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Music Theory for Beginners

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Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#61

Post by jerf »

msluyter wrote: post #36
Jun8 wrote: post #32

Fascinating read, but definitely not for beginners, at least for people like me, who have difficulty naming the notes (I have to go through "doe a deer..." each time, there are seven of them, right?) My total music illiteracy really annoys me. However, whenever I try to pick up some knowledge I got held back by lots of questions that the usual music student (or teacher for that matter) has never thought about and no…

Why are there seven notes? Is this due to an property of the ear? The 7 tones that make up a major scale are basically a cultural artifact of western music (which goes back to gregorian chant). Other cultures have more/fewer tones. Ditto, for the octave concept, why should it be multiples of two? Can you clarify this question? Octaves result from the natural harmonic series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seri…

"The 7 tones that make up a major scale are basically a cultural artifact of western music (which goes back to gregorian chant). Other cultures have more/fewer tones."

It's difficult to draw the line between culture and biology, but that's probably too far to the "cultural" side. There is a basis for those, which is that if you start on the base tone of C and run around the circle of fifths you'll get the white keys first: C -> G -> D -> A -> E -> B -> F#, and you get F by going down from the base tone. The importance of the fifth itself comes from the fact that the first harmonic of the base tone is one octave up, and the next harmonic is very close to an octave and a fifth with equal temprement. This seems more than coincidence.

I also find this a better explanation for why so many cultures pick this up once they are exposed to it. (Which is not to say they give up all their old harmonies but this tuning+scale has certainly gone global.) I really have a hard time imagining the mechanics of the Western Global Harmonic Imperialist Conspiracy; it seems much more likely that it so happens that people we call Westerners found this local optima first and it spread because humans in general like it, and it belongs to all humanity, not "the West", just like "perspective" and mathematics.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#62

Post by hernan7 »

eftpotrm wrote: post #35
zck wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was somewhat disappointed that the OP showed us a C Major scale without really explaining what a "major scale" is-- a collection of whole and half steps... I agree. I find it very frustrating that Western music breaks the twelve notes into two classes: the "naturals" (ABCDEFG), and "accidentals" (A# C# D# F# G#, and enharmonic equivalents). Playing guitar, I have come across people explaining barre chords -- a sin…

> To wit: when I play piano, I play in C. When I play guitar, I don't think about what key I'm in. I play in whatever fingering is easiest and what sounds best at the time. I know what you mean, but I think that's significantly a keyboard-based hazard. I play the trumpet (mostly; I can do a very little on a few others and trying to improve) and I've frequently ended up jamming away in odd keys, switching between them…

Sax also favors the C major scale [].

Back in the early 20th century, sax salespeople would take advantage of this to sell the sax as an "easy to play" instrument. You can hang a saxophone from your neck and in 5 minutes you are playing the C major scale, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, whatever.

Compare with the trumpet or the violin, where just playing your first major scale in tune scale in tune takes weeks of practice.

[] Actually, sax is a transposing instrument. But it does favor whatever scale you read as C major when you play it.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#63

Post by hasenj »

cynicalkane wrote: post #57
Jun8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the information. I wonder if there are any "music universals", like the ones for language, i.e. universal grammar. If favoring certain tone ratios is a characteristic of the human auditory system, then there should be.

Like Chomsky's search for universal grammar, the search for music universals has been a failure. Nevertheless, there are some ideas that pop up surprisingly often. Doing a quick mental search, I believe every musical tradition I've heard that emphasizes accurate pitch, and at least one I've heard that doesn't, utilizes the pentatonic scale: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pentatonic_sc...

> Chomsky's search for universal grammar (..) has been a failure

I don't know about Chomsky, but I took a linguistics course and the universal grammar was a major part of the course. It seems you're implying there's no such thing, what makes you think so? The impression I got from the course is that the idea of "universal grammar" is universally accepted (among linguists, of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-bar_theory

Ironically I don't remember Chomsky's name coming up during the course at all.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#64

Post by ThomPete »

gtani wrote: post #50
ThomPete wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something close is http://www.morphwiz.com/ and http://misadigital.com/index.php?target=home&lang=en They are both interesting because they are using touchscreen meaning that they are fretless.

Cool. I've started fretless bass, and reading about accommodations you make for playing with e.g. vocalists who run flat more often than sharp, or upper register of piano that are sharp.

Remember to check out Jaco Pastorious then!

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#65

Post by pessimizer »

SwellJoe wrote: post #59
presidentender wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key-agnostic fretboard is a big part of the reason I enjoy playing guitar. It's not a perfect tool for the application at hand because of the necessity of separating the second and third strings by a major third instead of a perfect fifth, which would confuse the issue. However, I think it'd be more convenient to have a graphical representation of the major scale's construction on which a whole step is always cle…

"separating the second and third strings by a major third instead of a perfect fifth" The other strings on a guitar are separated by a fourth, not fifth (perfect or otherwise).

Depends on which way you're counting.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#66

Post by pessimizer »

hasenj wrote: post #63
cynicalkane wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Chomsky's search for universal grammar, the search for music universals has been a failure. Nevertheless, there are some ideas that pop up surprisingly often. Doing a quick mental search, I believe every musical tradition I've heard that emphasizes accurate pitch, and at least one I've heard that doesn't, utilizes the pentatonic scale: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pentatonic_sc...

> Chomsky's search for universal grammar (..) has been a failure I don't know about Chomsky, but I took a linguistics course and the universal grammar was a major part of the course. It seems you're implying there's no such thing, what makes you think so? The impression I got from the course is that the idea of "universal grammar" is universally accepted (among linguists, of course). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ba…

Chomsky is the first name mentioned in that article.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#67

Post by thesethings »

cynicalkane wrote: post #57
Jun8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the information. I wonder if there are any "music universals", like the ones for language, i.e. universal grammar. If favoring certain tone ratios is a characteristic of the human auditory system, then there should be.

Like Chomsky's search for universal grammar, the search for music universals has been a failure. Nevertheless, there are some ideas that pop up surprisingly often. Doing a quick mental search, I believe every musical tradition I've heard that emphasizes accurate pitch, and at least one I've heard that doesn't, utilizes the pentatonic scale: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pentatonic_sc...

I wasn't aware that either of these quests for universals have been a failure. My friend did a relatively recent music thesis about universals.

I'm not in either field, but a belief in universal "deep structure" has helped me learn both language + music stuff. Even if they don't exist, I'm going to stick with what helps me :D

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#68

Post by hasenj »

pessimizer wrote: post #66
hasenj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chomsky's search for universal grammar (..) has been a failure I don't know about Chomsky, but I took a linguistics course and the universal grammar was a major part of the course. It seems you're implying there's no such thing, what makes you think so? The impression I got from the course is that the idea of "universal grammar" is universally accepted (among linguists, of course). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ba…

Chomsky is the first name mentioned in that article.

Yea, but I don't remember hearing about him in the course I took in the University.

Although to be honest I probably ignored names on purpose because there were so many of them.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#69

Post by te_chris »

ThomPete wrote: post #48
bmurphy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That song is terrible (and I love Devin Townsend, the singer).

Of course it's terrible it's using the xavian scale which you are not used to.

no, it's terrible because it sounds like a bad technical exercise (music graduate here)

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#70

Post by msluyter »

jerf wrote: post #61
msluyter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there seven notes? Is this due to an property of the ear? The 7 tones that make up a major scale are basically a cultural artifact of western music (which goes back to gregorian chant). Other cultures have more/fewer tones. Ditto, for the octave concept, why should it be multiples of two? Can you clarify this question? Octaves result from the natural harmonic series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seri…

"The 7 tones that make up a major scale are basically a cultural artifact of western music (which goes back to gregorian chant). Other cultures have more/fewer tones." It's difficult to draw the line between culture and biology, but that's probably too far to the "cultural" side. There is a basis for those, which is that if you start on the base tone of C and run around the circle of fifths you'll get the white keys…

I once asked an ethnomusicologist if any common factors existed across all musical cultures and he said that about all he could point to was: a) some concept of a tonal center and b) the interval of the 5th remained fairly constant, despite whatever scales/tunings might exist.

So, I'd grant that much, but beyond that, I don't see much evidence for the diatonic scale as being somehow inherently inevitable. The harmonic series isn't much help, since you get to the flat-7 or flat-five before various other diatonic notes (plus, it's not particularly in tune at the higher partials).

And the circle of fifths rationale seems to be a just so story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story (why stop at 7 notes? why not include G# or even C#? why not just C-G-D-A-E? (incidentally, a pentatonic scale) etc...?)

But this debate could go on ad infinitum, because the issue lacks empirical grounding. Which is to say, how could one falsify either the nature or culture thesis?

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