7 ms·

If you replace "theory" with "European-based jargon and notation patterns" then this is all pretty decent though imperfect. What most people call "music theory

If you replace "theory" with "European-based jargon and notation patterns" then this is all pretty decent though imperfect. What most people call "music theory" is not what would qualify as theory in any other field. At best (and it's rarely at its best), it explains music like chemical diagrams explain chemistry. Any actual theory of music has to be based in human psychology and then the assertions tested against how well they explain music we can observe across the world and through history. And that exists, but it's in stuff people call "music cognition" and even there, folks are often too deferential to the untested hypotheses that claim to be "music theory".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
analog31 7y ago
Indeed. And in fact, most music students are told this fairly explicitly. Not talking about you specifically, but more of a generalization: I've noticed that a lot of technical people get hung up on the arbitrariness of musical conventions, whereas musicians tend to just grab an instrument and start playing. I wonder if music theory is more like engineering than science. The people I know who studied theory did not become academic theory scholars, but learned theory in order to use it. Lost in discussions about theory are what you actually use it for. Music students, when they learn theory, are simultaneously being taught things like composition, arrangement, technique, and possibly improvisation.
- quadrangle 7y ago
  Were you assuming that I took this position because I'm a "technical [person]"? Incidentally, I'm a musician and music teacher who started out focusing on creative exploration, improvisation, composition, and world music. I found it frustrating that I went through years of "music theory" only to much later realize that all the deeper insights and questions I had were already understood and studied by people in music cognition and related fields and yet most music education never brings up any of it and most music teachers are totally unaware. One good intro: Music and Memory by Bob Snyder. That was written not for technical people but for multimedia artists at the art school where he teaches. They needed to understand music to use it better in their art. So, he wrote a book to actually explain music in a usable way. It's far and away more insightful and practically applicable than the traditional "music theory"
  - analog31 7y ago
    Nope, it really was intended to be a broader generalization. That book seems interesting. Oddly enough I'm a jazz musician, but I never learned theory. I mean, I understand scales and chord symbols, but never learned anything beyond that in a formal way. Comparing myself to players who have studied theory, my limitations are that I can't compose or arrange, and I struggle to improvise over complex chord changes.
    - quadrangle 7y ago
      Yeah, learning the grammar of what has become consensus-jazz (if you will) allows you to better play that game with other people. In that sense, I do just very much dislike that such grammar is presented under the guise of "theory" (that's both in the word and in having a pretense of explaining music rather than just being the general rules that lead to standard jazz). Compare to cooking: if you don't know how to use a measuring cup or the difference between baking and broiling, you will have a harder time following recipes or adapting them to your own tastes. And knowing deeper ideas like the effect of baking soda or eggs or the smoke points of different oils… it can get advanced and deep, but I still insist that learning about how cooking and digestion and taste actually work would be deeply insightful to cooking even if you can get by without that understanding. Same applies to music. Jazz musicians who just memorize all the scales and voice-leading ideas and forms etc. would gain a ton by learning about what music cognition offers.
criddell 7y ago
Most people who talk about music theory are artists, not scientists. Scientific rigour isn't normally needed or even expected by people who create music.
- quadrangle 7y ago
  What really happens in my observation of what you describe: musicians learn about what other people claim as theory and then pass it on without much question. However, the "theory" itself doesn't just come from practicing musicians explaining their own work (though there's some of that). It comes from a history of theorizing. A good analogy is language. Poets may indeed chatter about grammar a bunch. But the grammar they describe is usually stuff they inherited from their own schooling and from grammar books that have a whole long multi-generation history. And regardless of all this and the fact that it's largely right overall, scientific study of linguistics has found all sorts of issues with traditional grammar ideas. Anyone interested in understanding language, whether theoretically as an end in itself or to explore the art of poetry, will do better by studying scientific understandings of linguistics than in memorizing old grammar textbook claims.
  - criddell 7y ago
    Language is an interesting topic. Words ultimately mean whatever it is that they communicate. The meaning of music theory is what musicians have established it to be. For what you are talking about, you probably need to be more specific. Maybe scientific theory of music.
    - quadrangle 7y ago
      I'm suggesting that even to musicians, when they say, "I want to understand how music works", they pick up a book on "music theory". They think it does mean that. And they study it and hope it will get them what they want. It does a little. They aren't presented with the idea that any other approach even exists. And when they get advanced enough, some of them teach "music theory" classes and write more "music theory" books — all still thinking this is as good as we have at explaining the nature of music because they themselves sought that out and this is what they got. At grad-school level "music theory" all the insights from music cognition are recognized as totally within "music theory" except that everyone is so invested in the general notation-jargon path to get there that they rarely think much about what theory could/should be for beginners. They eventually found the other stuff after so many years, and most people don't question whether there might be a better path.
adrianmonk 7y ago
My advice is to not get too hung up on the word "theory". Scientific, rigorous, testable theory is one kind of theory, but "music theory" uses the word in an older, broader sense which is just about a contrast between practice and theory, sort of like the difference between experiential learning and analytical learning. There are absolutely things that can be learned by taking a scientific approach like you describe, but there is nothing wrong with a loose, informal type of analysis that musicians often engage in if it helps them see patterns and structure that occurs in music, even if the ultimate reason why it works isn't well-understood. I do share some frustration, though, with how music theory is often discussed. Musicians are often not very analytical people, so when they dip their feet into the analytical side, the way they do it can be kind of muddy and confusion and incoherent. But I accept that as sort of a necessary evil because if you get too analytical, it tends to shut off creativity because your mind gets too focused on other things.
- quadrangle 7y ago
  Oh, it's not just a semantic hangup. Most people who start reading about "music theory" are, I insist, hoping to understand what music is and how it works. What they get is instead a treatise on common-practice patterns from classical European through American-based jazz and pop music with only a smidgen of insights into the nature of music. Even if you just stick within one of those traditions, the "theory" is more of a post-hoc attempt to explain (and in some cases dictate) the patterns found in music practice. Rarely are those post-hoc explanations subjected to any rigorous sort of critical thinking aside from the history of debates between different theorists postulating their own variations of post-hoc explanations. Okay, even that is a bit unfair. But I think it does a disservice to students when these things are presented as "music theory" without qualification and context.
  - anthonypasq 7y ago
    This is still a semantic objection, just something different from what the other poster pointed out.
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

analog31 7y ago

Indeed. And in fact, most music students are told this fairly explicitly. Not talking about you specifically, but more of a generalization: I've noticed that a lot of technical people get hung up on the arbitrariness of musical conventions, whereas musicians tend to just grab an instrument and start playing. I wonder if music theory is more like engineering than science. The people I know who studied theory did not become academic theory scholars, but learned theory in order to use it. Lost in discussions about theory are what you actually use it for. Music students, when they learn theory, are simultaneously being taught things like composition, arrangement, technique, and possibly improvisation.

quadrangle 7y ago
Were you assuming that I took this position because I'm a "technical [person]"? Incidentally, I'm a musician and music teacher who started out focusing on creative exploration, improvisation, composition, and world music. I found it frustrating that I went through years of "music theory" only to much later realize that all the deeper insights and questions I had were already understood and studied by people in music cognition and related fields and yet most music education never brings up any of it and most music teachers are totally unaware. One good intro: Music and Memory by Bob Snyder. That was written not for technical people but for multimedia artists at the art school where he teaches. They needed to understand music to use it better in their art. So, he wrote a book to actually explain music in a usable way. It's far and away more insightful and practically applicable than the traditional "music theory"
- analog31 7y ago
  Nope, it really was intended to be a broader generalization. That book seems interesting. Oddly enough I'm a jazz musician, but I never learned theory. I mean, I understand scales and chord symbols, but never learned anything beyond that in a formal way. Comparing myself to players who have studied theory, my limitations are that I can't compose or arrange, and I struggle to improvise over complex chord changes.
  - quadrangle 7y ago
    Yeah, learning the grammar of what has become consensus-jazz (if you will) allows you to better play that game with other people. In that sense, I do just very much dislike that such grammar is presented under the guise of "theory" (that's both in the word and in having a pretense of explaining music rather than just being the general rules that lead to standard jazz). Compare to cooking: if you don't know how to use a measuring cup or the difference between baking and broiling, you will have a harder time following recipes or adapting them to your own tastes. And knowing deeper ideas like the effect of baking soda or eggs or the smoke points of different oils… it can get advanced and deep, but I still insist that learning about how cooking and digestion and taste actually work would be deeply insightful to cooking even if you can get by without that understanding. Same applies to music. Jazz musicians who just memorize all the scales and voice-leading ideas and forms etc. would gain a ton by learning about what music cognition offers.

criddell 7y ago

Most people who talk about music theory are artists, not scientists. Scientific rigour isn't normally needed or even expected by people who create music.

quadrangle 7y ago
What really happens in my observation of what you describe: musicians learn about what other people claim as theory and then pass it on without much question. However, the "theory" itself doesn't just come from practicing musicians explaining their own work (though there's some of that). It comes from a history of theorizing. A good analogy is language. Poets may indeed chatter about grammar a bunch. But the grammar they describe is usually stuff they inherited from their own schooling and from grammar books that have a whole long multi-generation history. And regardless of all this and the fact that it's largely right overall, scientific study of linguistics has found all sorts of issues with traditional grammar ideas. Anyone interested in understanding language, whether theoretically as an end in itself or to explore the art of poetry, will do better by studying scientific understandings of linguistics than in memorizing old grammar textbook claims.
- criddell 7y ago
  Language is an interesting topic. Words ultimately mean whatever it is that they communicate. The meaning of music theory is what musicians have established it to be. For what you are talking about, you probably need to be more specific. Maybe scientific theory of music.
  - quadrangle 7y ago
    I'm suggesting that even to musicians, when they say, "I want to understand how music works", they pick up a book on "music theory". They think it does mean that. And they study it and hope it will get them what they want. It does a little. They aren't presented with the idea that any other approach even exists. And when they get advanced enough, some of them teach "music theory" classes and write more "music theory" books — all still thinking this is as good as we have at explaining the nature of music because they themselves sought that out and this is what they got. At grad-school level "music theory" all the insights from music cognition are recognized as totally within "music theory" except that everyone is so invested in the general notation-jargon path to get there that they rarely think much about what theory could/should be for beginners. They eventually found the other stuff after so many years, and most people don't question whether there might be a better path.

adrianmonk 7y ago

My advice is to not get too hung up on the word "theory". Scientific, rigorous, testable theory is one kind of theory, but "music theory" uses the word in an older, broader sense which is just about a contrast between practice and theory, sort of like the difference between experiential learning and analytical learning. There are absolutely things that can be learned by taking a scientific approach like you describe, but there is nothing wrong with a loose, informal type of analysis that musicians often engage in if it helps them see patterns and structure that occurs in music, even if the ultimate reason why it works isn't well-understood. I do share some frustration, though, with how music theory is often discussed. Musicians are often not very analytical people, so when they dip their feet into the analytical side, the way they do it can be kind of muddy and confusion and incoherent. But I accept that as sort of a necessary evil because if you get too analytical, it tends to shut off creativity because your mind gets too focused on other things.

quadrangle 7y ago
Oh, it's not just a semantic hangup. Most people who start reading about "music theory" are, I insist, hoping to understand what music is and how it works. What they get is instead a treatise on common-practice patterns from classical European through American-based jazz and pop music with only a smidgen of insights into the nature of music. Even if you just stick within one of those traditions, the "theory" is more of a post-hoc attempt to explain (and in some cases dictate) the patterns found in music practice. Rarely are those post-hoc explanations subjected to any rigorous sort of critical thinking aside from the history of debates between different theorists postulating their own variations of post-hoc explanations. Okay, even that is a bit unfair. But I think it does a disservice to students when these things are presented as "music theory" without qualification and context.
- anthonypasq 7y ago
  This is still a semantic objection, just something different from what the other poster pointed out.
  - 7y ago