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Music Theory for Programmers

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Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#211

Post by fooster »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205
iainctduncan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you arguing how things should be, not what they are . I don't disagree that in music we have lots of inconsistent nomenclature that could have better names. But writing an intro to a topic and using non-standard nomenclature (without explaining that that's what you're doing) is still a source of confusion to learners. Whether or not this info should be in acoustics books or theory books is not relevant to th…

What would you call the topic of "why are there 12 notes to the octave?" "why is the perfect fifth the most consonant chord?" "why do we use equal temperament?"

It’s also worth mentioning that these are very western ideas. Lots of other cultures derive alternative structures not based around 12 half steps to an octave and so on.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#212

Post by khazhoux »

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.

Similar to me lobbying them to rename it Webster’s Traditional American English Dictionary

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#213

Post by apercu »

SwtCyber wrote: post #200
teiferer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props for mentioning “The Jazz Theory Book”! It's an excellent book. The only thing I'd add to your recommendations is: Listen! When you hear a song, some melody, a rhythm, listen carefully, try to deconstruct the components, how they interplay, and try to figure out what is it that you like. Was it a feature of the harmony? The melody? Pacing? Whatever it is, keep listening. Theory is just a way to try to explain wh…

Yeah, this is the advice I wish showed up more often in "learn music theory" discussions

I'm sort of the opposite - when I can name something, then play it, then I can hear it. E.g., going from minor third to major third to root. I can't "unhear" that in blues-based music now. But before it had a "name" it was just an interesting sounding "thing" that didn't pop out to me in any specific way.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#214

Post by Slow_Hand »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205
iainctduncan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you arguing how things should be, not what they are . I don't disagree that in music we have lots of inconsistent nomenclature that could have better names. But writing an intro to a topic and using non-standard nomenclature (without explaining that that's what you're doing) is still a source of confusion to learners. Whether or not this info should be in acoustics books or theory books is not relevant to th…

What would you call the topic of "why are there 12 notes to the octave?" "why is the perfect fifth the most consonant chord?" "why do we use equal temperament?"

While these are helpful topics to understand, they are not beginner topics. Not if you want to make music. They are fundamental questions in that they reside at the base of why things are the way they are, but they are not fundamental in the sense that you should teach them to a beginner who wants to make music.

The point is to make music. And the most practical way to do so is to teach instrument technique, intervals, scales, chords, and melody. Not low-level acoustic phenomena.

To make an (imperfect) programming analogy, you are proposing to teach low-level computation when most students would benefit from some Python, if/else statements, and functions. Not memory allocation and assembly. They're useful someday, but less useful when your first goal is to simply write a program.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#215

Post by analog31 »

gentooflux wrote: post #74
analog31 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know who are productive as composers or arrangers are familiar with theory.

Because they can write it down. Good for them.

It's way more than that. They are just more fluent at creating things like melodies and harmonies that "work" without essentially starting from scratch on every composition.

I know music notation and can write things down, but I'm not a good composer. I'm at the mercy of others to write new material if that's what I'm interested in playing.

And writing it down in a way that other musicians can understand is of nontrivial value if you want people to play your stuff.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#216

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fooster wrote: post #211
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you call the topic of "why are there 12 notes to the octave?" "why is the perfect fifth the most consonant chord?" "why do we use equal temperament?"

It’s also worth mentioning that these are very western ideas. Lots of other cultures derive alternative structures not based around 12 half steps to an octave and so on.

Oddly, or perhaps predictably, or both, most of them still converge on the same basic pitch classes.

The example I'm most familiar with is Carnatic and Hindustani music, where there are theoretically 22 tones per octave, and in fact the tones in most cases actually cover a range of frequencies rather than a single one. Nevertheless, the most common and most popular music from those traditions tends to only use about 7 tones per octave (equivalent to a western "scale"), and they still have a very central for tone ratios like 3/2.

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#217

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #214
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you call the topic of "why are there 12 notes to the octave?" "why is the perfect fifth the most consonant chord?" "why do we use equal temperament?"

While these are helpful topics to understand, they are not beginner topics. Not if you want to make music. They are fundamental questions in that they reside at the base of why things are the way they are, but they are not fundamental in the sense that you should teach them to a beginner who wants to make music. The point is to make music. And the most practical way to do so is to teach instrument technique, interval…

> The point is to make music.

Is it? Why?

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#218

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

iainctduncan wrote: post #210
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you call the topic of "why are there 12 notes to the octave?" "why is the perfect fifth the most consonant chord?" "why do we use equal temperament?"

In the all the textbooks I have or have seen, those are called "acoustics" (and more specifically "tuning and temperament"). They are covered in the text book I had for acoustics, and not covered in any of the textbooks I used for theory (jazz or classical). For example, in Rossings "The Science of Sound", it's in a chapter called "Musical Scales and Temperament". Look, I agree that they should be. I have literally h…

But TFA is called "Music Theory for Programmers". It's not called "Music Theory for Music Students".

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#219

Post by chrisjj »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150
chrisjj wrote: post #79

Nice site! > There are twelve notes for a reason Twelve pitches, actually. (Strictly, twelve pitch classes). Note != pitch. A note is a sound having properties of which one is pitch.

Tell me more about the other properties.

You really don't know?

Re: Music Theory for Programmers

#220

Post by strenholme »

bonsai_bar wrote: post #184
strenholme wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Change it to 300 and run it again. You get a different pitch and nothing breaks, because at this level there are no notes yet, just a number.” What the article is trying to explain here is that A=440 is just a convention. This is probably where the article should have had a discussion about perfect pitch vs. relative pitch. I would have written it like this: “Since this note is 440 hertz, in Western music, because o…

What does "break" mean here? What does "at this level there are no notes yet, just a number" mean?

Until we have an established scale, unless one has perfect pitch, one note is the same as another arbitrary note. It’s the ratios between notes that make up music.
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