What is the golden rule in music?

I happen to be sympathetic to Ellington's belief that the golden rule for music is this: it should sound good. If those whom Duke called 'legitimate musicians' want to sneer, that is their loss. Write music that sounds good and let them sneer.

greghowlett.com - The Golden Rule of Musical Composition - Greg Howlett

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The great composer Duke Ellington is known for many quotes. Here is one of my favorites:

You have to find a way of saying it without saying it.

That is good advice for many people including me. I just thought I would share it, but it has nothing to do with this post.

There is another quote about music that Ellington is famous for:

If it sounds good, it is good.

No, Ellington was not debating the morality of music. He was instead summarizing his belief that following generally accepted man-made rules is not the end goal when composing music. In fact, observing such rules is largely unnecessary.

Another quote from Duke about his orchestra:

We have not followed the fetishes of symphonic musicians and have not hesitated to break the rules and even make new rules. We know that we have offended a great many people in the process, particularly ‘legitimate musicians,’ but I think we have also made a few friends. A story is told about Ellington that he was riding in a taxi with a classical conductor and they were discussing musical rules. Ellington asked him to name the top ten rules that should be followed. When he got to his final destination, Ellington wrote ten new songs and each song was written to blantantly break one of the ten rules. While Ellington is a great example of rule breaking, he is hardly alone. Most great composers from any period would have almost certainly been considered rule breakers during their time. I happen to be sympathetic to Ellington’s belief that the golden rule for music is this: it should sound good. If those whom Duke called ‘legitimate musicians’ want to sneer, that is their loss. Write music that sounds good and let them sneer. They sneered at a genius like Ellington, so you are in good company. Writing music that sounds good may break manmade rules like parallel fifths and doubled thirds but you will be following natural laws of music that trump them. Men like Duke Ellington considered musical progression to be the result of the new discovery of natural laws. We are not inventing music but are rather discovering more and more about the natural way it works. Here is a practical example. For years, I instinctively changed V-I progressions to ii-V-I progressions in the music I played. I did not realize I was doing it or why I was doing it. It just sounded good. Today, I understand why it works and why it is a good thing to do. But earlier in life, I did not need to understand it to use it. I just focused on sounding better and the result was that I began automatically following a natural law about music. So, that is my advice for the day. Write and play music that sounds as good as possible. I will discuss this in more detail later in the week.

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