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Music Theory for Programmers

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Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#161

Post by ur-whale »

Crabber wrote: post #136

I think music is a good "test" for logically thinking people because it requires you to put away your logical brain and just accept that music sounds good because "it just does" and music theory is the way it is because "it just is". I don't think you can get good at an instrument or enjoy music if you keep trying to force it to make logical sense in your brain all the time. The fact that the author admits straight o…

> I don't think you can get good at an instrument or enjoy music if you keep trying to force it to make logical sense in your brain all the time.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

But then, please, don't call it "theory".

There is strictly nothing theoretical or indeed, logical, about it.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#162

Post by ur-whale »

teiferer wrote: post #122

>Sound is just air pressure wobbling. Sorry man, if you approach things from that angle then no wonder music is a mystery to you. The issue with "deriving from first principles" is that it very much depends on what you consider "principles" and which you pick. Take two people who want to derive sth "from first principles" and they will arrive at wildly different things. Because they start very differently. That's why…

> It's as if a physics student tries to derive medicine "from first principles" by starting at atoms and thinking hard. It doesn't work and won't fix your appendix.

An entire civilization (China) completely missed having a proper scientific awakening and the following industrial revolution about a 1000 year ago exactly because of that kind of dumb thinking.

Great idea!

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#164

Post by iainctduncan »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #137
iainctduncan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD Candidate in music and computer science and gigging jazz musicain here. It is not too harsh. Articles like this confuse people who interested in learning a topic more than they help. Yet another case of programmers thinking "I'm a programmer so I should blog about this thing I barely know anything about as if I'm an expert, what could possibly be the downside?"

How does it confuse people? There is "western music theory" ala Schenker, voice leading, serialism etc (to mention a couple of names that some people might have heard of) but that describes things to do once you've got a scale and chord system. This is "12T music theory", describing how you might get to a scale and chord system. I don't see how it is confusing. You can spend a lot of time doing "western music theory"…

"Music theory" has a near universally accepted meaning. This article is not about that, it's about what we all call in music academia acoustics and digital synthesis (which of course I know you know as I know your work). The derivation of scales from acoustic principles is not in theory books; it's in acoustics books. I've taken numerous theory courses and also taken university acoustics courses and digital synthesis courses, so I can certainly comment on what was taught where! If people go here and think they are learning music theory and then want to go on, they will be frustrated by not finding what they want, they will have issues communicating with others in the field, and they will lose credibility by not knowing the standard nomenclature. That kind of redefinition of standard terms is not good pedagogy.

Look, it's like me writing an introduction to "colour theory" and then writing about something else that eventually leads to how we see colour.

I'm not debating that the article has useful content – it does – but it's title and framing is misleading, which is a disservice to the new student. I happen to personally believe everyone getting into music theory would be well served by knowing more acoustics and that this is useful material. But muddying the waters by using terms in weird ways is off.

And when you write about a field and use the wrong terms, you lose credibility. Sorry, I don't trust authors who can't be arsed to use the standard nomenclature for a topic, it really doesn't make them sound trustworthy.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#165

Post by simonask »

bluGill wrote: post #107
simonask wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Music's theory is something you really need to understand at an unconscious level. All the study of how the notes relate and frequencies, that's very interesting and it may help you understand things better, but the real question is not, can you do all the math to figure out why this note and that note work together, it's can you hear it with your ears and play the correct harmony note for whatever purpose the music…

If you think music theory is about frequencies and math, you certainly have no idea what you’re talking about.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#166

Post by sbrother »

folkrav wrote: post #110
seanhunter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 liste…

That second point is spot on. The one thing I remember vividly - and that still helps me most - from all those years of classical piano training is the ear training. I don't have perfect pitch, but I remember A440 vividly (thanks to my electronic metronome) and the training left me with a strong sense relative pitch that helps me figure out pretty much any melody and chord progression relatively quickly.

I really wish I had studied piano for that reason. I put many years into flute and almost went to conservatory for it, so I can play pretty much any melody by ear after hearing it, but I have zero ability to do the same for harmonies/chord progressions. I've tried to learn some piano (and like the parent said, was forced to as part of music curriculum at college) but it's incredibly difficult to learn a new instrument to a satisfying level as an adult.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#167

Post by HexDecOctBin »

strenholme wrote: post #98
HexDecOctBin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

West Asian maqam has 24 notes, Indian classical has 22 notes, Indonesian gamelan has 5 or 7 notes. What would be the ratios that sound pleasurable now?

What is or isn't pleasurable is a matter of cultural training, and treating them as absolute facts is what I found frustrating in the books that I was complaining about.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#169

Post by rcxdude »

mpalmer wrote: post #139
rcxdude wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very idiosyncratic (and often irritating) style, but I don't find it particularly difficult to understand. It's not meaningless, just weirdly phrased.

You might consider how much of your reading deals with topics that are already familiar to you. Or how closely you're reading things. If you're trying to learn new information, you will trip over low-quality content like this more often.

Sure, I'll agree it's often obtuse, I'm just saying it does communicate some information, however poorly.
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