7 ms·

Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

120 points by troydavis 5y ago

troydavis 5y ago
Entire text as a 53 MB PDF: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/hw/MusicTheory-Aug-2020.pdf https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/hw/MusicTheory-Aug-2020.p... (from https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/)
- bambataa 5y ago
  Tangential but is there a reason Latex documents have such huge margins by default? Nearly 500 pages that could have happily fitted into 300.
  - racingmars 5y ago
    To quote Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Stlye: "Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal." Essentially, the theory is that longer lines are harder to read. A US Letter or A4-width page is just too wide for normal body text size according to most professional typographers. LaTeX provides typographically sound defaults.
    - jdgoesmarching 5y ago
      Well, it’s definitely nice for phone reading.
Slow_Hand 5y ago
This looks like a very thoughtful and well laid out introduction to theory for anyone who wants to teach themselves. Well done. Something like this should probably still be supplemented with an instructor who can provide the student with some immediate, fun, and practical exercises to make the process more exploratory and engaging, though. Something that will get them thinking musically right away.
telesilla 5y ago
Good to see solid info on 20th C techniques of serialism and minimalism. Extra content to flesh it out might be aleatoric, atonality and electroacoustic/computer music and 21st C digital and interactive scores and composition methods.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  I find serialism to be akin to throwing letters (or characters including the blank space) and expecting poetry (or really any intelligible text) to come out
  - telesilla 5y ago
    Try Stravinsky, IMO he was the best at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPExIXkBOus&t=0s&ab_channel=ContemporaryClassical https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPExIXkBOus&t=0s&ab_channel=...
_1a 5y ago
Is halfstep and whole steps common academic practice? Not being from the US I was always taught with semitones and tones. Whenever I saw YouTube videos with half steps and whole steps I thought they were dumbing down for the audience.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Half step and whole step is really standard in US. I spent my entire childhood studying instruments, but I don't think I saw the "semitone" nomenclature until I started studying music theory directly in high school.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  aren't they synonymous (at least in a 12-tet system)? a tone is whole step. a semitone is a half step.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  It's basically a British/American vernacular difference. They're the same thing. Sort of like semi/hemi/demi quavers and the like versus whole/half/quarter notes
- emerged 5y ago
  I’ve lived in the US for my entire life and do lots of music production. I never use half step or whole step. I tend to refer to things in terms of semitones or intervals (3rd, 5th, octave, etc). I thought half step, whole step was a grade school thing mostly. But I really wouldn’t blink at either style, it’s all the same to me.
anu7df 5y ago
May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think there was an explanation after.. I can grok science and math in all flavors just fine from most books, but music theory.. stumps me every time :(
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  I used this book as a gentle theory introduction: https://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/dp/0966161661 https://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/d... Ideally you'd do this alongside a teacher or someone who knows more so you can bounce questions and applications off of. There may be better theory books out now, I haven't kept up.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Could you share where you run into issues? > why does piano have 88 keys? I'm only ok at music theory, so I might get bits somewhat wrong, but the gist is right. Notes with wavelengths that are integer multiples/fractions of each other sound the same. 440 Hz sounds similar to 220 Hz and 880 Hz (and this makes sense if you just look at the waveform), so we give them the same name. Western music slices the range between ω and 2ω into 12 points evenly divided along a log scale (we call this an octave). The log scale means the relationship of nearby notes is always the same; it takes an exponentially growing scale (frequency) and makes it linear. You said 7 have names, but there are 12 notes in an octave. You'll learn more about that difference with scales, but the short answer most western music won't use all 12 notes because, for a given key; a specific subset of 7 sound a lot better together than the others. 88 keys is somewhat arbitrary, and there are pianos with more or less. What's important is how many and which octaves the piano covers. Why is it called an octave when it has 7 named notes? I guess so we can repeat the first one and drive home the 2ω relationship.
  - dcassett 5y ago
MauranKilom 5y ago
I've always had trouble drawing practical benefit from music theory. Once you go beyond simple scales, it always feels like it quickly devolves into "all these different things can also sound good", and every "rule" can also be broken to spice things up. As long as it sounds good. Conversely, there appears to often be many ways to "explain" a certain composition in terms of music theory. To be clear, I have seen first-hand that people well-versed in music theory can "understand" and also create (e.g. improvise) music more readily. But I can't seem to find joy in approaching music analytically...
- vcxy 5y ago
  I've found it better to consider theory a language to describe musical ideas, but not to impose rules. The "understanding" seems to be a bit more about just being able to name what a thing is, and thereby be able to manipulate it intentionally rather than kind of blindly grasping at musical emotion.
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    Thinking of it as a starting conceptual framework is helpful for me. I like to listen to music that seems to stray from those 'rules' all the time, but the more I learn about theory the more I see that what they're doing is quite intentional.
  - Spellman 5y ago
    Agreed. It's like understanding syntax or grammar for a language. Making explicit names, categories, and systems to take apart what you're doing/saying. 99% of the time though people don't think about that, they go by "feel." But if you can understand the underlying framework, you can also work to intentionally use those to your advantage such as by reinforcing expectations or subverting them in clever ways. Obviously you can also do this by "feel," but an understanding of the underlying mechanics and systems gives you a better framework to spot the points where you can get away with things. When you want to get deeper and push the boundaries of a craft it also helps to understand what "best practices" are in place and why, and then look to exploit them. I have a friend who was self-taught guitar and a variety of other instruments and only recently started on piano and proper theory. It's been fun watching him recognize and get a framework for why things he's intuitively known, such as how a cadence works or key transitions through a circle of fifths, be brought to the surface explicitly.
jancsika 5y ago
Something seems off here. 1. Cadential six-four chords are only listed briefly under the "figured bass" section. But cadential six-fours are a concept from Roman numeral functional harmony, which is outside the scope of figured bass. (Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord-- or in some special circumstances hints about voicing-- but not about how those chords function.) 2. The section on cadences-- which precedes the section on figured bass-- does not treat cadential six-four chords at all, nor AFAICT include any examples of them. In other words-- this text burrows away a fundamental pattern for ending phrases in tonal music. That makes a special case of most of the endings found in most Christian church hymnals, for example.
- dcassett 5y ago
  > Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord Those intervals are relative to the bass. A six-four has a sixth and fourth above the bass (i.e., a second inversion).
  - jancsika 5y ago
    That's true, but that still doesn't explain how the chord functions. What makes a "cadential six four" chord cadential? Or more practically-- which second inversion triads are cadential, and which aren't? To be completist about my criticism here-- the author could stick only to figured bass analyses and give enough examples that the reader/listener starts to implicitly hear the bass patterns, phrase structure, and voice leading that help them differentiate between passing 6-4 chords and cadential ones. Eventually, we've sung enough chorales that we can quickly start parsing these patterns easily enough. However, the author chose to introduce Roman numeral analysis which is the explicit approach to demarcating how the chords in an example function harmonically. That explicitness is quite useful. E.g. * the piece begins to modulate using this specific chord as a pivot, specified with roman numerals for both the old and new key * this second inversion chord gets special notation because it's a cadential six-four which will soon resolve to a V in root position That would all be fine and appropriate, except that the author then relegates cadential six four chords to an ancillary part of the tutorial. But demarcating cadential six four chords is one of the big reasons to go the route of Roman numeral analysis in the first place! Teaching students how to explicitly spot and notate the difference between passing moments in the phrase and cadential moments for the same exact chord is key to them understanding how phrases of tonal music operate. In a normal harmony class, the lessons dealing with cadential six four chords make it easier for students to more quickly analyze difficult music. E.g., is the first chord of Wagner's Liebestod a "one six four" chord or a cadential six four? In Roman numeral analysis one must resolve that ambiguity by making a choice. When one does, the structure of that part of the opera becomes obvious-- it's an ending full of little endings, each of which get elided through chromatic voice leading. You can eventually come to the same conclusion using only figured bass. But chromatic 19th century music can get pretty hairy and so the explicit tool of Roman numeral analysis can come in handy there. But if you learn Roman numeral analysis without learning about the quite common cadential six four, it strips out one of the fundamental lessons for figuring out how phrases of tonal music build and release tension in time. Consequently, analyses like this become more difficult for no good reason.
strogonoff 5y ago
> It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....
jedimastert 5y ago
A gentle reminder that this is a theory of music, not "the" music theory, or more specifically Western European music theory, rooted in 17th century Germany. A problem for many "21st century classrooms" is how they VASTLY over-state the universality and "superiority" of this form of music theory. Thing about the snooty elitist vibes of the "classical" chamber music world, then realize that almost every base assumption made have real-world counter-examples. 12 equal-tempered subdivisions to an octave is (possibly) obvious one, but most people don't realize that many musical cultures don't subdivide measures into even pulses, or have even/equal-sized measures (see "additive rhythm").
- incrudible 5y ago
  I suspect the joy for people versed in classic theory is sparked from being able to identify the name of a recurring concept in a segment of a classical music piece. On a related note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc
- ahthat 5y ago
  True, but even beyond world music, as far as I can tell there is no widely accepted academic theory of modern production technique, where note-based harmonic language is secondary to general creativity in sonic landscape. This is a large part of what most people find interesting in music today, that is popular music production for distribution via sound systems, which arguably represents the current pinnacle of evolution in human musical ingenuity.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    There has been a gradual shift in where new exciting stuff happens from harmony (in jazz music) to timbre (in electronic music). The science for that is in acoustics rather than music theory.
  - jedimastert 5y ago
    > even beyond world music sidenote: this is sort of part of the problem: a lot of the academic world has positioned one specialty of music as the default and everything else in the wide world of sport in to one "world music" bucket. Also, there are absolutely schools of music theory that place other aspects of theory "above" pitch. For example, while Hip-Hop and EDM are based on western harmonic structures, I would argue that there is a much larger emphasis placed on rhythm and timbre, as the other comment mentioned. Many American Indian and African musical traditions (which may not have a "widely accepted academic tradition" but should not be viewed as less valid) place much less emphasis on a specific pitch at all, as opposed to the motion of pitch over time, and very percussion and rhythm forward. If you're interested in theories around tonal shaping, look up electro-house and dubstep sound design tutorials. Dead serious, these guys do things that would never occur to us mere mortals because of the understanding of timbre and the tools they use. A personal favorite of mine is Virtual Riot. His "4 producers 1 sample" entry was truly mind bending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKY_DnM1PA&t=7m43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKY_DnM1PA&t=7m43s
quadrangle 5y ago
Hmm, GNU FDL why? I am all about free/libre/open terms, that was the first thing I checked. But CC BY-SA is the standard now for this type of thing, and GNU FDL mostly just creates incompatibility. Anyway, this content is "Western Art Music" academic, *dated* sort of stuff, it's not at all appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom. Serialism?? And no mention of any non-Western traditions or pitch systems etc. etc. This is more like mid-late-20th-century Eurocentric textbook just put on the internet.
- Bud 5y ago
  It's actually applicable to 99% of all "popular" music, as well. Obviously not just to "Western Art Music". Which is why all this stuff is still taught. What do you think is "appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom"? Do you have any music degrees? I've got a couple. If you've studied at a music school, then I'm sure you'd be aware that non-Western musical traditions and tonal systems are covered; just not in the core Theory 101/102 classes. They tend to get covered elsewhere. You can fuss all you want about how this is dated and academic; whatever. It's still highly relevant to the vast majority of music out there, both classical and not, that Westerners will run into. So of course, if you go looking for a music theory course in an academic context, in a Western context, this is what you're going to get. What do you expect to get?
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    > Do you have any music degrees? I've got a couple. Woopteedoo Mr. Argument-from-authority. Well, that's the snarky tone I might have if I stick to replying in a triggered-reactive state. But better for me to engage with the reasonable points and not focus on imagining you feeling defensive and me being reactive in reverse. Yes, you are right that "Western Art Music" is too narrow, many many aspects of pop-music and jazz and so on do indeed use these same structures. And furthermore, several aspects of this sort of "theory" are decently universal. I do still object strongly to the presentation of these ideas as if they explain music. I'm not going to prioritize getting into this in depth here. I would be happy and probably not really object if this stuff were all just labeled as Standard Patterns of 12-tone Western Music instead of "Music Theory". P.S. Yes, I have a music degree, and I also did a bunch of grad-level stuff too and almost started a music PhD, but life went in other directions. As it stands though, I have learned more about music away from academia than in it. However, I did find some people within academia who seemed to really have broader understandings, and I was pursuing working with such folks when I was still engaged in that world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AlbertCory 5y ago
A good example [1] of someone learning a piece without knowledge of the underlying theory. I find it magical because he was a teenager whose dad gave him a Joe Pass record, and he learned All The Things You Are when he was laid up with an injury and had too much time on his hands. He ends up playing it for his dad, who's impressed. He doesn't realize that the chords sort of follow a ii-V-I pattern, and I'm sure eventually he learned it. Would he have learned the song faster if he'd known that? Maybe. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hQvMhHL34&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hQvMhHL34&t=3s
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  He certainly knows all the theory now. He has a really good ear, in his videos he listens to a song for the first time, playing along on guitar or piano and naming all the chords and progressions as he goes.
racl101 5y ago
Very, very cool. Can't wait to check out this site when I get home from work.
teknopaul 5y ago
This is music theory for the 20th century, its what I got at school, dry and boring and instantly forgettable. I got re-learned music theory in a pub by a guy who could do heavy metal growling among other real world music skills and never looked back. Music must be enjoyable or it ain't music.

120 points by troydavis 5y ago

Entire text as a 53 MB PDF: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/hw/MusicTheory-Aug-2020.pdf https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/hw/MusicTheory-Aug-2020.p... (from https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/)

bambataa 5y ago
Tangential but is there a reason Latex documents have such huge margins by default? Nearly 500 pages that could have happily fitted into 300.
- racingmars 5y ago
  To quote Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Stlye: "Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal." Essentially, the theory is that longer lines are harder to read. A US Letter or A4-width page is just too wide for normal body text size according to most professional typographers. LaTeX provides typographically sound defaults.
  - jdgoesmarching 5y ago
    Well, it’s definitely nice for phone reading.

Slow_Hand 5y ago

This looks like a very thoughtful and well laid out introduction to theory for anyone who wants to teach themselves. Well done. Something like this should probably still be supplemented with an instructor who can provide the student with some immediate, fun, and practical exercises to make the process more exploratory and engaging, though. Something that will get them thinking musically right away.

telesilla 5y ago

Good to see solid info on 20th C techniques of serialism and minimalism. Extra content to flesh it out might be aleatoric, atonality and electroacoustic/computer music and 21st C digital and interactive scores and composition methods.

bsedlm 5y ago
I find serialism to be akin to throwing letters (or characters including the blank space) and expecting poetry (or really any intelligible text) to come out
- telesilla 5y ago
  Try Stravinsky, IMO he was the best at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPExIXkBOus&t=0s&ab_channel=ContemporaryClassical https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPExIXkBOus&t=0s&ab_channel=...

_1a 5y ago

Is halfstep and whole steps common academic practice? Not being from the US I was always taught with semitones and tones. Whenever I saw YouTube videos with half steps and whole steps I thought they were dumbing down for the audience.

InitialLastName 5y ago
Half step and whole step is really standard in US. I spent my entire childhood studying instruments, but I don't think I saw the "semitone" nomenclature until I started studying music theory directly in high school.
bsedlm 5y ago
aren't they synonymous (at least in a 12-tet system)? a tone is whole step. a semitone is a half step.
jedimastert 5y ago
It's basically a British/American vernacular difference. They're the same thing. Sort of like semi/hemi/demi quavers and the like versus whole/half/quarter notes
emerged 5y ago
I’ve lived in the US for my entire life and do lots of music production. I never use half step or whole step. I tend to refer to things in terms of semitones or intervals (3rd, 5th, octave, etc). I thought half step, whole step was a grade school thing mostly. But I really wouldn’t blink at either style, it’s all the same to me.

anu7df 5y ago

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think there was an explanation after.. I can grok science and math in all flavors just fine from most books, but music theory.. stumps me every time :(

mattgreenrocks 5y ago
I used this book as a gentle theory introduction: https://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/dp/0966161661 https://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/d... Ideally you'd do this alongside a teacher or someone who knows more so you can bounce questions and applications off of. There may be better theory books out now, I haven't kept up.
dehrmann 5y ago
Could you share where you run into issues? > why does piano have 88 keys? I'm only ok at music theory, so I might get bits somewhat wrong, but the gist is right. Notes with wavelengths that are integer multiples/fractions of each other sound the same. 440 Hz sounds similar to 220 Hz and 880 Hz (and this makes sense if you just look at the waveform), so we give them the same name. Western music slices the range between ω and 2ω into 12 points evenly divided along a log scale (we call this an octave). The log scale means the relationship of nearby notes is always the same; it takes an exponentially growing scale (frequency) and makes it linear. You said 7 have names, but there are 12 notes in an octave. You'll learn more about that difference with scales, but the short answer most western music won't use all 12 notes because, for a given key; a specific subset of 7 sound a lot better together than the others. 88 keys is somewhat arbitrary, and there are pianos with more or less. What's important is how many and which octaves the piano covers. Why is it called an octave when it has 7 named notes? I guess so we can repeat the first one and drive home the 2ω relationship.
- dcassett 5y ago

MauranKilom 5y ago

I've always had trouble drawing practical benefit from music theory. Once you go beyond simple scales, it always feels like it quickly devolves into "all these different things can also sound good", and every "rule" can also be broken to spice things up. As long as it sounds good. Conversely, there appears to often be many ways to "explain" a certain composition in terms of music theory. To be clear, I have seen first-hand that people well-versed in music theory can "understand" and also create (e.g. improvise) music more readily. But I can't seem to find joy in approaching music analytically...

vcxy 5y ago
I've found it better to consider theory a language to describe musical ideas, but not to impose rules. The "understanding" seems to be a bit more about just being able to name what a thing is, and thereby be able to manipulate it intentionally rather than kind of blindly grasping at musical emotion.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  Thinking of it as a starting conceptual framework is helpful for me. I like to listen to music that seems to stray from those 'rules' all the time, but the more I learn about theory the more I see that what they're doing is quite intentional.
- Spellman 5y ago
  Agreed. It's like understanding syntax or grammar for a language. Making explicit names, categories, and systems to take apart what you're doing/saying. 99% of the time though people don't think about that, they go by "feel." But if you can understand the underlying framework, you can also work to intentionally use those to your advantage such as by reinforcing expectations or subverting them in clever ways. Obviously you can also do this by "feel," but an understanding of the underlying mechanics and systems gives you a better framework to spot the points where you can get away with things. When you want to get deeper and push the boundaries of a craft it also helps to understand what "best practices" are in place and why, and then look to exploit them. I have a friend who was self-taught guitar and a variety of other instruments and only recently started on piano and proper theory. It's been fun watching him recognize and get a framework for why things he's intuitively known, such as how a cadence works or key transitions through a circle of fifths, be brought to the surface explicitly.

jancsika 5y ago

Something seems off here. 1. Cadential six-four chords are only listed briefly under the "figured bass" section. But cadential six-fours are a concept from Roman numeral functional harmony, which is outside the scope of figured bass. (Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord-- or in some special circumstances hints about voicing-- but not about how those chords function.) 2. The section on cadences-- which precedes the section on figured bass-- does not treat cadential six-four chords at all, nor AFAICT include any examples of them. In other words-- this text burrows away a fundamental pattern for ending phrases in tonal music. That makes a special case of most of the endings found in most Christian church hymnals, for example.

dcassett 5y ago
> Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord Those intervals are relative to the bass. A six-four has a sixth and fourth above the bass (i.e., a second inversion).
- jancsika 5y ago
  That's true, but that still doesn't explain how the chord functions. What makes a "cadential six four" chord cadential? Or more practically-- which second inversion triads are cadential, and which aren't? To be completist about my criticism here-- the author could stick only to figured bass analyses and give enough examples that the reader/listener starts to implicitly hear the bass patterns, phrase structure, and voice leading that help them differentiate between passing 6-4 chords and cadential ones. Eventually, we've sung enough chorales that we can quickly start parsing these patterns easily enough. However, the author chose to introduce Roman numeral analysis which is the explicit approach to demarcating how the chords in an example function harmonically. That explicitness is quite useful. E.g. * the piece begins to modulate using this specific chord as a pivot, specified with roman numerals for both the old and new key * this second inversion chord gets special notation because it's a cadential six-four which will soon resolve to a V in root position That would all be fine and appropriate, except that the author then relegates cadential six four chords to an ancillary part of the tutorial. But demarcating cadential six four chords is one of the big reasons to go the route of Roman numeral analysis in the first place! Teaching students how to explicitly spot and notate the difference between passing moments in the phrase and cadential moments for the same exact chord is key to them understanding how phrases of tonal music operate. In a normal harmony class, the lessons dealing with cadential six four chords make it easier for students to more quickly analyze difficult music. E.g., is the first chord of Wagner's Liebestod a "one six four" chord or a cadential six four? In Roman numeral analysis one must resolve that ambiguity by making a choice. When one does, the structure of that part of the opera becomes obvious-- it's an ending full of little endings, each of which get elided through chromatic voice leading. You can eventually come to the same conclusion using only figured bass. But chromatic 19th century music can get pretty hairy and so the explicit tool of Roman numeral analysis can come in handy there. But if you learn Roman numeral analysis without learning about the quite common cadential six four, it strips out one of the fundamental lessons for figuring out how phrases of tonal music build and release tension in time. Consequently, analyses like this become more difficult for no good reason.

strogonoff 5y ago

> It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....

jedimastert 5y ago

A gentle reminder that this is a theory of music, not "the" music theory, or more specifically Western European music theory, rooted in 17th century Germany. A problem for many "21st century classrooms" is how they VASTLY over-state the universality and "superiority" of this form of music theory. Thing about the snooty elitist vibes of the "classical" chamber music world, then realize that almost every base assumption made have real-world counter-examples. 12 equal-tempered subdivisions to an octave is (possibly) obvious one, but most people don't realize that many musical cultures don't subdivide measures into even pulses, or have even/equal-sized measures (see "additive rhythm").

incrudible 5y ago
I suspect the joy for people versed in classic theory is sparked from being able to identify the name of a recurring concept in a segment of a classical music piece. On a related note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc
ahthat 5y ago
True, but even beyond world music, as far as I can tell there is no widely accepted academic theory of modern production technique, where note-based harmonic language is secondary to general creativity in sonic landscape. This is a large part of what most people find interesting in music today, that is popular music production for distribution via sound systems, which arguably represents the current pinnacle of evolution in human musical ingenuity.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  There has been a gradual shift in where new exciting stuff happens from harmony (in jazz music) to timbre (in electronic music). The science for that is in acoustics rather than music theory.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  > even beyond world music sidenote: this is sort of part of the problem: a lot of the academic world has positioned one specialty of music as the default and everything else in the wide world of sport in to one "world music" bucket. Also, there are absolutely schools of music theory that place other aspects of theory "above" pitch. For example, while Hip-Hop and EDM are based on western harmonic structures, I would argue that there is a much larger emphasis placed on rhythm and timbre, as the other comment mentioned. Many American Indian and African musical traditions (which may not have a "widely accepted academic tradition" but should not be viewed as less valid) place much less emphasis on a specific pitch at all, as opposed to the motion of pitch over time, and very percussion and rhythm forward. If you're interested in theories around tonal shaping, look up electro-house and dubstep sound design tutorials. Dead serious, these guys do things that would never occur to us mere mortals because of the understanding of timbre and the tools they use. A personal favorite of mine is Virtual Riot. His "4 producers 1 sample" entry was truly mind bending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKY_DnM1PA&t=7m43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKY_DnM1PA&t=7m43s

quadrangle 5y ago

Hmm, GNU FDL why? I am all about free/libre/open terms, that was the first thing I checked. But CC BY-SA is the standard now for this type of thing, and GNU FDL mostly just creates incompatibility. Anyway, this content is "Western Art Music" academic, *dated* sort of stuff, it's not at all appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom. Serialism?? And no mention of any non-Western traditions or pitch systems etc. etc. This is more like mid-late-20th-century Eurocentric textbook just put on the internet.

Bud 5y ago
It's actually applicable to 99% of all "popular" music, as well. Obviously not just to "Western Art Music". Which is why all this stuff is still taught. What do you think is "appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom"? Do you have any music degrees? I've got a couple. If you've studied at a music school, then I'm sure you'd be aware that non-Western musical traditions and tonal systems are covered; just not in the core Theory 101/102 classes. They tend to get covered elsewhere. You can fuss all you want about how this is dated and academic; whatever. It's still highly relevant to the vast majority of music out there, both classical and not, that Westerners will run into. So of course, if you go looking for a music theory course in an academic context, in a Western context, this is what you're going to get. What do you expect to get?
- quadrangle 5y ago
  > Do you have any music degrees? I've got a couple. Woopteedoo Mr. Argument-from-authority. Well, that's the snarky tone I might have if I stick to replying in a triggered-reactive state. But better for me to engage with the reasonable points and not focus on imagining you feeling defensive and me being reactive in reverse. Yes, you are right that "Western Art Music" is too narrow, many many aspects of pop-music and jazz and so on do indeed use these same structures. And furthermore, several aspects of this sort of "theory" are decently universal. I do still object strongly to the presentation of these ideas as if they explain music. I'm not going to prioritize getting into this in depth here. I would be happy and probably not really object if this stuff were all just labeled as Standard Patterns of 12-tone Western Music instead of "Music Theory". P.S. Yes, I have a music degree, and I also did a bunch of grad-level stuff too and almost started a music PhD, but life went in other directions. As it stands though, I have learned more about music away from academia than in it. However, I did find some people within academia who seemed to really have broader understandings, and I was pursuing working with such folks when I was still engaged in that world.

deleted 5y ago

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AlbertCory 5y ago

A good example [1] of someone learning a piece without knowledge of the underlying theory. I find it magical because he was a teenager whose dad gave him a Joe Pass record, and he learned All The Things You Are when he was laid up with an injury and had too much time on his hands. He ends up playing it for his dad, who's impressed. He doesn't realize that the chords sort of follow a ii-V-I pattern, and I'm sure eventually he learned it. Would he have learned the song faster if he'd known that? Maybe. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hQvMhHL34&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hQvMhHL34&t=3s

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
He certainly knows all the theory now. He has a really good ear, in his videos he listens to a song for the first time, playing along on guitar or piano and naming all the chords and progressions as he goes.

racl101 5y ago

Very, very cool. Can't wait to check out this site when I get home from work.

teknopaul 5y ago

This is music theory for the 20th century, its what I got at school, dry and boring and instantly forgettable. I got re-learned music theory in a pub by a guy who could do heavy metal growling among other real world music skills and never looked back. Music must be enjoyable or it ain't music.