4 ms·

I strongly agree with the article's premise! I also agree with this guidepost for how we should be moving music theory past its highly entrenched and institutio

by jrajav 4y ago

I strongly agree with the article's premise! I also agree with this guidepost for how we should be moving music theory past its highly entrenched and institutional attitudes: > We should be asking: what is it that musicians are doing that sounds good? What patterns can we detect in the broad mass of music being made and enjoyed out there in the world? I would personally add one more leading question: Can we explain music in other ways than by its harmony and chords? A harmonic approach to analysis works fantastic for old European music, and pretty damn well for jazz too. For rock, it starts to oddly leave out important aspects of the music like rhythm, timbre, the way effects like distortion inform the harmony, vocal delivery, etc. And in the modern era, with all the advances and innovations made in the last 30 years in the now dominant genres of hip hop, pop, and electronic music, harmonic analysis is very poorly equipped to make sense of things in any meaningful way. One music theorist who is attempting more competent analysis of contemporary music is https://www.youtube.com/c/12tonevideos https://www.youtube.com/c/12tonevideos. I'd love to see more of this.

AlbertCory 4y ago
- jrajav 4y ago
  Those genres are far and away the most popular forms of music for an entire generation now, and exhibit a high degree of craftsmanship with techniques never used before them. Whether you personally enjoy the music or not, an honest academic exploration of music would seek to understand and explain what makes those styles of music tick.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    If you stick to "popular" I'm fine with it. Tastes change. It's the word "advances" which I object to. There's a value judgment attached to that.
    - pvg 4y ago
      Interesting conversation involves exchanging value judgements rather than pedantipoints.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        "pedantipoints" FTW
        someweirdperson 4y ago
        And so the language advances... but did it improve?
        AlbertCory 4y ago
        Ooh. Is it a portmanteau? https://www.dictionary.com/browse/portmanteau https://www.dictionary.com/browse/portmanteau
    - cjaybo 4y ago
      I don't think "advances" implies that something is subjectively better, but that it builds upon previous techniques and methods in some way. You can dislike synthesizers and samples all you want, but there's no denying that they opened up new creative avenues for composers and sound designers.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        OK. Fine with me. "Your music sucks" is a totally dead end and I'm not going there. What I will say is, arts do not advance linearly, more or less, like science does. You can't say that drama has "advanced" since Shakespeare -- it's just changed. So "what's popular?" is not a shorthand for "what's good?"
        crazygringo 4y ago
        I think you're reading too much into the word "advanced". One sense of "advance" does mean to improve, but another commonly used sense is simply to "move forwards". History advances, literature advances, music genres and technique advance, time advances. None of those imply improvement or a value judgment, just moving-forwards and building-upon (or building-in-reaction-to). You can absolutely say drama has advanced since Shakespeare, and few people would misunderstand. To say it hadn't would mean nobody had continued to write plays in the same tradition of western literature. (See [1] and contrast definitions 2 and 3.) [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advance https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advance
- tomrod 4y ago
  Most of these are, though, if only in terms of recombinant joy.
jancsika 4y ago
> I would personally add one more leading question: Can we explain music in other ways than by its harmony and chords? Yes. We can get a lot of mileage by talking about the form and texture. E.g., at the end of Haydn's so-called "Lark" quartet (Op. 64 No. 5) he's got a fast-paced Rondo in D major that features a virtuosic 1st violin part with continuous fast figuration. The other voices do a light accompaniment of that fast-moving line. It moves along about as you'd expect-- you get the main rondo theme. It gets repeated. Then a contrasting theme appears in the dominant, with a little bridge back to the original theme in D. Now that section gets repeated. You can just hear a theory teacher outlining the form and writing the boring letters of a typical rondo form on a whiteboard while the class yawns. It's nearly the same as any other boring rondo, save for the virtuosic 1st violin. Then, for reasons known only to Haydn, the music switches to the parallel minor key and commences a full-on four-voice fugal exposition at the same fast tempo. After about thirty seconds of some highly unexpected harmonically active imitative development, the pieces changes on a dime back to the original theme in D major, as if the fugue had never happened. Why did he do that? Was there an arrogant 1st violinist who he wanted to challenge? Was he just fucking around? I don't know the answer. But that Finale is fucking hilarious and you only need the most basic harmonic understanding to hear it. Mozart and Haydn were constantly playing with form in similar ways to the example above. Mozart in particular played around with dynamic contrasts-- a sudden loud chord followed immediately by a soft one. That was an influence on Beethoven, for example.

by jrajav 4y ago

AlbertCory 4y ago

jrajav 4y ago
Those genres are far and away the most popular forms of music for an entire generation now, and exhibit a high degree of craftsmanship with techniques never used before them. Whether you personally enjoy the music or not, an honest academic exploration of music would seek to understand and explain what makes those styles of music tick.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  If you stick to "popular" I'm fine with it. Tastes change. It's the word "advances" which I object to. There's a value judgment attached to that.
  - pvg 4y ago
    Interesting conversation involves exchanging value judgements rather than pedantipoints.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      "pedantipoints" FTW
      - someweirdperson 4y ago
        And so the language advances... but did it improve?
        AlbertCory 4y ago
        Ooh. Is it a portmanteau? https://www.dictionary.com/browse/portmanteau https://www.dictionary.com/browse/portmanteau
  - cjaybo 4y ago
    I don't think "advances" implies that something is subjectively better, but that it builds upon previous techniques and methods in some way. You can dislike synthesizers and samples all you want, but there's no denying that they opened up new creative avenues for composers and sound designers.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      OK. Fine with me. "Your music sucks" is a totally dead end and I'm not going there. What I will say is, arts do not advance linearly, more or less, like science does. You can't say that drama has "advanced" since Shakespeare -- it's just changed. So "what's popular?" is not a shorthand for "what's good?"
      - crazygringo 4y ago
        I think you're reading too much into the word "advanced". One sense of "advance" does mean to improve, but another commonly used sense is simply to "move forwards". History advances, literature advances, music genres and technique advance, time advances. None of those imply improvement or a value judgment, just moving-forwards and building-upon (or building-in-reaction-to). You can absolutely say drama has advanced since Shakespeare, and few people would misunderstand. To say it hadn't would mean nobody had continued to write plays in the same tradition of western literature. (See [1] and contrast definitions 2 and 3.) [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advance https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advance
tomrod 4y ago
Most of these are, though, if only in terms of recombinant joy.

jancsika 4y ago

> I would personally add one more leading question: Can we explain music in other ways than by its harmony and chords? Yes. We can get a lot of mileage by talking about the form and texture. E.g., at the end of Haydn's so-called "Lark" quartet (Op. 64 No. 5) he's got a fast-paced Rondo in D major that features a virtuosic 1st violin part with continuous fast figuration. The other voices do a light accompaniment of that fast-moving line. It moves along about as you'd expect-- you get the main rondo theme. It gets repeated. Then a contrasting theme appears in the dominant, with a little bridge back to the original theme in D. Now that section gets repeated. You can just hear a theory teacher outlining the form and writing the boring letters of a typical rondo form on a whiteboard while the class yawns. It's nearly the same as any other boring rondo, save for the virtuosic 1st violin. Then, for reasons known only to Haydn, the music switches to the parallel minor key and commences a full-on four-voice fugal exposition at the same fast tempo. After about thirty seconds of some highly unexpected harmonically active imitative development, the pieces changes on a dime back to the original theme in D major, as if the fugue had never happened. Why did he do that? Was there an arrogant 1st violinist who he wanted to challenge? Was he just fucking around? I don't know the answer. But that Finale is fucking hilarious and you only need the most basic harmonic understanding to hear it. Mozart and Haydn were constantly playing with form in similar ways to the example above. Mozart in particular played around with dynamic contrasts-- a sudden loud chord followed immediately by a soft one. That was an influence on Beethoven, for example.