8 ms·

This is really interesting, I'll be forwarding to my science writer friends for opinions. Potentially interesting to some: we get the same phenomenon right her

This is really interesting, I'll be forwarding to my science writer friends for opinions. Potentially interesting to some: we get the same phenomenon right here on HN regularly! To someone an advanced understanding of music theory (including western harmony, tuning systems, acoustics, psychoacoustics, doing a graduate degree, etc) HN is a regular source of armchair music theorists putting forth their own musical grand unified theories of everything without understanding the foundations. I guess, much like the field the author works in, the nature of it is that a strong understanding of a small piece leads one to easily believe there is this neat and tidy system of well behaving patterns when the reality is vastly more complex. I'd say once a week or so I see posts on HN that are the musical equivalents. I used to answer with pointers to what one might want to learn or suggests books, but really, I have no idea what the right response to that sort of thing is. It's way, way more complicated than one would think coming from a tangentially related field. Perhaps similarly, the popular music theory writing out there creates the same effect.

paulpauper 5y ago
what is an example of this. I find the idea of armchair music experts to be amusing.
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  hmm, hard to summon one, but mostly about stuff spanning probability/machine learning and tuning systems/harmony. Lots of very naive statistical inferences with conclusions that seem supported by the data - because they don't understand the data. Like "we found out X because of our analysis of the intervals/chords/whatever they are counting" in these pieces. Where the numerical prevalence really doesn't mean anything similar to what they are positing it means. Tuning and systems and harmony are a) freaking complicated b) almost neat, but so, so not neat on closer examination. :-)
- smartscience 5y ago
  If you want to go digging on Usenet, check out Albert Silvermann (I think it was) on rec.music.theory.
- ThreePhotons 5y ago
  Here's an example: https://dwheeler.com/essays/sight-reading.html https://dwheeler.com/essays/sight-reading.html It's funny (fascinating actually!) because it reads just like your typical highly opinionated software engineering blog post, only applied to music. Yet most of it, particularly the first three points, has no basis in reality. (E.g. point 3 - any music theorist will tell you there is a VERY valid reason for choosing a double-sharp over a natural in particular contexts.)
  - vcxy 5y ago
    Even without a music theorist telling you that point 3 is wrong, it just makes the music harder to read. Of course, the reason is what the theorist would give, but it highlights that he isn't really reading music. He's reading notes. He hasn't learned what those notes mean in context. It's like he's learned how to sound out written words in a foreign language but doesn't actually know what any of the words mean. Thanks for the link, it gave me a good laugh.
  - t8sr 5y ago
    To me, that mostly reads like a UX report. This person admits he has no musical education, and just wants to play - the issue seems to be that reading a score maybe shouldn’t require a degree in musical theory, the same way that using a piece of software doesn’t require a CS degree. As another amateur musician, I was nodding at most of these points. I fully believe it’s all very complex and double sharps exist for some reason, but how much of that do you really need the reader to understand?
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      The only really solid rule I've seen stated for accidentals is that you want to use sharps when you're going up (as in, playing a rising sequence of notes) and flats when you're going down.[1] There are also many, many people out there who will tell you that you use sharps when the key signature has sharps and flats when the key signature has flats, which (1) is really easy to implement, but also (2) makes no sense. Anyway, my first guess for a double sharp would be that you're e.g. notating an F# which is itself sharp for whatever reason, and you can't just notate it as a G because Gs are also sharped. (As will be true in any key signature with three or more sharps.) Then the reason for marking F𝄪 rather than G♮ is exactly the same as the reason you'd mark F# rather than G♭ in a key that didn't sharp either note. And even from a pure usability perspective, if you're in a key with three sharps and you're doing a lot of alternating between F𝄪 and G#, it's kind of nice having the two notes at the positions of F and G so that you can give them the appropriate accidentals once per measure instead of every time you play either note, the way you'd need to do if they were both on a G. I ran into some trouble with this exact problem when engraving this score recently: https://musescore.com/user/36584999/scores/7810499 https://musescore.com/user/36584999/scores/7810499 The first half of the vibraphone part looks like you're mainly doing downward variations, so I wrote it with flats. But the second half obviously suggests that it wants F#s rather than G♭s, and it felt really weird to use F# sometimes and G♭ other times. Since I know virtually no music theory, my approach was to ask people for help on the internet. I found someone who had majored in music theory and his response was "hmm, interesting", followed by asking a bunch of his friends. Consensus eventually worked out as something like "Hmm, interesting! Could go either way, but maybe F# is a little better than G♭. Whatever you choose, be consistent." It was all fairly unsatisfying and I'd be interested in other comments on how the accidentals in the piece should be marked. Following the general theme of "F# looks a little better, but be consistent" I interpreted every accidental anywhere in the piece as a departure upward rather than downward. :/ [1] I've also seen sharps used while going down, but it was pretty obvious what was going on there - the music had changed keys, but the score hadn't changed key signatures. Those sharps just reflected the new key rather than being departures from it.
- alar44 5y ago
  There was an article the other day where someone was saying something like "people who listen to more dissonant music, like heavy metal, may not be as good at hearing nuances in less dissonant music like classical." That sentence right there is just jam packed with bullshit and misunderstanding.
  - autarch 5y ago
    Ah, the most dissonant of all chords, the perfect 5th plus an octave, also known as the power chord.
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      That's a musical-theoretical perfect burn
  - vintermann 5y ago
    There's really only one mistake, he's misusing the word dissonant. It's certainly true that being deeply into one style of music makes you pay less attention to the things that don't vary much in "your" music but does vary in "their" music, making "your" music seem more varied and "their" music sound all the same.
    - alar44 5y ago
      Right, thats where I tried to meet them in the middle, but they were talking about discreet frequencies. Like listening to classical boosted the ability to recognize harmonics better.
indymike 5y ago
> the nature of it is that a strong understanding of a small piece leads one to easily believe there is this neat and tidy system of well behaving patterns when the reality is vastly more complex. The complexity is what keeps this industry interesting. Those people who are getting those little flashes of clarity, only to be crushed at the wheel of complexity, well, I have to admit I was and sometimes still am one of them.
mrjangles 5y ago
Oh believe me, every thread here about physics is exactly like this. 90% of the comments are the most ridiculous crackpot nonsense from people who clearly learned physics by watching startrek. There are usually a few surprisingly knowledgeable comments too, but you usually have to look at the bottom of the thread.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Just last week there was somebody insisting cell phones work by (I swear I am not making this up!) measuring heat with an analog to digital converter attached directly to the antenna. And assuring us that, on the basis of his deep understanding, 5G is known to be perfectly safe. :)
- exdsq 5y ago
  I used to have quite a lot of blind faith on HN comments regarding subjects I don’t know well, but after sharing the occasional link to friends who are established scientists in the field it ends up being mostly nonsensical :(
- lyaa 5y ago
  Absolutely true. I am especially amazed by the confidence with which they present their claims.
Jensson 5y ago
That is only natural, you learn programming by stating something you think might be true, then you get told you are wrong by an expert (ie the compiler returns an error), and then you adjust your statement and try again until it works. Almost everybody learns programming that way, it is the most efficient. So when people make stupid remarks here, view them as their "hello world" programs.
raverbashing 5y ago
The most successful physicists of today do know (at least a part of) physics in depth. On the other hand, for musical theory, the most successful (and rich) musicians today only know a fraction of music theory. Or none at all For as much as we can discuss about it, most of it is constructed. A lot of musical theory goes over rules and structures and archaic nomenclature for every little thing (fml) and what not, for, on the more advanced levels say "oh sure, you can break this rule if you want". Ok thanks, I guess I'll just save my time and play what sounds good, thanks
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  Music theory, at an advanced level, is no more about rules than physics is. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. It's about why, acoustically and psycho-acoustically, certain practices result in the sounds they do and why we perceive sounds the way we do. What rich or successful musicians do has as much to do with music theory as what rich race car drivers do has to do with physics - the car is the result of generations of the study of physics, but the driver only needs to know how they bits they interact with work. The fact that the vast majority of players have no idea how the intervals of 12th root of two to the 4th power, or 5/4, became a Major 3rd (ET and JT respectively) is irrelevant to a discussion of theory. I could teach a semester long course on how we arrived at our current notes on the piano keyboard, but lots of A-list piano players don't know any of that. A physicist is the equivalent of a music theorist, not of a musician, as music theory is largely applied physics and geometry applied towards acoustics.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    Ah yes, on the physical/acoustical description of Physics I agree that it's more descriptive and physical.
jameshart 5y ago
I mean, HN is plagued by people with outlandish theories about pharmaceuticals, nutrition, economics, climatology, artificial intelligence, economics, sociology, history, ethics, and microbiology. But you’re right, the music theory cranks are the worst.

paulpauper 5y ago

what is an example of this. I find the idea of armchair music experts to be amusing.

iainctduncan 5y ago
hmm, hard to summon one, but mostly about stuff spanning probability/machine learning and tuning systems/harmony. Lots of very naive statistical inferences with conclusions that seem supported by the data - because they don't understand the data. Like "we found out X because of our analysis of the intervals/chords/whatever they are counting" in these pieces. Where the numerical prevalence really doesn't mean anything similar to what they are positing it means. Tuning and systems and harmony are a) freaking complicated b) almost neat, but so, so not neat on closer examination. :-)
smartscience 5y ago
If you want to go digging on Usenet, check out Albert Silvermann (I think it was) on rec.music.theory.
ThreePhotons 5y ago
Here's an example: https://dwheeler.com/essays/sight-reading.html https://dwheeler.com/essays/sight-reading.html It's funny (fascinating actually!) because it reads just like your typical highly opinionated software engineering blog post, only applied to music. Yet most of it, particularly the first three points, has no basis in reality. (E.g. point 3 - any music theorist will tell you there is a VERY valid reason for choosing a double-sharp over a natural in particular contexts.)
- vcxy 5y ago
  Even without a music theorist telling you that point 3 is wrong, it just makes the music harder to read. Of course, the reason is what the theorist would give, but it highlights that he isn't really reading music. He's reading notes. He hasn't learned what those notes mean in context. It's like he's learned how to sound out written words in a foreign language but doesn't actually know what any of the words mean. Thanks for the link, it gave me a good laugh.
- t8sr 5y ago
  To me, that mostly reads like a UX report. This person admits he has no musical education, and just wants to play - the issue seems to be that reading a score maybe shouldn’t require a degree in musical theory, the same way that using a piece of software doesn’t require a CS degree. As another amateur musician, I was nodding at most of these points. I fully believe it’s all very complex and double sharps exist for some reason, but how much of that do you really need the reader to understand?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The only really solid rule I've seen stated for accidentals is that you want to use sharps when you're going up (as in, playing a rising sequence of notes) and flats when you're going down.[1] There are also many, many people out there who will tell you that you use sharps when the key signature has sharps and flats when the key signature has flats, which (1) is really easy to implement, but also (2) makes no sense. Anyway, my first guess for a double sharp would be that you're e.g. notating an F# which is itself sharp for whatever reason, and you can't just notate it as a G because Gs are also sharped. (As will be true in any key signature with three or more sharps.) Then the reason for marking F𝄪 rather than G♮ is exactly the same as the reason you'd mark F# rather than G♭ in a key that didn't sharp either note. And even from a pure usability perspective, if you're in a key with three sharps and you're doing a lot of alternating between F𝄪 and G#, it's kind of nice having the two notes at the positions of F and G so that you can give them the appropriate accidentals once per measure instead of every time you play either note, the way you'd need to do if they were both on a G. I ran into some trouble with this exact problem when engraving this score recently: https://musescore.com/user/36584999/scores/7810499 https://musescore.com/user/36584999/scores/7810499 The first half of the vibraphone part looks like you're mainly doing downward variations, so I wrote it with flats. But the second half obviously suggests that it wants F#s rather than G♭s, and it felt really weird to use F# sometimes and G♭ other times. Since I know virtually no music theory, my approach was to ask people for help on the internet. I found someone who had majored in music theory and his response was "hmm, interesting", followed by asking a bunch of his friends. Consensus eventually worked out as something like "Hmm, interesting! Could go either way, but maybe F# is a little better than G♭. Whatever you choose, be consistent." It was all fairly unsatisfying and I'd be interested in other comments on how the accidentals in the piece should be marked. Following the general theme of "F# looks a little better, but be consistent" I interpreted every accidental anywhere in the piece as a departure upward rather than downward. :/ [1] I've also seen sharps used while going down, but it was pretty obvious what was going on there - the music had changed keys, but the score hadn't changed key signatures. Those sharps just reflected the new key rather than being departures from it.
alar44 5y ago
There was an article the other day where someone was saying something like "people who listen to more dissonant music, like heavy metal, may not be as good at hearing nuances in less dissonant music like classical." That sentence right there is just jam packed with bullshit and misunderstanding.
- autarch 5y ago
  Ah, the most dissonant of all chords, the perfect 5th plus an octave, also known as the power chord.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    That's a musical-theoretical perfect burn
- vintermann 5y ago
  There's really only one mistake, he's misusing the word dissonant. It's certainly true that being deeply into one style of music makes you pay less attention to the things that don't vary much in "your" music but does vary in "their" music, making "your" music seem more varied and "their" music sound all the same.
  - alar44 5y ago
    Right, thats where I tried to meet them in the middle, but they were talking about discreet frequencies. Like listening to classical boosted the ability to recognize harmonics better.

indymike 5y ago

> the nature of it is that a strong understanding of a small piece leads one to easily believe there is this neat and tidy system of well behaving patterns when the reality is vastly more complex. The complexity is what keeps this industry interesting. Those people who are getting those little flashes of clarity, only to be crushed at the wheel of complexity, well, I have to admit I was and sometimes still am one of them.

mrjangles 5y ago

Oh believe me, every thread here about physics is exactly like this. 90% of the comments are the most ridiculous crackpot nonsense from people who clearly learned physics by watching startrek. There are usually a few surprisingly knowledgeable comments too, but you usually have to look at the bottom of the thread.

ncmncm 5y ago
Just last week there was somebody insisting cell phones work by (I swear I am not making this up!) measuring heat with an analog to digital converter attached directly to the antenna. And assuring us that, on the basis of his deep understanding, 5G is known to be perfectly safe. :)
exdsq 5y ago
I used to have quite a lot of blind faith on HN comments regarding subjects I don’t know well, but after sharing the occasional link to friends who are established scientists in the field it ends up being mostly nonsensical :(
lyaa 5y ago
Absolutely true. I am especially amazed by the confidence with which they present their claims.

Jensson 5y ago

That is only natural, you learn programming by stating something you think might be true, then you get told you are wrong by an expert (ie the compiler returns an error), and then you adjust your statement and try again until it works. Almost everybody learns programming that way, it is the most efficient. So when people make stupid remarks here, view them as their "hello world" programs.

raverbashing 5y ago

The most successful physicists of today do know (at least a part of) physics in depth. On the other hand, for musical theory, the most successful (and rich) musicians today only know a fraction of music theory. Or none at all For as much as we can discuss about it, most of it is constructed. A lot of musical theory goes over rules and structures and archaic nomenclature for every little thing (fml) and what not, for, on the more advanced levels say "oh sure, you can break this rule if you want". Ok thanks, I guess I'll just save my time and play what sounds good, thanks

iainctduncan 5y ago
Music theory, at an advanced level, is no more about rules than physics is. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. It's about why, acoustically and psycho-acoustically, certain practices result in the sounds they do and why we perceive sounds the way we do. What rich or successful musicians do has as much to do with music theory as what rich race car drivers do has to do with physics - the car is the result of generations of the study of physics, but the driver only needs to know how they bits they interact with work. The fact that the vast majority of players have no idea how the intervals of 12th root of two to the 4th power, or 5/4, became a Major 3rd (ET and JT respectively) is irrelevant to a discussion of theory. I could teach a semester long course on how we arrived at our current notes on the piano keyboard, but lots of A-list piano players don't know any of that. A physicist is the equivalent of a music theorist, not of a musician, as music theory is largely applied physics and geometry applied towards acoustics.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Ah yes, on the physical/acoustical description of Physics I agree that it's more descriptive and physical.

jameshart 5y ago

I mean, HN is plagued by people with outlandish theories about pharmaceuticals, nutrition, economics, climatology, artificial intelligence, economics, sociology, history, ethics, and microbiology. But you’re right, the music theory cranks are the worst.