7 ms·

Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

305 points by aanet 21d ago

aanet 21d ago
Book: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom by Robert Hutchinson
ultrasounder 21d ago
https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ link takes you to the homeworks/assignments and everything else for a self-study/auto-didact to follow along. Neat!
IvanK_net 21d ago
Am I the only one who thinks that the classic music notation is 3x harder to learn than the basic music theory (without the rules of notation)? I think that you can learn music theory (to play an instrument or to compose music e.g. in a "piano roll tool" / MIDI editor) much faster if you skip the classic notation. And I think that it is even better to learn the notation AFTER you understand the music theory. I even made my own guide to music :D https://www.jampea.com/learn https://www.jampea.com/learn
- bonzini 21d ago
  https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 explains why music notation is the way it is. There are very good reasons for it. The parts that are really weird (like the C clef) have mostly been obsoleted, unless you play the viola I guess.
  - song_synth 21d ago
    love that video, it made me lol so hard the first time I saw it :D Classical composer and software engineer here. One of my goals is to help update score notation. I use something called "harmonic coloring" which is like a reduced MIDI notation: You color a note by its functional role (harmonic value) rather than an arbitrary hue in 0-11. What this view shares with MIDI: Long rectangles representing the applied durations. How it is different: Occupies a minimal amount vertical space. The color palette I'm using is intended to support people with colorblindness. The shades/hues of a color encodes the functional harmony. The root key signature (origin) is always the same color; and chords some distance r away on the circle of fifths is the shade/hue at that offset r. There is a similar concept described in the Tantacruel video towards the end. You can explore it here on Monic Theory. (mobile view should be fixed within 48 hours) https://monictheory.com/project-templates https://monictheory.com/project-templates
    - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
      Note that in historical Byzantine musical culture, there are no absolute pitches at all. Their notational form is entirely intervals from some arbitrary root note. Similarly, in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, the note names (Sa, Re, Pa etc) do not denote pitches - Sa is always the root, whatever it is, and the rest have a somewhat well defined intervallic relationship to it. I personally would not use "harmonic value" to describe this, since it occurs in music that (broadly speaking) lacks harmony. The key point, IMO, is that what matters are sets of intervals (ratios, if you prefer) rather than actual pitches (as frequencies).
      - aanet 21d ago
        ^^ THIS Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be). A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2] [1] The Ragas of North Indian Music, N.A. Jairazbhoy, https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725 https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725 [2] Rāgs Around the Clock, A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style, https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#resources https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#r...
        song_synth 21d ago
        much love for the Just Intonation in the house
      - mrob 20d ago
        Actual frequencies matter in bass-focused dance music. You want a root note around 40Hz to 60Hz, which is high enough that it's easily heard and reproduced, but not so high that it loses the tactile body-shaking effect.
  - jaggirs 21d ago
    I suppose it makes historical sense, and even ingeniously designed. But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I've picked up a new instrument since ~2 months, and 1 month in I could already play all scales by by deliberately staying away from music notation, learning the raw distances/steps that make up a scale and how to play them, rather than the 'delta from C', which is how classical training taught me to think. (Same story for chords etc)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
      I have some great news: you're a nerd ! :)) ... or is it geek, i can never remember the difference ...
    - BalinKing 21d ago
      > But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I don't think this is true—I was under the impression that, at least on piano, keys other than C major are sometimes chosen specifically to make things easier on the fingers.
      - jaggirs 21d ago
        Easier on the fingers - maybe (I don't know what you reference), but not easier on the mind: Instead of learning each chord once, you have to learn it 12 times (for each key). See http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/ http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/
  - jerf 21d ago
    It kind of reminds me of the periodic declaration someone makes on HN that textual programming sucks and we all need to switch to something else, usually visual programming in this case. If someone takes time to deeply understand the advantages of the textual approach and then builds an alternative, I'll listen. But at this point, anyone who is doing this and their criticism of the original approach is shallow and uninsightful, where it's basically just "it's old and it must therefore suck", is unlikely to produce a good answer. I think that applies to the music notation case too. "Conventional" music notation isn't just a staff and a couple of types of notes. By the time you handle all the use cases that conventional notation handles, or even just a solid subset of it, your brand new notation is probably a lot less elegant than it started out as in someone's head.
    - TheOtherHobbes 21d ago
      Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance. Unlike most languages it's inherently two dimensional because music includes both horizontal (time, rhythm) and vertical pitches (chords/colours, harmony) information. And - especially important - melody is an element that needs both. You can't represent the same information with text without losing a lot of important content, which is why toys like Sonic Pi are more limited than they seem. You can kinda sorta represent the same information on a piano roll, but it's not any easier to read than dots - in some ways harder, because you're not going to see the relationship between a bass line and chords as clearly. Is it a good programming language? It's quite dense, but not denser than some code idioms. The 2D element is unique, and hard to represent in other ways. The learning curve is steep, but it's probably as good as it can be given the requirements and constraints.
      - bluGill 20d ago
        Don't forget about the dynamics (loud or soft) dimension of music.
      - otabdeveloper4 20d ago
        > Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance. Not really. Here in the 21st century people mostly use DAWs, and there's a piano roll inside that thing instead of staff notation.
  - bitbckt 21d ago
    As a semi-professional trombonist, C clefs are very important to me. Alto and tenor as-written, tenor as a means of transposing Bb treble, mezzo-soprano as a means of transposing F parts… they are not obsolete.
    - totallymike 21d ago
      My favorite genre of hacker news comment is when someone lacks sufficient imagination to wonder why something that’s commonly used by many people is still in use
      - bonzini 21d ago
        FWIW, there's no real need for imagination here. The comment says "mostly", and added a parenthetical comment that was simply meant to name the viola as a prominent remaining use. In particular, trombones have almost entirely stopped using the tenor clef in jazz.
        bitbckt 20d ago
        It's true that jazz charts are unlikely to use tenor clef. Nonetheless, it remains career limiting for a trombonist to be unable to read clefs. Commercial players are likely to use the skill for transposing Bb treble lead sheets, or playing in a pit. Tenor clef shows up in modern musicals regularly. Not to mention being shunned from quartet or choir opportunities that are the basis of networking in the industry.
        bonzini 19d ago
        Transposing is an important skill for all instruments. It's true that trombonists get some cases for free if they learn the tenor and alto clefs, but it's possible to learn it without knowing the C clefs. And even trombonists have to learn how to handle sharps and flats in chromatic passages, so there's a lot more to transposing than using a different clef. > Tenor clef shows up in modern musicals regularly. This I didn't know, thanks!
    - 21d ago
- Hunpeter 21d ago
  This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide: I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.
  - tracnar 21d ago
    To give an example, this it of course not true: > Only a limited set of frequencies is used in music. All these frequencies (that exist in music) can be played by a piano.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
      You're saying its not possible to tune a piano to an arbitrary set of 88 pitches?
      - organsnyder 21d ago
        Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote. In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.
        BigTTYGothGF 21d ago
        Also quarter step bends in guitar and vibrato in general.
        PaulDavisThe1st 20d ago
        That's not what "tuning" means. Yes, fretless string instruments, the human voice, instruments like the trombone are all capable of being played with arbitrary or semi-arbitrary pitch. But they are still either tuned in some way, or never tuned at all. Performance is not tuning.
- kian 21d ago
  It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).
  - BigTTYGothGF 21d ago
    > It's all about the integers modulo 12. Only in 12TET.
    - kian 21d ago
      24, 128, approach infinity -- I know there are microtonal systems, but if you want to understand them, choose the nearest multiple-of-twelve (or really, choose whatever TET contains the closest approximations to the exact notes) TET and look where their intervals land with respect to the symmetries (factors) within that TET, and where those symmetries are broken by a note moving by a perceptual 'slide' (one note 'moves' into the other position) rather than sounding like a new distinct voice.
      - bonzini 21d ago
        More like, only if you're playing Schoenberg it's about modulo 12. Almost all sheet music that you play uses 5 or 7 unequal subdivisions of the octave, and occasionally the rest. Sure, sometimes you'll have one or two of the rest on a regular basis (blues, harmonic/melodic minor), but still most music won't use all twelve.
        drdaeman 21d ago
        Isn't modulo-twelve (if we ignore microtonal) the core underlying structure, and then you pick scale (like 2 2 1 2 2 2 1) and a key as a mapping, and then use degree as an 1-based index into the scale? I don't really know a thing about music, so I could be wrong here - but that mental model at least made some sense to me when I tried to map all the concepts I've heard about into some sort of a mental system.
Eduard 21d ago
didn't find a single audio file; only links to unaffiliated YouTube videos which want me to watch ads first. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
- mcbuilder 21d ago
  I feel that quote more likely is pointed at "music appreciation" as a written work, versus understanding the theory. I know a few musicians who are happy to use terminology from theory, "I love to write songs with diminished and sustained chords". This seems like a great resource to me, a classically trained pianist who is now playing different types of music.
- rc5150 21d ago
  skill issue.
- aanet 21d ago
  There are several music samples in there... Example: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMajor.html https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMaj...
xcf_seetan 21d ago
Happy to see serialism covered! thanks
tantalor 21d ago
Very cool but what does this have to do with "21st-Century Classroom"? Is that just a meaningless phrase to make it sound modern, not old-fashioned?
- bwanab 21d ago
  Could just be because it is the 21st century and this was written for classroom use.
- gowld 21d ago
  It's a new presentation, an online hypertext, and uses YouTube publications of 21st Century music as example. https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter-5.html https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter-5.html
- colonwqbang 21d ago
  If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music, art, mathematics and you'll just have a lot of books with identical and quite dull titles.
  - odyssey7 21d ago
    Insightful. The title being more to distinguish than to describe.
    - ithkuil 21d ago
      "Music Theory, Bells and Whistles"
      - utopcell 21d ago
        "BaW Music Theory", for that click-bait effect.
      - Lio 20d ago
        First review with that as a title: ”Beware, this is just a general book of modern music theory masquerading as a guide specially for the bell or whistle player”.
cbondurant 21d ago
I was hoping to see if by "21st-Century" it meant "music theory that is applicable to the way modern music is generally written and interacted with". With details on things like microtonal music, increased focus on rhythmic theory, an increased appreciation for the role that timbre plays in the sound of music, the theoretical frameworks that underpin long standing musical traditions of other cultures and contrasting what makes each musical theory unique as a way of better understanding both western theories of music as well as the breadth of musical expression.... Nope! Just the same old, well beaten, rotting corpse of a horse in the form of a musical theory that entirely exists to prop up schenkerian analysis. The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. (The way you can tell is because it includes figured bass, which is totally irrelevant to any discussion that isn't about the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians.) God forbid I want to, oh I don't know, make music that's similar to the kind that I actually listen to on a regular basis? Better understand its underpinnings and what makes it work in the ways that it does? No. Figured bass.
- maroonblazer 21d ago
  > The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. Are you this guy? https://youtu.be/u2NKodxRO4A?si=xdOd7I1f_rnFN85C&t=255 https://youtu.be/u2NKodxRO4A?si=xdOd7I1f_rnFN85C&t=255
- mtizim 20d ago
  Somebody ate Adam Neely's video hook line and sinker. I do agree, but I don't know how many generations will die before we can overturn the ridiculousness of the current approach. Even the book linked has some nice flowcharts of harmonic function, given as a useful tool for analysis and composing. Sadly, the theory fails almost instantly, defeated by the highly experimental niche piece of music called "Hotel California". However, bringing race and class into it, while true, does not help the argument, as most people you're trying to convince are already fully convinced of the supremacy of the German masters.
waffletower 21d ago
How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.
- chrisjj 20d ago
  Indeed. Like so many books of this type, better title would be "Our Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom".
larodi 21d ago
Music theory for the 21st century with notation from several centuries earlier. Hmm.... sorry but tracker's table-like views are much easier. And so are most DAWs gantt-like editors. 100 times easier to comprehend than notation having the same not written in three different ways, and then some.
- dfltr 21d ago
  The English language is messy as hell, and yet, here we are using it because it's a shared set of rules and symbols that pretty much everyone who wants to join in on this conversation already knows. Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
  - odyssey7 21d ago
    > learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go A certain Amazon Web Services comes to mind…
  - nwatson 21d ago
    The choir director at my church, Michael Dodds (UNCSA), covers the early development of musical notation, "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" [0]. Currently on sabbatical at Cambridge. Once in a while during rehearsal he will give an impromptu lecture on music history, always interesting. [0] https://a.co/d/0bLcrlyE https://a.co/d/0bLcrlyE
  - larodi 20d ago
    No, English language is easy as sh... as piece of cake. A lot of it is marginalized French tbh, sorry, no offense, and the English in the USA is further simplified. You think tis difficult, because you never tried Russian, French, or Mandarin - then we discuss again. Had it not for the simplicity of English Language, it wouldn't be so omnipresent. So you are so wrong on this account. And I really want to see you communicate wobbling bass or fast random notes. Well you can - in Studel.cc - but is impossible in this notation. Same for complex drum sections (as in dnb, yes), and I can give you fair amount of other examples where medieval notation is useless.
chrisjj 21d ago
> On the piano there are 88 notes. 88 keys (usually) and unlimited notes.
- shermantanktop 21d ago
  I suppose a 1 key piano can have unlimited notes, at least until the key wears out.
  - _carbyau_ 21d ago
    I hated Battlestar Galactica for this.
stackghost 21d ago
Suffers from the same problem that all music theory texts seem unable to avoid: they require the reader to simply accept a bunch of random facts to memorize with no context. Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so. Similar: in a major scale all notes are played and none are skipped or repeated. Except if your scale goes D–E–F#–G, in which case you skip F. The only way for this to be correct is apparently we consider F and F# to be the same note for purposes of scales even though this directly contradicts a previous section. I was expecting a “21st century” music theory reference to have an emphasis on building intuition. Music theorists are apparently allergic to good pedagogy.
- scottious 21d ago
  A better way to think about it is that all letters in the musical alphabet are represented in a musical scale. Some are sharp or flat D major: D E F♯ G A B C♯ D minor: D E F G A B♭ C Db major: D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C Db minor: D♭ E♭ F♭ G♭ A♭ B♭♭ C♭
  - stackghost 21d ago
    Sure, I knew what they meant. But if they are sloppy with their terminology on the knucklehead stuff then it doesn’t bode well for the esoteric stuff to follow. My point was not to showcase my confusion, rather to reinforce the fact that music theory texts are just generally low quality, and music theory as a field seems to be okay with that.
    - deadfoxygrandpa 20d ago
      but it doesnt say that. you paraphrased the book in a way that makes it look sloppy but it was your paraphrased version which is sloppy. if you read through the book when it defines this stuff, it introduces accidentals as "characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them" and then in the section on the major scale it says "All major scales use the notes of the musical alphabet in order; no notes are skipped and no notes occur twice." i dont think this is ambiguous
SeanLuke 21d ago
I dunno. On first glance, for a "21st-Century" textbook, this seems to place a high emphasis on classical music theory, and moves very highly influential modern styles to the back burner -- notably jazz. And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian), nor current analysis of pop and rock music.
- aanet 21d ago
  > And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian)... To me, that above ^ looks like the biggest gap. To be fair, the book doesn't claim to demonstrate theory of the "world music" (sic, a phrase as bad as it sounds). My (brief and shallow) understanding is that most scholars of music in the western world just do not have enough knowledge to talk intelligently about non-western genres. Exceptions exist, of course, but they are quite rare. [Other reason is that there is a lot of gate-keeping. I've seen that in Hindustani/Carnatic classical studies, FWIW, which is one my areas of interest]
  - quacked 21d ago
    I don't understand why this standard is always applied to westerners. When we go to other countries, are they explaining all the fundamentals of western music in addition to the theories of their own? "Yeah our students in Boston don't know anything about Carnatic rhythm, but over in Bengal they all learn counterpoint and fugue before they learn the traditional ornaments"
    - bluGill 20d ago
      I suspect given western dominance in economics others have exposure to western music traditions. I wouldn't expect exposure to traditions other than their own and western.
      - analog31 20d ago
        Indeed, the musical traditions of western Europe and Africa, forged together in the Americas, dominate world culture. Turn on the radio anywhere in the world and you will hear the influences of jazz, rock, funk, samba, hip-hop, etc.
sedivy94 21d ago
SVG illustrations, too? Delicious! This is how an online textbook should be done. Bravo.
zkanda 20d ago
I can't recommend enough Absolutely Understand Guitar[0], it's free and taught me music theory than any course I've ever tried. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pXCWAnIeTQyw_mvy1L7ryxxPH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pX...
simonebrunozzi 20d ago
Tangentially related: what would be the equivalent of this, but for learning how to play piano? "Piano learning for the 21st-Century middle age guy". Any help is appreciated! Including a device, or a service, that could be particularly useful.
- AlecSchueler 20d ago
  Not really a device or a service, but I'd recommend learning the names of the notes and then just tinkering around. If you notice some patterns or wonder about specific things that come up in the course of that, look it up. If your hand starts to hurt, look up what to do differently. Etc. You'll manage it quite well with that method.
casey_lang 20d ago
I've also been recommended to Open Music Theory, as a beginner to theory. Has anyone compared the two? https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/introduction/ https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/int...
nomel 20d ago
The fact that the equation 440 * 2^((n-49)/12) is nowhere to be found makes me strongly disagree.
- treebeard901 20d ago
  The history around how 440hz came to be the standard is pretty interesting in itself.
salt_pine 19d ago
'21st-Century' in the title is doing the work of distinguishing, not describing. An open-licensed textbook with homework is the actual novelty, and that's worth putting in the title.

305 points by aanet 21d ago

aanet 21d ago

Book: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom by Robert Hutchinson

https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ link takes you to the homeworks/assignments and everything else for a self-study/auto-didact to follow along. Neat!

IvanK_net 21d ago

Am I the only one who thinks that the classic music notation is 3x harder to learn than the basic music theory (without the rules of notation)? I think that you can learn music theory (to play an instrument or to compose music e.g. in a "piano roll tool" / MIDI editor) much faster if you skip the classic notation. And I think that it is even better to learn the notation AFTER you understand the music theory. I even made my own guide to music :D https://www.jampea.com/learn https://www.jampea.com/learn

bonzini 21d ago
https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 explains why music notation is the way it is. There are very good reasons for it. The parts that are really weird (like the C clef) have mostly been obsoleted, unless you play the viola I guess.
- song_synth 21d ago
  love that video, it made me lol so hard the first time I saw it :D Classical composer and software engineer here. One of my goals is to help update score notation. I use something called "harmonic coloring" which is like a reduced MIDI notation: You color a note by its functional role (harmonic value) rather than an arbitrary hue in 0-11. What this view shares with MIDI: Long rectangles representing the applied durations. How it is different: Occupies a minimal amount vertical space. The color palette I'm using is intended to support people with colorblindness. The shades/hues of a color encodes the functional harmony. The root key signature (origin) is always the same color; and chords some distance r away on the circle of fifths is the shade/hue at that offset r. There is a similar concept described in the Tantacruel video towards the end. You can explore it here on Monic Theory. (mobile view should be fixed within 48 hours) https://monictheory.com/project-templates https://monictheory.com/project-templates
  - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
    Note that in historical Byzantine musical culture, there are no absolute pitches at all. Their notational form is entirely intervals from some arbitrary root note. Similarly, in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, the note names (Sa, Re, Pa etc) do not denote pitches - Sa is always the root, whatever it is, and the rest have a somewhat well defined intervallic relationship to it. I personally would not use "harmonic value" to describe this, since it occurs in music that (broadly speaking) lacks harmony. The key point, IMO, is that what matters are sets of intervals (ratios, if you prefer) rather than actual pitches (as frequencies).
    - aanet 21d ago
      ^^ THIS Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be). A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2] [1] The Ragas of North Indian Music, N.A. Jairazbhoy, https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725 https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725 [2] Rāgs Around the Clock, A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style, https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#resources https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#r...
      - song_synth 21d ago
        much love for the Just Intonation in the house
    - mrob 20d ago
      Actual frequencies matter in bass-focused dance music. You want a root note around 40Hz to 60Hz, which is high enough that it's easily heard and reproduced, but not so high that it loses the tactile body-shaking effect.
- jaggirs 21d ago
  I suppose it makes historical sense, and even ingeniously designed. But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I've picked up a new instrument since ~2 months, and 1 month in I could already play all scales by by deliberately staying away from music notation, learning the raw distances/steps that make up a scale and how to play them, rather than the 'delta from C', which is how classical training taught me to think. (Same story for chords etc)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
    I have some great news: you're a nerd ! :)) ... or is it geek, i can never remember the difference ...
  - BalinKing 21d ago
    > But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I don't think this is true—I was under the impression that, at least on piano, keys other than C major are sometimes chosen specifically to make things easier on the fingers.
    - jaggirs 21d ago
      Easier on the fingers - maybe (I don't know what you reference), but not easier on the mind: Instead of learning each chord once, you have to learn it 12 times (for each key). See http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/ http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/
- jerf 21d ago
  It kind of reminds me of the periodic declaration someone makes on HN that textual programming sucks and we all need to switch to something else, usually visual programming in this case. If someone takes time to deeply understand the advantages of the textual approach and then builds an alternative, I'll listen. But at this point, anyone who is doing this and their criticism of the original approach is shallow and uninsightful, where it's basically just "it's old and it must therefore suck", is unlikely to produce a good answer. I think that applies to the music notation case too. "Conventional" music notation isn't just a staff and a couple of types of notes. By the time you handle all the use cases that conventional notation handles, or even just a solid subset of it, your brand new notation is probably a lot less elegant than it started out as in someone's head.
  - TheOtherHobbes 21d ago
    Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance. Unlike most languages it's inherently two dimensional because music includes both horizontal (time, rhythm) and vertical pitches (chords/colours, harmony) information. And - especially important - melody is an element that needs both. You can't represent the same information with text without losing a lot of important content, which is why toys like Sonic Pi are more limited than they seem. You can kinda sorta represent the same information on a piano roll, but it's not any easier to read than dots - in some ways harder, because you're not going to see the relationship between a bass line and chords as clearly. Is it a good programming language? It's quite dense, but not denser than some code idioms. The 2D element is unique, and hard to represent in other ways. The learning curve is steep, but it's probably as good as it can be given the requirements and constraints.
    - bluGill 20d ago
      Don't forget about the dynamics (loud or soft) dimension of music.
    - otabdeveloper4 20d ago
      > Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance. Not really. Here in the 21st century people mostly use DAWs, and there's a piano roll inside that thing instead of staff notation.
- bitbckt 21d ago
  As a semi-professional trombonist, C clefs are very important to me. Alto and tenor as-written, tenor as a means of transposing Bb treble, mezzo-soprano as a means of transposing F parts… they are not obsolete.
  - totallymike 21d ago
    My favorite genre of hacker news comment is when someone lacks sufficient imagination to wonder why something that’s commonly used by many people is still in use
    - bonzini 21d ago
      FWIW, there's no real need for imagination here. The comment says "mostly", and added a parenthetical comment that was simply meant to name the viola as a prominent remaining use. In particular, trombones have almost entirely stopped using the tenor clef in jazz.
      - bitbckt 20d ago
        It's true that jazz charts are unlikely to use tenor clef. Nonetheless, it remains career limiting for a trombonist to be unable to read clefs. Commercial players are likely to use the skill for transposing Bb treble lead sheets, or playing in a pit. Tenor clef shows up in modern musicals regularly. Not to mention being shunned from quartet or choir opportunities that are the basis of networking in the industry.
        bonzini 19d ago
        Transposing is an important skill for all instruments. It's true that trombonists get some cases for free if they learn the tenor and alto clefs, but it's possible to learn it without knowing the C clefs. And even trombonists have to learn how to handle sharps and flats in chromatic passages, so there's a lot more to transposing than using a different clef. > Tenor clef shows up in modern musicals regularly. This I didn't know, thanks!
  - 21d ago
Hunpeter 21d ago
This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide: I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.
- tracnar 21d ago
  To give an example, this it of course not true: > Only a limited set of frequencies is used in music. All these frequencies (that exist in music) can be played by a piano.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 21d ago
    You're saying its not possible to tune a piano to an arbitrary set of 88 pitches?
    - organsnyder 21d ago
      Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote. In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.
      - BigTTYGothGF 21d ago
        Also quarter step bends in guitar and vibrato in general.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 20d ago
        That's not what "tuning" means. Yes, fretless string instruments, the human voice, instruments like the trombone are all capable of being played with arbitrary or semi-arbitrary pitch. But they are still either tuned in some way, or never tuned at all. Performance is not tuning.
kian 21d ago
It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).
- BigTTYGothGF 21d ago
  > It's all about the integers modulo 12. Only in 12TET.
  - kian 21d ago
    24, 128, approach infinity -- I know there are microtonal systems, but if you want to understand them, choose the nearest multiple-of-twelve (or really, choose whatever TET contains the closest approximations to the exact notes) TET and look where their intervals land with respect to the symmetries (factors) within that TET, and where those symmetries are broken by a note moving by a perceptual 'slide' (one note 'moves' into the other position) rather than sounding like a new distinct voice.
    - bonzini 21d ago
      More like, only if you're playing Schoenberg it's about modulo 12. Almost all sheet music that you play uses 5 or 7 unequal subdivisions of the octave, and occasionally the rest. Sure, sometimes you'll have one or two of the rest on a regular basis (blues, harmonic/melodic minor), but still most music won't use all twelve.
      - drdaeman 21d ago
        Isn't modulo-twelve (if we ignore microtonal) the core underlying structure, and then you pick scale (like 2 2 1 2 2 2 1) and a key as a mapping, and then use degree as an 1-based index into the scale? I don't really know a thing about music, so I could be wrong here - but that mental model at least made some sense to me when I tried to map all the concepts I've heard about into some sort of a mental system.

Eduard 21d ago

didn't find a single audio file; only links to unaffiliated YouTube videos which want me to watch ads first. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

mcbuilder 21d ago
I feel that quote more likely is pointed at "music appreciation" as a written work, versus understanding the theory. I know a few musicians who are happy to use terminology from theory, "I love to write songs with diminished and sustained chords". This seems like a great resource to me, a classically trained pianist who is now playing different types of music.
rc5150 21d ago
skill issue.
aanet 21d ago
There are several music samples in there... Example: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMajor.html https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMaj...

xcf_seetan 21d ago

Happy to see serialism covered! thanks

tantalor 21d ago

Very cool but what does this have to do with "21st-Century Classroom"? Is that just a meaningless phrase to make it sound modern, not old-fashioned?

bwanab 21d ago
Could just be because it is the 21st century and this was written for classroom use.
gowld 21d ago
It's a new presentation, an online hypertext, and uses YouTube publications of 21st Century music as example. https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter-5.html https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter-5.html
colonwqbang 21d ago
If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music, art, mathematics and you'll just have a lot of books with identical and quite dull titles.
- odyssey7 21d ago
  Insightful. The title being more to distinguish than to describe.
  - ithkuil 21d ago
    "Music Theory, Bells and Whistles"
    - utopcell 21d ago
      "BaW Music Theory", for that click-bait effect.
    - Lio 20d ago
      First review with that as a title: ”Beware, this is just a general book of modern music theory masquerading as a guide specially for the bell or whistle player”.

cbondurant 21d ago

I was hoping to see if by "21st-Century" it meant "music theory that is applicable to the way modern music is generally written and interacted with". With details on things like microtonal music, increased focus on rhythmic theory, an increased appreciation for the role that timbre plays in the sound of music, the theoretical frameworks that underpin long standing musical traditions of other cultures and contrasting what makes each musical theory unique as a way of better understanding both western theories of music as well as the breadth of musical expression.... Nope! Just the same old, well beaten, rotting corpse of a horse in the form of a musical theory that entirely exists to prop up schenkerian analysis. The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. (The way you can tell is because it includes figured bass, which is totally irrelevant to any discussion that isn't about the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians.) God forbid I want to, oh I don't know, make music that's similar to the kind that I actually listen to on a regular basis? Better understand its underpinnings and what makes it work in the ways that it does? No. Figured bass.

maroonblazer 21d ago
> The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. Are you this guy? https://youtu.be/u2NKodxRO4A?si=xdOd7I1f_rnFN85C&t=255 https://youtu.be/u2NKodxRO4A?si=xdOd7I1f_rnFN85C&t=255
mtizim 20d ago
Somebody ate Adam Neely's video hook line and sinker. I do agree, but I don't know how many generations will die before we can overturn the ridiculousness of the current approach. Even the book linked has some nice flowcharts of harmonic function, given as a useful tool for analysis and composing. Sadly, the theory fails almost instantly, defeated by the highly experimental niche piece of music called "Hotel California". However, bringing race and class into it, while true, does not help the argument, as most people you're trying to convince are already fully convinced of the supremacy of the German masters.

waffletower 21d ago

How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.

chrisjj 20d ago
Indeed. Like so many books of this type, better title would be "Our Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom".

larodi 21d ago

Music theory for the 21st century with notation from several centuries earlier. Hmm.... sorry but tracker's table-like views are much easier. And so are most DAWs gantt-like editors. 100 times easier to comprehend than notation having the same not written in three different ways, and then some.

dfltr 21d ago
The English language is messy as hell, and yet, here we are using it because it's a shared set of rules and symbols that pretty much everyone who wants to join in on this conversation already knows. Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
- odyssey7 21d ago
  > learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go A certain Amazon Web Services comes to mind…
- nwatson 21d ago
  The choir director at my church, Michael Dodds (UNCSA), covers the early development of musical notation, "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" [0]. Currently on sabbatical at Cambridge. Once in a while during rehearsal he will give an impromptu lecture on music history, always interesting. [0] https://a.co/d/0bLcrlyE https://a.co/d/0bLcrlyE
- larodi 20d ago
  No, English language is easy as sh... as piece of cake. A lot of it is marginalized French tbh, sorry, no offense, and the English in the USA is further simplified. You think tis difficult, because you never tried Russian, French, or Mandarin - then we discuss again. Had it not for the simplicity of English Language, it wouldn't be so omnipresent. So you are so wrong on this account. And I really want to see you communicate wobbling bass or fast random notes. Well you can - in Studel.cc - but is impossible in this notation. Same for complex drum sections (as in dnb, yes), and I can give you fair amount of other examples where medieval notation is useless.

chrisjj 21d ago

> On the piano there are 88 notes. 88 keys (usually) and unlimited notes.

shermantanktop 21d ago
I suppose a 1 key piano can have unlimited notes, at least until the key wears out.
- _carbyau_ 21d ago
  I hated Battlestar Galactica for this.

stackghost 21d ago

Suffers from the same problem that all music theory texts seem unable to avoid: they require the reader to simply accept a bunch of random facts to memorize with no context. Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so. Similar: in a major scale all notes are played and none are skipped or repeated. Except if your scale goes D–E–F#–G, in which case you skip F. The only way for this to be correct is apparently we consider F and F# to be the same note for purposes of scales even though this directly contradicts a previous section. I was expecting a “21st century” music theory reference to have an emphasis on building intuition. Music theorists are apparently allergic to good pedagogy.

scottious 21d ago
A better way to think about it is that all letters in the musical alphabet are represented in a musical scale. Some are sharp or flat D major: D E F♯ G A B C♯ D minor: D E F G A B♭ C Db major: D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C Db minor: D♭ E♭ F♭ G♭ A♭ B♭♭ C♭
- stackghost 21d ago
  Sure, I knew what they meant. But if they are sloppy with their terminology on the knucklehead stuff then it doesn’t bode well for the esoteric stuff to follow. My point was not to showcase my confusion, rather to reinforce the fact that music theory texts are just generally low quality, and music theory as a field seems to be okay with that.
  - deadfoxygrandpa 20d ago
    but it doesnt say that. you paraphrased the book in a way that makes it look sloppy but it was your paraphrased version which is sloppy. if you read through the book when it defines this stuff, it introduces accidentals as "characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them" and then in the section on the major scale it says "All major scales use the notes of the musical alphabet in order; no notes are skipped and no notes occur twice." i dont think this is ambiguous

SeanLuke 21d ago

I dunno. On first glance, for a "21st-Century" textbook, this seems to place a high emphasis on classical music theory, and moves very highly influential modern styles to the back burner -- notably jazz. And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian), nor current analysis of pop and rock music.

aanet 21d ago
> And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian)... To me, that above ^ looks like the biggest gap. To be fair, the book doesn't claim to demonstrate theory of the "world music" (sic, a phrase as bad as it sounds). My (brief and shallow) understanding is that most scholars of music in the western world just do not have enough knowledge to talk intelligently about non-western genres. Exceptions exist, of course, but they are quite rare. [Other reason is that there is a lot of gate-keeping. I've seen that in Hindustani/Carnatic classical studies, FWIW, which is one my areas of interest]
- quacked 21d ago
  I don't understand why this standard is always applied to westerners. When we go to other countries, are they explaining all the fundamentals of western music in addition to the theories of their own? "Yeah our students in Boston don't know anything about Carnatic rhythm, but over in Bengal they all learn counterpoint and fugue before they learn the traditional ornaments"
  - bluGill 20d ago
    I suspect given western dominance in economics others have exposure to western music traditions. I wouldn't expect exposure to traditions other than their own and western.
    - analog31 20d ago
      Indeed, the musical traditions of western Europe and Africa, forged together in the Americas, dominate world culture. Turn on the radio anywhere in the world and you will hear the influences of jazz, rock, funk, samba, hip-hop, etc.

sedivy94 21d ago

SVG illustrations, too? Delicious! This is how an online textbook should be done. Bravo.

zkanda 20d ago

I can't recommend enough Absolutely Understand Guitar[0], it's free and taught me music theory than any course I've ever tried. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pXCWAnIeTQyw_mvy1L7ryxxPH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pX...

simonebrunozzi 20d ago

Tangentially related: what would be the equivalent of this, but for learning how to play piano? "Piano learning for the 21st-Century middle age guy". Any help is appreciated! Including a device, or a service, that could be particularly useful.

AlecSchueler 20d ago
Not really a device or a service, but I'd recommend learning the names of the notes and then just tinkering around. If you notice some patterns or wonder about specific things that come up in the course of that, look it up. If your hand starts to hurt, look up what to do differently. Etc. You'll manage it quite well with that method.

casey_lang 20d ago

I've also been recommended to Open Music Theory, as a beginner to theory. Has anyone compared the two? https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/introduction/ https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/int...

nomel 20d ago

The fact that the equation 440 * 2^((n-49)/12) is nowhere to be found makes me strongly disagree.

treebeard901 20d ago
The history around how 440hz came to be the standard is pretty interesting in itself.

salt_pine 19d ago

'21st-Century' in the title is doing the work of distinguishing, not describing. An open-licensed textbook with homework is the actual novelty, and that's worth putting in the title.