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Music theory for nerds

eev.ee

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Re: Music theory for nerds

#151

Post by [deleted] »

cturner wrote: post #143
dietrichepp wrote: post #20

> Also, this notation has a slight problem. That problem is that sheet music is terrible. > This has got to be some of the worst jargon and notation for anything, ever. I hear it bandied around in these articles that music notation is awful. Can someone explain to me why? I'm not much of a musician, but I can work my way through sheet music if necessary, or write it when I want to. I don't remember what it was like t…

> I hear it bandied around in these articles that music > notation is awful. Can someone explain to me why? I've played a lot with alternatives, and disagree. But I can explain why people might object to it, but then defend the settlement. There's so much harmonic music in our lives that most people take harmony for granted. Separately, someone who was interested in only a subset of western music might decide that we…

[deleted]

Re: Music theory for nerds

#152

Post by jahnu »

theseoafs wrote: post #46

> It completely obscures the relationship between the pitches, though. It doesn't actually obscure the relationship between the notes -- it makes them clearer. For example, I see the notes C, E, and G on some sheet music, maybe with some accidentals on some of those notes. I know that I'm therefore supposed to play a C triad. Now, there are multiple kinds of triads, but once I know I'm supposed to play a triad, it's…

> we say that a piece is in the key of C major when it resolves to the a C major chord at the end

Can you ELI5 that for me, please? I'm very interested to have a better understanding of that concept.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#153

Post by jb1991 »

dfabulich wrote: post #142
jb1991 wrote: post #141

> C major is identical to A minor, and I don’t understand why we need both. Well, an orange and a carrot are the same color, but does that mean we don't need both? These two keys have the same signature, and that's it. To say they are identical is false. > I don’t know anything about music. You got that right. > I suppose it’s possible to change the sound of an entire piece of music just by changing the key signature…

> > I don’t know anything about music. > You got that right. This is gratuitous negativity. It adds nothing to your post except to emphasize disdain for the author. It's especially uncivil in response to the author's own statement of humility. This post would be better (and much more constructive) if you explained (or linked to an explanation of) how C major and A minor are different, or how the concept of modulation…

I disagree. The article is not of high quality, and I am compelled to point that out. It is one thing to admit not knowing anything about a subject, it is something else entirely to suggest that the way things are in that subject don't make any sense. That is arrogance hiding behind a pretence of ignorance.

If the author truly wanted to explore this subject, rather than suggest the key of A minor is superfluous and redundant, he would make an attempt to answer, not ask, that question. Western music theory has not existed for centuries without reason, and some of the attitude in this post suggests the author has superficial appreciation for how music works, as if the author could do it better. There are many more examples of this in the article.

I found the article questionable in its intent and content, and the general tone throughout is worthy of my response.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#154

Post by lmm »

dfabulich wrote: post #139
theseoafs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this over again, it seems like the author's not yet fully wrapped their mind around "big picture" stuff like keys, chords, basic compositional structure, etc. It's an... interesting choice to write a piece proclaiming that musical notation is absurd when you're only a beginner.

Is there an article/book/video anyone can recommend that explains the advantages of modern staff notation in terms that beginners can understand? In particular, I think everyone would agree that it's it's much harder for beginners to hunt and peck sheet music in modern staff notation than it is for a novice typist to type words on a QWERTY keyboard. (At least when the sheet music is written in any key except C major,…

I don't think you can explain it to someone who can't play music, because it's a notation for music. You could teach someone to play an instrument the old-fashioned way, person-to-person without any sheets, and once they understood music (i.e. what patterns of notes sound good or don't) ask them to come up with a way to write it down, and they'd come up with something much like staff notation. But that's a very labour-intensive way to learn.

Hunt-and-peck is always going to be hard on an instrument that supports multiple modes, because each mode only uses some of the modes. At my school music classes were taught on the xylophone/glockenspiel, which you configure for your piece at the start (putting the correct bars on for the mode/key you're working in), which is probably easier for beginners, but it's not a popular instrument (and nor is the harp, which is the only other example I can think of of that approach).

Re: Music theory for nerds

#155

Post by lmm »

blake8086 wrote: post #130
theseoafs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this over again, it seems like the author's not yet fully wrapped their mind around "big picture" stuff like keys, chords, basic compositional structure, etc. It's an... interesting choice to write a piece proclaiming that musical notation is absurd when you're only a beginner.

If a beginner can't immediately grasp musical notation, isn't that evidence that it is, in fact, absurd?

Maybe the notation is optimized for efficiency for experts, at the cost of beginner-friendliness. Maybe it's representing something genuinely hard. Absurdity is possible but not the only possible reason.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#157

Post by pwdisswordfish »

asmdb wrote: post #134
blake8086 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a beginner can't immediately grasp musical notation, isn't that evidence that it is, in fact, absurd?

I'm curious, did you immediately grasp the syntax of every programming language you've ever learned?

Can't speak for the parent, but as far as I can recall, I did. Well, maybe not literally immediately, but to me, the syntax was generally the easiest part of learning a programming language. (It probably helps that they are often very similar to each other.)

The only things that were hard were forgetting to write semicolons after statements in C (I have previously mostly written Pascal), and C declarators — but even the latter were easy after I learned that "declaration reflects use".

Re: Music theory for nerds

#158

Post by buzzybee »

arnarbi wrote: post #145

Why is this at the top of HN? While the author is right that western music notation has shortcomings, almost none of the (admittedly poorly understood) reasons they list are a factor in that. > [Key signatures] completely obscure the relationship between the pitches, though. Nope, they exactly allow the notes to show scale degree relationships. Without key signatures, music in any major scale other than C would be ve…

eevee seems to be a relatively popular writer, however I became less enamored with the persona as I realized that a lot of the work on display is shoot-from-the-hip hot takes, a smattering of summarized research minus the essential components of appreciation, concrete experience, asking for directions, or admitting "I might be wrong". I expect this kind of thing from sophomore CS students, not a blogger who presumably has an earnest interest in learning a thing and presenting said learnings.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#159

Post by jsackmann »

jahnu wrote: post #152
theseoafs wrote: post #46

> It completely obscures the relationship between the pitches, though. It doesn't actually obscure the relationship between the notes -- it makes them clearer. For example, I see the notes C, E, and G on some sheet music, maybe with some accidentals on some of those notes. I know that I'm therefore supposed to play a C triad. Now, there are multiple kinds of triads, but once I know I'm supposed to play a triad, it's…

> we say that a piece is in the key of C major when it resolves to the a C major chord at the end Can you ELI5 that for me, please? I'm very interested to have a better understanding of that concept.

Broadly speaking, major chords sound bright and happy. Minor chords sound dark and sad.

The C major scale consists of C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The A-minor scale consists of A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A. Those are the same notes, but if you play each of those patterns on a keyboard, the first one sounds happy, the second one sounds sad.

A C-major chord (technically, triad) is made up of C-E-G, the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale. Again, sounds happy. The A-minor triad is A-C-E ... sad.

But if you play a melody -- that is, one note at at a time -- it isn't always clear whether it's happy or sad. In most western music, though (including virtually all pre-1900 classical music and the vast majority of modern pop), the piece will end ("resolve") with a clearer "happy" or "sad" type of chord. That final chord is what determines the key.

(In a huge amount of classical and popular music, the final chord is the same as the opening chord, but not always. When they're different, the final chord tells you the key.)

Re: Music theory for nerds

#160

Post by lmm »

SwellJoe wrote: post #118
zeta0134 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sight read for winds and voice, but not for Piano, despite being able to play Piano relatively well. Thus, this explanation will probably apply mostly to single-voice musicians. 1. Find Do. This is the first note of the Major scale in the key which you are playing. Find it on the page, and burn it into your mind; everything you're about to do centers on the location of Do. In the key of C (white keys on a piano…

"2. Learn your intervals, and learn Solfege. If you're a musician, you already know these things in principal, even if you don't know the words or the terminology. In particular, you should be able to "hear" the distance between Do-Mi-Sol without too much difficulty, because you hear those distances in music a lot." I believe the Solfege named intervals (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do) are only taught as a historical oddity…

As a computery person, what bothers me the most is the 1-based indexing of intervals. I get that music theory predates zero, but it makes it incredibly frustrating to work with (e.g. add a third to a fourth and you get a... sixth).
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