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Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

musictheory.pugetsound.edu

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Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#31

Post by quadrangle »

Hmm, GNU FDL why? I am all about free/libre/open terms, that was the first thing I checked. But CC BY-SA is the standard now for this type of thing, and GNU FDL mostly just creates incompatibility.

Anyway, this content is "Western Art Music" academic, *dated* sort of stuff, it's not at all appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom. Serialism?? And no mention of any non-Western traditions or pitch systems etc. etc. This is more like mid-late-20th-century Eurocentric textbook just put on the internet.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#32

Post by quadrangle »

anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

It exists. It's out of print. It's "The Sounds of Music: Perception and Notation" by Gerald Eskalin. He had multiple academics acknowledge that it's great for what it is and all of them expressed that they could never use it because it completely fails to fit the standard school curriculum, it violates all the expectations of what is taught in what order.

"Music theory" is almost always "European academic music jargon and notation patterns" with near-zero theory at all. If you actually want theory, you want something like "Music and Memory: An Introduction" by Bob Snyder which is written for creative multimedia artists and others with no formal music notation training, and it doesn't even ever show notation and never gets into harmony at all, but it explains the rest of the basic perception of music.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#34

Post by quadrangle »

sseagull wrote: post #24
anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

Leonard Bernstein has some lectures that might be helpful. This one has some good stuff about why notes an octave apart sound similar, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHi36dvTdE

I strongly urge people to skip this and not keep suggesting it. It amounts to Bernstein being an outlier in bothering to even ask questions in the right direction while few others were doing so, and he gives lots of erroneous and speculative answers based on having no access to the rest of ethnomusicology and music cognition and other understandings that have developed in the decades since.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#35

Post by incrudible »

jedimastert wrote: post #29

A gentle reminder that this is a theory of music, not "the" music theory, or more specifically Western European music theory, rooted in 17th century Germany. A problem for many "21st century classrooms" is how they VASTLY over-state the universality and "superiority" of this form of music theory. Thing about the snooty elitist vibes of the "classical" chamber music world, then realize that almost every base assumptio…

I suspect the joy for people versed in classic theory is sparked from being able to identify the name of a recurring concept in a segment of a classical music piece.

On a related note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#36

Post by AlbertCory »

A good example [1] of someone learning a piece without knowledge of the underlying theory. I find it magical because he was a teenager whose dad gave him a Joe Pass record, and he learned All The Things You Are when he was laid up with an injury and had too much time on his hands. He ends up playing it for his dad, who's impressed.

He doesn't realize that the chords sort of follow a ii-V-I pattern, and I'm sure eventually he learned it. Would he have learned the song faster if he'd known that? Maybe.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hQvMhHL34&t=3s

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#37

Post by ahthat »

jedimastert wrote: post #29

A gentle reminder that this is a theory of music, not "the" music theory, or more specifically Western European music theory, rooted in 17th century Germany. A problem for many "21st century classrooms" is how they VASTLY over-state the universality and "superiority" of this form of music theory. Thing about the snooty elitist vibes of the "classical" chamber music world, then realize that almost every base assumptio…

True, but even beyond world music, as far as I can tell there is no widely accepted academic theory of modern production technique, where note-based harmonic language is secondary to general creativity in sonic landscape. This is a large part of what most people find interesting in music today, that is popular music production for distribution via sound systems, which arguably represents the current pinnacle of evolution in human musical ingenuity.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#38

Post by kansface »

MauranKilom wrote: post #10

I've always had trouble drawing practical benefit from music theory. Once you go beyond simple scales, it always feels like it quickly devolves into "all these different things can also sound good", and every "rule" can also be broken to spice things up. As long as it sounds good. Conversely, there appears to often be many ways to "explain" a certain composition in terms of music theory. To be clear, I have seen firs…

> every "rule" can also be broken to spice things up. As long as it sounds good.

This was certainly not the case for western music since the reintroduction of polyphony.

Music can't really only sound good or bad to you? Bach may sound good or bad, but there is surely something more to it than that when comparing it to Shostakovitch, right? Understanding why requires theory.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#40

Post by Bud »

quadrangle wrote: post #31

Hmm, GNU FDL why? I am all about free/libre/open terms, that was the first thing I checked. But CC BY-SA is the standard now for this type of thing, and GNU FDL mostly just creates incompatibility. Anyway, this content is "Western Art Music" academic, *dated* sort of stuff, it's not at all appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom. Serialism?? And no mention of any non-Western traditions or pitch system…

It's actually applicable to 99% of all "popular" music, as well. Obviously not just to "Western Art Music".

Which is why all this stuff is still taught.

What do you think is "appropriate for a globally-aware 21st century classroom"? Do you have any music degrees? I've got a couple. If you've studied at a music school, then I'm sure you'd be aware that non-Western musical traditions and tonal systems are covered; just not in the core Theory 101/102 classes. They tend to get covered elsewhere.

You can fuss all you want about how this is dated and academic; whatever. It's still highly relevant to the vast majority of music out there, both classical and not, that Westerners will run into. So of course, if you go looking for a music theory course in an academic context, in a Western context, this is what you're going to get. What do you expect to get?

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