4 ms·

I hear that a lot. And I always ask the same thing in return: Show me a riff, within the context of a song, that you came up with entirely on your own, and demo

by ksaj 3y ago

I hear that a lot. And I always ask the same thing in return: Show me a riff, within the context of a song, that you came up with entirely on your own, and demonstrates the benefits you have obtained by not being held back by learning music theory. They always play a variation of something you can trace back to one of their favourite songs. A blind copy. No doubt by someone who actually does understand the theory. So, "theory holds you back" should be followed by "from copying your heroes and knowing why they make the musical choices they make."

solomonb 3y ago
There are many musical traditions which evolved completely orthogonal to [western] music theory. That such traditions can exist and have performers who express virtuosity contradicts the claim that all 'riffs' originate with [western] music theory.
- ksaj 3y ago
  They still have theory. I have an amazing book on playing Rajas. But if I played them right now, it would sound more like messed up blues because I haven't learned that aspect of how to play Raja music correctly, and only by coincidence the blues pentatonic scale is similar. I have an idea what Raja sounds like, but that's rather incomplete knowledge of the associated music theory. Applying the wrong theory produces the wrong sound. Enough evidence that there is theory in all forms of music. You might be right about a certain western bias toward [western] theory, but it has no bearing on theory in general. Especially how it applies to each culture's distinct music. The same bias appears in the other direction, because Indians regularly say they think Western music sounds out of tune and lacking expression. I don't think anybody brought that up as an issue though. The difference, pertaining to this thread, is understanding music, versus merely aping riffs you learned from your heroes, with no regard to the underlying music and how things that fit, fit.
  - solomonb 3y ago
    Okay so we can generalize to music theory outside of the western canon but then aren't we also allowing in "the theory of the music made by not learning western theory but rather by listening to lou reed riffs and copying his hand movements"? At this point everyone can have their own music theory and the argument that musicians need to learn theory seems a little vacuous? Or do you draw the line at certain branches of established theory greater then just the western canon? For the record I am very much in favor of musicians learning music theory (of whatever sort). However it seems odd to say that a musician can not learn music without first learning theory. Did we have music theory before musicians? Perhaps you can make the case that given the systemic biases in our modern taste for music it is _hard_ to break away from modern music theory, but that doesn't make it impossible. See the extended technique of Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bob Ostertag, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, etc as an example.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      > However it seems odd to say that a musician can not learn music without first learning theory. Except nobody said that ? Just that by learning theory you will learn faster than reverse engineering the songs you like into bases components (conciously or not). And, well, nothing stops anyone from learning more than just western music theory > Did we have music theory before musicians? We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics...
      - solomonb 3y ago
        > Except nobody said that ? Ksaj claimed that a musician who learned to make music without music theory will inevitably end up producing music which is actually derivative of the music of someone else who did study theory. I reject that claim. > We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics... I do not think you can reasonably compare something as subject as music with mechanical engineering. Yes you can make music which has as much structure as the Golden Gate bridge but no that is not the only way to make music.
devin 3y ago
Some people's ears are better than their theory. Plenty of examples.
- ksaj 3y ago
  There are different types of understanding, and self taught musicianship is not excluded from this. In fact, they involve exactly the same type of effort as learning theory in the standard fashion. They rarely even deviate from it. The old blues masters might not be able to name the chords and scales, but they're pretty strict about the blues and pentatonic scales, turnarounds, and how to start and end riffs on the correct underlying chords, when and how to throw in a 7th chord (or even what a 7th chord is, and major or minor or diminished, for that matter), etc... which means they absolutely know the theory even if they don't verbalize it well in a classical manner. Simply copying someone and saying theory isn't needed is akin to using Dall-E to generate a drawing and calling yourself an artist for having done so. And that's the distinction being made here.

by ksaj 3y ago

solomonb 3y ago

There are many musical traditions which evolved completely orthogonal to [western] music theory. That such traditions can exist and have performers who express virtuosity contradicts the claim that all 'riffs' originate with [western] music theory.

ksaj 3y ago
They still have theory. I have an amazing book on playing Rajas. But if I played them right now, it would sound more like messed up blues because I haven't learned that aspect of how to play Raja music correctly, and only by coincidence the blues pentatonic scale is similar. I have an idea what Raja sounds like, but that's rather incomplete knowledge of the associated music theory. Applying the wrong theory produces the wrong sound. Enough evidence that there is theory in all forms of music. You might be right about a certain western bias toward [western] theory, but it has no bearing on theory in general. Especially how it applies to each culture's distinct music. The same bias appears in the other direction, because Indians regularly say they think Western music sounds out of tune and lacking expression. I don't think anybody brought that up as an issue though. The difference, pertaining to this thread, is understanding music, versus merely aping riffs you learned from your heroes, with no regard to the underlying music and how things that fit, fit.
- solomonb 3y ago
  Okay so we can generalize to music theory outside of the western canon but then aren't we also allowing in "the theory of the music made by not learning western theory but rather by listening to lou reed riffs and copying his hand movements"? At this point everyone can have their own music theory and the argument that musicians need to learn theory seems a little vacuous? Or do you draw the line at certain branches of established theory greater then just the western canon? For the record I am very much in favor of musicians learning music theory (of whatever sort). However it seems odd to say that a musician can not learn music without first learning theory. Did we have music theory before musicians? Perhaps you can make the case that given the systemic biases in our modern taste for music it is _hard_ to break away from modern music theory, but that doesn't make it impossible. See the extended technique of Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bob Ostertag, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, etc as an example.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    > However it seems odd to say that a musician can not learn music without first learning theory. Except nobody said that ? Just that by learning theory you will learn faster than reverse engineering the songs you like into bases components (conciously or not). And, well, nothing stops anyone from learning more than just western music theory > Did we have music theory before musicians? We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics...
    - solomonb 3y ago
      > Except nobody said that ? Ksaj claimed that a musician who learned to make music without music theory will inevitably end up producing music which is actually derivative of the music of someone else who did study theory. I reject that claim. > We had engineering before engineers but we come to conclusion teaching someone to build bridge is far more effective than letting them stumble till they work out the basics... I do not think you can reasonably compare something as subject as music with mechanical engineering. Yes you can make music which has as much structure as the Golden Gate bridge but no that is not the only way to make music.

devin 3y ago

Some people's ears are better than their theory. Plenty of examples.

ksaj 3y ago
There are different types of understanding, and self taught musicianship is not excluded from this. In fact, they involve exactly the same type of effort as learning theory in the standard fashion. They rarely even deviate from it. The old blues masters might not be able to name the chords and scales, but they're pretty strict about the blues and pentatonic scales, turnarounds, and how to start and end riffs on the correct underlying chords, when and how to throw in a 7th chord (or even what a 7th chord is, and major or minor or diminished, for that matter), etc... which means they absolutely know the theory even if they don't verbalize it well in a classical manner. Simply copying someone and saying theory isn't needed is akin to using Dall-E to generate a drawing and calling yourself an artist for having done so. And that's the distinction being made here.