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Music Theory for Programmers

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Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#31

Post by seanhunter »

This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books.

If you actually want to learn music theory for the purposes of playing I strongly recommend you just follow whatever tutorials for your instrument and style and if you get to the point where feel you want to learn more and take it seriously in and of itself, buy “The Jazz Theory Book” by Mark Levine[1]. In spite of what it says, there really isn’t any such thing as Jazz theory - it’s just music theory, and this book is a great presentation with lots of good examples. If you like jazz (or the western popular music tradition including rock, pop, funk, etc) you’ll come out understanding how that music works better than most people. If you’re doing a music degree, there will be books recommended by your music programme, but honestly, Levine will cover most of what you need if you’re not doing a straight classical course in which case you’ll want to augment with a more conventional source so you understand the “rules” they want you to follow when writing pastiche counterpoint etc.

If you want to get big into composition and/or want to understand late romantic and 20th century music, get Harmonielehre and “Structural Functions of Harmony” by Schoenberg. Together they are by far the best harmony books I have ever seen and go super-deep into why the western classical tradition works the way it does. If you compose there’s a decent chance they will change your life forever as his approach is to not take anything for granted but exhibit everything with examples from masterworks of the western tradition. Amazing books both of them. Harmony is not a spectator sport though - to get full benefit you have to get the books and work through stuff on the piano. It will reward you immensely.

If you want something else that will blow your mind, read “The technique of my musical language” by Messiaen. If you read Levine first this will have the additional benefit of showing you where the “diminished” and “augmented” scales and the whole “harmonic major” thing come from.

[1] https://www.shermusic.com/products/the-jazz-theory-book

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#32

Post by huflungdung »

polotics wrote: post #16

Let us try an experiment shall we: listen to any music you like and try and match the information the article provided to the complexity of what you are hearing. How much do you see a path from A(rticle) to S(ound in your ear). This article is trivializing music down to a few not-so-important facts and mistaking some math for anything that would help `programmers` (?) understand music. Maybe start by rewatching "This…

[dead]

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#33

Post by hypfer »

This is clearly interesting and contributing value, but it's also painfully AI prose to the point where it is hard to not dismiss it as likely false information.

Fun interactive examples though. With another human pass, this could be great.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#34

Post by WindyTree »

Pretty good, could use more on the tonic, how it’s defined for a diatonic set of 7 notes. The chosen I IV V primary chords are key for that, but a precious tidbit I learned is any of the notes can be set as tonic, but the I IV V chords are only for major and minor. Like for the notes in C major, it becomes A minor with I IV V chords starting off A, but to set the tonic to F, it becomes F Lydian mode with primary chords I, II, and VII. (Fmag, Gmaj, Emin) The rule for the primary chords of the modes is you find the note that differentiates it from the major or minor scale, and pick the chords that have it avoiding the diminished. Playing the notes of c major starting at f, it’s the sharp fourth b that is different, so the primary triads are f-a-c e-g-b and g-b-d.

Oh, and rhythm is just the same as consonance. Most are octave based, beats on wave peaks of overlaid octaves getting quieter. The 3 based on times like 6/8 are the same but for 5ths and 17ths. (The bottom number 8 is just a BPM hint from old days.) beyond those the intervals get unstable feeling, like 7/4 in Money by Pink Floyd has that cut off feeling, someone took a few from each measure, but maps to a minor 7th interval.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#35

Post by vishalmullur »

hypfer wrote: post #33

This is clearly interesting and contributing value, but it's also painfully AI prose to the point where it is hard to not dismiss it as likely false information. Fun interactive examples though. With another human pass, this could be great.

The first couple of sentences got me hooked because I have had the same difficulty trying to learn music where I dont understand if I am producing the right sound or not. I thought it was fun so tried to push myself to read through but overcoming the dislike of the way AI structures the statements became impossible after a short while.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#36

Post by hypfer »

vishalmullur wrote: post #35
hypfer wrote: post #33

This is clearly interesting and contributing value, but it's also painfully AI prose to the point where it is hard to not dismiss it as likely false information. Fun interactive examples though. With another human pass, this could be great.

The first couple of sentences got me hooked because I have had the same difficulty trying to learn music where I dont understand if I am producing the right sound or not. I thought it was fun so tried to push myself to read through but overcoming the dislike of the way AI structures the statements became impossible after a short while.

I eventually just started clicking on the examples and thinking "hey that sounds nice".

And now I've realized that the page hosting that is for a JS snippet editor embedding thingy. Commercial stuff.

So this is just a tech demo created with AI to showcase what can be done with their library, and not someone actually caring about the topic :<

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#37

Post by vishalmullur »

seanhunter wrote: post #31

This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books. If you…

When I see my friends who are into music play and talk about different instruments, it actually feels like magic to me. I tried to learn Violin some years ago but I could never understand why the note was correct. I do know that if I had learnt Keyboard instead, I would know where the correct notes are but I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is. Any pointer as to what I can do? Because I dont think learning music theory is going to be enough for me.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#38

Post by seanhunter »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #26

> Which is a strange way to teach a system that essentially comes out of physics and arithmetic. There are twelve notes for a reason. There is of course a lot of physics involved. But there is at least as much convention at play. So imho this is a very one sided way of looking at it. There is a physical reason the 12 notes are those 12 notes (though the exact frequencies assigned are influenced by culture as well), b…

Also his physics explanation is not the best, and you can see if you just ask the next “why” question.

He talks about the harmonic series giving the basic ratios of the Pythagorean scale but why is that the case? When you solve the equations of motion of any sort of harmonic oscillator (including crucially, strings, vibrating columns of air from a wind instrument etc) you see that you can solve them using a Fourier series, so if you solve this in trigonometric form you get a_1 * cos blah_1 + 1/2 * (a_2) * cos blah_2 + 1/3 * (a_3) * cos blah_3 + … + 1/n * (a_n) * cos blah_n [1]

…so those fractions end up being the partials of the harmonic series (a_n/n) where a_n is the n_th coefficient, which you find using an integral. Now if you have a normal western musical instrument, the higher overtones (later terms of the Fourier series) are not prominent so those coefficients are small. So the terms that matter have ratios a_1, a_2/2, a_3/3, a_4/4, a_5/5 corresponding to the primary intervals that he’s talking about.

In cultures (eg Balinese and Javanese music from Indonesia) where they use a different number of tones and different scale, it’s no coincidence that they play a lot of gongs and bells, which have much more prominent higher overtones, so a different set of Fourier coefficients so different ratios are going to be “congruent”/melodious-sounding.

[1] the “blah” terms are a function of pi and the length and stiffness of the string etc. Not really relevant here.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#39

Post by seanhunter »

vishalmullur wrote: post #37
seanhunter wrote: post #31

This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books. If you…

When I see my friends who are into music play and talk about different instruments, it actually feels like magic to me. I tried to learn Violin some years ago but I could never understand why the note was correct. I do know that if I had learnt Keyboard instead, I would know where the correct notes are but I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is. Any pointer as to what I can do? Beca…

At many western music schools, if piano isn’t your first instrument, it is compulsory to study piano as a second instrument. The reason for this is that it really helps when understanding harmony. You also do ear training, which is meant to solve the problem I think you’re describing. I expect you would find ear training resources on youtube or something now but I did it the old-fashioned way where you start by listening when people play major / minor chords, all the intervals, learn to recognize inversions etc and then move on to doing transcriptions of music you like. I have box files full of transcriptions I did when learning. But Levine (for example) includes some ear training advice.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#40

Post by kaoD »

vishalmullur wrote: post #37
seanhunter wrote: post #31

This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books. If you…

When I see my friends who are into music play and talk about different instruments, it actually feels like magic to me. I tried to learn Violin some years ago but I could never understand why the note was correct. I do know that if I had learnt Keyboard instead, I would know where the correct notes are but I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is. Any pointer as to what I can do? Beca…

> I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is

That is called "perfect pitch" and it is not necessary to play music. It's very rare to have perfect pitch, and it seems to be innate, not something you learn.

Contextual note recognition (relative pitch) is what musicians normally use to jam. It comes with practice and contextual clues that you pick up over tens of years (including familiarity with your jammate's instrument, even if it's not the one you play; familiarity with multiple eras of music theory; pure practice), so this shouldn't be your #1 priority since it just comes along for free (or a bit of practice), as you learn. Music playing 101 is just... playing music in your instrument. You don't need to recognize notes until you want to jam, which comes years after you start playing an instrument.

Some people seem to just be physically unable to distinguish relative pitch though.

You might want to start here: https://www.musictheory.net/ (not affiliated, I just think it's a very good resource for Music Theory 101).

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