UAShenlong wrote:First off, I speak as a musician and a composer myself.
Alot of people, and I myself, dont like Mana because alot of Mana's songs are snippets that are taken from Classical pieces - he didn't actually compose most of the music - he just arranged it. He made this quite obvious in "BAROQUE" and quite intentional by using Beethoven's "Fur Elise" and Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" in another song... I forget which. As Mana progresses in time, he steals musical ideas from lesser known Classical pieces. I used to listen to alot of Bach (I almost had 50% of all his compositions until I had to reformat) along with Beethoven, Chopin and other Classical composers and I too reckognize alot of "Mana's" musical ideas - mainly from the time when I was listenning to Classical music. Its either he intentionally knew that he was stealing musical ideas from some of the greatest composers of all time OR The musical ideas must have subconsciously entered his mind upon the time of "composition" - This is not an uncommon phenomena amongst composers - I know because whenever I freestyle to try and come up with something, I end up producing a song I have allready heard before. Mana basically used the genius of others to get rich and alot of fame out of popular Japanese culture. Moi Dix Mois is even worse - every song sounds the almost the same and I was informed by a friend that one of MDM's songs was a complete replicate of one of Chopin's pieces (I forgot which. Sorry). Its a cheap trick but thats what you get when you compose tonal music. See thats the thing about tonality - when a composer chooses to compose using tonal theory, the composer can only repeat musical ideas which have allready been thought of before - it will never be original idea because every tonal musical idea has been thought of allready. There exists nothing new - its all just a repeat. This is most evident in punk bands like Green Day who play the same boring cliche I-IV-V-IV-I chord progression through out every song. Yet why does it sell? Because that is the nature of tonal music. The V chord pulls you to the I chord (ii, IV, VII as well, if you want to get technical). The composer does not allow himself/herself any freedom. When a composer chooses to compose tonal music, he/she sacrifices individuality and originality. This is one of the reasons, why I like atonal music. Atonal music such as Bela Bartok (Considered by many the Beethoven of the 20th Century), and Henry Cowell (Who invented a completely new way of playing the piano by getting inside and attacking the strings with different parts of his body and making music out of it). Atonality, It gives me alot more freedom as a composer and awhile atonality isn't ment to sound good like tonality, "what sounds good" is really in the ears of the listenner. However, there is no real market for atonal music, the composer sacrifices fame and money. Only elitist modern garde/minimalists/modernists with university music majors would invest in such a thing. Anyway I am getting carried away with this. Back to Mana, this is one of the reasons why people dislike Mana, along with other reasons that were stated earlier in this thread.
As a musician and composer myself, I would hate to be Mana. I see what Mana has done as having lack of integrity and respect for those he has stole from.
But the music, regardless of who wrote it, still sounds good in my opinion and I think thats all that matters in the end.
I guess you can say I am a semi-elitist. I side with both you guys and elitist friends with music majors.
This is such bullshit. Tell you what: I'm going to speak as a musician and composer too. Now we're on equal footing.
First of all, the fact that you think that no one else would notice that there are snippets of classical pieces in there is more elitist than it needs to be. Don't for one second think that Mana was trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. It's very clear that Malice Mizer and Mana want you to think "oh, that's Mozart", and "oh, that's Beethoven" when those parts come up. Are you going to hate a group like Dream Theater for stealing from themselves?
Also I'm pretty familiar with Chopin, so why don't you do a little research and dig up that m10m/Chopin crossover so it's not just a baseless rumor.
As for atonal music, its only good use is an intellectual exercise. You can use bits of atonal composing in the midst of actual, you know, listenable music (back to the Dream Theater example, they do this at times), but of COURSE atonal music isn't a product anyone would want to invest in. I don't know how you're getting the syllogism where "people with music majors" = "dislike of Mana".
I am a serious student of music -- just like you! -- and I don't like seeing people misinterpret the fairly obvious, i.e. that the references are supposed to be noticed.
I've mentioned the "Malice Mizer chord progression" before, so you've noticed something there, but that doesn't neccesitate the degradation of the music.
There's plenty of freedom in tonal music, and to promote anything otherwise as fact necessarily makes you look more elitist than I think you'd want and also looks antagonistic.