[HN Gopher] Toward a Better Music Theory (2013)
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Toward a Better Music Theory (2013)
Author : brudgers
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-08-04 15:02 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ethanhein.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ethanhein.com)
| zokier wrote:
| My music theory is very weak, but I have some difficulty
| understanding the point of supermode; if it includes 10 out of
| the 12 notes, then does it really function as a scale anymore or
| would it be just simpler to think in terms of the chromatic scale
| and abandon modes altogether?
| spekcular wrote:
| I have a more conservative critique of traditional music theory,
| along the same lines. Forget pop, jazz, and rock - standard music
| theory courses don't even equip students to properly analyze
| Western art from music the late romantic period, including things
| like impressionism. Most voice leading textbooks have very little
| material on post 1850-ish classical music, and some have
| essentially nothing. They seem to focus on Mozart, Beehoven,
| Haydn, etc., or aspects of later music amendable to the
| analytical tools they develop for those classical period
| composers.
|
| Here's an exercise you can try. Choose a more harmonically
| adventurous French or Russian composer from around the turn of
| the 20th century (perhaps Debussy, Ravel, Scriabian, maybe even
| Shostakovitch), and get some sheet music for a solo piano piece
| off the internet. Grab any of the standard college harmony
| textbooks and attempt to write down a harmonic analysis of that
| piece. You're going to have trouble.
| ybroze wrote:
| Maybe -- but the context to understand what Debussy and Ravel
| were doing (maybe not Scriabin) is to get the Bach / Haydn /
| Mozart / Beethoven / Schubert under your belt.
|
| Source: I've taught this at university.
| sh4rks wrote:
| I don't see how the supermode can be useful to anyone starting to
| learn music theory. The hard part is figuring out the rhythm,
| vocabulary, and phrasing that make those notes sound "good".
|
| I still think one of the best ways of learning theory (for guitar
| at least) is to start with the pentatonic and diatonic scales,
| then add triads and "colour" notes.
|
| I'm curious to know other people's opinions though.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yeah, I don't quite see what the notion of the "supermode" does
| for anyone, either.
|
| Maybe he's going to elaborate it somewhere else? Or just hoping
| that someone else does.
| diydsp wrote:
| it's a useful device like the circle of fifths but i don't
| see it displacing existing models.
| xor99 wrote:
| I think these basic arguments are valuable and musicians should
| be focussed on whether a better understanding of music theory
| actually produces music with desirable qualities such as
| surprisal (e.g. that moment when Dj Screw slowed the record or
| groups of monks decided to chant together etc).
|
| IMO the answer is a big nope. One reason is that music theory is
| always explicated in retrospect and contributes little to the
| invention of new music or enjoyment. It's useful (not devaluing
| it wholesale) if you want to do x in the style of y (e.g. I want
| this to sound like Miles Davis!). H/w an accurate picture of
| musical performance and general cultural activity surrounding
| would never reduce it all to just that.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Trad theory will enhance existing talent but do nothing for
| people who have no instinct for music, no matter how much
| learning they do.
|
| It's very directly and obviously useful for certain kinds of
| music, especially Hollywood pastiche and some genres of game
| soundtracks.
|
| It's also very handy in some areas of pop. Pop's dirty secret
| is that a lot of it is written/arranged by professionals with
| some kind of classical background. The lead band/artist are
| typically front people for an entire team which includes a
| producer, various engineers, and possibly session players and
| arrangers. These people don't get a lot of attention, and only
| industry insiders have heard of them. But they have a huge
| impact on pop of all kinds.
|
| Vocal harmonies, string parts, and sometimes brass parts have
| to be written and arranged, and that's a challenge for anyone
| without dot-writing skills.
|
| But there's also a kind of fluency and ease that comes with
| solid training, and that spills over into vocal and
| instrumental contributions of all kinds.
|
| Trad theory on its own doesn't _guarantee_ interesting or
| successful music. There are plenty of composition graduates who
| have no feel for the art of music at all.
|
| It also doesn't help with transformative developments and new
| techniques.
|
| But it's far from useless. People with solid theory skills and
| some creative flair are in a sweet spot that's hard to beat.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I find it best to think of music theory as a language musicians
| can use to describe what they just _did_ , not what they are
| about to do.
|
| That's likely to be true even if/when we improve "music theory"
| to cover much more than 18th century European harmonic forms.
| xor99 wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense!
| sseagull wrote:
| Pretty much. It helps with giving language and notation to
| particular sounds. It condenses sounds to something you can
| write down and communicate, without having to think of each
| note individually.
|
| It's like design patterns for music. Not necessarily
| prescriptive (it's your music, do whatever you want), but
| helpful for reducing music into something more concrete.
|
| It has helped me a lot in learning (classical) music. It's
| also kind of like watching a sport where you understand the
| rules vs. one you don't - knowing the "rules" helps you
| engage more, and peek into the composer's mind, or give you
| ideas for your own compositions.
| klik99 wrote:
| For me theory is most important as a debugging tool - I write
| without considering it and if something sounds "off" in a bad
| way theory will often help me pinpoint why. It's also useful
| for analysis when I'm trying to capture a certain sound. Either
| way it is not a composition tool and shouldn't taught that way
| except for exercises to understand theory.
| superb-owl wrote:
| The author mentions the data is available, but the link appears
| to be dead. Anyone know where it might live?
| pjbk wrote:
| The main problem I see with (occidental) "music theory" is its
| historical baggage. Most of it is useful, beautiful by its own
| merits but, specially if you have a scientific/logic way of
| looking things, much of its structure and nomenclature really
| gets in the way. After many years of doing false starts I sat one
| day, started from scratch, looked at just the facts (= math), and
| then everything fell together:
|
| - The Pythagoreans dealt for centuries with the known conundrum
| of figuring out irrational numbers. I had a computer so I just
| run a script for measuring the total error with different
| bisecting rational quantizations (up to 256 IIRC) of note
| frequencies in the equal-tempered scale within one octave
| (2^(1/N) splits). Oh, peaks at 12, 19 at 24 on the low side of
| the counter. That is why they settled on 12 notes, middle eastern
| has 24 (just double the resolution) and why 19 also sounds good
| [1]. 12 seems like the minimum acceptable then. Ok, 10 minutes,
| move on.
|
| - Since we know we can only approximate to irrationals and our
| brain tries to makes things even, moving through scales with
| increasing intervals (2^(n/12)) will normally accumulate
| "tension". Half notes sound spooky. Whole notes are a bit better.
| Too bad sound perception is logarithmic (= tempered scale) and
| has non-linear compression on both amplitude and frequency
| (Fletcher-Munson, etc). Double the frequency is an octave.
| Perfect fit, brain happy (2^(12/12)). Try to split an octave in
| half? Again, fitting a peg in the only wrong hole available when
| using half-note resolution. Welcome to accidentals and the Circle
| of Fifths. "Try", because of course you can't: 2^(7/12) =
| 1.498307.... Close to 150%, but no cigar. Close enough for a
| crippled monkey brain that can only hear up to 20kHz or so. They
| even named it "Perfect". Moving up: F to C, G to D, A to E...
|
| - Music would be very dull and inadequate if we cannot shift
| notes up or down. However our brain still recognizes the
| patterns. We can even play those patterns at the same time, even
| on different instruments. So that pattern with the same scale on
| a G sounds good with the other guy playing C (harmonies). What if
| the guy playing the C wants to play like the guy on the G? Enter
| modes... Oh yeah, cool Myxolydian tunes. And minor scale too -
| don't forget that looks THE SAME as an Aeolian.
|
| - Your new singer cannot hit that low notes. What about now
| moving everything up then? Transpose. We have "physical
| instruments" like a guitar. Easy, just play the same pattern some
| frets up. Done. Poor piano player who has a "logical instrument"
| with notes separated nicely in two different kinds based on half
| notes and that ugly 1.498307 fraction. Good that he is also good
| at math. So that C scale becomes a D. He just replaces on the fly
| some white keys with black keys... F# and C#. But wait a sec.
| Didn't the Circle of Fifths also moved F to C too? Does it
| continue like that for all notes? Yes it does! Transposing has
| the same structure as modes the other way around! So what if
| instead of moving up we move down, or play the same pattern in
| the original C scale? For every raised (sharp) accidental we get
| it's complement lowered (flat) one. Of course, since 7 + 5 = 12!
| The Circle of Fifth is complete. B to E, A to D, G to C... That G
| pattern moved down to C? G major scale (aka Ionian) has one
| accidental: F#. The first flat is Bb. C scale with B lowered to
| Bb... Yep, Myxolydian indeed!
|
| - We can also use those interval numbers to name chords when we
| play notes together. We can also name the scales when adding and
| removing notes, maybe borrowing from other scales. Sounds
| pentatonic or exotic. The sky is the limit.
|
| - Piano player now teases the guitar player. Now it's her turn to
| do the math. Looks like "physical" and "logical" instruments are
| also complementary. What is easy on one needs thinking on the
| other, and vice-versa. Win-win.
|
| Honestly, that covers like 95% of practical music note theory. Of
| course there is much more to it (note, rhythm, history, etc). If
| they have just started explaining it like that without all the
| mumbo-jumbo it would have made sense since day #1 and I would
| have saved many years of my life hitting my head in the wall and
| trying to learn things I forgot within a week. Perhaps the main
| issue is that not many music teachers are good at math or they
| would think their students would get scared if they told them
| it's all math underneath?
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_equal_temperament
| khitchdee wrote:
| Equal temperament makes it easier to design simple musical
| instruments. Older music and current music in other genres
| (e.g. Indian Classical) is based on a harmonic scale, taking
| its roots in vocal music.
| ybroze wrote:
| Read this.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BT17M4S/
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The title is a bit misleading. I was expecting some polemic about
| Western music ignoring indigenous peoples, etc. etc.
|
| Instead, I kinda liked it. I took some classical piano and my
| teacher got very impatient with me approaching some pieces like a
| jazz musician would: assigning chords to measures that were quite
| obviously melodies over those chords. She was all about plagal
| cadences and all that stuff she learned at Oberlin.
|
| The Bach Prelude in C is especially entertaining to treat that
| way. There's one bar near the end that it's almost impossible to
| give a chord symbol to.
| ybroze wrote:
| Yeah, Rameau is the "Louie, Louie" French fellow who was the
| "Newton of Music" who gave us the Roman numeral notation, while
| the Germans were still doing counterpoint and harmonics.
|
| I very seriously believe there's a link between that, the
| revolutionary attitudes and kinship of the French and
| Americans, with the Rock and Roll movement of the 1950s /
| 1960s.
| ybroze wrote:
| Plagality is a pretty deep musical concept within tonality,
| though -- you have to deeply grok counterpoint and tonal
| harmony first, and then you can start to hear and perceive
| different aspects of tonal gravity.
|
| For plagality, it's the "dark side" of the tritone,
| specifically with iio or iv6.
|
| Start putting together that tritone with the major standards of
| viideg or V7, and you're really rolling with the joy of
| traditional harmony.
| ybroze wrote:
| For further reading, this was
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Riemann and harmonic
| dualism.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| khitchdee wrote:
| Based on the standard tuning of a guitar E, A, D, G, B, E and
| assuming you use E as your tonic, the scale I, 2, 3-flat, 4, 5,
| 6, 7-flat which translates to E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D should be a
| base scale. If you strum a guitar open, all the strings fall
| within this scale. It does have a flat seventh and a
| corresponding flat third.
|
| If you take out the 2 and the 6, this becomes the Minor
| Pentatonic Scale.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > It would be better to have some hard data on what we all
| collectively think makes for valid music.
|
| "Valid"? As opposed to "invalid music"?
|
| > As you'd expect, the tonic I is the most commonly-used chord in
| the Rolling Stone corpus.
|
| If it wouldn't be the most used, would it be used as point of
| reference and called the tonic?
|
| > Rock uses plenty of V-I, but it uses even more IV-I. And the
| third most common pre-tonic chord in rock is not ii, like you'd
| expect if you went to music school; it's bVII, reflecting rock
| musicians' love of Mixolydian mode.
|
| I-V and IV-V seems to be the same with the point of reference
| moved to IV. And IV-bVII-V is I-IV-V.
|
| Is a fixed point of reference really needed? Doesn't it just add
| unnecessary complexity?
| spekcular wrote:
| > If it wouldn't be the most used, would it be used as point of
| reference and called the tonic?
|
| Yes. The tonic is determined by what the key is, not what chord
| is most used. (It's hard to establish the key without slipping
| the tonic in somewhere, but that doesn't mean it needs to
| appear frequently.)
|
| > I-V and IV-V seems to be the same with the point of reference
| moved to IV. And IV-bVII-V is I-IV-V.
|
| I don't think this is right. V-I has the root moving by a 5th,
| while IV-V moves by a second. And the second example can't be
| right because the relative distances of the roots of the first
| and last chords are different (again, a second versus a fifth).
|
| > Is a fixed point of reference really needed? Doesn't it just
| add unnecessary complexity?
|
| Yes, it's a useful analytical tool.
| nateburke wrote:
| Do not forget that Bach's music needed to feed 20 of his children
| over the course of his life. (10 survived)
|
| I have a hard time believing that he was intentionally carving
| out the rules of eg _Gradus ad Parnassum_ rather than
| consistently trying to make music that sounded good with good
| timbre given the constraints of his living situation and
| employer.
|
| What seems prescriptive to the children is often originally
| descriptive to the elders.
| spekcular wrote:
| He was definitely aiming for a certain style, which involved
| following certain rules. There are surviving draft manuscripts
| where he makes edits to follow voice-writing rules like
| avoiding parallel fifths, etc. It seems pretty clear based on
| this (and his training, and even a cursory study of what he
| wrote) that his compositional practice was intensely
| theoretical. The dude was not out there freestyling.
|
| In fact, the places where he broke certain fundamental rules
| are so rare that they form a rather short list, despite his
| voluminous output: https://www.bach-
| chorales.com/ConsecutivesInChorales.htm.
| rybosome wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| polotics wrote:
| Totally agreeing with the article, this "supermode" ie in C: all
| white keys plus Eb, Ab, Bb, is exactly what my rock band's
| noodles have intuitively followed.
| eunoia wrote:
| In the context of existing music theory that supermode could be
| considered Eb/Cm.
|
| I've been learning a couple pop songs lately that essentially
| seem to use this supermode by switching between the major and
| minor on verse/chorus. Seems pretty versatile.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| ybroze wrote:
| Coming from this field personally, this feels like typical
| Temperley and de Clerq sorts of things. Davie Temperley was in
| David Huron's lab once upon a time, I believe.
|
| The systematic musicology world, especially the portion doing
| corpus studies, often is just doing descriptive research. The
| article linked is a bit more prescriptive.
|
| The best book on music theory ever written, IMO, is David Huron's
| "Voice Leading -- The Science Behind a Musical Art." Definitely
| recommend.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BT17M4S/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
| ybroze wrote:
| This article is about "we should change things because we know
| more!" Huron has always been more about "we should know more!"
|
| For me, I'm with the latter.
| ybroze wrote:
| This is my corpus study. https://online.ucpress.edu/mp/article-
| abstract/31/1/32/62590...
| jrajav wrote:
| I strongly agree with the article's premise! I also agree with
| this guidepost for how we should be moving music theory past its
| highly entrenched and institutional attitudes:
|
| > We should be asking: what is it that musicians are doing that
| sounds good? What patterns can we detect in the broad mass of
| music being made and enjoyed out there in the world?
|
| I would personally add one more leading question: Can we explain
| music in other ways than by its harmony and chords?
|
| A harmonic approach to analysis works fantastic for old European
| music, and pretty damn well for jazz too. For rock, it starts to
| oddly leave out important aspects of the music like rhythm,
| timbre, the way effects like distortion inform the harmony, vocal
| delivery, etc. And in the modern era, with all the advances and
| innovations made in the last 30 years in the now dominant genres
| of hip hop, pop, and electronic music, harmonic analysis is very
| poorly equipped to make sense of things in any meaningful way.
|
| One music theorist who is attempting more competent analysis of
| contemporary music is https://www.youtube.com/c/12tonevideos. I'd
| love to see more of this.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > the advances and innovations made in the last 30 years in the
| now dominant genres of hip hop, pop, and electronic music.
|
| Not all changes are advances.
| jrajav wrote:
| Those genres are far and away the most popular forms of music
| for an entire generation now, and exhibit a high degree of
| craftsmanship with techniques never used before them. Whether
| you personally enjoy the music or not, an honest academic
| exploration of music would seek to understand and explain
| what makes those styles of music tick.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you stick to "popular" I'm fine with it. Tastes change.
|
| It's the word "advances" which I object to. There's a value
| judgment attached to that.
| cjaybo wrote:
| I don't think "advances" implies that something is
| subjectively better, but that it builds upon previous
| techniques and methods in some way.
|
| You can dislike synthesizers and samples all you want,
| but there's no denying that they opened up new creative
| avenues for composers and sound designers.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| OK. Fine with me. "Your music sucks" is a totally dead
| end and I'm not going there.
|
| What I _will_ say is, arts do not advance linearly, more
| or less, like science does. You can 't say that drama has
| "advanced" since Shakespeare -- it's just changed. So
| "what's popular?" is not a shorthand for "what's good?"
| pvg wrote:
| Interesting conversation involves exchanging value
| judgements rather than pedantipoints.
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