Looks like I’m a little late to the party

Now the party begins!

Oh, my. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I’m watching it now and it’s so bad. His arguments are on par with the average r/classicalmusic user decrying “modernism” and the “avant-garde.”

I’m having a hard time finding his post in /r/classicalmusic about it where he and I got into it a bit. It was frustrating, of course.

But most importantly, he holds classical music in such contempt while at the same time trying to appear that not only is he knowledgeable about classical music but that he likes it and is sympathetic toward it. None of that is true. As you note, many of his off-hand comments betray his ignorance as well.

committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz.

There was a weird phenomenon a number of years ago where it seemed like computer science types were positioning themselves as the top experts in every single field of study because they could dash off a Python script in an afternoon to solve the most difficult problems in all these fields. It doesn’t seem as bad anymore but back in the day, whew!, it was a sight to behold! Anyway, Neely seems to have a bit of that about him, classical music can be best explained in terms of jazz and where it can’t, it’s not worth thinking about anyway.

seems not to have realized that electronic music’s biggest pioneers were classical composers, that classical composers have been writing scores for electronic music (both fixed and live electronics) for decades

Yeah, it’s just some basic research or maybe even paying attention in class. Oops, he went to Berklee so who knows what he “learned” there!

I have to admit, I didn’t expect the video to be that bad.

Adam is always full of surprises!

If you are in the US (and this most likely applies to most countries outside the US), you already have a copyright on anything you create. But yes, you can drive the point home by putting a copyright notice on the sheet music which isn’t strictly necessary but everyone does it so you might as well. I do this as does everyone I know. It’s easy and legal though it doesn’t provide any extra protection (except maybe to discourage someone from thinking you’ve released the work to the public domain).

If you ever need to sue someone for actual money, then you need to register your sheet music with the US Copyright office. If you are planning on making money from your sheet music, this is probably a good idea.

I do not work with ASCAP or any other performance rights organizations. My music is is more in the avant-garde style of classical so I’m not really concerned with performances plus I license my music with a very liberal Creative Commons license so no one would have to pay royalties anyway. All that to say, I don’t really have any advice for that side of things.

How deep are you looking to go into it? Do you want to sell physical copies of your sheet music?

I have a very simple setup using Paypal. They let you create buttons for whatever items you want to sell and then you just put the code into you website and it just works. There’s lots of options on how to charge or even let people enter in their own amounts (like for donations) and different kinds of buttons and/or links. I found it pretty easy and they handle all the security stuff.

Anything more complicated than that and I have no experience with it.

That is interesting. Of course composers deserve royalties, right? Strange that it was even a question! I do happen to use a permissive CC license for everything I do but that’s my choice and I certainly don’t expect everyone to follow in my footsteps.

I love his dismantling of the [r/R]omantic view of composers being ascetics living on bread and water in dusty attics and not wanting anything to do with that filthy lucre that is permissible for all others in the music industry to pursue. That myth of the composer doing it for art and not caring about the money still exists today and is part of how people differentiate classical (or “Art”) music from other genres. One of my favorite quotes from Cage on this subject in a foreward he wrote for a bio on Schoenberg:

“Like most other composers, Schoenberg had more or less constant money problems. The thought arises whether these are not the true subject of music.”

Also interesting is the few composers who had managed to enter the repertory of the day (1939) according to him: Strauss, Stravinsky, and Sibelius (the original 3 S’s?). I feel like Strauss’s place isn’t particularly secure anymore and just like in the article, it’s only a few of Stravinsky’s early pieces that have made it. I guess Sibelius has weathered that storm pretty well though I don’t think he’s as popular as he apparently was back then.

Thanks for posting that video. First, I do actually like a lot of Neely’s videos. Many of them are very interesting and well-researched and entertaining. I even enjoy his method of presentation and his tone (which I know many people dislike).

That said, my specific gripe has always been that he handles classical music badly. He thinks he’s an expert on it but he really isn’t.

The first part of this video dealt with that and Neely’s inability to really admit how wrong he was.

The second part with Adam Ragusea was something I was unfamiliar with but holy shit, Neely really dropped the ball on that by not doing the five seconds of research required to verify Ragusea’s qualifications for being used in the video. I know Neely can’t be held 100% responsible for the living hell Ragusea suffered through because of that video but Neely most certainly contributed to making things worse for Ragusea and really hasn’t done anything to fix that situation. I’m sure Neely reads tons of shit about himself online and probably feels Ragusea should have a thicker skin, but just being a decent human being means we really should temper what we say and how we say it when criticizing other people. I’m sure the professor from the first part of the video went through some similar hell because of how badly Neely misrepresented him.

The last part of the video is trickier and I think the author of the video tried to make that clear. I think that the other music theory person would have the right to feel at least a little bothered by how amazingly similar Neely’s analogy was. It’s entirely possible that Neely forgot about the other person’s video and thought this was something he came up with or had heard about in music schools decades ago. But when confronted with the facts, he could have handled that better. Interestingly, in the comments, Youtuber David Bennett defended Neely on this point. Have no idea if that means anything but just as some professional courtesy it’s entirely ok to issue a mea culpa and take some lumps. In no way would that have hurt Neely’s career.

Finally, I wish the author had done a segment on Neely’s video about the cult of sheet music (or some such similar title). Once again Neely completely misrepresented how classical music works this time relative to sheet music. In fact, he and I got into a bit of a heated argument on the topic on Reddit. His knowledge of classical music is lacking but his confidence isn’t.

There have been a few other times where Neely has stated an opinion on certain classical composers or works that I’ve found suspect but aren’t worth worrying about. But they do help confirm his lack of expertise when it comes to classical music.

Awesome! Thanks for showing up! So far I’m liking how Lemmy works so who knows, maybe this can become a thing.