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Music theory for nerds

eev.ee

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Re: Music theory for nerds

#351

Post by ktRolster »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #261
ktRolster wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be a very good book, but I'll be honest, it doesn't look like a very gentle introduction.

It's not :(. Although the average person could probably get a lot of good high-level info by browsing it. I haven't yet come across anything that is a good gentle intro. Most resources that approach music and math make the mistake of treating music theory like the law, without any rationale for it provided. Music history textbooks typically give a lot more context of how our music theories emerged, but they don't tal…

Does that book provide anything helpful to someone who already understand music theory?

Re: Music theory for nerds

#352

Post by ktRolster »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #345
ktRolster wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that sounds great, but very difficult to read/play

Sometimes when there's a bunch of triplets the editor will just write "simile" and drop the triplet notation. This could work like that and only the time signature would need a brand new notation, so no I don't think it would be super hard to read.

Triplets are tough to play haha

Re: Music theory for nerds

#353

Post by zhemao »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #349
zhemao wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form, Timbre I think dynamics (or at least dynamic contrast) is also an important element. > Timbre is the easiest to appreciate due to its lack of rich structure It does have a rich structure, we just don't really understand it yet. Timbre is essentially the linear combination of harmonics of a single pitch. You could express it as a Fourier series. But we don't have a good model of how to…

Fourier analysis indicates there is a huge space of timbre, but not necessarily a rich one. In my experience while timbres can be annoying, they aren't wrong like a an arbitrary harmonic progression is. Harmony being such a minefield is what makes its space so rich.

Ah, I see what you mean. I guess you can think of timbre as a mixture of dynamics and a very simplified version of harmony in which you can only have intervals of an octave.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#354

Post by pkolaczk »

ajuc wrote: post #257
andrepd wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

o.O why so? And what on earth do you propose?

C is 0. Each half-tone up is +1. If you really want to keep it concise you can write it as base-12 numbers. C1 C1# D1 D1# E1 F1 F1# G1 G1# A1 A1# B1 C2 C2# D2 D2# E2 F2 F2# G2 G2# A2 A2# B2 ... 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b ... First number is octave. Second number is half-tone in that octave. Translating is just mechanical addition. EDIT: on second thought making it base-12…

It looks better on paper for an engineer, but not for someone who actually plays an instrument and reads the notation. With most western music, not all 12 pitches in an octave are used most of the time, but only a subset determined by the key and scale. Although the currently used notation may look weird for a newbie, it takes just a quick look at the key signature and you know which pitches will be used in a piece of music. When you know the scale (and practicing scales is just a standard part of learning), then "decoding" a note by counting tones is much easier than counting individual semitones (12 seems just too many). After a little practice you get it intuitively and you really don't count; you just know where each tone (or chord) is in a given scale and what function it has. And then when you suddenly see an additional flat or sharp symbol before a note, you know that this is an out-of-scale note, so it is also easier to play it. Disclaimer: I'm an engineer.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#355

Post by komponisto »

theOnliest wrote: post #260
ajuc wrote: post #224

My main problem with music notation is the difference between C-C# and E-F interval. That is - there's no difference, but notations pretends there is one because that's how we put the keys closer to each other or some other historical reason.

This is (sometimes) a legitimate gripe about the standard notation system, which is that it's optimized for music in a key. Sometimes there is a difference between E-F and C-C#. In the key of F major, E-F is the leading tone moving to tonic, which is a diatonic interval (a diatonic half-step). C-C#, on the other hand, is a chromatic half-step: in F major, it represents an alteration of scale degree 5 (sol). If you se…

>This is one reason that the music of the 2nd Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg) is so impossible to look at: the structure of the music is obfuscated by the structure of the notation

Wrong. First of all, it's not "impossible" to look at by any means; I think it's beautiful to look at (as great music usually is).

There is a good reason why Schoenberg abandoned his (briefly-held) ideas about new forms of notation (and went on to produce another three decades' worth of music in traditional notation). He, and his disciples Berg and Webern, were steeped in the Western art music tradition, of which they believed their work to be a natural continuation. They didn't have a very good theoretical understanding of the new music they were creating -- because, apparently, music theory is hard. But they could sense its intimate relationship to its historical predecessors; indeed, they specifically, cultivated that relationship, baking it into the music. This, in my view, is why they were never going to break away from the visual representation of that relationship, of that continuity -- namely, traditional notation.

The idea that their music is not in a key is widespread, but incorrect. Inferential distance (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Inferential_distance) precludes me from being able to explain this concisely in a non-misleading way, unfortunately.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#356

Post by lmm »

jacobolus wrote: post #344
lmm wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reducing all those ordinal numbers by one really doesn’t help all that much. You still have to remember how the “minor” and “major” labels interact for every interval in the scale, which is a horribly confusing mess. Those interactions are pretty intuitive. Where defined, major + minor = perfect (considering an octave as perfect), perfect + major/minor = major/minor. As long as you remember which notes exist, you c…

They’re not remotely “intuitive”. They only make sense to someone with years of training. If instead you used digits from –5 to 6, using arithmetic mod 12, it becomes obvious that e.g.: -2 + -3 = -5 4 + 3 = -5 5 + 5 = -2 -5 + -1 = 6 4 + -3 = 1 etc. The “perfect” intervals are just ±5 (ratios very close to 3:2 and 4:3). The “major” intervals are –3, –1, 2, 4 (approx. ratios of 5:3, 15:8, 9:8, 5:4). The “minor” interva…

> Then it’s easy to see that your “major + minor = perfect” formula only works for some intervals, Etc.

Where does it go wrong? Do those cases come up in practice?

Counting up and down the scale is a core use case for a notation for intervals. It absolutely needs to be well-supported. A 12-semitone approach is never going to match the usability of even the existing system.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#357

Post by komponisto »

lmm wrote: post #356
jacobolus wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not remotely “intuitive”. They only make sense to someone with years of training. If instead you used digits from –5 to 6, using arithmetic mod 12, it becomes obvious that e.g.: -2 + -3 = -5 4 + 3 = -5 5 + 5 = -2 -5 + -1 = 6 4 + -3 = 1 etc. The “perfect” intervals are just ±5 (ratios very close to 3:2 and 4:3). The “major” intervals are –3, –1, 2, 4 (approx. ratios of 5:3, 15:8, 9:8, 5:4). The “minor” interva…

> Then it’s easy to see that your “major + minor = perfect” formula only works for some intervals, Etc. Where does it go wrong? Do those cases come up in practice? Counting up and down the scale is a core use case for a notation for intervals. It absolutely needs to be well-supported. A 12-semitone approach is never going to match the usability of even the existing system.

>A 12-semitone approach is never going to match the usability of even the existing system

I am obliged to point out that a 12-semitone approach is in fact part of the "existing system" (see: pitch-class set theory).

(Mind you, I of course think its usefulness is overrated, because I think the "atonal" repertory is tonal.)

Re: Music theory for nerds

#358

Post by anentropic »

dharma1 wrote: post #294
perlgeek wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that's an explanation I haven't heard that way before, but that makes sense to me. Follow-up question: how are phase of the scale and the piece of music synchronized? When I think in terms of a wave, I could Fourier-Transform it into sines or in cosines, or any other phase-shifted variant (a * sin(nx + const.))? Is it always the first note of the piece of music that "anchors" the piece in its scale? Does that…

The phase of a sound wave doesn't play a role in the context of compositions or scales. It does of course play a role in audio in general though - in recording, and analog and digital signal processing etc.

they're not talking about phase of the sound wave but "phase" of the scale notes as an alternative way of describing what music theory calls modes

Re: Music theory for nerds

#359

Post by anentropic »

zhemao wrote: post #353
Ericson2314 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fourier analysis indicates there is a huge space of timbre, but not necessarily a rich one. In my experience while timbres can be annoying, they aren't wrong like a an arbitrary harmonic progression is. Harmony being such a minefield is what makes its space so rich.

Ah, I see what you mean. I guess you can think of timbre as a mixture of dynamics and a very simplified version of harmony in which you can only have intervals of an octave.

you can have fifths and thirds too I think... you can pluck those harmonics on a single guitar string.

I don't know if any other intervals are possible as harmonics... perhaps the ratios for other intervals are too big to make it practical, they are too weak to sound

Re: Music theory for nerds

#360

Post by midgetjones »

abruzzi wrote: post #313
skrebbel wrote: post #174

I'd like to elaborate a bit, in the same "for nerds" manner, on where Eevee seems to get lost a bit with scales and notation. He (she? not sure) calls the A minor and C major scales the same, because they contain the same notes. That's not an odd thought, but it's like calling sine and cosine the same because both functions contain the same set of values, in the same order. The difference is phase. Basically, scales…

Even though the key signature for a major and its relative minor are the same, that is only part of the story. When you see that A Minor has the same key signature as C Major, what you are seeing is the "natural minor" scale. This is simply the notes implied by the key signature, and so is identical (but down a third) from the relative major. If you play purely in the natural minor, you are really closer to the Aeoli…

I've never quite understood why you learn a melodic minor as being different depending on if it's ascending or descending.

Are there examples of this in music? Or is it just something invented to test young pianists in exams?

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