Why 13th Chords
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Why 13th Chords
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Re: Why 13th Chords
#2Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
Re: Why 13th Chords
#3Very much baby steps in jazz music theory, but this will probably be helpful to some people!
Re: Why 13th Chords
#4Very much baby steps in jazz music theory, but this will probably be helpful to some people!
yeah, as I said in the post, it's Jazz Theory 101. But anyone coming from a classical music theory background will hopefully find it a helpful insight.
Re: Why 13th Chords
#5Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
Ironically, the situation is very similar to math.
It's relatively easy to read music theory notation, so that the Gibberish and Goobeltygookus make sense, similar to learning mathematical notation. (I personally believe this is easier than learning the alphabet, but that's a different story)
However, understanding what the abstractions mean is difficult. The difference between memorizing formulas and intuiting patterns. Maybe this is no harder than understanding the abstractions behinds words.
Like most "hard" things, the largest reason for difficulty is one of obtaining persistent practice.
If it were common to sing piano music using theory words rather than a single "lalala", for example, or if our language made use of specific tonal changes (up a second v down a major third), or if everyone learned the theory at the age where we now learn the alphabet, the gibberish goobeltygook would seem "easy".
Re: Why 13th Chords
#6Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
Actually it's a perfectly succinct and easy notation. Not many musicians have a "hard time" getting it, except for those that never cared to study it.
In fact, in the history of jazz piss poor black kids that never went to school managed to master music theory just fine. And an enormous amount of people all around the world.
The particular example you mention (chord naming) has something like 1/100 the difficulty of something like regular expressions.
And it's several orders of magnitude easier than actually learning to play your instrument. Which also millions of people manage to do.
Re: Why 13th Chords
#7Re: Why 13th Chords
#8Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
It seems pretty straight forward to me. The entire article, and this type of music theory, is about intervals and combinations of notes at different intervals.
Re: Why 13th Chords
#9Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
Actually it's a perfectly succinct and easy notation. Not many musicians have a "hard time" getting it, except for those that never cared to study it. In fact, in the history of jazz piss poor black kids that never went to school managed to master music theory just fine. And an enormous amount of people all around the world. The particular example you mention (chord naming) has something like 1/100 the difficulty of…
I'm afraid you miss my point.
I'm not sure who the article was for, people who already know its contents perhaps? Anyone else would have to have a solid background in theory to understand much of anything in it.
"I find not only the 13th chord a great substitute for a 7th now, especially when it's the dominant resolving to the tonic, but I also love the 7th+3rd+13th/6th way of voicing it too."
Re: Why 13th Chords
#10Well, that pretty much explains why people have a hard time "getting" music theory. Gibberish+Goobeltygooksus7
Ironically, the situation is very similar to math. It's relatively easy to read music theory notation, so that the Gibberish and Goobeltygookus make sense, similar to learning mathematical notation. (I personally believe this is easier than learning the alphabet, but that's a different story) However, understanding what the abstractions mean is difficult. The difference between memorizing formulas and intuiting patte…
The problem I always had with math (when it came to integrals, anyway) was the whole 'dx' notation, where you apparently just had to "go with the flow" and understand what was being expressed. It ain't "d times x", it's this other thing that's syntactically similar to saying "ab" which means "a times b".
Someone on HN is going to hammer me. I just muddled through the ambiguity.
Then again, what I used to think was the real solution (an exensible grammar -- say, s-expressions -- which would remove the ambiguity) would result in really ugly-looking math.
[Don't get me started on denotational semantics. I tried, I really tried to understand the foundation of Standard ML through some DS-based books on the subject, but in the end I just got sick of yet another system of poorly defined heiroglyphics. Maybe I'm just allergic.]