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One thing that is particularly arbitrary is that C is named "C" rather than "A", which would make far more sense (given that it is the root note of the only major scale that has no sharps or flats).
I've skimmed a lot of articles on music "theory" but none of them provide anything like what I'm looking for. A music theory should explain: 1. Why do we like pieces when played forward but not backward or inverted? 2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions? 3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)? In other words, why does…
Some examples:
* http://www.music.msu.edu/areas-studios/music-theory
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory#Fundamentals_of_m...
> Also, this notation has a slight problem. That problem is that sheet music is terrible. > This has got to be some of the worst jargon and notation for anything, ever. I hear it bandied around in these articles that music notation is awful. Can someone explain to me why? I'm not much of a musician, but I can work my way through sheet music if necessary, or write it when I want to. I don't remember what it was like t…
I think the "completely obscures the relationship between the pitches" is more about the relationship to the tonal than anything else. A note a full step above the tonal sounds the same in any key. When first glancing at a piece of music, the relationship is obscured; to tell something is a perfect fifth from the tonal, you first need to recognize the tonal.
Meanwhile, all the thirds are easier to recognize, since they have the same spacing.
I would love to see an alternative notation that is demonstrably easier to read. That is, there's a big difference between "it's hard because music notation is an inherently difficult problem" and "it's hard because the notation we chose sucks".
This has got to be some of the worst jargon and notation for anything, ever. Indeed. I'm a musician, and something non-musicians often ask (especially techies, it seems) is why we use such an archaic notation system. The reason is simply that a certain number of musicians have developed the skill of sight reading which is the ability to perform a composition directly from a written sheet, with little or no rehearsal.…
It's moer than just that though. The inertia to overcome also includes pretty much all sheet music ever printed, all the schools that have adopted the current system, all the educational materials... etc. etc. the list goes on.
In addition to all of that, the new system needs to convey most of (if not all) the information that the current system has. I have seen a few attempts at improvement, but they all fell short of the current system, which let's face it has been in development for several hundred years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the "completely obscures the relationship between the pitches" is more about the relationship to the tonal than anything else. A note a full step above the tonal sounds the same in any key. When first glancing at a piece of music, the relationship is obscured; to tell something is a perfect fifth from the tonal, you first need to recognize the tonal.
I'm not sure what you mean by "perfect fifth away from the tonal". Do you mean tonic? Perfect fifths are easy to recognize, they're notes which are both on lines or both on spaces, and there is a small gap between them. Yes, you have to remember that one of the fifths is diminished, but only one of them. Meanwhile, all the thirds are easier to recognize, since they have the same spacing. I would love to see an altern…
Yes, it's easy to tell a fifth relative to the root of a chord. What I'm talking about is the chord relative to the tonic.
I've skimmed a lot of articles on music "theory" but none of them provide anything like what I'm looking for. A music theory should explain: 1. Why do we like pieces when played forward but not backward or inverted? 2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions? 3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)? In other words, why does…
Would you like a movie played backward?
> 2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions?
Large part of this boils down to if the waves representing the sounds meet at zeroes or not.
> 3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)?
I think that this is currently impossible. The music composition search space is actually extremely large, larger than say the search space of Go. You can restrict the search space quite a bit but it's still large.
> In other words, why does a particular sequence of sounds A, B, C lead to a mental state M that has particular internal qualities?
Think of it as design. It's the same sort of problem.
One thing that is particularly arbitrary is that C is named "C" rather than "A", which would make far more sense (given that it is the root note of the only major scale that has no sharps or flats).
Well, it has to be somewhat arbitrary. But it is nice that the relative minor of C, which is two steps down, is A. Otherwise you would have to go five steps up (from A to F, hypothetically, if A B C D E F G A were a major scale).
It would certainly make more sense for people learning music. The C major scale is universally agreed to be the simplest, most basic scale, so wouldn't it make more sense for it to be ABCDEFG, rather than CDEFGAB?
Here're my thoughts on the subject.
For some reason no one can explain, Western music settled on a system of 12 tones with equal temperament, This system emerged as a result of long evolution of Western music, and experimentally proven to be very rich in possibilities.
Scales used in Western music (of which jazz is a part of) are built on two simple principles: 1) interval between adjacent notes of the scale is either tone or semitone 2) there's no two semitones in a row.
It's easy to check that all scales that satisfy these 2 rules are:
major scale and its modes (7-note scales; 7 modes)
melodic minor scale and its modes (7-note scales; 7 modes)
diminished scale and its modes (8-note scales; 2 modes)
whole-tone scale (6-note scale, single mode).
(Whole tone scale is not used very often, except by T.Monk)
But even after we "explain" scales, we need to figure out how to use them, what their role is, what the properties of each mode are. There's no hard science behind this, the properties just "emerge", and you have to experience them - theorizing is not of much help, math formulas don't explain anything, just lead to confusion.
In short: you have to play AND think; thinking alone won't help. It's an experimental subject.
Edit: forgot to say: scale is a very useful notion, but in some contexts, it's more convenient to think in terms of triads and interpolation. I know this all sounds hand-wavy, and it is! Unfortunately, without piano, it's impossible to to illustrate what it all means. The subject doesn't easily lend itself to verbalization.