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Originally Posted by atsonicpark
But yeah, I've always really wanted someone who actually knows a little about music theory to listen and deconstruct what I'm doing and stuff, so I appreciate the thoughtful responses, Glice. Usually my reviews range from "A RANDOM COLLECTION OF STUFF TO LISTEN TO WHILE ON ACID" or "SOME GUY FUCKING AROUND WITH FRUITY LOOPS" (which I've never programmed a whole song on, period).
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I can't emphasise enough that I don't think 'virtuosity' is the virtue it seems (ha). There's plenty of instances of composers not being able to play the music they wrote (Bartok/ Stravinsky's piano music, lots of Cage pieces etc) and there's plenty of people who make a virtues of their lack of 'chops' (Scelsi, arguably la Monte Young etc). With most of the SS stuff I've heard before, there's a sense of moving so quickly between ideas, and that it doesn't sound like it's designed to be 'live', that it doesn't really matter if you can play it. You could have the most complicated solo imaginable, but because it's so production heavy, you could just as easily have recorded it one note at a time; because there's often not much of a sense of an explicit pulse or rhythm (the songs tend to hold together by their own logic), recording something piecemeal would work just as well.
I recorded some classical music on acoustic guitar a while ago (which I haven't quite got around to getting mastered). For whatever reason I ended up getting red light fever, so I had to record the pieces in chunks of 10-15 bars. Odd, as I've not had a problem playing the pieces live, but unfortunately red light fever tends to hit me harder with prepared stuff. It was surprising how easy it was to cut the pieces together to give the impression of continuity though (and one of the pieces is about 12 minutes long).
Yeah, basically, I don't think you need to worry about playing 'well' - the only thing with that is that the nature of SS is that it's going to take quite an intense listen to get the sense that these are heavily-structured and well-played which, unfortunately, most listeners aren't going to do.
Also, I'm going to have to say again that I am entirely self-taught on theory, so I'm by no means anything like an expert. I'd happily accept the title of gobshite though.