4 ms·

The author clearly and good-humoredly declares that he comes with no knowledge of music or music theory at all, and is clearly documenting his process of coming

by jwfxpr 9y ago

The author clearly and good-humoredly declares that he comes with no knowledge of music or music theory at all, and is clearly documenting his process of coming to grips with enough of those basics you may have known as a 6 year old with 1 year of experience, and is attempting to do so in order to do something interesting. So perhaps 'wrongness' is far less important to this than 'interestingness' and, though I am a multi-instrumentalist myself and know music well, I'd like to thank him for attempting to learn what he needed to to attempt this interesting thing. I really enjoyed the read and intend to have a little play with the data.

mb_72 9y ago
Ok, perhaps you are fine with letting little gems like "Musicians never play notes one at a time. They always use chords." slide, but I'm not. If I can't trust the author about the basics and things that I know about, how can I trust their reasoning or thoughts on more complicated matters and items that are outside my own domain? I cannot, and hence don't read further because there is an opportunity cost in doing so, and there are many other interesting things I could be reading or otherwise doing with my time.
- jwfxpr 9y ago
  Honestly I just feel like you may have wielded judgement too hastily at the expense of your sense of wonder and shared joy in someone exploring territory that is well trodden only to relatively few. Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. For most people, scaling what may to you be barely the foothills of knowledge is a great and challenging experience, and I think it should be celebrated. And sure, perhaps you and I can easily distinguish the subtle difference between 'Musicians always use chords' (obviously wrong) and 'Musicians always work, individually or together, within a key, which is an abstracted but well-defined set of tones that can be combined in time series or simultaneously to produce an inexplicably pleasant experience in the listener, by some neurological magic that has never been adequately explained' (non-obviously correct) but y'know what, I actually am willing to let little gems like that slide because they're adequate approximations of the truth that allow good folks to proceed on a journey that may one day lead them to, just maybe, have the arrogance required to belittle the uninitiated.
  - asdffdsa321 9y ago
    For me, the issue was that the writing style, like most articles written by programmers, passed off every thing as fact. Things like "they have the same chord progression" in section 2.a is patently false. This kind of writing is misleading to others, especially newcomers (blind leading the blind) I do agree though, that to do somethimg, learn something, have something almost correct is better than having learned and done nothing, but as Bill Evans points out in the youtube video about the learning process, it's much better to start with something simple, concrete, and which you know as true then build from there, than start approximating (incorrectly) lots of things at once. So it's a case by case basis, but it's not merely gratuitous arrogance that motivates people to call other people out on false statements.
  - coliveira 9y ago
    > Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. This is just like saying that very few people in the world have a solid grasp of computer programming... Do you know that there are hundreds of university departments in the world where the only thing people do is, wait for it... having a solid grasp of musical theory!?
    - jwfxpr 9y ago
      How is that not 'very few people' in a sample that includes the population of the Earth?
      - coliveira 9y ago
        Not everyone if the world is trying to create a computer model of music. The minimum a person with this interest can do is to contact a specialist in music theory (of whom there are thousands as I mentioned).
peterburkimsher 9y ago
Thank you so much for this encouragement. The whole music investigation was a side-project, compared to my main efforts on Pingtype (a Chinese learning site). https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io I got interested because my friends at the KHOP prayer room gave me the song sheets in PDF format. They have the chords written, and the key on the top right. I thought it would be interesting to figure out which songs go well together so I could make some playlists. Even though I can't play music, I listen a LOT - all day in the office, and while I bike to work. The fact this side project got more upvotes than my language-learning interests, and your encouragement that the data might be useful, is a sign to me that I should keep on with this and maybe learn to play. There's a piano in the house I rent, but I don't know what to do with it. It seems like now might be a good time to start learning.

by jwfxpr 9y ago

mb_72 9y ago

Ok, perhaps you are fine with letting little gems like "Musicians never play notes one at a time. They always use chords." slide, but I'm not. If I can't trust the author about the basics and things that I know about, how can I trust their reasoning or thoughts on more complicated matters and items that are outside my own domain? I cannot, and hence don't read further because there is an opportunity cost in doing so, and there are many other interesting things I could be reading or otherwise doing with my time.

jwfxpr 9y ago
Honestly I just feel like you may have wielded judgement too hastily at the expense of your sense of wonder and shared joy in someone exploring territory that is well trodden only to relatively few. Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. For most people, scaling what may to you be barely the foothills of knowledge is a great and challenging experience, and I think it should be celebrated. And sure, perhaps you and I can easily distinguish the subtle difference between 'Musicians always use chords' (obviously wrong) and 'Musicians always work, individually or together, within a key, which is an abstracted but well-defined set of tones that can be combined in time series or simultaneously to produce an inexplicably pleasant experience in the listener, by some neurological magic that has never been adequately explained' (non-obviously correct) but y'know what, I actually am willing to let little gems like that slide because they're adequate approximations of the truth that allow good folks to proceed on a journey that may one day lead them to, just maybe, have the arrogance required to belittle the uninitiated.
- asdffdsa321 9y ago
  For me, the issue was that the writing style, like most articles written by programmers, passed off every thing as fact. Things like "they have the same chord progression" in section 2.a is patently false. This kind of writing is misleading to others, especially newcomers (blind leading the blind) I do agree though, that to do somethimg, learn something, have something almost correct is better than having learned and done nothing, but as Bill Evans points out in the youtube video about the learning process, it's much better to start with something simple, concrete, and which you know as true then build from there, than start approximating (incorrectly) lots of things at once. So it's a case by case basis, but it's not merely gratuitous arrogance that motivates people to call other people out on false statements.
- coliveira 9y ago
  > Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. This is just like saying that very few people in the world have a solid grasp of computer programming... Do you know that there are hundreds of university departments in the world where the only thing people do is, wait for it... having a solid grasp of musical theory!?
  - jwfxpr 9y ago
    How is that not 'very few people' in a sample that includes the population of the Earth?
    - coliveira 9y ago
      Not everyone if the world is trying to create a computer model of music. The minimum a person with this interest can do is to contact a specialist in music theory (of whom there are thousands as I mentioned).

peterburkimsher 9y ago

Thank you so much for this encouragement. The whole music investigation was a side-project, compared to my main efforts on Pingtype (a Chinese learning site). https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io I got interested because my friends at the KHOP prayer room gave me the song sheets in PDF format. They have the chords written, and the key on the top right. I thought it would be interesting to figure out which songs go well together so I could make some playlists. Even though I can't play music, I listen a LOT - all day in the office, and while I bike to work. The fact this side project got more upvotes than my language-learning interests, and your encouragement that the data might be useful, is a sign to me that I should keep on with this and maybe learn to play. There's a piano in the house I rent, but I don't know what to do with it. It seems like now might be a good time to start learning.