Intro
For organizing different sounds and internalizing them faster.
Principle 2 of book
If music is a language, then it must contain letters, grammar, cliches, etc.
For the cliches, they are the corner stone of being able to play in the sandbox as they show what phrases have been good enough to stand the test of time.
They allow us to divert from them and expand our own phrases.
For the case of comedy, this could be:
- Comedy comes in threes
- Knock Knock jokes
- Racism in comedy
- Irony
- Suicide
- Etc
Comics who master the cliches are able to build from them and create their own repritour.
For the case, this could be:
- major and minor triad sounds
- whole tone scales
- pentatonic sound
- diminished
- augmented
Musicians who master the cliches are able to build from them and create their own repritour.
Why doesn't music education work the same way?
Its taught in books as physical exercises. But the 'why' is never explained. I believe the why is more important than the exercises themselves, as they explain the mindset you should be in when practicing the exercises and why we are even choosing to spend time doing the exercises in the first place.
To learn the chliches to create a foundation for the comic inside of us. So then we can use the cliches to build up or subvert the audiences expectations and create something memorable.