analogy with language. Something like: when you speak you don't think what word to say next, they just come. Same think while you improvise with an instrument.

The important thing is to know you can achieve that.

 

[Human Mint]

@Joseph Maynor Or in other words you want too keep the musicality always alive otherwise it becomes depressing.

[Joseph Maynor]

11 hours ago, Human Mint said:

@Joseph Maynor Or in other words you want too keep the musicality always alive otherwise it becomes depressing.

Yes.  This is the most important thing.  To keep playing.  Practicing depresses me because even when I am practicing I like to be playing.  I don't have a strict duality between practicing and playing.  When I am practicing, I am still performing for myself.  It is always about the sound and performing IMO.

 

Edited July 8 by Joseph Maynor

[Human Mint]

@Joseph Maynor Thanks for those shares.

[Human Mint]

 

[Joseph Maynor]

I've changed my mind a lot recently about how to create good music.  It is a process.  It is hard to reconcile theory and practice.  I've been playing a lot of pop tunes without vocals on piano and trumpet and realizing that the key is to -- play with chords and augment with scales.  That will give you the most flexibility to improvise and not play bad notes.  And you will learn the major and minor scales this way too.  You have to do this as a musician.  You grow by playing things that inspire you to learn these chords and scales.  And this is just the start.  

[Human Mint]

@Joseph Maynor It is just like learning a language. If you've had any experience learning a new language you know is hard af.

The serious musicians study a lot of hours a day. 3 hs is rocky numbers, and that's where I am at currently.

The key is to use your intelligence to keep yourself motivated. Like super tunned to your practice. Otherwise you loose patience easily and quit early.

Edited August 10 by Human Mint

[Human Mint]

This is a song I've been practicing the last couple of months in piano. Besides my guitar practice.

 

Edited August 10 by Human Mint

[Human Mint]

What an absolute masterpiece. I recomend the entire album, which is a lot of good songs.

If you travel by train this is the perfect album to plug. Or by bus too. And also a car for that matter.

Edited August 14 by Human Mint

[Joseph Maynor]

On 8/9/2026 at 7:51 PM, Human Mint said:

@Joseph Maynor It is just like learning a language. If you've had any experience learning a new language you know is hard af.

The serious musicians study a lot of hours a day. 3 hs is rocky numbers, and that's where I am at currently.

The key is to use your intelligence to keep yourself motivated. Like super tunned to your practice. Otherwise you loose patience easily and quit early.

You're right.  I've been improvising in every key both both major and minor over a variety of different tunes to get the chords and scales under my fingers so I don't hit any wrong notes.  I love Pat Metheny too!

 

Edited August 15 by Joseph Maynor

[Human Mint]

10 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

  I've been improvising in every key both both major and minor over a variety of different tunes to get the chords and scales under my fingers so I don't hit any wrong notes.

That's important. I am also integrating the scales in the guitar much more. This is my 3rd year practicing jazz.

Not blundering noter takes way to much work at least for me lol. But very cool is to start producing interesting lines. Or what gospel musicians like to call it "perfecting your chops"

10 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I love Pat Metheny too!

Such a creative individual. How long have you been listening to him?

Edited Saturday at 12:10 PM by Human Mint

[Meeksauce]

On 6/9/2026 at 9:56 AM, Human Mint said:

I think this discussion falls into the intellectual subforum.

I want to share what it is a very powerful idea about music which I've been contemplating for a while now, this will probably resonate to those who like to compose their own music. And I'll try to explain it simply for the majority that doesn't play music.

When you study music theory you are just learning to play the Infinite Song. Every song in existence is just part of one big song, which has every note, every scale, every harmony progression, every rhythms changes imaginable. As a limiting being the challenge is to produce beauty out of different combinations and configurations of notes. You're like a scientist experimenting with different combinations until you find the ones that work. And then you make a business out of that.

All of your study of music culminates in you being able to playing effortlessly anything that you want beautifully, that's what's so compelling about the art.

The more I study, the more I see the similarities between different songs, and the more I know how to reproduce them. Those songs which at first seemed like a mistery what exactly made them sound so good, now I can pinpoint what makes them the way they are and I can reproduce the art and add my own touch. Because you understand the mind behind the creation of that song.

I'll refine my explanation more and more the upcoming years but for now that's what I am intuiting. I always dreamed to crack the code of music for more than a decade, this is my life purpose.

Music is both an illusion comprised of individual frequencies and a voice that is sung from the heart, hearing the entire line, simultaneously. It's like unraveling the illusion of life - anyone is free to unravel it, but life exists for its own sake, as its own end goal. That is to say music exists primarily at the foundational level of perceivability in the same way that the universe exists as a function of perceivability. 

 

When it comes to writing music, all music is God writing music through you, yet this actually doesn't negate your free will. Absolute will and individual will intersect in tandem yet function independently. In simpler terms, the unpotentiated infinite will of the universe channels itself through you in a way that still gives you decision in every moment. Knowing this alone doesn't make you an excellent musician, using it to go beyond the confines of an established technical mastery does.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Human Mint  What I learned is you practice different things at different times as a musician.  One underrated thing to practice is listening to a lot of music.  The last 6 months I was really working on chords and scales.  Now I am not.  I go thru phases in what I focus on.  

[Joseph Maynor]

Music is taking someone else on a sonic trip.  And even yourself too as a musician performing.