6 ms·

Anyone know a nice source for learning some basic music theory? To be more specific, something that would teach whatever would be required to understand the mus

Anyone know a nice source for learning some basic music theory? To be more specific, something that would teach whatever would be required to understand the musical concepts in this article (for example). The ideal would be something directed towards readers with some mathematical background (but not a PhD), conversational, and focused on concepts and maybe historical development rather than just stating facts without context.

elihu 9y ago
Perhaps Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu.
- westoncb 9y ago
  This seems pretty much like exactly what I was looking for—thanks!
IAmGraydon 9y ago
The only thing that learning music theory will do for you in this case is make you realize that most of what you see in this article is nonsense. Certainly, none of it will help you make music. I say this as a songwriter and student of music theory for 20 years.
- adamsea 9y ago
  Damn son, talk about dropping the hammer on ‘em. As a longtime, trained musician with a bit of theory, I’d love to get a breakdown. Would you be willing to explain what is nonsensical about the article?
  - mrbrowning 9y ago
    I think what the grandparent is getting at is that music is a culturally-mediated perceptual phenomenon, and so the geometric interpretations here are an artifact of the model rather than of how our minds organize pitch into some musical Gestalt. I both agree with that (I love Coltrane, but as the article accidentally implies, this is about as meaningful as numerology) and find the artifacts to be pretty cool, so I’m not so down on it as an intellectual lark as that poster.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - soundwave106 9y ago
      The author of the original post seemed to miss that Coltrane was drawing a "circle of fourths" (all the notes you see that are squared in the diagram are part of this) with a +1 / -1 half step radiating from them. I'm not entirely sure what John Coltrane was trying to do here, but the circle of fourths is well established theory. From my perspective, the transformations the author did were strange to me. They made neat letter patterns but I'm not sure they made musical ones. From my personal perspective (and all music is to some degree personal opinion), I'm not a fan of trying to orient too much "numerology" to our 12 note equal tempered system (12TET). The 12 note equal tempered system really doesn't pattern all that well to what humans typically find as "consonant": whole integer ratio harmony. EG: One can say the most pleasing ratios follow as such - 2:1 (C:C - octave), 3:2 (C:G, fifths), 4:3 (C:F, fourths), 5:4 (C:E, maj. thirds). That has a certain "math as beauty" look to it when you look at the ratios, but the letter sequence is not as pretty. So if one is trying to find "numerology sense" in music harmony, I personally I think one should use frequencies or frequency ratios instead. My personal impression about too many 20th century music theories, is that too often theories overfocused on 12TET note relationships, and led to some music that in general is difficult to get into (atonal, 12 tone, serial, etc.). These "have their uses" (some of the theories have found great success as scoring techniques for, say, horror films), and some people do seem to genuinely enjoy it. But the theories that I see that were more successful in the public eye (and in my mind as well) are "less is more" type theories (eg modal jazz or minimalism).
      - adamsea 9y ago
        Thank you both for the thoughtful answers :). I think what you both said makes a lot of sense. The one thing I'll throw in is that graphic notation (which I don't know a lot about) is an area where something like the OP can also have relevance - a way of visually expressing musical ideas (including, perhaps, some ideological content meant to inform attitude of the musician). It's also a blurry place between "functional" music notation and art. I hadn't looked closely at the actual notation in the article - sounds like it may have lacked some rigor.
- westoncb 9y ago
  My main interest is just that it seems like an interesting system—and it's cool that it can be put into correspondence with sounds.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  I agree with you on this as a lifelong musician and improvisor. It isn't the math of grammar we think about when conversing to convey meaning and style. We think about what we want to say and how we want to say it. We listen and build something together just like we do in conversation. There is a kind of obsession among some jazz players with spirituality though, it is true. If you are the sort of person who likes that kind of thing, you probably like prose writing like this as well. You certainly don't need to analyze all mathematical relations and artifacts to improvise masterfully. In my experience, the more time a player focuses on this type of thing, the less energy they put into actually having something to express. Or perhaps it has something to do with a fear that they will find they have nothing to say, so they avoid that challenge by making technique and mathematical-theoretical relationships the focus of their practice. The only composer I can think of who managed to be obsessed with the math of things while actually using them to create a unique language through which he expessed ideas,style, and narrative was Messaien. (in his modes studies and bird calls) I do understand why many jazz musicians reached for spirituality and really complex mathematical relationships in modes of improvisation:it's because they were not granted the legitamacy and respect they deserve (and craved, many of them, like Monk, for example) from so-called arbiters of "high culture". If what they were doing could be serious and difficult and inscrutable except with hours and hours of thinky labor, they felt it might elevate them.Of course this was totally not needed and what they (monk especially) were creating had a laguage and history of its own that was in many ways more innovative and culturally relevant than that what they sought to be included with. Of course that's easy to say now.It must have been frustrating, like for Ornette.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    > most of what you see in this article is nonsense How as a creative person are you okay with saying blank statements like that? Sure if you just want to only talk about John Coltrane's drawing out of his time and only focus on today, possibly. As someone who has several years of Music Theory and a grandfather that retired as a NYC Jazz Musician I absolutely know many people that worked this way. Heck we had 20 years of the "Mozart Effect" (Was bogus since day one that believed passively listening to Mozart made children and lab rats smarter). BUT music is mathematical and some people have certainly taken this bogus Mozart thing and found out the math behind music. For decades the musical music was captivated with math in the 20th century. This wasn't some spiritual journey in music it was a mathematical puzzle they were trying to work out. The best example of Music based on Math was Iannis Xenakis, who composed from 1940s into the 1990s. Now he is certainly a required taste and I would say listening to his music live MIGHT make it more palatable but he was using computers in the 1960s to help his compositions. He wasn't Thelonious Monk who just played everything in the hardest keys to prove how great he was on piano but just wrote music from the love he had for mathematics and engineering. Classical music or "European Classical Music" was more into Math and as the high brow crowd was into his stuff it certainly was inside the head of John Coltrane, Miles and Ornette Coleman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2O8bMlEijg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2O8bMlEijg Stravinky's Septet from 1952 can also show how this serial technique composition had huge influence on Jazz in the late 50s and early 60s. Especially when you listen to Miles Davis and Bill Evans "Sketches of Spain." You see that thousands of musicians were exploring and thinking about the "Math of Grammar." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSmRoPzMaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSmRoPzMaY
snaily 9y ago
A blog post: "Music theory for [non-music] nerds": https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/ Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528144
wyclif 9y ago
This is only going to be useful in a partial way, and more likely to be helpful if you play guitar, but Richard Lloyd (formerly of the band Television) explains the "circle of fourths and fifths" here: https://youtu.be/mNmEq-cP9Oo https://youtu.be/mNmEq-cP9Oo https://youtu.be/9lSifKZ80H4 https://youtu.be/9lSifKZ80H4
- beat 9y ago
  I took a lesson from Richard Lloyd once. In that format, he goes much deeper into the Circle of Fifths. He finds as much spiritual meaning in it as Coltrane did in the symmetries found in the drawings of the original article.
  - wyclif 9y ago
    You are lucky. He's an idiosyncratic and eccentric, but unique and brilliant guitar teacher. Also one of the most influential guitarists ever. He has issues too, but I think his unique approach overcomes his mental health history and he's stabilized a lot after getting the right medication. I've heard he now conducts lessons over Skype and I should check to see if he's taking new students.
mdahlstrand 9y ago
A bit late to the game, but I've really enjoyed reading Musimatchics by Gareth Loy, it explains music theory from a mathematical and historical perspective: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/musimathics https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/musimathics

elihu 9y ago

Perhaps Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu.

westoncb 9y ago
This seems pretty much like exactly what I was looking for—thanks!

IAmGraydon 9y ago

The only thing that learning music theory will do for you in this case is make you realize that most of what you see in this article is nonsense. Certainly, none of it will help you make music. I say this as a songwriter and student of music theory for 20 years.

adamsea 9y ago
Damn son, talk about dropping the hammer on ‘em. As a longtime, trained musician with a bit of theory, I’d love to get a breakdown. Would you be willing to explain what is nonsensical about the article?
- mrbrowning 9y ago
  I think what the grandparent is getting at is that music is a culturally-mediated perceptual phenomenon, and so the geometric interpretations here are an artifact of the model rather than of how our minds organize pitch into some musical Gestalt. I both agree with that (I love Coltrane, but as the article accidentally implies, this is about as meaningful as numerology) and find the artifacts to be pretty cool, so I’m not so down on it as an intellectual lark as that poster.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    The author of the original post seemed to miss that Coltrane was drawing a "circle of fourths" (all the notes you see that are squared in the diagram are part of this) with a +1 / -1 half step radiating from them. I'm not entirely sure what John Coltrane was trying to do here, but the circle of fourths is well established theory. From my perspective, the transformations the author did were strange to me. They made neat letter patterns but I'm not sure they made musical ones. From my personal perspective (and all music is to some degree personal opinion), I'm not a fan of trying to orient too much "numerology" to our 12 note equal tempered system (12TET). The 12 note equal tempered system really doesn't pattern all that well to what humans typically find as "consonant": whole integer ratio harmony. EG: One can say the most pleasing ratios follow as such - 2:1 (C:C - octave), 3:2 (C:G, fifths), 4:3 (C:F, fourths), 5:4 (C:E, maj. thirds). That has a certain "math as beauty" look to it when you look at the ratios, but the letter sequence is not as pretty. So if one is trying to find "numerology sense" in music harmony, I personally I think one should use frequencies or frequency ratios instead. My personal impression about too many 20th century music theories, is that too often theories overfocused on 12TET note relationships, and led to some music that in general is difficult to get into (atonal, 12 tone, serial, etc.). These "have their uses" (some of the theories have found great success as scoring techniques for, say, horror films), and some people do seem to genuinely enjoy it. But the theories that I see that were more successful in the public eye (and in my mind as well) are "less is more" type theories (eg modal jazz or minimalism).
    - adamsea 9y ago
      Thank you both for the thoughtful answers :). I think what you both said makes a lot of sense. The one thing I'll throw in is that graphic notation (which I don't know a lot about) is an area where something like the OP can also have relevance - a way of visually expressing musical ideas (including, perhaps, some ideological content meant to inform attitude of the musician). It's also a blurry place between "functional" music notation and art. I hadn't looked closely at the actual notation in the article - sounds like it may have lacked some rigor.
westoncb 9y ago
My main interest is just that it seems like an interesting system—and it's cool that it can be put into correspondence with sounds.
brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
I agree with you on this as a lifelong musician and improvisor. It isn't the math of grammar we think about when conversing to convey meaning and style. We think about what we want to say and how we want to say it. We listen and build something together just like we do in conversation. There is a kind of obsession among some jazz players with spirituality though, it is true. If you are the sort of person who likes that kind of thing, you probably like prose writing like this as well. You certainly don't need to analyze all mathematical relations and artifacts to improvise masterfully. In my experience, the more time a player focuses on this type of thing, the less energy they put into actually having something to express. Or perhaps it has something to do with a fear that they will find they have nothing to say, so they avoid that challenge by making technique and mathematical-theoretical relationships the focus of their practice. The only composer I can think of who managed to be obsessed with the math of things while actually using them to create a unique language through which he expessed ideas,style, and narrative was Messaien. (in his modes studies and bird calls) I do understand why many jazz musicians reached for spirituality and really complex mathematical relationships in modes of improvisation:it's because they were not granted the legitamacy and respect they deserve (and craved, many of them, like Monk, for example) from so-called arbiters of "high culture". If what they were doing could be serious and difficult and inscrutable except with hours and hours of thinky labor, they felt it might elevate them.Of course this was totally not needed and what they (monk especially) were creating had a laguage and history of its own that was in many ways more innovative and culturally relevant than that what they sought to be included with. Of course that's easy to say now.It must have been frustrating, like for Ornette.
- baldfat 9y ago
  > most of what you see in this article is nonsense How as a creative person are you okay with saying blank statements like that? Sure if you just want to only talk about John Coltrane's drawing out of his time and only focus on today, possibly. As someone who has several years of Music Theory and a grandfather that retired as a NYC Jazz Musician I absolutely know many people that worked this way. Heck we had 20 years of the "Mozart Effect" (Was bogus since day one that believed passively listening to Mozart made children and lab rats smarter). BUT music is mathematical and some people have certainly taken this bogus Mozart thing and found out the math behind music. For decades the musical music was captivated with math in the 20th century. This wasn't some spiritual journey in music it was a mathematical puzzle they were trying to work out. The best example of Music based on Math was Iannis Xenakis, who composed from 1940s into the 1990s. Now he is certainly a required taste and I would say listening to his music live MIGHT make it more palatable but he was using computers in the 1960s to help his compositions. He wasn't Thelonious Monk who just played everything in the hardest keys to prove how great he was on piano but just wrote music from the love he had for mathematics and engineering. Classical music or "European Classical Music" was more into Math and as the high brow crowd was into his stuff it certainly was inside the head of John Coltrane, Miles and Ornette Coleman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2O8bMlEijg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2O8bMlEijg Stravinky's Septet from 1952 can also show how this serial technique composition had huge influence on Jazz in the late 50s and early 60s. Especially when you listen to Miles Davis and Bill Evans "Sketches of Spain." You see that thousands of musicians were exploring and thinking about the "Math of Grammar." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSmRoPzMaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSmRoPzMaY

snaily 9y ago

A blog post: "Music theory for [non-music] nerds": https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/ Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528144

wyclif 9y ago

This is only going to be useful in a partial way, and more likely to be helpful if you play guitar, but Richard Lloyd (formerly of the band Television) explains the "circle of fourths and fifths" here: https://youtu.be/mNmEq-cP9Oo https://youtu.be/mNmEq-cP9Oo https://youtu.be/9lSifKZ80H4 https://youtu.be/9lSifKZ80H4

beat 9y ago
I took a lesson from Richard Lloyd once. In that format, he goes much deeper into the Circle of Fifths. He finds as much spiritual meaning in it as Coltrane did in the symmetries found in the drawings of the original article.
- wyclif 9y ago
  You are lucky. He's an idiosyncratic and eccentric, but unique and brilliant guitar teacher. Also one of the most influential guitarists ever. He has issues too, but I think his unique approach overcomes his mental health history and he's stabilized a lot after getting the right medication. I've heard he now conducts lessons over Skype and I should check to see if he's taking new students.

mdahlstrand 9y ago

A bit late to the game, but I've really enjoyed reading Musimatchics by Gareth Loy, it explains music theory from a mathematical and historical perspective: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/musimathics https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/musimathics