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Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

musictheory.pugetsound.edu

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Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#21

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #19
JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listen to a lot of progressive metal/math metal and they basically live and die by music theory. While I am not the most musically educated individual, from my listening experience it allows them to defy the listeners expectations. Without this structure the complexity of their music would be closer to grindcore or something which is more chaotic. Using music theory they can understand why certain composition works…

Have you seen Yogev Gabay's analyses of prog metal tunes? He did one on Bleed [1]. He uses the terms "guest" and "host" to describe complex time in the songs he analyses. So in Bleed for example, I think he'd say the "host" was 4/4, but the "guest" is definitely not. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcsAAPdJTBE

Oh looks interesting, I haven't seen that. Thanks!

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#22

Post by dcassett »

dehrmann wrote: post #14
anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

Could you share where you run into issues? > why does piano have 88 keys? I'm only ok at music theory, so I might get bits somewhat wrong, but the gist is right. Notes with wavelengths that are integer multiples/fractions of each other sound the same. 440 Hz sounds similar to 220 Hz and 880 Hz (and this makes sense if you just look at the waveform), so we give them the same name. Western music slices the range betwee…

> Why is it called an octave when it has 7 named notes?

I think it's because of 1-based numbering. Two identical pitches are called a "unison".

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#23

Post by nspeller »

anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

[shameless plug] I built http://lightnote.co for exactly this. Starting from basic sound waves, it teaches music theory while skipping all of the technical notation. It definitely doesn't go as deep as this post, but I don't think that's essential to getting started.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#24

Post by sseagull »

anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

Leonard Bernstein has some lectures that might be helpful. This one has some good stuff about why notes an octave apart sound similar, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHi36dvTdE

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#25

Post by thewebcount »

MauranKilom wrote: post #10

I've always had trouble drawing practical benefit from music theory. Once you go beyond simple scales, it always feels like it quickly devolves into "all these different things can also sound good", and every "rule" can also be broken to spice things up. As long as it sounds good. Conversely, there appears to often be many ways to "explain" a certain composition in terms of music theory. To be clear, I have seen firs…

For me it's just a way to make communicating about music quicker. My ear is mediocre at best. Given time I can figure out what's being played, but having another person say, "It's a I-vi-ii-V-I in F" communicates it much more quickly.

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#26

Post by strogonoff »

> It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory.

https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#27

Post by jedimastert »

anu7df wrote: post #9

May be it is just me, but I am yet to find a single book of music theory that really starts from the basics. Most pretend to, but start talking about famous clefs and what not, quickly moving on to examples that for the life of me I cannot follow the relevance of. In this book for example, in the basics chapter, he talks about .. oh there are only 7 named notes, so why does piano have 88 keys?.. I really don't think…

> starts from the basics

what do you mean by "the basics"? Every kind of music theory is based around assumptions from elsewhere and prior experience

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#28

Post by dcassett »

jancsika wrote: post #15

Something seems off here. 1. Cadential six-four chords are only listed briefly under the "figured bass" section. But cadential six-fours are a concept from Roman numeral functional harmony, which is outside the scope of figured bass. (Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord-- or in some special circumstances hints about voicing-- but not about how those chords function.) 2. The section on cadences--…

> Figured bass only tells what intervals make up the chord

Those intervals are relative to the bass. A six-four has a sixth and fourth above the bass (i.e., a second inversion).

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#29

Post by jedimastert »

A gentle reminder that this is a theory of music, not "the" music theory, or more specifically Western European music theory, rooted in 17th century Germany. A problem for many "21st century classrooms" is how they VASTLY over-state the universality and "superiority" of this form of music theory.

Thing about the snooty elitist vibes of the "classical" chamber music world, then realize that almost every base assumption made have real-world counter-examples. 12 equal-tempered subdivisions to an octave is (possibly) obvious one, but most people don't realize that many musical cultures don't subdivide measures into even pulses, or have even/equal-sized measures (see "additive rhythm").

Re: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

#30

Post by jedimastert »

_1a wrote: post #5

Is halfstep and whole steps common academic practice? Not being from the US I was always taught with semitones and tones. Whenever I saw YouTube videos with half steps and whole steps I thought they were dumbing down for the audience.

It's basically a British/American vernacular difference. They're the same thing.

Sort of like semi/hemi/demi quavers and the like versus whole/half/quarter notes

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