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Ear Training Practice

tonedear.com

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Re: Ear Training Practice

#21

Post by black_puppydog »

functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

You're roughly describing Chromatone and their Muto method of notation: https://muto-method.com/en/index.html

Sure, if path dependency was were not a thing, this might make more sense. But it takes an extraordinary amount of time to really get good at music and you don't want to be the only person who speaks a completely different language to the people around you. So it makes sense to stick with what everybody speaks.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#22

Post by Groxx »

taco_emoji wrote: post #8
functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

There is no "objective" foundation to music. Mapping twelve letters onto a piano keyboard would then look something like this: B D G I K A C EF H J LA Which means an A major scale in this notation would be ACEFHJLA, which is actually less intuitive than understanding the circle of fifths etc. and arriving at ABC#DEF#G#A (to use this universe's notation)

To +1 the "no objective foundation": browse music theory research a bit! There's a ton of caveats and poor-sounding fits and whatnot for literally every approach, and there's endless discussion of it. E.g. have a MinutePhysics take on how the common 12 note western scale falls apart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4

And that's before even getting into completely alternate approaches, or how strongly harmonics affect perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAgXpCK_4gA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ8qZCGg4Bk

(maybe to clarify: there are objective aspects, in that sound is measurable. but there is nothing like a "grand unified theory" that covers all music, nor are roughly any of the popular ones internally consistent - it's far, far too varied for that, and physics often doesn't allow the desired consistency, causing more variety)

Re: Ear Training Practice

#24

Post by khazhoux »

mentalgear wrote: post #18

I was expecting this was a tool to help people who couldn't distinguish sounds in a noisy environment to train their ears. But its for musical training. (which may or may not help?)

You expected one thing but found it was not what you thought. What is the takeaway for us?

Re: Ear Training Practice

#26

Post by khazhoux »

functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

Sounds like you don’t understand scales if you’re confused about why we have 7 note names.

Also, in your own color analogy: we have a small number of main color names, then a bunch of in betweens.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#27

Post by epiccoleman »

functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

Do you have much experience reading musical notation?

I've found that engineer types tend to immediately bristle at the weird parts of how notes are named because the system seems really kludgy until you realize that there's actually a utility in the weirdness - namely, that scale patterns look roughly similar in any given key and so sight reading is counterintuitively easier with the current system than it would be in a system which assigned a different position on the staff (or a different name) to each note.

Furthermore - we have seven note names because there are seven notes in the major scale, so changing this count would definitely not make sense.

To be clear there are definitely warts in the current system, lots of confusing stuff around enharmonics. But there's definitely babies in the bathwater and any alternate system would not want to toss them out.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#28

Post by nostrademons »

jbritton wrote: post #12
bigbuppo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... did y'all not have music class in elementary school?

I never had a music class at any point in school in California.

It exists in some California schools, but this is one of those things that exists because in some districts the parents setup a 501(c)3 whose only job is to fill the gap left by Prop 13 and Prop 98. My kid's had it every year, but in kinder it was a parent volunteer teaching it and in 1st/2nd the music teacher was entirely funded out of parent donations.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#30

Post by functionmouse »

black_puppydog wrote: post #21
functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

You're roughly describing Chromatone and their Muto method of notation: https://muto-method.com/en/index.html Sure, if path dependency was were not a thing, this might make more sense. But it takes an extraordinary amount of time to really get good at music and you don't want to be the only person who speaks a completely different language to the people around you. So it makes sense to stick with what everybody speak…

In a way, string instrument players already think this way
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