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There are certain rules and conventions in theory - avoiding consective ocatives, fidths and ensuring melody and bass )function alternately. Certain chaps (DIck Wagner and John Bach) have broken two of those plenty of times. I just opened the score to the St John Passion to find alt least one broken rule.
But they do so effectively. The metal I may hear sounds boring from the lazy chording used. With the huge amount of music to hear now listeners have choices and I'd rather hear something where someone cares about their music rather than going for a lazy hack (so much metal which can veer from the corny to the great).
Theory is good for arranging and knowing how to transpose especially for a singer or how to really extend a piece without a sudden (horrible) key change. For composition it's good for knowing if you are going to put a "wrong" note somewhere, whether it is correct or not and why. For instance there are actually 10 notes per scale! Most think there are 8. (The dominant 7th notes of the I and IV chords are all unacknowledged in the signature accidentals.
It's the written version of language as playing is the oral part of the language. Anyway it's often the rhythm that really defines how things happen.
The understanding of theory and the assessment of a piece is noted in the perennial discussion over Wolfie's intention over his Allegro in the 40th a long time favourite number of mine. Fun to play (the bits I can anyway)...
Composer's intention - to finish the thing. Composer's hope - someone likes it.
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Posted: September 17 2014 at 02:39
"There are certain rules and conventions in theory"................
.. which is why theory is boring. And produces boring, predictable music. By the same token, you don't want to produce a cacophony, so it's knowing when and how to break the rules which is important. (c.f. Zappa et al.)
I only need to look at most world music to realise that the rules of music theory can easily be broken. Most Islamic and Indian music works on a set of concepts and scales completely alien to Western theory. There is no real musical theory there, just guidelines in construction. And yet it works.
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Posted: September 17 2014 at 04:37
Davesax1965 wrote:
"There are certain rules and conventions in theory"................
.. which is why theory is boring. And produces boring, predictable music. By the same token, you don't want to produce a cacophony, so it's knowing when and how to break the rules which is important. (c.f. Zappa et al.)
I only need to look at most world music to realise that the rules of music theory can easily be broken. Most Islamic and Indian music works on a set of concepts and scales completely alien to Western theory. There is no real musical theory there, just guidelines in construction. And yet it works.
You cannot regulate "art".
I disagree. All forms of music regardless of their place of origin has a music theory to describe it. Eastern music has real musical theory, you say it sounds alien to Western theory but it is not completely alien, it has the same basic tenets of scales, note length and note intervals, meters, rhythms and tempo that are common to all forms of human created music, they have different 'rule-sets' to describe the music produced but the basics are the same.
Music theory describes the practice of making music, it is an after the effect analysis of what music is. What it is not is a set of rules that determine what music should be, there are no [unbreakable] rules in music theory. All music (whether boring or not) is described by Music Theory.
This sounds counter-intuitive because what we use to describe a chord or a scale certainly appears to be a rule-set, and it is something that is hammered into us when we learn music or learn to play an instrument, we diligently learn our scales by rote and by heart. Yet self-taught musicians and musicians with no formal training pick up those scales "by ear" - they are note-intervals that sound right when played together (and there are good mathematical reasons for that that I'll not go into). Every form of music played throughout the world (and from the archaeological evidence, throughout human history) shares similar sequences of note-intervals that can be described as a scale (or mode).
For example if we state that the note intervals are {tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone} then we have described a major scale, and that scale existed in practice long before anyone (such as Pythagoras) analysed it and described it. That interval-set works no matter which note we use as the starting note, we can shift those intervals up and down the piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and every scale we play will be a major scale and that starting note will be the key to unlocking that scale. So now it appears we have two 'rules', one for creating a major scale and one for transposing it to a different key.
Musicians found that even though the major scale sounded good there were note combinations within the scale that didn't sound good when played together, by omitting those notes from the scale they found that they could play any sequence of the remaining notes and it would sound good (where that "good" is 'harmonic'). This omission of notes is not breaking the 'interval rule' of the major scale, it is describing a different 'rule'. Music theory observes and describes the remaining notes and from that it can be observed that the omitted notes where those whose interval to the next note was a semitone {tone, tone, semitone + tone, tone, tone + semitone}, and that gives a different interval-set and a different 'rule' - which is that of the major pentatonic scale. Again this 'rule' was used in music long before anyone analysed it or created a formal theory to describe it, moreover it is a universal scale that can be found in every form of music, from India to Indonesia, from Arabia to Japan, from Africa to Europe; the Indonesian Gamelan and a peel of bells in a Norman church are both pentatonic. Music Theory describes World Music.
The thing with rules is that one has to know them to break them and when. Once upon a time the diminished interval was a complete no no. It took chaps like Beethoven to tell 'em to get stuffed, he'll do his Gross Fuge.
Another thing with rules is to prevent music from being boring, keep the detail alive and fresh. Not to mention hoow to keep solos alive and ensemble playing tight.
Having said that, listening to such absolutely correct academic music can drain the life out of it, the importance of being correct is paramount in those circles. But the right intervals in the right order stops the strings and voices from crossing the harmonies - unless there;s an intention for say, a bass fill to ascend. It's really just making the road smoother and easier to drive on rather than having pot holes knocking hell out your suspension - or hearing....
My oldest friend, a guy I've known since I was 3, is currently doing a PhD in physics while taking a philosophy course. Strange mix, but highly interesting - at least to the likes of me. Anyway, we've often talked about the 'language' or 'recipe' for highly complex things often works in hindsight. Fx, relegating the inner workings of a wave in mathematical terms is indeed very possible, but the fluctuations and ever twisting harmonics of the natural world restricts us from being able to accurately foresee how a wave will behave.
I see music in much the same manner. All music can be relegated in a 'recipe' of notes and keys, but it's the small fluctuations coming from the human playing that really sets it off. I love the illogical about music - when things do not follow the recipe - when mistakes are used and in turn come off as something completely different. Just ask Jimi Hendrix or the guys from Amon Düül ll;)
In that respect, you could say that the way I feel about music rather mimics the inner workings of flight - as nimbly explained by the great Douglas Adams below in my sig.
“The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
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Posted: September 17 2014 at 21:42
Guldbamsen wrote:
My oldest friend, a guy I've known since I was 3, is currently doing a PhD in physics while taking a philosophy course. Strange mix, but highly interesting - at least to the likes of me. Anyway, we've often talked about the 'language' or 'recipe' for highly complex things often works in hindsight. Fx, relegating the inner workings of a wave in mathematical terms is indeed very possible, but the fluctuations and ever twisting harmonics of the natural world restricts us from being able to accurately foresee how a wave will behave. I see music in much the same manner. All music can be relegated in a 'recipe' of notes and keys, but it's the small fluctuations coming from the human playing that really sets it off. I love the illogical about music - when things do not follow the recipe - when mistakes are used and in turn come off as something completely different. Just ask Jimi Hendrix or the guys from Amon Düül ll;) In that respect, you could say that the way I feel about music rather mimics the inner workings of flight - as nimbly explained by the great Douglas Adams below in my sig.
I don't think any of that is restricted by music theory or by an understanding of music theory. How a piece is played is nothing to do with theory. Music theory cannot (and does not) describe emotion, that is the art of the musician.
As some dude¹ said, "there is no such thing as a wrong note" ... the same dude also said "It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong." ... and of course we can use Music Theory to explain why that is so and how it works; and there are recipes and rules that can help chose that second note, first of which is "do what worked before" (which is all a rule is when you think about it). Musicians who don't use formal Music Theory use the "do what worked before" rule all the time, and that is informal Music Theory.
Jam-bands and other bands and musicians that improvise music do that a lot, which is why I argue that improvisation is not "a stream of subconsciousness" nor does it come from some magical realm or zone, it comes from experience and practice, it comes from knowing which notes can be played next because they worked before. This is why some improvs are interesting while most are arse-numbingly boring - the mistakes seldom come off something completely different because the "what worked before" recipe for fixing the mistake have a habit of being completely the same every time.
This is not instinctive - it has to be learnt². A non-musician will not know how to resolve a "wrong" note but with practice and experience it does become second nature so the musician doesn't have to consciously think about the next note to play, he just plays it - and there is no magic to that.
¹ It was Miles Davies, it's always Miles Davies, he also said "don't fear mistakes, there are none"
² If I asked you to add 5 to 4 you would not have to think about the answer nor would you count 5 then 4 on your fingers, you just know the answer is 9. The reason you know that is because years ago you learnt the sum "5+4=9", committed it to memory and can give the answer with out thinking. No one instinctively knows that 4 added to 5 gives a total of 9, it has to be learnt.
² If I asked you to add 5 to 4 you would not have to think about the answer nor would you count 5 then 4 on your fingers, you just know the answer is 9. The reason you know that is because years ago you learnt the sum "5+4=9", committed it to memory and can give the answer with out thinking. No one instinctively knows that 4 added to 5 gives a total of 9, it has to be learnt.
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Posted: September 18 2014 at 02:31
Epignosis wrote:
Dean wrote:
² If I asked you to add 5 to 4 you would not have to think about the answer nor would you count 5 then 4 on your fingers, you just know the answer is 9. The reason you know that is because years ago you learnt the sum "5+4=9", committed it to memory and can give the answer with out thinking. No one instinctively knows that 4 added to 5 gives a total of 9, it has to be learnt.
Common Core Curriculum in America:
Oh my, they made a meal out of that. While it isn't really what Common Core is about the method is one that is not uncommon, my wife uses that rounding-up method, especially when sorting change (aka coinage, money, spondula, shrapnel) and she can arrive at the answer a lot quicker than I can. Obviously no one will ever use it to add 6 to 9 in reality, with all single digit maths we commit the result to memory and it will just be a means to memorise the result so I guess it's intended for the addition of bigger numbers that we don't memorise the answer to.
However, that's way off topic and from what I've read on the internet it is seriously political, perhaps it warrants its own GD thread but I suspect that will simply turn into a pointless sl*g.ing match.
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Posted: September 18 2014 at 05:39
The "no such thing as a wrong note"... is actually a quote from Ornette Coleman, a free jazz saxophonist. He said "There's no such thing as a wrong note played with the right intention". I think he's right, but I can't stand him as a sax player. ;-)
Good post, Dean. Emotion is indeed the language of the musician. I get all these people telling me that music is about mathematics or theory...... it's not. Music is what emotions sound like. And there's another quote. ;-)
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Posted: September 18 2014 at 06:03
Davesax1965 wrote:
The "no such thing as a wrong note"... is actually a quote from Ornette Coleman, a free jazz saxophonist. He said "There's no such thing as a wrong note played with the right intention". I think he's right, but I can't stand him as a sax player. ;-)
Good post, Dean. Emotion is indeed the language of the musician. I get all these people telling me that music is about mathematics or theory...... it's not. Music is what emotions sound like. And there's another quote. ;-)
The quote is variously attributed to several people including Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk and several have added their own version of "with the right intention" to it.
Music is about lots of things, as I have attempted to show, maths and theory only describe what music is, not what it is about. I can explain mathematically why two notes will sound harmonious or dissonant and nothing will ever change that, the mathematics can never describe how those two notes affect the listener.
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Posted: September 19 2014 at 03:07
[/QUOTE]
I disagree. All forms of music regardless of their place of origin has a music theory to describe it. Eastern music has real musical theory, you say it sounds alien to Western theory but it is not completely alien, it has the same basic tenets of scales, note length and note intervals, meters, rhythms and tempo that are common to all forms of human created music, they have different 'rule-sets' to describe the music produced but the basics are the same.
[/QUOTE]
Hi Dean, yes and no. Eastern maqams are not constructed in anything like a similar way to Western music or use scales in the same way that Western music does. 17 notes per octave in Eastern music, remember ? ;-) (24 in some cases.) Indian music uses - in the main - a completely different method of construction, too. As for meters, nope. The meters and rhythms of, say, Moroccan gnawa music or the music of Istanbul are completely alien to Western music. OK, you can have a 9/8 time signature in Western music but the beat emphasis is completely different.
[/QUOTE] Yet self-taught musicians and musicians with no formal training pick up those scales "by ear" - they are note-intervals that sound right when played together (and there are good mathematical reasons for that that I'll not go into). Every form of music played throughout the world (and from the archaeological evidence, throughout human history) shares similar sequences of note-intervals that can be described as a scale (or mode).
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely, and this is what people forget. It is possible to play by ear alone. This is what I'm saying, *musicians get hung up by believing they have to learn musical theory and that they have to relate everything back to theory before they can play anything*. As a matter of fact, you don't. You can play by ear, and this is the important thing in music, because it's the basis of improvisation, which is - to me, anyway, true music.
So what I'm saying is please forget all your music theory, folks. Learn it, but only learn it as far as you need it, ie. to gain a basic understanding and then play from ear from there. What I see is an infinite number of guitarists who just sit at home playing scales up and down up and down up and down until that's all they can do. They forget to *play the damn guitar*
[/QUOTE]Music Theory describes World Music.
[/QUOTE]
Er, sorry, Dean. Music theory can be *used* to describe world music, but world music is so varied that whilst music theory can be bent to a description of it, it's occasionally a very bad translation. ;-)
Edited by Davesax1965 - September 19 2014 at 03:08
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Posted: September 19 2014 at 04:33
Erm. I said Music Theory, not Western Music Theory, Music Theory encompasses all hemispheres; Music Theory = Western Music Theory + Middle Eastern Music Theory + Eastern Music Theory + etc.
Music Theory covers atonal and microtonal scales and all ports in between. Ignoring regional variations in pitch and temperament, the music composed does not use every note in the 12/17/24 note scales and the notes chosen are those that work well together. Theory did not dictate which notes to use, musicians found those notes "by ear" and the Theory later explained why that was so, we use the Theory as a convention so we don't have to use trial and error every time. This is a common convention in the music of any hemisphere, the basic raga in Indian music is a melody formed from five notes from the full Indian scale, those basic five notes are pentatonic in nature.
9/8 time can have the beat emphasis wherever you want it to be, the common western convention is to split it into a triple compound (3+3+3) but this is not a fixed rule, some Irish music places the emphasis on the 5th and 9th beat, and other Western music splits it into non-triple compounds (2+2+2+3 a la Blue Rondo, Apocalypse in 9/8 goes 3+2+4). All this is covered by Music Theory.
I also made no distinction between informal music theory (playing by ear) and formal Music Theory. Playing by ear finds what works, Music Theory describes why it works.
As you said earlier: "...you don't want to produce a cacophony, so it's knowing when and how to break the rules which is important." ... Improvisation does not throw theory (informal or formal) out of the window, quite the opposite, it generally adheres more rigidly to convention than formal composition... It's fun to play but can be arse-numbing to listen to.
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Posted: September 19 2014 at 05:18
Yeah, I get the impression that as many of the last 60 years or so's breakthroughs within music theory have come from developments in jazz/improv rather than "classical" orchestral music. Even within the context of something like free jazz, you need to know the rules in order to successfully work around them if they shape audience expectations just through "cultural osmosis". This I'm saying as someone who doesn't get that much closer to real jazz than Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. Popular audiences might not know that much theory, but by trickling down through discourse of music through writing and musicians themselves it still informs ideas of what music is capable of in composition and performance.
One example is that even with the rudimentary music theory knowledge I mentioned in the opening post, I still have the ability to sense to the point a piece of music sounds awkward or off-kilter is by design or by accident: Basically if there's some kind of coherent system to how the music deviates from the standardized norm of its style. It's what differentiates Celtic Frost and Voivod's earliest records from so many other no-fi early-1980s metal records lacking traditional technical proficiency. (one reason I think the latter is so underrated on this site)
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Posted: September 19 2014 at 05:36
Toaster Mantis wrote:
Yeah, I get the impression that as many of the last 60 years or so's breakthroughs within music theory have come from developments in jazz/improv rather than "classical" orchestral music. Even within the context of something like free jazz, you need to know the rules in order to successfully work around them if they shape audience expectations just through "cultural osmosis". This I'm saying as someone who doesn't get that much closer to real jazz than Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. Popular audiences might not know that much theory, but by trickling down through discourse of music through writing and musicians themselves it still informs ideas of what music is capable of in composition and performance.
One example is that even with the rudimentary music theory knowledge I mentioned in the opening post, I still have the ability to sense to the point a piece of music sounds awkward or off-kilter is by design or by accident: Basically if there's some kind of coherent system to how the music deviates from the standardized norm of its style. It's what differentiates Celtic Frost and Voivod's earliest records from so many other no-fi early-1980s metal records lacking traditional technical proficiency. (one reason I think the latter is so underrated on this site)
This. This times all the this-es .
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Well all that music theory really does is to offer up a universal music language. Now whether that is preferable is something I leave entirely up to the different musicians out there. I do however think there are places, even in rock music, where it's recommendable to have your theory up to scratch.....playing with Zappa for instance.
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Posted: September 19 2014 at 09:41
As an analogy, music theory is physics. You don't consider physics when catching a ball. You learn the principles and just do it. It is important to know the rules. As it is to, say, know the rules of a language.
On this Dean and I agree, it seems. However, it's the method of delivery we appear to be at odds on (and some other minor stuff. ;-) ) - if I get a sax out, after 40 years of playing and go on stage and blow, what happens is that I think music and music comes out of the end of the sax, without me being consciously aware of constructing it, what theory applies and even the fact that my fingers are moving. It just happens. The fact is, there is tons of theory somewhere in my head, but it's not at the front of my thoughts when playing, otherwise I couldn't play. I'd be too busy thinking.
If you learn to play an instrument, theory is something you have to know. However, the purpose of playing an instrument.... is to play. A lot of classically trained players sit there with the sheet music (or tab, in the case of a lot of guitarists) and when you remove it, they're lost. Do not, whatever you do, think that theory is music. Theory is just theory.
If you spend 10 years thinking "scales go up, scales go down", then you end up just being able to play scales which.... go up and down. I showed some hopeless case the notes of a minor pentatonic blues scale a few years back and he said "which notes do you bend ? " - Will, put the guitar back in the case, honestly, put the case under the bed, leave it there.
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Posted: September 20 2014 at 07:09
Davesax1965 wrote:
Indian music uses - in the main - a completely different method of construction, too.
Could you elaborate on that because this statement makes me quite curious. Because our ragas/modes are quite similar to Western scales with the difference being that the name of the raga does not change only based on the absolute notes being played; rather it depends on the relative locations of the notes. But the construction of a melodic phrase is not drastically different in Indian music vis a vis Western music. The main difference is our melodies are much more intricate (whereas we have no harmony or just one note harmony) but it's essentially the same phrase embellished a lot more to give it a curvy shape that Western melodies don't have (in comparison). And this is not just my observation. The Indian composer Ilayaraja made the same observation when asked how he was able to fuse Western and Indian. He said he heard Indian ragas in J S Bach's compositions, just minus the ornamentation and thus concluded they were essentially one and the same. I think it would be safe to say he knows a damn sight more about both forms of music than either of us. In the same vein, I have watched Shakti perform (RIP U Shrinivas) and observed first hand what I had already heard before in their recorded output - McLaughlin comfortably slipping in phrases that would fit note for note in Western music even as he performed within the boundaries of music that was largely Hindustani-based. I have often wondered if misconception and prejudice, rather than any logical impossibilities, make it so difficult to establish common ground between the two schools.
It is of course quite possible you mean something entirely different by the word construction so I shall look forward to your response.
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Posted: September 21 2014 at 06:51
It would be interesting here to look into the classical music traditions of cultures that aren't of Indo-European origin at all, Japan or Korea for instance, and compare their underlying systems of modes/scales/phrases.
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The importance of music theory
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Davesax1965 wrote:
While it isn't really what Common Core is about the method is one that is not uncommon, my wife uses that rounding-up method, especially when sorting change (aka coinage, money, spondula, shrapnel) and she can arrive at the answer a lot quicker than I can. Obviously no one will ever use it to add 6 to 9 in reality, with all single digit maths we commit the result to memory and it will just be a means to memorise the result so I guess it's intended for the addition of bigger numbers that we don't memorise the answer to.
.