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Comments
I don’t think I’m spreading misconceptions. My perception is based on what I’ve experienced, and I’ve seen it here, too. Less so in this thread, but elsewhere on the forum, where (for example) people have decried ambient and experimental music because it doesn’t fit in with their (rigid and conservative - small c) view of theory. To the extent that anything that doesn’t fit in that framework is branded as being at best substandard, at worst disqualified from being music at all.
Even in this discussion, theory fans seem remarkably insecure, in that I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn it if you need it or find it interesting/useful, but I have no need of it and get along just fine. Yet I’ve had responses that boil down to: “yes, but you’d do so much better if you learn to follow our rules”. It’s as if, having spent a lot of time learning this stuff, someone who doesn’t have a use for it is almost seen as a threat.
Music education has much to answer for, I suspect. It’s probably the biggest thing that puts kids off enjoying musical activity and creativity. Whoever mentioned gatekeeping was spot on with respect to this. Trampling all over a child’s creative urges by insisting they can’t do anything worthwhile without learning all this stuff or spending decades learning a particular instrument verges on wickedness.
NB, before I get subjected to an avalanche of opprobrium, I am NOT dissing people who want to go down either of those paths. What I’m dissing is the idea peddled by many that those are essential prerequisites for doing meaningful musical work.
On this point I’m entirely in agreement!
I like the cut of this guy's jib!
As I've said multiple times, I've been anti-theory (for myself, at least) up until more recently. I certainly champion the right for people to choose how when and why they interact with listening to and making music. But I have to push back on the above paragraph.
Music theory is inert until studied or taught. How that theory is taught is gong to be different from teacher to teacher. Sure, it's possible that one's first experience of music theory having been delivered by some harridan of a music-teacher, could inform a lifelong hatred of stifling rules. But that's not the fault of the music itself. On the contrary, it's possible that one's first experience of music theory could be delivered by someone like Jacob Collier. Such an experience would likely illicit the opposite result. Same rules, different outcome.
Ironically, in my own life, most of the people I met who had a good foundation in theory also had a much richer musical experience than myself. Whether it be a more profound connection with their instrument that often comes from a deeper understanding, or just the many more opportunities that being a proficient and learned musician offered up. More than that, everyone of these musicians, when given the opportunity to teach, did so with love and deep enjoyment. It was contagious.
So, given that, I wonder why i took such a hardline stance against it, for so long. In hindsight, it was likely out of laziness, or the fear that the understanding would elude me (I'm referring to me, and not claiming anyone who avoids music-theory is lazy and/or dumb).
Just one of my many regrets, I guess.
@el_bo I’d hoped that I’d been clear enough that I am not taking a hard line against it if someone finds it useful. But certainly when I was in school there was a very definite attitude from music teachers (and teachers in general at primary level) that music was only valid (or even allowed) if you did it “properly”. Hence huge numbers of kids learning to play Michael Rowed The Boat Ashore (or whatever it was) on recorders, and losing the will to live in the process.
You've made it very clear. And I don't think you were taking a hard line,
What I think you did do, and have now done again, is not been clear to separate the theory from the teacher(s). You seem to have had bad experiences going back a very long time, that still inform your viewpoint. That certainly wasn't my experience, nor that of many I've known.
Your examples about the rigidity of music theory conflate some people’s beliefs about music theory with music theory. You are treating their misconceptions about music theory as if they are accurate.
As I said, earlier, I am not saying that you need to learn music theory..but I think you have some beliefs about music theory that are based on mistaken representations of what music theory is.
A person that tells you that “music x” violates music theory is confusing a particular convention (let’s say Western Classical Music) with music theory. Maybe a piece doesn’t follow the conventions of western classical music. Who cares? Lots of great music doesn’t.
They are mistaken if they think any of the following;
There are no absolute rules of music. Even within any tradition the “rules” (which are really either conventions or tendencies) are not inviolable rules. The “rules” are constantly changing..,that is often how composers distinguish themselves..violating a convention to create new music.
It sounds like you have heard people talk about the theory of the western classical tradition who mistakenly think that music needs to follow those rules.
Music theory is really just a framework for discussing and analyzing the elements of music. It is a bit of a misnomer because it isn’t a “theory “ in the sense of the Theory of Relativity.
😂 Lol! Did you get that phrase from an animated movie? 🤣
Music theory as well as all the bad things I said about it, is incomplete – very clearly incomplete
I’ve yet to encounter any kind of explanation, or even a distant approach toward an explanation, regarding how when you’re listening to a song, it changes angle
Well, not a 90° angle, more of a gentle course correction, that’s it, music theory doesn’t explain the ‘going along nicely toward this destination, then decides to go over there a bit instead’
Some music is full of these angles - going along straight for a bit, then goes over there a bit, then back past the original direction and over this way instead for a bit, then back to the original path
I mean, what’s going on there – if music theory was all it’s cracked up to be, it’d have extensive study and documentation regarding how to elicit feelings of course correction, changing of mind because you want to go over there, deciding it was a distraction so you’re coming back here but getting further distracted by something shiny over on the other side, and then remembering what your original aim was and resuming it
Also, where’s the study and documentation regarding making it feel like you’re half way in, but you’re actually not (eg a middle eight is called a middle eight because it feels like you’re in the middle, but invariably they’re not in the middle at all, they’re more like two thirds in, you’re pretty near the end actually)
Also where’s the transmissible learning etc about making some songs sound lazy and others sound frenetic, even though they’re the same tempo
Also where’s etc about making you feel very very impressed by what’s suddenly occurring after being lulled into some turgid torment of several verses of custard, suddenly a bit of the song rescues you and fishes you out and you’re so so grateful (and you buy it)
If music theory was all it was cracked up to be, it’d have whole sections on space and reverb and spread and location, to do with attention and distraction and command and authority and ambience and politeness
It’d have bits on what sequences of tones have semantics that are (possibly culturally modulated) universal and therefore can be used for sonification (eg is the traditional ding dong doorbell actually saying there’s someone at the door and you’d like to answer it, or is it just that we’re taught that that’s what it means?)
I look to music theory to find encyclopaedic knowledge on the relationship between sounds and emotions
…but all I get is what to me seems quite clearly to be passed-on inherited re-learned confusion and codification of this confusion, which if people keep repeating it consistently seems to work
Now I think you're just trolling
Actually, it is not so clear what that means, it must be some boomer saying
I am very interested in learning music theory, hoping it will help me decode my favorite genres. The little I've been able to grasp has already helped me a bit in messing around with flatted degrees that are commonly used in rock (bIII, bVI, bVII). Without that bit, I would still be lost as to what that means when people talk about it.
Lol! 😂 Probably. I heard it in this animated movie "Puss in Boots - The Last Wish".
It's a very old saying. It's another way of saying, "I don't like your attitude", or, "I don't like how you handle yourself".
If you have never been sailing, you may not be familiar with the term (jib) and find the humor in the comment. And I’m not a Boomer.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cut+of+your+jib
The animated TV show The Simpsons has used this phrase countless times, usually by the wealthy and out of touch character Mr. Burns.
Oh...and its etymology suggests somewhat pre-Boomer
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cut-of-one-s-jib
U> @Danny_Mammy said:
Socrates is one of the few individuals whom one could say has so-shaped the cultural and intellectual development of the world that, without him, history would be profoundly different, simply put: one of the smartest people mankind has ever known
he believed that simple ignorance is being aware of one’s own ignorance, whereas double ignorance is not being aware of one’s ignorance while thinking that one knows.
Socrates and Plato are some of my heroes.
But it is pronounced So-Crates
So Messrs Dunning and Kruger ripped off So-Crates?
Classical theory from a textbook is probably not the most productive way to begin. I'd suggest this for raw beginners:
1) Learn to spell chords. This takes maybe ten minutes to learn. A half hour tops.
2) Learn the Nashville numbering system. This takes no more than ten minutes to learn.
In less than a half hour a person can learn 95% of what you need to communicate with band mates. Why anyone would not learn that much is beyond me. It's like moving to Spain and refusing to study Spanish because "it might restrict my freedom!".
Whoa!
Music has relationships and patterns that can’t be challenged, just like maths or physics can’t be disputed.
But what are we calling “music theory”?. I wouldn’t say it’s just the way it’s taught, I think the accepted “standards” could be a lot better, they’re far from friendly or intuitive, quite the opposite. Someone decided a notes fourth interval would be 5 semitones apart, while the fifth is seven semitones… that’s illogical, doesn’t fit any pattern and creates a barrier that obfuscates the beautiful math behind music. Seems to me like “don’t question it, just learn it and shut up”.
Everyone knows that the A4 on the piano is tuned to 440hz. Then, one day I came to know this sensational news: the upper octave (A5) is 880hz and the second octave above (A6) is 1760hz: the frequency doubles at each octave. For this exact reason they are in tune when played together
Since that day my life as a musician has changed
Fourths and fifths talk is about a particular western tradition. It isn’t that theory is illogical. You are talking about a particular tradition. That convention has some interesting quirks. Some of the quirks are the result of a melding of two different approaches: twelve note chromatic scales and seven note scales.
If you think about the notes in the seven note scale (the traditional western scales), a fourth just means four note names apart. A fifth is five note names apart. A third is three note names apart.
Somewhere along the line, people realized you could add some notes in between on instruments so that you could change keys without retuning or switching instruments. That results in a 12-tone scale. And in that scale the steps of the seven note scale are not equally far apart.
If you think about the scale you are playing in, the interval numbers still relate to the note names.
Adding the layer of thinking in chromatic notes (semitones) may make it seem illogical..but it isn’t that hard to learn. And if it seems to illogical, just think in terms of scale tones.
As someone who speaks at least two languages, do you not see the parallels? Languages are riddled with inconsistencies and oftentimes very illogical. It speaks to how language evolved within and alongside our very own imperfect evolution, and shouldn't be judged as though it were handed down by some higher-power, as though it were perfect. But those who wish to speak a 2nd language just learn to ignore these little bumps, and look to the bigger picture...then end up better off for it.
I also don't understand the dichotomy between "Just learn it and shut up" and the ability to question it. Why not learn it and still question it? Of curse, as with many things, it's necessary to know something well, before being able to provide adequate alternative solutions i.e reform from within.
I just went back to your first post, as I seemed to remember there was a feeling that you somehow wished you knew more (At least, you mentioned being ashamed at not knowing more). but after 5 pages, your posts read more like you want more confirmation to steer well clear. No problem with that, of course. But if you do still have an interest in learning, is it really the imbalance of semitones between certain intervals that will derail your efforts?
“Musicians do it with great frequency.”
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
The piano keyboard is only relatively recent in musical history though
I view it as a mistake
Before the piano’s ancestors the idea of a linear keyboard was not normal – stringy things were more common, deriving from ancestors that would become the later harps and lyres with no concept of frets yet
I find it more than a little suspicious that the predecessors of the piano that had that keyboard were a product of a western religious musical movement more than anything else, so I suspect an amount of the alien layout of the keyboard black notes and white notes was in part due to what was allowed by religion in those days when people were still religious
You can also divide them by two. Eventually you will get a tempo setting that is in tune with the key of your song.
Those decisions are not arbitrary. They derive from the harmonic series.
We all know how to walk, right? We do it every day without conscious thought. What muscles are we using to manipulate which joints and in what order? A few of you may know enough anatomy to answer that question in detail, but the lack of anatomical knowledge doesn’t stop the rest of us walking, we’ve learned how to do right by trial, error and practice. The same with speaking. We learn to speak way before anyone tries to teach us grammar.
All you folks who compose and play music just based on what sounds right have something in your brain which is telling you if what you’re hearing ‘works’. Usually, that will conform to some principle of music theory because the theory was constructed after the fact to describe what is going on in the majority of music that we find listenable. You guys DO know music theory, but not in a form you have labels or diagrams for, it’s that part of you that tells you what you want to hear.