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Music Theory for Beginners

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Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#81

Post by emillon »

maw wrote: post #79
Jun8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the information. I wonder if there are any "music universals", like the ones for language, i.e. universal grammar. If favoring certain tone ratios is a characteristic of the human auditory system, then there should be.

Interesting question. I think there are some. Does N hz "sound like" N*2 hz and N/2 hz across cultures? I expect the answer is yes, but I don't really know. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13_QGMtlRE . I think Bobby McFerrin would say that there indeed are music universals.

It does. You can view any 2*N Hz signal as a N Hz signal with a doubled period. So two such signals will keep "in phase", and when you mix them it can compose a new coherent sound.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#82

Post by ThomPete »

te_chris wrote: post #69
ThomPete wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's terrible it's using the xavian scale which you are not used to.

no, it's terrible because it sounds like a bad technical exercise (music graduate here)

So does Jazz to a virgin ear. That doesn't mean it is.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#84

Post by SwellJoe »

pessimizer wrote: post #65
SwellJoe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"separating the second and third strings by a major third instead of a perfect fifth" The other strings on a guitar are separated by a fourth, not fifth (perfect or otherwise).

Depends on which way you're counting.

While guitarists, by necessity, have a loose approach to finding the right notes for a chord, and will often use an inversion to get them all (or at least the harmonically important ones, like the third) on the fretboard in a reasonable way, that doesn't change the meaning of fourth and fifth. It's a bit pedantic, sure, and the notes have the same harmonic meaning (sort of, though inversions do feel different sometimes), but when you lay out the standard tuning of a guitar out on a piano and ask someone the distance, it is a fourth. You have to jump through some hoops to convince them to tell you that the relationship between the G to the D below it is a "perfect fifth".

I'll also point out that the post I was responding to had already established which way he was counting by describing the relationship between the G and B strings (which, if we're counting the other direction would be a flat 6th; and, as a musician of twenty years I had to do mental somersaults to make my brain think of it that way). One way or another the description of standard guitar tuning was incorrect.

See what you made me do? I had to go all pedantic and stuff, and I hate doing that.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#85

Post by pinchyfingers »

This is so white! lol I can relate because it's how I first approached music, but most mature musicians in the Western world begin with rhythm, yet there is no mention of rhythm in this article.

Rhythm is our soul, get some soul, crackers!

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#86

Post by tieTYT »

I really love the idea behind this article, but I didn't like the execution. I was confused and intimidated after the "scales" section (and that's the first part).

Also, I don't know what the difference between a key, note and a few other words mean.

Trying to be constructive, I hope the article gets edited because I'm genuinely interested in learning these things.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#87

Post by ghotli »

alexophile wrote: post #47
Jun8 wrote: post #32

Fascinating read, but definitely not for beginners, at least for people like me, who have difficulty naming the notes (I have to go through "doe a deer..." each time, there are seven of them, right?) My total music illiteracy really annoys me. However, whenever I try to pick up some knowledge I got held back by lots of questions that the usual music student (or teacher for that matter) has never thought about and no…

People sometimes guffaw at this, but I can't recommend Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEVGQKwKeCc They skip over several centuries of shifting and tweaking between the triad and the modern (western) major scale, but it's a great visual answer at least to your second question.

I recently went on a crusade to find this and show it to my children. I view it as a turning point in my development and one that influenced my life's path a great deal.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#88

Post by joeld42 »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #23
jonp wrote: post #6

This is great. Can anyone recommend a "DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)" for Windows? Preferably with at least a free trial version. Thanks.

And also one for Linux that actually works. :(

I've heard good things about Ardour http://ardour.org/ especially and also Renoise http://www.renoise.com/ but I haven't tried them personally.

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#89

Post by AndyKelley »

ThomPete wrote: post #82
te_chris wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it's terrible because it sounds like a bad technical exercise (music graduate here)

So does Jazz to a virgin ear. That doesn't mean it is.

Jazz sounds awful. There's a reason pop music sticks to the four chords of victory - they sound great!

Re: Music Theory for Beginners

#90

Post by blahblahblah »

doki_pen wrote: post #40
Jun8 wrote: post #32

Fascinating read, but definitely not for beginners, at least for people like me, who have difficulty naming the notes (I have to go through "doe a deer..." each time, there are seven of them, right?) My total music illiteracy really annoys me. However, whenever I try to pick up some knowledge I got held back by lots of questions that the usual music student (or teacher for that matter) has never thought about and no…

Get a list of tone frequencies and do math with them. You will see patterns, called harmonics by musicians. Doubling the frequency (octave) can be thought of as the same tone playing twice, with an even offset. Our brains can pick up on that and notice that 440Hz is the same as 880Hz (only and "octave" higher) Interesting fact: The tones of the scale aren't exactly evenly spaced, because of math. Some instruments use…

To generate a list of tone frequencies, start with A=440Hz and multiply by 2^(1/12) to get the frequency of the next higher tone or divide by 2^(1/12) to go down to the next lower tone in the chromatic scale. Notice that the octave is 12 of these intervals away, making it's frequency (2^(1/12))^12 = 2 times the initial frequency.
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