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There are no first principles in music. The harmonic series is relevant, but you can't start from the harmonic series and find your way to Western classical mus

There are no first principles in music. The harmonic series is relevant, but you can't start from the harmonic series and find your way to Western classical music. It just doesn't work like that. Music could have gone in various directions, and Western music happened to pick the various directions it developed in, more or less arbitrarily. They happen to emphasise a combination of parallel blocks and horizontal lines, and various quite complex kinds of motivic and structural elaboration and development. Post-classical music - especially electronica - is much more focused on rhythm and timbre. It has more complex sounds and sound combinations and less complex structures. There isn't much in the way of rhythm-and-timbre theory yet, but it's on its way and will be a thing within a few decades. All of it is a mess because music has always been about styles, experiments, and conventions, and those have changed over time. And it's also written from the musician's POV. Not a mathematician's POV. Or a dabbler's POV. Or a nerdy POV. For example - sooner or later people get to transposing instruments and the obvious question is "Why would anyone sane do that?" And the answer is because it's convenient for the players. That's it. That's the rationale. For all of it. So while it's awkward and not very elegant, it has a kind of consistency that's somewhat useful across multiple styles. It's impossibly hard to invent a system that is so much better for this that it's worth throwing the old system away. People keep trying and failing, because you can't just rationalise part of it, you have to improve all of it. And it's such a huge thing that's not a practical project. So it persists - partly as a relic, partly as a developing system.

abetusk 5y ago
This type of reply is indicative of precisely why it's so off putting for programmers to get into music. The attitude of "there are no rules!" is espoused while artist after artist that produce music that we like are clearly following some type of ruleset, at least to some extent. Electronica might be rhythm and timbre based but even looking at rhythm you can start to ask some basic questions (what note length frequency is more pleasing? Why? What frequency of two underlying beats sounds good? Why?). Sometimes theory can be nothing more than a collection of discovered tricks. Sometimes it can be something more fundamental. To waive your hands and say that all of it is arbitrary is doing a disservice to anyone trying to learn and understand.
- danShumway 5y ago
  It's technically correct while also being practically useless. There are no fundamental rules to grammar, but we still teach writers what a simile is. Even in spelling, English has no consistency about a lot of this stuff. Are spelling rules useful though for non-native learners? Heck yes. Do we still have grammar books? Yes. It turns out that learning the exceptions is sometimes faster than memorizing everything. Music is a communicative medium based in large part around social norms of what combinations of sounds tend to feel good to people who grew up in a specific environment, and music theory is an attempt to break apart that social consensus into basic rules that can be imitated and built up into more complicated genres. The rules are somewhat arbitrary and made up, but that doesn't mean they're not real, and that doesn't mean you can't sort-of derive some of them from more basic rules or from basic principles. Music could have gone in multiple directions, but for whatever reason Western music went in the direction it did, and many people who are trying to learn music aren't trying to learn the full spectrum of every direction music could have gone. They're trying to learn how to imitate Western sounds, and for that purpose specifically music has rules -- many of them derivable from other rules, flexible and breakable as they may occasionally be.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    They're not rules unless your teacher is an asshole. Music theory is a language used to be able to have conversations about harmonic and melodic aspects of a piece of music. Rythmic aspects are less well supported (that's putting it mildly) by western musical theory, but the same is true there for whatever formalism or terminology/nomenclature you might pick: it's not a set of rules, it's a language to facilitate non-musical discusison.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      I think this is a distinction that only matters if your definition of rules is such that they can never be broken or played with. That's not typically the way I think of rules, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Even programmers understand that a lot of programming "rules" are actually just heuristics about how to produce good code. As another example, I've spent a ton of time learning game design rules, and all of them are optional, but they're still useful. "Rules" in this context means, yes, communicative terminology, but communicative terminology about particularly effective ways to build commonly understood musical motifs/phrases that affect Western listeners in somewhat predictable ways. Music theory is a language for talking about a language, music itself. It is partially social convention that leads us to have a 12 tone scale, and it is definitely social convention that leads us to call that a "scale". However, the average Western listener will respond to the notes of that scale in predictable ways, and there are "rules" that you can learn that will allow you to more easily and predictably manipulate that listener's emotions and communicate broader ideas through your music -- many of those underlying rules about tuning, ratios between notes, and so on are derivable from mathematical principles or at least describable in mathematical terms, even if ultimately the reason why listeners respond to some of those ratios is social and arbitrary. Of course, the rules are not concrete or immutable, they can be broken and often are. But the majority of rules we learn in most subjects are not concrete. Similarly, there are no concrete rules in writing, and the terminology we use to describe story structure is arbitrary and made up. However, learning the "rules" of writing will make you a better writer for typical audiences that live near you, and those rules are expressed through common set of terms and concepts that many professional/hobby writers have decided to use -- many of which can be partially derived or explained by talking about psychology or history or whatever. Sure, these are not immutable, scientific principles baked into the heart of the universe, but: A) the author goes out of her way to say that she isn't claiming that, and B) breaking down rules and building them back up from different starting points or looking at them mathematically is still a reasonable thing to do with rules that have a social origin, and C) even though a lot of why certain chords sound good is baked into culture rather than biology, it's also a kind of strong claim to say that all of it is purely social. But I don't think it would matter much even if it was purely social, people who do music theory for a living still talk about math sometimes.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> but you can't start from the harmonic series and find your way to Western classical music. You absolutely can, because that's essentially exactly what western classical music (and more or less all other forms of music) already did, just spread out over a very long period of time.
- maldusiecle 5y ago
  That's the wrong way about thinking about it, though. Historical processes don't operate solely based on first principles, they operate according to contingency. Take Western music. Early music is mostly vocal, and early principles of music theory evolved around what would be possible (and practical) to sing. Different people have different vocal ranges, and the constraints that puts on the music lead to certain constraints in counterpoint. Eventually instrumental music becomes more socially important, and that changes what kinds of music can be made. Mathematics progresses in such a way that new tuning systems (12 tone equal temperament, and its precursors) make it easier to modulate between keys, and more modulation (and chromaticism) becomes common. Even things like the way the music is structured depend on social practices, they're not spontaneous. The sonata form depends on an audience that listens attentively to music so that they can perceive the way the themes are gradually transformed. I could go on, but nearly everything in music goes this way--there are principles, but they only have a limited explanatory power, you need to get into historical contingency to really understand why things evolve the way they do.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I never said that it was necessarily a smart way to think about it. But just as we don't reach the periodic table by taking children through every process and discovery that led to uncovering a new element, it's not necessary to teach this subject (whatever we call it) as a historical process either. I certainly agree that historical context has always been central to the way music has developed. It's not for nothing that most of Europe refers to "the church modes" rather than using a more abstract term for a set of interval rotations. But that historical context is only absolutely necessary if you want to try to understand why music evolved in the way that it did. It's not necessary if your goal is to understand the way we understand, compose and perform music today. Of course, I'm all for more understanding of music, so I'd favor historical context every time. It's just that it's not a necessary feature for understanding where we currently are.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
RE: transposing instruments It's not just a "convenient for the players" moment. It's also because changing over to non-transposing instruments would create a generation-long transition period of broken pedagogy. It's the same reason oboe fingerings are so nonsensical. It's backwards compatibility to preserve previous fingerings that makes the new fingerings awkward and arbitrary.
- natechols 5y ago
  As a software developer, I think of bassoon fingerings as a classic example of "technical debt", and also the kind of design that if someone thought it up de novo, the only appropriate response would be "you're fired."

abetusk 5y ago

This type of reply is indicative of precisely why it's so off putting for programmers to get into music. The attitude of "there are no rules!" is espoused while artist after artist that produce music that we like are clearly following some type of ruleset, at least to some extent. Electronica might be rhythm and timbre based but even looking at rhythm you can start to ask some basic questions (what note length frequency is more pleasing? Why? What frequency of two underlying beats sounds good? Why?). Sometimes theory can be nothing more than a collection of discovered tricks. Sometimes it can be something more fundamental. To waive your hands and say that all of it is arbitrary is doing a disservice to anyone trying to learn and understand.

danShumway 5y ago
It's technically correct while also being practically useless. There are no fundamental rules to grammar, but we still teach writers what a simile is. Even in spelling, English has no consistency about a lot of this stuff. Are spelling rules useful though for non-native learners? Heck yes. Do we still have grammar books? Yes. It turns out that learning the exceptions is sometimes faster than memorizing everything. Music is a communicative medium based in large part around social norms of what combinations of sounds tend to feel good to people who grew up in a specific environment, and music theory is an attempt to break apart that social consensus into basic rules that can be imitated and built up into more complicated genres. The rules are somewhat arbitrary and made up, but that doesn't mean they're not real, and that doesn't mean you can't sort-of derive some of them from more basic rules or from basic principles. Music could have gone in multiple directions, but for whatever reason Western music went in the direction it did, and many people who are trying to learn music aren't trying to learn the full spectrum of every direction music could have gone. They're trying to learn how to imitate Western sounds, and for that purpose specifically music has rules -- many of them derivable from other rules, flexible and breakable as they may occasionally be.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  They're not rules unless your teacher is an asshole. Music theory is a language used to be able to have conversations about harmonic and melodic aspects of a piece of music. Rythmic aspects are less well supported (that's putting it mildly) by western musical theory, but the same is true there for whatever formalism or terminology/nomenclature you might pick: it's not a set of rules, it's a language to facilitate non-musical discusison.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    I think this is a distinction that only matters if your definition of rules is such that they can never be broken or played with. That's not typically the way I think of rules, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Even programmers understand that a lot of programming "rules" are actually just heuristics about how to produce good code. As another example, I've spent a ton of time learning game design rules, and all of them are optional, but they're still useful. "Rules" in this context means, yes, communicative terminology, but communicative terminology about particularly effective ways to build commonly understood musical motifs/phrases that affect Western listeners in somewhat predictable ways. Music theory is a language for talking about a language, music itself. It is partially social convention that leads us to have a 12 tone scale, and it is definitely social convention that leads us to call that a "scale". However, the average Western listener will respond to the notes of that scale in predictable ways, and there are "rules" that you can learn that will allow you to more easily and predictably manipulate that listener's emotions and communicate broader ideas through your music -- many of those underlying rules about tuning, ratios between notes, and so on are derivable from mathematical principles or at least describable in mathematical terms, even if ultimately the reason why listeners respond to some of those ratios is social and arbitrary. Of course, the rules are not concrete or immutable, they can be broken and often are. But the majority of rules we learn in most subjects are not concrete. Similarly, there are no concrete rules in writing, and the terminology we use to describe story structure is arbitrary and made up. However, learning the "rules" of writing will make you a better writer for typical audiences that live near you, and those rules are expressed through common set of terms and concepts that many professional/hobby writers have decided to use -- many of which can be partially derived or explained by talking about psychology or history or whatever. Sure, these are not immutable, scientific principles baked into the heart of the universe, but: A) the author goes out of her way to say that she isn't claiming that, and B) breaking down rules and building them back up from different starting points or looking at them mathematically is still a reasonable thing to do with rules that have a social origin, and C) even though a lot of why certain chords sound good is baked into culture rather than biology, it's also a kind of strong claim to say that all of it is purely social. But I don't think it would matter much even if it was purely social, people who do music theory for a living still talk about math sometimes.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> but you can't start from the harmonic series and find your way to Western classical music. You absolutely can, because that's essentially exactly what western classical music (and more or less all other forms of music) already did, just spread out over a very long period of time.

maldusiecle 5y ago
That's the wrong way about thinking about it, though. Historical processes don't operate solely based on first principles, they operate according to contingency. Take Western music. Early music is mostly vocal, and early principles of music theory evolved around what would be possible (and practical) to sing. Different people have different vocal ranges, and the constraints that puts on the music lead to certain constraints in counterpoint. Eventually instrumental music becomes more socially important, and that changes what kinds of music can be made. Mathematics progresses in such a way that new tuning systems (12 tone equal temperament, and its precursors) make it easier to modulate between keys, and more modulation (and chromaticism) becomes common. Even things like the way the music is structured depend on social practices, they're not spontaneous. The sonata form depends on an audience that listens attentively to music so that they can perceive the way the themes are gradually transformed. I could go on, but nearly everything in music goes this way--there are principles, but they only have a limited explanatory power, you need to get into historical contingency to really understand why things evolve the way they do.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I never said that it was necessarily a smart way to think about it. But just as we don't reach the periodic table by taking children through every process and discovery that led to uncovering a new element, it's not necessary to teach this subject (whatever we call it) as a historical process either. I certainly agree that historical context has always been central to the way music has developed. It's not for nothing that most of Europe refers to "the church modes" rather than using a more abstract term for a set of interval rotations. But that historical context is only absolutely necessary if you want to try to understand why music evolved in the way that it did. It's not necessary if your goal is to understand the way we understand, compose and perform music today. Of course, I'm all for more understanding of music, so I'd favor historical context every time. It's just that it's not a necessary feature for understanding where we currently are.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

RE: transposing instruments It's not just a "convenient for the players" moment. It's also because changing over to non-transposing instruments would create a generation-long transition period of broken pedagogy. It's the same reason oboe fingerings are so nonsensical. It's backwards compatibility to preserve previous fingerings that makes the new fingerings awkward and arbitrary.

natechols 5y ago
As a software developer, I think of bassoon fingerings as a classic example of "technical debt", and also the kind of design that if someone thought it up de novo, the only appropriate response would be "you're fired."