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Yeah I'd agree with that. I think of 'Music Theory' as being that which distinguishes between 'music' as commonly understood vs random plinky plonk notes with r
by codeulike 6y ago
Yeah I'd agree with that. I think of 'Music Theory' as being that which distinguishes between 'music' as commonly understood vs random plinky plonk notes with random percussion. Which can also be stated as 'why does music sound good?'. So that starts with the stuff about frequency ratios which then leads to chords and keys and scales, and then at a deeper level yes you start looking at song structure and the balance between repetition and progression, the different types of progression like key changes and the overall art of the balance between meeting expectations and subverting them.
- megameter 6y agoOne of the deepest issues I see with music theory as it stands is simply that harmony is "overworked". It has a lot of baggage that is of some use conversationally to discuss different eras and genres and to play polyphonically, but also not really needed to write interesting music or make sense of an existing piece. Most harmonic structure can be described very well just in terms of scale degree emphasis, and overlapping scales where the structure is complex. And it's quite easy to stumble into "spicy" yet listenable results by setting yourself up with two scales, playing monophonic arpeggiations that interchange them, and then condensing those into chord progressions. It's much harder to reach those chords by starting with a list of block chords, because that medium works in one scale at a time, so the notation quickly gets unwieldy.