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

Music theory for nerds

eev.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 390 posts

Re: Music theory for nerds

#371

Post by arnarbi »

coldtea wrote: post #216
Desustorm wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people with experience in the field are just annoyed with her poorly-conceived assertions at the end, e.g. "This has got to be some of the worst jargon and notation for anything, ever." rather than pedantry.

Only a lot of experience could just be cargo cult and busy work, as is in most fields. I.e the music world's analogue to: "but of course you need to make XML configuration files for everything and FactoryFactorySingletons etc, that's how we do things in J2EE".

I'm not an a musician by most measures, and definitely not an experienced one. I lack exactly training and experience, so my understanding of music notation comes from the same kind of observations as the post author - only over a longer time and in the context of playing many instruments badly. So I don't think I drank any cool aid.

So, my comment is a response to the specific points they made. Yes, there may be cargo culture around it, and certainly the system isn't perfect. But their examples are non-examples of that.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#372

Post by andrepd »

hiddenkrypt wrote: post #331
meggar wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letters and flats/sharps give you key/value over frequencies, which is better than just a numeric index over a chromatic scale. Working with the keys allows for the same abstractions to be used with all 12 keys at the same time, on the same staff.

I'm not really arguing one way or the other, just pointing out that they're functionally equivalent. It's two different maps keying to the same set of frequencies. The BASE12 system described above would allow for keys as well, just with a different notation. Instead of flats/sharps marked next to the clef in traditional sheet music, the BASE12 system could start each line with a list of 'prohibited' notes. For examp…

You need to stop thinking about things in engineer terms. The scale going 7,9,b,0,2,3 instead of G,A,B,C,D,E,F with B and E flat may be functionally identical, but one is sure a better representation of the actual patterns in the music than simply referring to a number proportional to the log(frequency).

Re: Music theory for nerds

#373

Post by rodgerd »

technomancy wrote: post #252
rodgerd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you can't read Italian after a half-arsed effort to learn it, is this proof Italian is broken?

Not as badly as English is broken. I mean, it's generally agreed that English as a language has accrued so much historical baggage that it's shed any elegance or coherence it may or may not have once had. It would honestly be surprising to me if the same thing didn't happen to musical language.

> it's generally agreed

Buy people who know nothing about how languages and linguistics work, I can only assume.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#374

Post by Musonius »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #179
brunorsini wrote: post #144

In case anyone is searching for a really smart, modern method for learning music theory, this is it: https://www.hooktheory.com The author devised his own system for visually representing notes, it makes it much easier to understand things like scale degrees and relative notation (and thus the theory around famous harmonies, melodies, etc). I think music tools are in desperate need for improvement... Starting with no…

No, instruments really don't. The point of conventional instruments is that once you learn them - which takes years - you can instantly express almost any musical idea using all the possible degrees of freedom available on that instrument. With something like Ableton Push, you're one step removed from the sound generation, because you're triggering automata with a very limited expressive repertoire. (With Push, it's…

This is utter BS, you can play the Push as if it were a piano and the sound design options are endless.

Saying electronic music is either too chaotic or too repetitive is not only entirely subjective but completely impossible for you to say. Artists like Kiasmos or, famously, Aphex Twin, just to name a couple amongst hundreds, make music that can be neither repetitive or chaotic, for example.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#375

Post by jlu »

karlb wrote: post #176

Many musicians much better than me are surprised at how I can play a song just by hearing it on the radio. My breakthrough came from understanding music was realizing that the real “meaning” of a note lies in its position relative to the tonic note (e,g, I-II-II, etc, also written do-re-mi). Suddenly, almost all of the clutter was removed, and the problem became manageable. Let's consider the three-note tune “do, re,…

@karb: mind if I shoot some questions about the "decipher” all music into I, II, III, IV, V" part in email? Thanks.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#376

Post by tgb »

arnarbi wrote: post #370
tgb wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good reason this is popular. I wanted to understand key signatures and stuff, so I bought a music theory book. Oh boy, that was a mistake. It just listed scales and chords and told me what a staff was. There was no theory there! Then I read a mathematics of music book and finally the scales were explained. That's why this exists. There's a lot of cruft out there when you look for music theory that isn't wha…

This is the case for many complex topics. One recent example for me is aviation: Textbooks for pilots are woefully inaccurate, contradictory, and plain confusing. But they get you flying. This happens naturally when you can practice an art/craft/skill without deep understanding of the complex system that underlies it. Since that understanding isn't interesting to many, the system survives by teaching an incomplete or…

I'm guessing that these textbooks for pilots are labelled things like "Fundamentals of Flight"[1] or "Pilot's Manual" and not "Theoretical Aerodynamics". I think it is a peculiarity of music that the field labelled "music theory" is actually about music practice (or perhaps music description), at least at the introductory level. And this causes frustration in a certain subset of people.

For example, you don't find the info from this article in the wikipedia page on Music Theory, though you do find it in the "Music and Mathematics" page. I understand that there's more to music theory than rational numbers and the twelfth root of two, but it was the first thing that ever explained to me why something was true in music. In contrast to the circle of fifths which shows that there is a pattern but does not explain form where that pattern came.

[1] Actually I googled this one and it exists and it seems to be about the design of aircraft; a case where it's perhaps more theoretical than I would have guessed.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#377

Post by tgb »

zhemao wrote: post #329
tgb wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good reason this is popular. I wanted to understand key signatures and stuff, so I bought a music theory book. Oh boy, that was a mistake. It just listed scales and chords and told me what a staff was. There was no theory there! Then I read a mathematics of music book and finally the scales were explained. That's why this exists. There's a lot of cruft out there when you look for music theory that isn't wha…

That's because music theory books are written for musicians, not mathematicians. It is a theory, just an empirical one and not a mathematical one. The circle of fifths is not magic. Every step you take on the circle of fifths moves one note in the key by a semitone.

To clarify, I was saying that the presentation of the circle of fifths was as if it were magical. By itself, the circle of fifths is descriptive more than it is explanatory.

Re: Music theory for nerds

#378

Post by ngneer »

djaychela wrote: post #120
ktRolster wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why the circle of fifths is a circle that goes through all keys, but the really interesting thing about the circle of fifths is that a fifth sounds relatively close to the key next to it, and it doesn't really explain that, I guess.

Any key a fifth away only changes one note - if you go from C Major (CDEFGABC) to G Major (GABCDEF#G) then only the F# has changed, and as a result there are chords which are common between the two keys - any chord without an F in it in C will be common to G as well. Works the other way if you go 'down' a fifth (to F), but has a flat instead. (Bb)

More specifically, going up a fifth augments the fourth by a semitone to become the seventh and going down a fifth diminishes the seventh by a semitone to become the fourth. In your example, F the fourth became F# the seventh and B the seventh became Bb the fourth. A fifth away _IS_ a semitone away.

Defining the following eight functions:

  SEMITONE =  +1 mod 12;  ANTI_SEMITONE = SEVENTH;
  FOURTH   =  +5 mod 12;  ANTI_FOURTH   = FIFTH;
  FIFTH    =  +7 mod 12;  ANTI_FIFTH    = FOURTH;
  SEVENTH  = +11 mod 12;  ANTI_SEVENTH  = SEMITONE;
We ask ourselves why the following holds:

   FOURTH(X) = ANTI_SEMITONE(SEVENTH(FIFTH(X)))
  SEVENTH(X) = SEMITONE(FOURTH(ANTI_FIFTH(X)))
Substituting, the answer is clear:

  X +  5 = X + 7 + 11 - 1
  X + 11 = X - 7 +  5 + 1
Keys one fifth apart differ by one note because:

  1 = 11 + 7 - 5 mod 12
Algebraically it seems to work out...

Re: Music theory for nerds

#379

Post by arnarbi »

tgb wrote: post #376
arnarbi wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the case for many complex topics. One recent example for me is aviation: Textbooks for pilots are woefully inaccurate, contradictory, and plain confusing. But they get you flying. This happens naturally when you can practice an art/craft/skill without deep understanding of the complex system that underlies it. Since that understanding isn't interesting to many, the system survives by teaching an incomplete or…

I'm guessing that these textbooks for pilots are labelled things like "Fundamentals of Flight"[1] or "Pilot's Manual" and not "Theoretical Aerodynamics". I think it is a peculiarity of music that the field labelled "music theory" is actually about music practice (or perhaps music description), at least at the introductory level. And this causes frustration in a certain subset of people. For example, you don't find th…

Yes, you are absolutely right ("Pilot's handbook of aeronautical knowledge", "Helicopter flying handbook", etc.).

That said, rational numbers and twelfth root of two etc. aren't exactly what musicians or composers would be thinking about, but rather scales, intervals, chords and progressions. That's the music theory the OP was arguably looking for. Those are introduced on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory#Fundamentals_of_m...

Re: Music theory for nerds

#380

Post by ngneer »

karlb wrote: post #176

Many musicians much better than me are surprised at how I can play a song just by hearing it on the radio. My breakthrough came from understanding music was realizing that the real “meaning” of a note lies in its position relative to the tonic note (e,g, I-II-II, etc, also written do-re-mi). Suddenly, almost all of the clutter was removed, and the problem became manageable. Let's consider the three-note tune “do, re,…

Indeed, the scales are isomorphic.
Post reply on HN