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Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

academic.udayton.edu

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Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#21

Post by jtheory »

msluyter wrote: post #15
mertd wrote: post #12

This is truly a great effort. At the same time I am frustrated by the choice of the medium. We are well past the age of disseminating information through print. I would love to "hear" the concepts described. Why not make an interactive web page? Maybe sprinkle some audio samples here and there? It seems convoluted to not use sense of hearing to describe music.

Indeed. The ability to click on an interval and immediately hear it -- and/or simultaneously see it played on the piano -- would be quite nice. (Or, conversely, the ability to see piano notes instantly rendered on a staff and have the intervals identified.) Combining two learning pathways -- visual and aural = win.

If Java applets don't make you wince too badly, I have some interactive music theory concepts and drills freely available here:

http://www.emusictheory.com/interact.html

and here http://www.emusictheory.com/practice.html

I largely ran out of time to extend/improve it several years back, but it still gets quite a lot of use; students of subscribing teachers can use MIDI keyboards as well, which makes the instrument/theory link quite tangible.

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#22

Post by Cogito »

This looks like a great resource, that is severely suffering from lack of accessibility (as pointed out by many others here). I emailed the author, hopefully they will be able to improve the usability. Following is the guts of message I sent, for reference. The documents look over a year old in most cases, so I doubt we will see much, but you never know!

----

First of all, thanks! These are some excellent notes. That said, it is extremely irritating trying to read them. If you could provide the ability to do one or all of the following it would be most excellent:

1. Download of the entire pdf as one document

2. View the documents as a web page/series of web pages

3. Open-source the documentation so others can contribute/provide fixes

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#23

Post by icarus_drowning »

jtheory wrote: post #7

Teaching music theory is damned hard . You very quickly find yourself making statements like this (taken from the second PDF in this series): "A tuplet is any non-standard division of a note. These are usually written as a group of notes delineated with a bracket and a number showing the division being made." It's correct in grammar and sense, and about as exciting as a lawn-mower repair manual. This is probably the…

Teaching music theory can be hard, but it doesn't have to be. I know, because I do it almost every day (its my day job). To make it relatable, you have to tie it into the elements of music-- for this, I use Copland's "What to Listen for in Music". Once students can generally grasp and talk specifically about Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Tone Color, you can relate the music theory to it.

I have about 200 6th-8th graders that are able to perform basic figured-bass analysis on major-key chorales in about 3-4 months by progressing in an orderly fashion from notation to rhythm to major scales to the Circle of Fifths to minor scales to intervals, to chords, and finally, to cadencial analysis. Some of them pretty much view it as a game we play with written notes, but, when reinforced by practical experience in private lessons or participation in ensembles, it is remarkable how much they like it and are sad when we move on to Music History in the second half of the year.

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#24

Post by wallflower »

OT: I am not a musician, still kick myself for giving up piano lessons after only a couple years. I believe that anyone who writes software can learn from how musicians practice and get better and don't or do get in a creative/skills/motivation/passion/Groundhog-Day rut...

One of the most interesting books I have in my library is "Effortless Mastery". Recommended by a musician and artist.

http://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-Master-M...

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#25

Post by brunorsini »

weewooweewoo wrote: post #19

Anyone who spent time to download every single page want to upload the set?

...please? it just makes zero sense downloading these files one by one, such is the state of the internet. whoever is benefiting from this, please allow me to just send you a few bucks for not going through this awfulness...

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#26

Post by mietek »

dizzystar wrote: post #13
jtheory wrote: post #7

Teaching music theory is damned hard . You very quickly find yourself making statements like this (taken from the second PDF in this series): "A tuplet is any non-standard division of a note. These are usually written as a group of notes delineated with a bracket and a number showing the division being made." It's correct in grammar and sense, and about as exciting as a lawn-mower repair manual. This is probably the…

The way this teaches it is very difficult. They make the same mistake as all music theory lessons, which is to dive right into the Circle of Fifths without ever mentioning how the Circle of Fifths is derived. I've been thinking about writing a music theory lesson for programmers and "normal" people. I swear it is a conspiracy theory of music teachers to make music theory seem hard. Once you see the logic of how it al…

I'm hoping one day to find an explanation of what music really is; why do certain patterns of sounds appeal to us; why do we share a sense of melody, harmony, rhythm.

Ideally, this explanation would ignore centuries of historical cruft, starting instead from the physical and physiological basics, and making full use of the infinitely malleable sound generators we all own.

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#28

Post by jamie_ca »

jtheory wrote: post #18
sigsergv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily you can (after stupid registration) download these pages and read them offline.

Yes, one page at a time. After providing your age (I just turned 99 today!) among other required fields.

At least he licensed them CC visibly - Here's the first section merged:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1002031/Music%20Theory%20Fundamental...

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#29

Post by brian_cloutier »

jamie_ca wrote: post #28
jtheory wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one page at a time. After providing your age (I just turned 99 today!) among other required fields.

At least he licensed them CC visibly - Here's the first section merged: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1002031/Music%20Theory%20Fundamental...

Thank you so much. I would love the rest too, if you feel like making another pdf.

Re: Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People

#30

Post by gtani »

wallflower wrote: post #24

OT: I am not a musician, still kick myself for giving up piano lessons after only a couple years. I believe that anyone who writes software can learn from how musicians practice and get better and don't or do get in a creative/skills/motivation/passion/Groundhog-Day rut... One of the most interesting books I have in my library is "Effortless Mastery". Recommended by a musician and artist. http://www.amazon.com/Effort…

Werner's book has value for software devs or mathematicians that read it, if you're the kind that falls into a trance, given a suitable problem to think about.

These also

http://sivers.org/berklee

http://sivers.org/kimo

http://sivers.org/session-musician

http://sivers.org/sakamoto

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