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Music Theory for Programmers

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Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#91

Post by nprateem »

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…

And even saying the 12 notes must have specific frequencies is wrong. It's very common when creating synths for example to detune them to create richer sounds, or play on dissonance to some extent.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#92

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

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…

There's nothing magic in it. Any two pitches that have a rational number ratio with a small denominator sound "correct".

It's just a quirk of human physiology. The real creativeness and ingenuity comes from rhythm and the interplay of repetitive and surprising sounds. The pitches are not important.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#93

Post by simonask »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #90
bonzini wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he means as music theory is the next step after what this (blatantly AI-written, but passable) article talks about. This is the part that you take for granted, but it certainly is music theory in the same way that Peano's axioms are number theory even though you don't use them explicitly . The AI style gets boring very quickly, but I liked the explanation of what Western music notation is optimized for.…

There's no such thing as "music theory". Music theory was originally a tool for music critics in the 19th century to talk about conservatory music of the time. There's nothing rigorous, systematic or scientific in it; it's mostly a historical cultural artifact more than anything else. For example, music "theory" is completely helpless when describing an EDM track or how to compose one. EDM is one of the most primitiv…

Spoken like someone with absolutely zero grasp of music theory or modern electronic music. I almost want to congratulate you for the worst-informed comment I’ve read today.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#94

Post by simonask »

gentooflux wrote: post #68
dosisking wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say that the article isn't music theory but don't bother to say why. His response sounded kind of gatekeep-y to me. Kind of like an academic with theoretical knowledge, but no practical experience. Many great musicians never learned proper music theory. Innovation comes from outside, not from inside the establishment.

Music theory is a way of describing that cool thing you played, not the other way around

Music theory is absolutely an indispensable tool for musicians and composers. You can play music without it, but that’s just putting an unnecessary upper bound on what you can achieve.

More than anything, it’s a vocabulary to talk about the thing you’re doing with others.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#95

Post by cubefox »

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…

Many subject matters are initially so confusing and inaccessible that I have often wished for an audio-visual video lecture series in the following format:

Part 1: Music theory explained in just 5 minutes

Part 2: Music theory explained in just 20 minutes

Part 3: Music theory explained in 80 minutes

Etc. Starting with an extremely simplified overview and then making the overviews progressively more detailed.

Many people instead try to give simple explanations without making them short. But no confused beginner wants to be overwhelmed by a huge wall of text, let alone by a long theoretical book.

Unfortunately most people who have become knowledgeable about some subject matter then quickly and thoroughly forget how confusing, overwhelming or intimidating it was before.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#96

Post by bossyTeacher »

"The problem was never the practice. It was that every explanation of music theory seemed to miss out the fundamental reasons for how and why things are the way they are. Here is a staff. Here are the notes on it. This is a major scale, memorise the pattern. Why those notes? Why that pattern? Because that is the convention." This has the signature LLM writing style.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#97

Post by bossyTeacher »

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…

> 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

Your recommendation seems to mostly apply to western music (I assume so since you only mentioned western music), no? Will Jazz Levine's book help with ragga or gamelan?

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#98

Post by strenholme »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #44
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…

As a non-musician non-Western programmer, the only music book that is making sense to me (still reading) is Robert Snyder's Music and Memory[1]. It's the first book that doesn't trick me by trying to pass cultural artefacts (notes, scales, raga, etc.) as some universal truth, or douse me in medieval pseudo-science (Pythagorean small ratios, etc.) I am not an expert, so maybe this book has its own shortcomings which I…

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, and 6/5 are intervals which sound pleasant to the human ear. [1]

Once that is established, as per the linked article, 12-tone equal temperament makes a lot of sense (but isn’t universal, obviously) because it’s resulting tuning gives us a really close 3/2 and 4/3, and having a simple 12-tone scale reasonably in tune everyone can agree on makes sense.

We can then explain that 5/4 and 6/5 are a bit off in 12-tone, but are “good enough” that we tolerate them being slightly out of tune when using equal temperament. Once we accept that 12-tone has imperfect thirds, we can then look at the I IV V chord progression (I IV V comes from 3/2, 5/4, and 4/3 sounding pleasant to the human ear), and explain why that chord progression is so common in western popular music.

These aren’t universal truths—12-tone equal temperament is a compromise, but, as per the linked article, a reasonable one. Just intonation is, of course, another possible compromise.

[1] 2/1: Octave; 3/2: Perfect fifth; 4/3: Perfect fourth; 5/4: Major third; 6/5: Minor third

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#99

Post by bossyTeacher »

chrisjj wrote: post #81
seanhunter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fun webpage about a programmer dipping their toes in the very most basic elements of music and documenting some of their current understanding.Imagine I wrote an article called "Programming for musicians" that was mostly about how to turn your computer on and install homebrew[1] and finished by showing you step by step how to cut and paste "hello world" in javascript from stack overflow. You might rightly say…

> Here[2] Is the syllabus for ABRSM Grades 1-5 music theory. I've always thought that's mistitled. Better would be Traditional Western Music Notation Theory. Notice what's absent, e.g. frequency and timbre which are nicely introduced by the current article. Music theory is a lot wider than the ABSRM syllabus. And the current article is a great starting point.

Done on purpose. The assumption here is that this theory is the one and only theory.
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