Thinking theory

[frabarmus]

he tells you Kurt Cobain wrote a great melody because it has the extensions of chords in it.

I'd say Sting is the one who really has a blast with chord extensions in his melodies. Police songs are full of them.

[Christian Miller]

I'd say Sting is the one who really has a blast with chord extensions in his melodies. Police songs are full of them.

1) Sting is probably enough of muso jazz dork to know that he is doing it. Which is philosophically uninteresting.
2) Extensions in popular music are in fact, common. Even Bloody Shake it Off has extensions. 9ths on chords are especially common.
3) I think we can probably agree that Tay-Tay is just using the major pentatonic scale over a vamp on that one though, pan-diatonic vamp harmony or whatever you want to call it. But if Beato wanted to appease the Swifties, he would talk about the 9ths, right? ('Incredibly great melody writing (tm)').
4) Kurt is mostly using the minor pentatonic. However, I think Kurt's use of the 9th in SLTS is quite an important part of the song. It reminds me of many jazz lines. Also the SLTS progression is much more chromatic than Tay-Tay's songs. So that's quite interesting.
5) This what ACTUALLY interests me - the difference between having 9ths in a tune on purpose, and by accident? How do we divine this from our analysis, and how important is it?
6) OOOOO the epistemological conundrum!

[pauln]

From Bobby Timmons #195

Further help from my pal the bot since you guys are so aggressive.
Music Theory vs. Pure Aural Perception:
Music Theory:Music theory is the academic study and analysis of the fundamental elements that make up music. It encompasses a range of concepts, systems, and methodologies used to describe and understand how music works. Music theory involves:
Abstract Concepts: Music theory deals with abstract concepts such as scales, chords, harmony, and counterpoint, which are not directly perceived through hearing but are understood intellectually....
Wrong

Predictive and Prescriptive: It provides tools for predicting how certain combinations of notes and rhythms will sound and prescribing methods for composing and performing music.
Very wrong

Pure Aural Perception:Pure aural perception refers to the direct experience of hearing music without the intermediary of theoretical knowledge or notation. This involves:
Immediate Experience: Listening to music is an immediate sensory experience that involves perceiving sound waves through the ears and interpreting them in the brain....
Absurdly wrong

Intuitive Understanding: Musicians and listeners often develop an intuitive understanding of music through repeated exposure and practice, even without formal theoretical knowledge....
So wrong it's not even wrong

Distinction and Interplay:While music theory provides a structured and systematic approach to understanding music, pure aural perception is the raw, unmediated experience of music as sound. Both aspects are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of music:
Infinitely wrong

Your pal the bot has never heard sound nor music, only is able to aggregate existing data modified enough to avoid plagiarism... certainly not a source regarding phenomenological experience.
Ironically wrong to entertain a machine's answers to human questions

[frabarmus]

1) Sting is probably enough of muso jazz dork to know that he is doing it. Which is philosophically uninteresting.
2) Extensions in popular music are in fact, common. Even Bloody Shake it Off has extensions. 9ths on chords are especially common.
3) I think we can probably agree that Tay-Tay is just using the major pentatonic scale over a vamp on that one though, pan-diatonic vamp harmony or whatever you want to call it. But if Beato wanted to appease the Swifties, he would talk about the 9ths, right? ('Incredibly great melody writing (tm)').
4) Kurt is mostly using the minor pentatonic. However, I think Kurt's use of the 9th in SLTS is quite an important part of the song. It reminds me of many jazz lines. Also the SLTS progression is much more chromatic than Tay-Tay's songs. So that's quite interesting.
5) This what ACTUALLY interests me - the difference between having 9ths in a tune on purpose, and by accident? How do we divine this from our analysis, and how important is it?
6) OOOOO the epistemological conundrum!

7) Homework: Compose a tune called Epistemology as you imagine Charlie Parker would have done it... :-)

[Mick-7]

From the web bot: "Abstract Concepts: Music theory deals with abstract concepts such as scales, chords, harmony, and counterpoint, which are not directly perceived through hearing but are understood intellectually...."

This statement is a non sequitur. Nothing is perceived "directly" though the senses, we mentally interpret everything we perceive.

[pamosmusic]

…. but …. but ….


the bot?

[pamosmusic]

Also jokes on you. I’ve been pouring incorrect music theory information into the internet for years so that when the time finally comes for me to compete for my work with an AI, it’ll be mining nothing but my mindless drivel.

Check and mate.

[Bobby Timmons]

You guys are mad. I have to wake up to pauln being mad at my pal the bot and just calling him wrong with zero explanation? pauln, you're worse than the bot with ur bunk info!

[Christian Miller]

7) Homework: Compose a tune called Epistemology as you imagine Charlie Parker would have done it... :-)

Very good!


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[pamosmusic]

Also jokes on you. I’ve been pouring incorrect music theory information into the internet for years so that when the time finally comes for me to compete for my work with an AI, it’ll be mining nothing but my mindless drivel.

Check and mate.

To say nothing of Christians output.

Actually … a fun statistic. Did you know that one in every 7 music-related prompts elicits a response that contains the word “partimento?”

[frabarmus]

Very good!

Waiting for it. Post a video of it when you're done.

[Christian Miller]

Waiting for it. Post a video of it when you're done.

What would it be a contrafact on?

It Don’t Mean a Thing?
You don’t know what love is?
I could write a book?

I’m struggling here!


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[charlieparker]

Hey, original poster here. What I think of as theory is when one takes the musical knowledge (and by that I mean real-time available performance know-how) and “translates” it into non-performance offline information usually expressed in a combination of notation, English language and math. I am not theory averse, by any means, especially when it has useful information that I can take and bring to life with my playing. For example reading notated music and any exposition about what’s happening is useful. However, when the dissection of music goes so deeply into the weeds that it’s an academic self serving tomb (ok, in the extreme) it serves little purpose but to amuse other academics. The thing is, I can glean so much from music just by listening to it that I don’t need the intermediary steps of notation, English and math to describe it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve no interest in reproduction of anyone else’s work, and all I care about is improvising I live the majority of my time as an ear player. I think if anyone listens to my work that will be readily apparent.

Mark, you play in a free form style so you might not need as much theory who wants to play bebop. I'm sure you can play well in that style, too, but I haven't heard it.

I would hypothesize that guys like Ornette Coleman also needed to know less theory, but maybe my hypothesis is wrong. IMO, it's a helluva lot easier to play blues music without theory than Anthropology.

But maybe my ear isn't good enough or I am doing it wrong. I haven't achieved any level of mastery so my opinion shouldn't be taken seriously.

My point, is that the bebop language is challenging to learn. I'm sure for some with incredible ears, technique, and rhythm less difficult. But for others we try every tool to get it.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

What would it be a contrafact on?

It Don’t Mean a Thing?
You don’t know what love is?
I could write a book?

I’m struggling here!


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On The Sunny Side Of The Street

[starjasmine]

7) Homework: Compose a tune called Epistemology as you imagine Charlie Parker would have done it... :-)

1. Get VERY high.
2. Play all day long.
3. Blow like mad at the gig that evening.
4. When some jive cat asks you what you played, tell him it's called "Epistemology." Try not to laugh when you are saying this.
5. Over the coming weeks, observe other musicians and the music press trying to cop "Epistemology."

[Bobby Timmons]

Get VERY high.

On H?

[Mark Kleinhaut]

Mark, you play in a free form style so you might not need as much theory who wants to play bebop. I'm sure you can play well in that style, too, but I haven't heard it.

I would hypothesize that guys like Ornette Coleman also needed to know less theory, but maybe my hypothesis is wrong. IMO, it's a helluva lot easier to play blues music without theory than Anthropology.

But maybe my ear isn't good enough or I am doing it wrong. I haven't achieved any level of mastery so my opinion shouldn't be taken seriously.

My point, is that the bebop language is challenging to learn. I'm sure for some with incredible ears, technique, and rhythm less difficult. But for others we try every tool to get it.

I would need a fair lot of time to unpack the issues you’ve raised. But I don’t want you to go answered. All forms of music are difficult and require years of dedicated application of skills. What and how we practice has everything to do with the results. People often refer to natural ability or gifts that make it easier for some, however, I truly belief that the appearance of ease is an illusion and that the real factor boils down to whether the musical expression being pursued is authentically attuned to the being presuming to practice it. It’s cultural, genetic, social, situational, geographic and temporal. For me it would be no more authentic to play Gregorian chants than to play bebop though dabbling in the forms is education and developmentally supportive for me. Still, what will be my music? The Freeform I play is completely different than say the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Completely and totally different! I play straight ahead jazz too, but it sounds nothing like Wes. Maybe a bit more like Jom Hall, but still- jazz is a music of individuality that’s synchronous with like minded but not identical voices who collect themselves in various so called styles. Where did we all fit in? That’s the big question.

[Tal_175]

I would need a fair lot of time to unpack the issues you’ve raised. But I don’t want you to go answered. All forms of music are difficult and require years of dedicated application of skills. What and how we practice has everything to do with the results. People often refer to natural ability or gifts that make it easier for some, however, I truly belief that the appearance of ease is an illusion and that the real factor boils down to whether the musical expression being pursued is authentically attuned to the being presuming to practice it. It’s cultural, genetic, social, situational, geographic and temporal. For me it would be no more authentic to play Gregorian chants than to play bebop though dabbling in the forms is education and developmentally supportive for me. Still, what will be my music? The Freeform I play is completely different than say the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Completely and totally different! I play straight ahead jazz too, but it sounds nothing like Wes. Maybe a bit more like Jom Hall, but still- jazz is a music of individuality that’s synchronous with like minded but not identical voices who collect themselves in various so called styles. Where did we all fit in? That’s the big question.

I think what charlieparker means is, playing freely, rubato with a loose time signature, form and harmony at the tempo of ones choosing is quite different than playing an improvised arrangement of a tune with a strict time signature, form and harmonic progression and expected to be performed within a stylistic tradition at various tempos require different skillsets. Since we are talking about the role of mental organization of music in the practice room, the distinction is important.

[Mark Kleinhaut]

I think what charlieparker means is, playing freely versus playing an improvised arrangement of a tune with a strict time signature, form and harmonic progression and expected to be performed within a stylistic tradition at various tempos require different skillsets. Since we are talking about the role of mental organization of music in the practice room, the distinction is important.

Different skill sets, absolutely, but he said playing freeform requires less theory than playing bebop. Whether the skills are more or less theory-dependent, more or less difficult, or how natural ability plays in to it all is quite debatable. As a practitioner of both stylistically structured music and Freeforms, I would argue neither is intrinsically more or less theoretical, and the perceived difficulty is caused by other factors that have precious little to do with the music itself.

[Jimmy blue note]

I would hypothesize that guys like Ornette Coleman also needed to know less theory, but maybe my hypothesis is wrong. IMO, it's a helluva lot easier to play blues music without theory than Anthropology.


My point, is that the bebop language is challenging to learn. I'm sure for some with incredible ears, technique, and rhythm less difficult. But for others we try every tool to get it.

I played with a guy who played free improvisation. He would play with Jack D's Special Edition and they'd play long stretches of structures not bound by changes. He was also a part of several bands with Charlie Haden. Because his style was different to my ears than Herb Ellis or Billy Bean, I asked him one day if he ever played bebop.
He answered very seriously "This is ALL bebop. Everything I play is bebop"

It took me over two decades to understand what he meant. In that time, I was heavily engaged in learning the bebop language, internalizing the ear I needed to play diatonic harmony, melodic approaches (encompassing approach ornaments but not restricted to), dominant approaches, secondary dominant approaches, chromatic approaches, sequential approaches and differing tonal areas in the defined movement that determines compositional form.
Over two decades of playing over changes and one day I realized my ear had become trained to hear on a higher level. For me, traditions of bebop were invaluable for training my ear. It'll always be with me and if I move beyond that sensibility in my own choices, that ear is still at the foundations.

The point is, it was only after this was internalized that I found the real substance of structure and the liberties that can be found by choosing options that supplanted what is given as a given.
It took me two decades of learning the restrictions of a language to be able to hear and play with him. When we did, it was free, even when it was on Stella.

[pamosmusic]

Yeah early ornette in particular (shape of jazz, etc) sounds very bebop to me

[Jimmy blue note]

Yeah early ornette in particular (shape of jazz, etc) sounds very bebop to me

Good ear. And some people can listen to Dolphy and hear nothing jazz like in his playing.
Archie Shepp's music with Dennis Charles and Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor are very bebop to me. I love it.

[Christian Miller]

A lot of the free guys swing harder than the boppers. At least around these parts…


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[Mark Kleinhaut]

A lot of the free guys swing harder than the boppers. At least around these parts…


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Where’s that??

[RLetson]

I go away to music camp for a week and come back to a cross between a bar fight and a faculty meeting*. Geez.

So in the mythic, primal, Edenic world, when Thog the Caveman found that he could make nice noises by blowing across a hollow bird bone and became quite the campfire party guest, did he understand and deploy the natural harmonic series before or after his performances? And when he found that he could tie five bones of different sizes together and become the model for Orpheus, what was he thinking? And was it a good way to get girls?

* Waitaminit--isn't that a redundancy?