4 ms·

Actually it's a perfectly succinct and easy notation. Not many musicians have a "hard time" getting it, except for those that never cared to study it. In fact,

Actually it's a perfectly succinct and easy notation. Not many musicians have a "hard time" getting it, except for those that never cared to study it. In fact, in the history of jazz piss poor black kids that never went to school managed to master music theory just fine. And an enormous amount of people all around the world. The particular example you mention (chord naming) has something like 1/100 the difficulty of something like regular expressions. And it's several orders of magnitude easier than actually learning to play your instrument. Which also millions of people manage to do.

mml 15y ago
I'm afraid you miss my point. I'm not sure who the article was for, people who already know its contents perhaps? Anyone else would have to have a solid background in theory to understand much of anything in it. "I find not only the 13th chord a great substitute for a 7th now, especially when it's the dominant resolving to the tonic, but I also love the 7th+3rd+13th/6th way of voicing it too."
- jtauber 15y ago
  It was for people who know music theory but not jazz
- ericflo 15y ago
  It's no different than an article about some Rails or Node.js technique, which appear on HN frequently. That is, lots of jargon and techinal foundation that the reader is assumed to know, but within that context some instructive text.
- dextorious 15y ago
  """I'm not sure who the article was for, people who already know its contents perhaps?""" No, just anyone who already knows a bit of music theory. Not even a great deal of it. Something that can be learned in a week, tops. Tons of articles on HN have titles like: Djikstra's algorithm, advanced types in Haskell, currying and memoization in Scala, A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus, and similar content. Is someone expected to understand those without knowing the underlying naming schemes, theory, basic domain knowledge etc? Or do people seeing stuff like "^[ab](foo)^[k])/i complain that: "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" computer science theory. Gibberish.Goobeltygook$"? There a logic behind regular expressions, and there's a logic behind chord/interval notation. And the second is a lot easier, too, and it's used because it's succint and it works. Urban legends about qwerty keyboards ( http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html ) and railroad gauges ( http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp ) aside, bad solutions don't last 400 years. """Anyone else would have to have a solid background in theory to understand much of anything in it.""" The naming scheme used in the article takes like 10 minutes to grasp --and requires no great background in music theory. 7th, 13th etc are like numeric indexes. As for dominant / tonic, those are are like music theory 101. Similar to knowing what "Objects" and "Interfaces" mean when discussing OO programming.
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    Any idea how elitist this sounds? It's not at all "just like" an article about Dijkstra, Ruby on Rails or mathematics or whatever. Usually such articles are praised on how well-written they are, even allowing for people not familiar with the background getting the gist, somewhat. > Or do people seeing stuff like "^[ab](foo)^[k])/i complain that: > "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" computer science theory. Gibberish.Goobeltygook$"? > There a logic behind regular expressions, and there's a logic behind chord/interval notation. And the second is a lot easier, too, and it's used because it's succint and it works. That's a very good example, because IMO it demonstrates my point. If anyone would have written an article like that about regular expressions, written in the same way, with: Regexes peppered inline throughout each sentence, repeatedly mentioning how this is probably the most basic stuff ever--up to the point of actually apologizing for stooping down to the level of what must probably be "regex theory 101". Then someone would have remarked "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time 'getting' regular expressions. Gibberish. Goobeltygook", then nobody would have disagreed with them. Because everybody knows that a badly written article about regexes very quickly becomes to look like unreadable gibberish. And in case you didn't catch that, this article actually apologizes for "probably being jazz theory 101". What? Have you ever seen a comp.sci/math article being apologetic about saying "I know this is probably graph theory 101, but we define a graph as an ordered pair G = (V, E) comprising a set V of vertices or nodes together with a set E of edges or lines ..." Of course not! It is considered good style to repeat the basics, and in fact IMO, I consider it bad style to be apologetic about it (because it's condescending to that part of your audience that made good use of the quick refresher). Everybody knows that regexes can quickly look like unreadable gooblygook, even if you're familiar with them, and any article that wants to discuss something fundamental about regexes, is going to have to take some special care to not make it look as such. In some sense, same goes for set theory or mathematical formulae in general. That still doesn't mean the hypothetical regex article would be so much clearer to the layman, but it would seem much more approachable, in some sense. I thought I knew some very rudimentary things about music theory, but apparently not enough to make the leap to "get" and string together what this guy is talking about in pure jargon (and believe me I spent more than the "10 minutes" everybody says it would take). To me, that tells me the article is simply badly written. A similar exposition about monads in functional programming, is more like what I'd expect in a 1-on-1 comment thread (when it's perfectly ok to use as much jargon to succinctly get your point across) than a blog article intended for the general public (when regardless how obvious or simple, it always pays to step down and explain from basics, even if only to reinforce the audience that already knows them you're talking about the same things). In fact, the only other computer science topic I've seen this sort of attitude, is the security/exploit/disclosure/hacking scene. That's where people routinely bash on eachother for repeating the basics and that "this is nothing new" because hacker X already did sploit Y in 2005 which was kinda similar (regardless that writing/warning about it again is a good thing).
- dextorious 15y ago
  Actually, the part I found difficult about music theory, is that that there are tons of stuff you're supposed to remember. They are not difficult to understand, and they are even easy to derive from some basic rules. But you do have to remember them, not derive them at will, to be able to think musically and play fluently. I think that's my problem with Chemistry too, as opposed to Physics. There was always tons of stuff to remember when studying chemistry, while just remembering a few basic rules and deriving everything else was possible in Physics (I talk about High School grade material, of course).
  - alanfalcon 15y ago
    This is exactly why Math was Good for me in High School and History was Terrible. And the thing is, with an understanding of history a lot can be derived, or at least worked out, yet history class was all about memorizing names and dates and the relationships and flow of history was often something that felt coincidental to what was being taught.
  - MrTortoise 15y ago
    Id say by the time you are playing fluently with these ideas you are no longer remembering them ... its further than that you body knows and executes them.
- radiowave 15y ago
  Music education is in general great at telling people what notes to play, but rather worse at supplying much intuition for why certain patterns of notes work together. You can look at a diagram that will tell you what notes go together to make a particular 11th chord, say, but it tells you nothing about why that's a useful way to combine notes. The blog post is aimed at people who know some of the "what", but who could use a clue as to some of the "why".
fredsanford 15y ago
Piss poor black kids that never went to school can still have good ears. It's all about the ears.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Yeah, but I also mean that they also seem to pick the theory/names just fine -- i.e not just playing complicated stuff by ears, but also understanding how everything is called and how it works.
- jtheory 15y ago
  Music THEORY isn't "all about the ears" at all, though. It is the conceptual framework & vocabulary you use to talk about music, not perform it. If kids love performing and listening to music, they'll want to talk about it. And initially they'll be limited to things like "I love that thing it does near the middle when the bass is going baBONG baBONG baBONG then everything suddenly get really quiet and strange". That's obviously ridiculously imprecise, right? And aren't you curious to know what "strange" means in this context? Suppose you want to write a piece of music that sounds "strange" like the piece you liked, but more so? So even piss-poor black kids end up with a thirst for a subject that looks pretty dry to the unmotivated.
  - gruseom 15y ago
    It's more diverse than that. Some do end up learning theory but many great musicians don't. Here's a delightful example: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1090345--video-randy-bachman-on-recording-with-little-richard http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1090345--video-...
    - dextorious 15y ago
      """Some do end up learning theory but many great musicians don't.""" We're talking about music theory in genres where it is important, i.e where the music is involved and advanced. Three minute fifties rock-n-roll tunes is not where this happens. Little Richards is great, but not in the musically advanced way Charles Mingus, Miles Davies, etc are great. He's great for the raw fun/energy/danceability impact of his music. So, not really a counter-example.
sudoscience 15y ago
I disagree. I was a professional musician at one time and regular expressions are far easier than music theory, in my opinion.
- dextorious 15y ago
  I was comparing regexes to chord naming (which was the OP topic), not music theory in general. If you want a comparison for music theory, try compiler theory (or just type theory). Music theory is dead easy in comparison, no?

mml 15y ago

I'm afraid you miss my point. I'm not sure who the article was for, people who already know its contents perhaps? Anyone else would have to have a solid background in theory to understand much of anything in it. "I find not only the 13th chord a great substitute for a 7th now, especially when it's the dominant resolving to the tonic, but I also love the 7th+3rd+13th/6th way of voicing it too."

jtauber 15y ago
It was for people who know music theory but not jazz
ericflo 15y ago
It's no different than an article about some Rails or Node.js technique, which appear on HN frequently. That is, lots of jargon and techinal foundation that the reader is assumed to know, but within that context some instructive text.
dextorious 15y ago
"""I'm not sure who the article was for, people who already know its contents perhaps?""" No, just anyone who already knows a bit of music theory. Not even a great deal of it. Something that can be learned in a week, tops. Tons of articles on HN have titles like: Djikstra's algorithm, advanced types in Haskell, currying and memoization in Scala, A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus, and similar content. Is someone expected to understand those without knowing the underlying naming schemes, theory, basic domain knowledge etc? Or do people seeing stuff like "^[ab](foo)^[k])/i complain that: "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" computer science theory. Gibberish.Goobeltygook$"? There a logic behind regular expressions, and there's a logic behind chord/interval notation. And the second is a lot easier, too, and it's used because it's succint and it works. Urban legends about qwerty keyboards ( http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html ) and railroad gauges ( http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp ) aside, bad solutions don't last 400 years. """Anyone else would have to have a solid background in theory to understand much of anything in it.""" The naming scheme used in the article takes like 10 minutes to grasp --and requires no great background in music theory. 7th, 13th etc are like numeric indexes. As for dominant / tonic, those are are like music theory 101. Similar to knowing what "Objects" and "Interfaces" mean when discussing OO programming.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Any idea how elitist this sounds? It's not at all "just like" an article about Dijkstra, Ruby on Rails or mathematics or whatever. Usually such articles are praised on how well-written they are, even allowing for people not familiar with the background getting the gist, somewhat. > Or do people seeing stuff like "^[ab](foo)^[k])/i complain that: > "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" computer science theory. Gibberish.Goobeltygook$"? > There a logic behind regular expressions, and there's a logic behind chord/interval notation. And the second is a lot easier, too, and it's used because it's succint and it works. That's a very good example, because IMO it demonstrates my point. If anyone would have written an article like that about regular expressions, written in the same way, with: Regexes peppered inline throughout each sentence, repeatedly mentioning how this is probably the most basic stuff ever--up to the point of actually apologizing for stooping down to the level of what must probably be "regex theory 101". Then someone would have remarked "that pretty much explains why people have a hard time 'getting' regular expressions. Gibberish. Goobeltygook", then nobody would have disagreed with them. Because everybody knows that a badly written article about regexes very quickly becomes to look like unreadable gibberish. And in case you didn't catch that, this article actually apologizes for "probably being jazz theory 101". What? Have you ever seen a comp.sci/math article being apologetic about saying "I know this is probably graph theory 101, but we define a graph as an ordered pair G = (V, E) comprising a set V of vertices or nodes together with a set E of edges or lines ..." Of course not! It is considered good style to repeat the basics, and in fact IMO, I consider it bad style to be apologetic about it (because it's condescending to that part of your audience that made good use of the quick refresher). Everybody knows that regexes can quickly look like unreadable gooblygook, even if you're familiar with them, and any article that wants to discuss something fundamental about regexes, is going to have to take some special care to not make it look as such. In some sense, same goes for set theory or mathematical formulae in general. That still doesn't mean the hypothetical regex article would be so much clearer to the layman, but it would seem much more approachable, in some sense. I thought I knew some very rudimentary things about music theory, but apparently not enough to make the leap to "get" and string together what this guy is talking about in pure jargon (and believe me I spent more than the "10 minutes" everybody says it would take). To me, that tells me the article is simply badly written. A similar exposition about monads in functional programming, is more like what I'd expect in a 1-on-1 comment thread (when it's perfectly ok to use as much jargon to succinctly get your point across) than a blog article intended for the general public (when regardless how obvious or simple, it always pays to step down and explain from basics, even if only to reinforce the audience that already knows them you're talking about the same things). In fact, the only other computer science topic I've seen this sort of attitude, is the security/exploit/disclosure/hacking scene. That's where people routinely bash on eachother for repeating the basics and that "this is nothing new" because hacker X already did sploit Y in 2005 which was kinda similar (regardless that writing/warning about it again is a good thing).
dextorious 15y ago
Actually, the part I found difficult about music theory, is that that there are tons of stuff you're supposed to remember. They are not difficult to understand, and they are even easy to derive from some basic rules. But you do have to remember them, not derive them at will, to be able to think musically and play fluently. I think that's my problem with Chemistry too, as opposed to Physics. There was always tons of stuff to remember when studying chemistry, while just remembering a few basic rules and deriving everything else was possible in Physics (I talk about High School grade material, of course).
- alanfalcon 15y ago
  This is exactly why Math was Good for me in High School and History was Terrible. And the thing is, with an understanding of history a lot can be derived, or at least worked out, yet history class was all about memorizing names and dates and the relationships and flow of history was often something that felt coincidental to what was being taught.
- MrTortoise 15y ago
  Id say by the time you are playing fluently with these ideas you are no longer remembering them ... its further than that you body knows and executes them.
radiowave 15y ago
Music education is in general great at telling people what notes to play, but rather worse at supplying much intuition for why certain patterns of notes work together. You can look at a diagram that will tell you what notes go together to make a particular 11th chord, say, but it tells you nothing about why that's a useful way to combine notes. The blog post is aimed at people who know some of the "what", but who could use a clue as to some of the "why".

fredsanford 15y ago

Piss poor black kids that never went to school can still have good ears. It's all about the ears.

dextorious 15y ago
Yeah, but I also mean that they also seem to pick the theory/names just fine -- i.e not just playing complicated stuff by ears, but also understanding how everything is called and how it works.
jtheory 15y ago
Music THEORY isn't "all about the ears" at all, though. It is the conceptual framework & vocabulary you use to talk about music, not perform it. If kids love performing and listening to music, they'll want to talk about it. And initially they'll be limited to things like "I love that thing it does near the middle when the bass is going baBONG baBONG baBONG then everything suddenly get really quiet and strange". That's obviously ridiculously imprecise, right? And aren't you curious to know what "strange" means in this context? Suppose you want to write a piece of music that sounds "strange" like the piece you liked, but more so? So even piss-poor black kids end up with a thirst for a subject that looks pretty dry to the unmotivated.
- gruseom 15y ago
  It's more diverse than that. Some do end up learning theory but many great musicians don't. Here's a delightful example: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1090345--video-randy-bachman-on-recording-with-little-richard http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1090345--video-...
  - dextorious 15y ago
    """Some do end up learning theory but many great musicians don't.""" We're talking about music theory in genres where it is important, i.e where the music is involved and advanced. Three minute fifties rock-n-roll tunes is not where this happens. Little Richards is great, but not in the musically advanced way Charles Mingus, Miles Davies, etc are great. He's great for the raw fun/energy/danceability impact of his music. So, not really a counter-example.

sudoscience 15y ago

I disagree. I was a professional musician at one time and regular expressions are far easier than music theory, in my opinion.

dextorious 15y ago
I was comparing regexes to chord naming (which was the OP topic), not music theory in general. If you want a comparison for music theory, try compiler theory (or just type theory). Music theory is dead easy in comparison, no?