by analogy:

[Jan Civil]

{A critic who is engaged in the act of what she is talking or writing about, on a regular basis, has pretty much earned the right to publishing a strong opinion or editorial regarding that activity, IME. On the other hand, if one has never done, or eschews to do, it's really not valid to pretend to 'know'; it doesn't matter if one has all the published information in the world about how something is built. If one has never had to make something from a blueprint, or ever discussed the blueprint in the act of planning a building with the draughtsperson, or never drawn one, one knows not one thing about it. To pretend to know is a pose. It's not more than that.}

To say that, one doesn't have to be Speed Racer to know a clunker, is a poor analogy.
One has to have driven. For instance, there is no such thing as a mechanic who has never driven. The entire function of an automoblile would be lost on this person. It isn't theoretical or hypothetical.

To pretend that a critique is based on an objective anything, one has to have made objects of that kind sucessfully. Musical criticism is, 'I do not like it Sam-I-Am!' for the most part. It's stating a preference. If it's more than that, it's based on knowledge. Information is not knowledge. Reading about something is not equal to participation in the thing.

BY ANALOGY: Spectators at a sports match aren't doing sports. The ones who have the valid opinion on the strategy of the game, have coached or played.

If one is going to say, 'poorly structured', and have nothing even theoretical to say to even support it, it compounds the folly.

[Jan Civil]

Well, I never mentioned income once did I. I said 'work in that field'. You turned that into 'earned some income as...'. Not real surprising, this lapse of being able to appreciate a basic difference such as this, given your track record as a writer here thus far, though.

Working in the field of rap is not working in the field of orchestra music, now is it. Another bogus analogy.
Your brain surgeon one is a bit better. If you applied the 50 cent per classical concert music of the 19th and early 20th century to medicine, you'd be applying a podiatrist to a brain surgeon. (See what I did there: that's how you make analogies. Poor thing.)

But, to counter that: I think a brain surgeon should have done some *work* in surgeon school to get some practice with the brain and the mechanics of it. What you'd do is simply read up on it, be satisfied with that, and then kill the patient.

It's glaringly clear to me that you don't know anything about music from having made any. You've read quite a bit of words about music, and you've got a record collection, & I bet you've been to concert hall and seen some things on tv. I've seen surgery on tv too, but I'm not saying I know anything about it at the surgeon's forum.

I'm going to take a minute to answer your absurd comments on my own music to demonstrate how full of it you are when you write about music.

You, on the one hand claim that music is "empty form", as if content can be absent, you said yourself, empty container, as if it's a building. Then, you give an example of where I went for '19th century vocabulary' in the midst of '21st century vocabulary' instead of sticking to the latter, as your proof of concept, 'poor form'.

That 'vocabulary' or 'harmonic language' is a stylistic choice; & while I would not separate it from form, it is content. It is an utter failure of critique to say that form is divorced from content and then to say 'her form is poor' because of *mixed content*. It's another laughable attempt to sound like you know something about... 'form in music'.

When you conclude that, it's not more than self-indulgent noise when I do this kind of thing, so what meaning does this now have? It's a rant. This is noise, it doesn't sum to anything cogent to do this, and you are indulging yourself and trying to prop up your ego, at my expense.
I did some original music. You did what? What have you made? What does a critic do, again, when he is not engaged in what he talks smack about? What's the impulse here?

Combined with the utter failure of the things you say, you must not understand what form is if you need to separate it from content. I mean you've read some other ass clowns like this Downs character (you seem to aspire to be 'that guy'.) and think this is something, but it again is glaring, your lack of basis in anything real, your lack of even the ability to fake it with some talk, you reveal yourself as just fundamentally dishonest intellectually; and the act of attacking a composer on a composer's forum (and just not doing any kind of respectable job of, is the thing) is just entirely suspect and reveals a lack of character in my estimation.

"NOISE". What is noise, in terms of information? Now, I have no good basic in mathematics. So, if I look at some physics, some calculus applied to something like that, it doesn't convey the concept to me. Is it noise because I lack the understanding to see it?
This is just what you do here.

The '19th c harmony' I use in that, then a work-in-progress, is a coagulation of other things in the other '21st c. vocabulary' (I use quote marks as these aren't real meaningful - or accurate - descriptions to me), which has been growing organically from the outset of the first piece in the set, & is evident at the outset of this piece; and a person with an ear from having been a composer or an experienced musician might be equipped to hear it, or someone with an honest curiosity as opposed to your need to validate yourself here might be inclined to give it a further audition, but, hey you're just not that guy are you. No, you're a poor man's Edward Downs.

You're the guy to say that Le Sacre in 1913 was self-indulgent noise. You're the guy poo-pooing Pictures at an Exhibition... Shit, you're the guy saying that same garbagio about Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. But now that history, posterity has validated these things for you, you wouldn't say that. Everything you say about music here reveals this tendency, your investment in, and it would appear wish to be some historical character (I'd hire you to play Edward Downs, no doubt!), really a kind of escape from reality, and real thought.

It's pathetic really.

[Fredrick zinos]

Apparently, according to the view expressed by Ms. Civil, a brain surgeon should not be permitted to operate unless he /she has had a brain tumor.

The idea that there can be no valid views of music or anything else unless one earns the majority of their income in that field is absurd on its face.

What does "working in the field" mean? Apparently to some it means earning a living in music. Which would mean that those who earn the most are the most qualified to make comments. Which means that 50 cent is a more cogent critic of Mozart, Berg, Mahler than Edward Downs. Baloney.