Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Music Theory for Beginners

whitakerblackall.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 110 posts

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#101

Post by eftpotrm »

hernan7 wrote: post #62
eftpotrm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To wit: when I play piano, I play in C. When I play guitar, I don't think about what key I'm in. I play in whatever fingering is easiest and what sounds best at the time. I know what you mean, but I think that's significantly a keyboard-based hazard. I play the trumpet (mostly; I can do a very little on a few others and trying to improve) and I've frequently ended up jamming away in odd keys, switching between them…

Sax also favors the C major scale [ ]. Back in the early 20th century, sax salespeople would take advantage of this to sell the sax as an "easy to play" instrument. You can hang a saxophone from your neck and in 5 minutes you are playing the C major scale, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, whatever. Compare with the trumpet or the violin, where just playing your first major scale in tune scale in tune takes weeks of pract…

OK, there's two separate things here :-)

Trumpet fingering is easiest in C, F or G majors (as read, concert Bb, Eb and F). The actual blowing is quite physical and needs a good bit of practice to build strength; that is easiest in C, and the lowest fifth of that too.

But.... There's only three keys, they always operate in the same sequence, so once you've learnt that fingerings flow quite easily, and the harmonics are good, useful intervals. Perfect fifth, perfect fourth, major third, minor third. That gives the five core open harmonics over a core range of two octaves once you use the valves. Hence, once you've got yourself going a bit, while some keys are easier than others the instrument's structure lends itself nicely to switching keys at will without major issues. It makes it a nice instrument for improvisation.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#102

Post by AndyKelley »

ThomPete wrote: post #100
AndyKelley wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virgin? http://www.last.fm/user/superjoe30 According to this website I listen to 60 tracks every day.

60 Jazz tracks? That's what I mean with virgin ear. You are not used to listen to Jazz so it's more likely to sound horrible to you since it's often rather complex. Why do you think that parents of the 68' generation hated Beatles despite it being what we consider pop culture today. You need to understand this in context rather than in absolute terms.

Makes sense except for one point: Why would a person purposefully subject themselves to a musical genre that sounds bad? You said yourself, to the virgin ear, jazz sounds bad. That means that everyone who likes jazz music at one point thought that it was terrible music yet listened to it anyway.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#103

Post by eftpotrm »

mmaunder wrote: post #58
ThomPete wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways do divide an octave. Steve Vai created a scale called the Xavian scale wich is dividing the octave by 10. He used in on Deep Down Into The Pain http://www.guitarflame.com/2008/xavian-scale-steve-vais-own-...

I think a big part of music is familiarity which is why you see the overuse of the I, V, vi, IV progression. So to me Xavian sounds like chromatic played out of tune. Nice idea though.

It's not just that; the musical intervals we tend to favour are based around natural resonances and constructive / destructive interference. Hence why a perfect fifth sounds good and a diminished fifth jars; the waveforms don't compliment each other.

I'm willing to be persuaded and don't claim to have made a large study of this but I'm yet to hear a microtonal tuning that didn't just sound off. The sounds actively work against each other because the resonances just aren't there.

(I'm aware in this that modern keyboards are even tempered and so we don't actually _quite_ have perfect intervals any more, but the differences at that level are far smaller.)

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#104

Post by ThomPete »

AndyKelley wrote: post #102
ThomPete wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 Jazz tracks? That's what I mean with virgin ear. You are not used to listen to Jazz so it's more likely to sound horrible to you since it's often rather complex. Why do you think that parents of the 68' generation hated Beatles despite it being what we consider pop culture today. You need to understand this in context rather than in absolute terms.

Makes sense except for one point: Why would a person purposefully subject themselves to a musical genre that sounds bad? You said yourself, to the virgin ear, jazz sounds bad. That means that everyone who likes jazz music at one point thought that it was terrible music yet listened to it anyway.

That is up to the individual.

Many people as they start playing instruments they start developing a more and more sophisticated sense of harmony.

It's not different than code looking like nonsense to the noob.

This is where culture comes in. Jazz used to be pop-music, people grew up with it.

Context history culture sophistication at any given subject.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#105

Post by gbog »

eftpotrm wrote: post #103
mmaunder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of music is familiarity which is why you see the overuse of the I, V, vi, IV progression. So to me Xavian sounds like chromatic played out of tune. Nice idea though.

It's not just that; the musical intervals we tend to favour are based around natural resonances and constructive / destructive interference. Hence why a perfect fifth sounds good and a diminished fifth jars; the waveforms don't compliment each other. I'm willing to be persuaded and don't claim to have made a large study of this but I'm yet to hear a microtonal tuning that didn't just sound off . The sounds actively w…

Don't be afraid to be right. I did study music theory and I can confirm that the intervals as we know them are just a way to modelize the natural physical relationships between the waves we hear. It is a way to remeber where to put your finger on a violin to make the two string sound good together in a given harmonic context.

One can alway declare to prefer microtonal or whatever invention, but the level interference (or harmony) between pitched sounds can be determined rationaly. This, for once, is not placable under cultural relativism. That's why it is probable that quater tones in Indian or Iranian music are not really tones, and are more like little bends to the natural scale.

(This fact do not please avant-gardists, because it means there is roughly nothing new to invent in this field, but reality is not supposed to always be pleasant, right?)

By the way, I couldn't read the OP (blocked), sorry if my contrib is not related enough.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#106

Post by davidmathers »

AndyKelley wrote: post #89
ThomPete wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does Jazz to a virgin ear. That doesn't mean it is.

Jazz sounds awful. There's a reason pop music sticks to the four chords of victory - they sound great!

Jazz sounds awful.

I can understand styles of music sounding awful, but what does it mean for a whole genre of music to sound awful? How does that even make sense?

Just to be clear, do you think this (Desafinado) sounds awful?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So718wk426c

Crazy talk.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#107

Post by ThomPete »

gbog wrote: post #105
eftpotrm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that; the musical intervals we tend to favour are based around natural resonances and constructive / destructive interference. Hence why a perfect fifth sounds good and a diminished fifth jars; the waveforms don't compliment each other. I'm willing to be persuaded and don't claim to have made a large study of this but I'm yet to hear a microtonal tuning that didn't just sound off . The sounds actively w…

Don't be afraid to be right. I did study music theory and I can confirm that the intervals as we know them are just a way to modelize the natural physical relationships between the waves we hear. It is a way to remeber where to put your finger on a violin to make the two string sound good together in a given harmonic context. One can alway declare to prefer microtonal or whatever invention, but the level interference…

And I guess also why they don't really use chord progressions like we do in the west no?

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#108

Post by jtheory »

maw wrote: post #79
Jun8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the information. I wonder if there are any "music universals", like the ones for language, i.e. universal grammar. If favoring certain tone ratios is a characteristic of the human auditory system, then there should be.

Interesting question. I think there are some. Does N hz "sound like" N*2 hz and N/2 hz across cultures? I expect the answer is yes, but I don't really know. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13_QGMtlRE . I think Bobby McFerrin would say that there indeed are music universals.

The "counter-proofs" to music universals is often just presenting an example of music from somewhere that doesn't match the universal in question.

Counter-example don't disprove trends, though, and there are certainly trends (I think "universals" is just not quite the right word).

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#109

Post by jtheory »

icarus_drowning wrote: post #3

I teach Music Theory (and piano) for a living-- this is an excellent introduction to the most practical concepts. I was somewhat disappointed that the OP showed us a C Major scale without really explaining what a "major scale" is-- a collection of whole and half steps-- especially since they used a keyboard as an example, which is laid out in exactly the right pattern for teaching the major scale. (Notice that the bl…

It's a good intro, and music theory is one of those things that's quite hard to introduce well.

I'm a music educator, of a sort; this is a project of mine, build around interactive drills & concepts (click free resources if curious): http://emusictheory.com

...but I've held off for a long time on writing a real online course, because, well, it's hard. The concepts don't always seem logical in isolation, the names of concepts sometimes overlap in weird ways (er, major 7th interval or major 7th chord?), and the general approach -- to lay down all the groundwork first, and only then get into anything remotely practical -- is deadly, deadly boring.

So I'm very much in favor of taking a practical approach, and trying to give the student something actual musical-sounding they can produce at the end of every mini-lesson... but if this were easy to do, I'd have it up on the site already. :)

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#110

Post by AndyKelley »

davidmathers wrote: post #106
AndyKelley wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jazz sounds awful. There's a reason pop music sticks to the four chords of victory - they sound great!

Jazz sounds awful. I can understand styles of music sounding awful, but what does it mean for a whole genre of music to sound awful? How does that even make sense? Just to be clear, do you think this (Desafinado) sounds awful?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So718wk426c Crazy talk.

This song isn't actively bad. I wouldn't mind it in the background. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't really utilize "jazzy" chords either. It's just kind of gentle and peaceful and doesn't ask for too much attention. I wouldn't use this as a good example of Jazz music.

What I'm referring to as what sounds awful are songs that try to use "creative" chords that are really just dissonant or don't belong together and "advanced" notes that are really just out of key. As far as I can tell this song isn't doing that.

Post reply on HN