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It’s interesting that the article refers to “classical music’s obsession with the major scale”. I was raised on rock guitar, where the minor pentatonic scale wa
by rybosome 4y ago
It’s interesting that the article refers to “classical music’s obsession with the major scale”. I was raised on rock guitar, where the minor pentatonic scale was king. For that reason I often thought of keys in terms of their relative minor.
Whole heartedly agreed that our current model of theory is excessively academic relative to the music most people are making and consuming (at least in America).
All that said, a grounding in theory is still a wonderful thing to have as a musician. Even if you choose to ignore what you’ve learned (and you should sometimes!), it allows you to understand a lot of music more deeply, allowing you to learn it more quickly.
- jrajav 4y agoI don't think current music theory is excessively academic, I think it's not academic or rigorous enough. Many institutions languish in studying harmonic theory to the exclusion of many other modes of musical analysis. This leaves them equipped only to study archaic styles of European music and jazz where harmony was one of the defining factors. The expressive power and applicability of music theory would be served best by focusing study on areas that have been underexplored. Those areas are too numerous to even list, but standouts that apply to music more recent than mid-century are rhythm, timbre, movement (as driven by elements other than harmony), instrumentation, electronic techniques, and cultural aspects of music like references and interpolation.