4 ms·

It's only taught as a series of facts to remember if you're not involved in practical application.. AKA actually playing music. If you're getting a practical e

It's only taught as a series of facts to remember if you're not involved in practical application.. AKA actually playing music. If you're getting a practical education in this stuff you learn bits of theory right at the point they make perfect sense and you "Grok" them quickly and internalize them without having to think of them as memorizable facts. E.x. you are directly associating a particular part of the music theory with a direct link to muscle memory on your chosen instrument. It's burned into your muscle memory already and now you have just associated the theory with the practice. Every time you perform that technique or type of passage it just reinforces the theory. Another example.. understanding the difference between a minor chord and major chord or 7th/diminished/augmented chord, or the difference in how two different intervals relate means a totally different thing to a person who has practiced those things till they can differentiate them by ear than a person who cannot differentiate them by ear. Perhaps all this is a weakness in an age where a lot of people are making music on computers in ways that break this type of link. It's all very analogous IMO to someone who has read a book about a sport but has never actually played the sport.

danShumway 5y ago
> It's only taught as a series of facts to remember if you're not involved in practical application.. AKA actually playing music. First, no. I went hard into music in my early life, I both learned basic piano and intermediate saxophone, and I went through the full suite of band/orchestra/jazz/soloing, to the point where I was a fairly decent-ish musician. It's not until later that people get taught this stuff in my experience, I struggled with any practical connection to music theory probably until late middle-school. But second, what you're describing is exactly why the article is useful; because the people who are trying to get into music haven't played an instrument for so long that they can improvise on it and start to put together intuitively that certain ratios or key signatures or whatever sound good. What happens with people who are taught to play instruments is that they spend a lot of time honing those instincts by playing the instrument, but at the same time, what they're playing is constantly attached to this notation so that when they intuitively connect that minor/major/augmented chords sound good or bad in different situations, they simultaneously connect them to the notation as a way of expressing those concepts. People who don't have formal instruction don't go through that process the same way. They might be composing music without ever thinking about the notation. And when they go to seek out instruction or learn more about techniques, they don't have a bridge to connect their intuitions about what does and doesn't sound good with the notation, everyone just expects them to find the notation intuitive. I had a lot of formal instruction on playing jazz. A lot of it was about honing intuition, listening to jazz, replaying other famous improve tracks, improving over those tracks, memorizing licks. But that intuition and practical experience was also coupled with being able to break down and describe what those other musicians were doing. That required a shared notation that I could understand, it required being able to understand what an instructor meant when they talked about why certain riffs worked or common ways to resolve a run of notes if I got lost in the middle of an improv solo and didn't what to do next. But I could follow that instruction because I knew the notation and I had a connection between my practical experience of how music sounds and the formal notation about key signatures and chords and crud. A lot of people don't have that because they haven't spent X years learning to read sheet music. Articles like this are helpful for them.
AlbertCory 5y ago
I got to ask The Alexander String Quartet at their Q&A about microtones and whether F# is really the same as Gb (answer: it's not for them). There IS a notation that they use among themselves about microtones above and below the standard pitch, and they have to agree what pitch, exactly, they're playing at any given note. Furthermore, the pitch they would use depends on whether the musical line is going up or down; in other words, it could be different in different parts of the same piece. There are a lot of things that serious musicians know well enough to explain, but almost no one ever asks them.
- rtsil 5y ago
  > whether F# is really the same as Gb (answer: it's not for them). The reason they're the "same" is because of a limitation of musical instruments in their ability to play in multiple keys that led most Western instruments to be tuned in the 12-tone equal temperament system. If you select a different temperament, or use an instrument that can't be constrained by the 12-tone temperament, such as a computer, they can be different. Some violin players will also tell you that they're not the same notes.
  - cma 5y ago
    >Or use an instrument that can't be constrained by the 12-tone temperament, such as a computer Or a guitar... I think multistring fretted instruments can't be in equal temperament.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    This may or may not be a disagreement with what you said: They're the same on an instrument that can only play a defined set of notes, e.g. a piano or fretted instrument. It has nothing to do with the piano being in equal temperament. If a violinist is playing an F#, his finger isn't necessarily on the exact same spot as when he's playing a Gb. As he explained answering my question, it isn't even in the exact same spot for the same F# every time in the same piece. The string players have very slight variations that they can describe precisely to each other so they sound good together.
zanderwohl 5y ago
In my experience, these bits and pieces taught during practical lessons don't help if you don't already have a musical intuition. Like mathematics, we need to stop catering only to those who already "get it" and also teach those who don't.

danShumway 5y ago

> It's only taught as a series of facts to remember if you're not involved in practical application.. AKA actually playing music. First, no. I went hard into music in my early life, I both learned basic piano and intermediate saxophone, and I went through the full suite of band/orchestra/jazz/soloing, to the point where I was a fairly decent-ish musician. It's not until later that people get taught this stuff in my experience, I struggled with any practical connection to music theory probably until late middle-school. But second, what you're describing is exactly why the article is useful; because the people who are trying to get into music haven't played an instrument for so long that they can improvise on it and start to put together intuitively that certain ratios or key signatures or whatever sound good. What happens with people who are taught to play instruments is that they spend a lot of time honing those instincts by playing the instrument, but at the same time, what they're playing is constantly attached to this notation so that when they intuitively connect that minor/major/augmented chords sound good or bad in different situations, they simultaneously connect them to the notation as a way of expressing those concepts. People who don't have formal instruction don't go through that process the same way. They might be composing music without ever thinking about the notation. And when they go to seek out instruction or learn more about techniques, they don't have a bridge to connect their intuitions about what does and doesn't sound good with the notation, everyone just expects them to find the notation intuitive. I had a lot of formal instruction on playing jazz. A lot of it was about honing intuition, listening to jazz, replaying other famous improve tracks, improving over those tracks, memorizing licks. But that intuition and practical experience was also coupled with being able to break down and describe what those other musicians were doing. That required a shared notation that I could understand, it required being able to understand what an instructor meant when they talked about why certain riffs worked or common ways to resolve a run of notes if I got lost in the middle of an improv solo and didn't what to do next. But I could follow that instruction because I knew the notation and I had a connection between my practical experience of how music sounds and the formal notation about key signatures and chords and crud. A lot of people don't have that because they haven't spent X years learning to read sheet music. Articles like this are helpful for them.

AlbertCory 5y ago

I got to ask The Alexander String Quartet at their Q&A about microtones and whether F# is really the same as Gb (answer: it's not for them). There IS a notation that they use among themselves about microtones above and below the standard pitch, and they have to agree what pitch, exactly, they're playing at any given note. Furthermore, the pitch they would use depends on whether the musical line is going up or down; in other words, it could be different in different parts of the same piece. There are a lot of things that serious musicians know well enough to explain, but almost no one ever asks them.

rtsil 5y ago
> whether F# is really the same as Gb (answer: it's not for them). The reason they're the "same" is because of a limitation of musical instruments in their ability to play in multiple keys that led most Western instruments to be tuned in the 12-tone equal temperament system. If you select a different temperament, or use an instrument that can't be constrained by the 12-tone temperament, such as a computer, they can be different. Some violin players will also tell you that they're not the same notes.
- cma 5y ago
  >Or use an instrument that can't be constrained by the 12-tone temperament, such as a computer Or a guitar... I think multistring fretted instruments can't be in equal temperament.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  This may or may not be a disagreement with what you said: They're the same on an instrument that can only play a defined set of notes, e.g. a piano or fretted instrument. It has nothing to do with the piano being in equal temperament. If a violinist is playing an F#, his finger isn't necessarily on the exact same spot as when he's playing a Gb. As he explained answering my question, it isn't even in the exact same spot for the same F# every time in the same piece. The string players have very slight variations that they can describe precisely to each other so they sound good together.

zanderwohl 5y ago

In my experience, these bits and pieces taught during practical lessons don't help if you don't already have a musical intuition. Like mathematics, we need to stop catering only to those who already "get it" and also teach those who don't.