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A counter argument to the typical "piss on TFA" HN top voted comment: (musician of many decades) the post IS music theory of the kind it purports to be, it's no

by coldtea 20d ago

A counter argument to the typical "piss on TFA" HN top voted comment: (musician of many decades) the post IS music theory of the kind it purports to be, it's not misleading in the least, at worst it's incomplete (but never claimed to be complete) and simplified. It's just not conventional music theory (which is just a set of rules thrown at you). But the whole point that the parent missed, is that it is told in a way to arrive to music theory from first principles as understood by computer programmers and math nerds. Any statement made in TFA is true (at least to a basic level, and, for some of claims, when focusing on western music). You'll learn nothing of the sort you learn in TFA by reading "The Jazz Theory book" suggested by the parent. The opening paragraphs of TFA explicitly address why that doesn't cut it: "The problem was never the practice. It was that every explanation of music theory seemed to miss out the fundamental reasons for how and why things are the way they are. Here is a staff. Here are the notes on it. This is a major scale, memorise the pattern. Why those notes? Why that pattern? Because that is the convention. Which is a strange way to teach a system that essentially comes out of physics and arithmetic. There are twelve notes for a reason. The major scale has the shape it has for a reason. Chords that sound good sound good for a reason, and you can compute those reasons." The parent comment is stuck on trying to sell the conventional music theory nomenclature and its extensions, which, despite the name "theory", is a descriptive set of norms and rules based on historical practices. The author of the above comment's "postgrad in music" and experience in conservertoires make then unable to see the worth of TFA, because they're too invested in the conventional description and "how things are done". If you want to understand music theory as a construction, not merely as "here's a set of arbitrary rules and other rules that build on them", ignore jazz/classical musicians and people with music degrees trying to sell you on what they've been taught, as it will be near useless. This requires a different type of mindset. There are books on musicology that address the concerns of TFA in an official and deep way, but TFA is a good programming-nerd oriented introduction to the matter.

simonask 20d ago
I'm a programmer with a degree in musicology as well. This ain't it. I'm reading your comment with a certain disdain for analysis and theory, which I get - a lot of people come out scarred from music theory training, and I'm sorry someone hurt you that way. But music theory is fundamentally a way to talk about music. Nobody is trying to "sell" you anything, but it does become much easier to work together as musicians when we share a language we can use to talk about the music. "Take it from the candenza", "a bit more ritenuto", etc. is just more efficient and precise than "take it from the place where it goes dun-dun-dunnnn", or "go more slowly-like". Seriously, you're doing yourself a huge favor as a musician and broadening your conceptual thinking about music by learning this stuff.
- coldtea 20d ago
  >I'm reading your comment with a certain disdain for analysis and theory, which I get - a lot of people come out scarred from music theory training, and I'm sorry someone hurt you that way. I'm fine with contentional music theory training. Know my music theory, had official music training, been at it for some decades. It's not the purpose of this. Traditional music theory training or a jazz theory book wont tell you about harmonics and timbre. It wont tell you how come we divided the octave like this, and things this tries to tackle. It was written to serve a fundamentally different purpose. A purpose which apparently familiarity with regular music theory makes most blind to. It's like someone wanting to learn about acoustics, and someone given them an earful about diatonic chords and how to read notation. It's simply not what they want to now about. Or it's like someone wants to know about the chemistry of cement or the physics behind structural engineering, and people try to tell him all about construction and construction terms. Not what he is interested in knowing, even if it's essential for building a house, just like music theory is essential (or at least useful) in playing and composing music. >But music theory is fundamentally a way to talk about music. Nobody is trying to "sell" you anything, but it does become much easier to work together as musicians when we share a language we can use to talk about the music. That's neither here nor there. The purpose of TFA is not for musicians to talk about music with one another, or to help someone analyze that this piece of music is in that key or uses that mode, and modulates there, or that "this chord here is used as a chromatic mediant", or borrowed chords, or counterpoint, and all that. >"Take it from the candenza", "a bit more ritenuto", etc. is just more efficient and precise than "take it from the place where it goes dun-dun-dunnnn", or "go more slowly-like". That's explicitly NOT what TFA wants to be useful for.

by coldtea 20d ago

simonask 20d ago

I'm a programmer with a degree in musicology as well. This ain't it. I'm reading your comment with a certain disdain for analysis and theory, which I get - a lot of people come out scarred from music theory training, and I'm sorry someone hurt you that way. But music theory is fundamentally a way to talk about music. Nobody is trying to "sell" you anything, but it does become much easier to work together as musicians when we share a language we can use to talk about the music. "Take it from the candenza", "a bit more ritenuto", etc. is just more efficient and precise than "take it from the place where it goes dun-dun-dunnnn", or "go more slowly-like". Seriously, you're doing yourself a huge favor as a musician and broadening your conceptual thinking about music by learning this stuff.

coldtea 20d ago
>I'm reading your comment with a certain disdain for analysis and theory, which I get - a lot of people come out scarred from music theory training, and I'm sorry someone hurt you that way. I'm fine with contentional music theory training. Know my music theory, had official music training, been at it for some decades. It's not the purpose of this. Traditional music theory training or a jazz theory book wont tell you about harmonics and timbre. It wont tell you how come we divided the octave like this, and things this tries to tackle. It was written to serve a fundamentally different purpose. A purpose which apparently familiarity with regular music theory makes most blind to. It's like someone wanting to learn about acoustics, and someone given them an earful about diatonic chords and how to read notation. It's simply not what they want to now about. Or it's like someone wants to know about the chemistry of cement or the physics behind structural engineering, and people try to tell him all about construction and construction terms. Not what he is interested in knowing, even if it's essential for building a house, just like music theory is essential (or at least useful) in playing and composing music. >But music theory is fundamentally a way to talk about music. Nobody is trying to "sell" you anything, but it does become much easier to work together as musicians when we share a language we can use to talk about the music. That's neither here nor there. The purpose of TFA is not for musicians to talk about music with one another, or to help someone analyze that this piece of music is in that key or uses that mode, and modulates there, or that "this chord here is used as a chromatic mediant", or borrowed chords, or counterpoint, and all that. >"Take it from the candenza", "a bit more ritenuto", etc. is just more efficient and precise than "take it from the place where it goes dun-dun-dunnnn", or "go more slowly-like". That's explicitly NOT what TFA wants to be useful for.