I wrote this before seeing Romy's last post with the painting, so it not a response to that post... strange coincidende that we were both thinking of painting...

In the case of music we are dealing with art.

The one common denominator in art is the expression of a vision... No vision = No art.

Assuming you are the artist, and you the artist have a vision (hopefully something that burns in your gut), next comes the expression of that vision, and the mastering of the power and subtilty of that expression.

In painting, there is no point painting anything until you understand compostion, and have learned to draw...

Please do not talk to me about color if you havn't mastered light and shadow (contrast).

Color is really the last thing you need to worry about. When you finally do reach for the colors, if you have everything else right, as long as you control the contrast, you can use literally whatever color you want, wherever you want... it is nearly irrelevant.

Consider that real life happens in living color.

Now remember the last time you saw a well photographed black and white film with a good story ; A half an hour into the film did you find yourself wanting high-def super-saturated living color ? Did you really care ?

My opinion : Just as in the world of good black and white film, once strapped into your listening seat, your brain most appreciates a system capable of naturally rendering relative contrast.

jd*