Admission of Guilt: I enjoy Jazz theory like Sudoku

[Helgo]

I am wired the same way and what JonR said speaks from my heart:

Count me in. I regard them as two quite different pursuits. Making music has its rewards, and so does reading theory. They do kind of help each other a little, but not very much. Neither is essential for the other, although I think playing is more useful for understanding theory than knowing theory (in the book learning sense) is for playing music.

Best,
Helgo

[TonyB56]

Being able to play fly Sh*t and understand the theory of music is an essential for Pro musicians, take for instance studio musicians, studios cannot afford to waste the time and money while someone learns an arrangement by ear that's why you get the situation where musicians that play live are not always playing on their records. The drummer Buddy Rich considered by many to be the greatest jazz drummer couldn't read music and wasn't interested in it so the recording studios had a session drummer to play the arrangement to him so he could record it. I played in a swing orchestra, dance bands and rock groups in my youth and not being to read music would have made it virtually impossible to work as a professional. Now I only play at home for my own amusement reading and understanding the theory of music is not essential although it saves time with new tunes.

[P4guitar]

Nobody has claimed that music is string theory. Arguing against a straw-man is a distraction from guitar playing, I repeat.

It was not a straw man, it was an analogy. Perhaps you can point to a theoretician who used his/her theory to generate great music? (of course, 'great' is subjective which gets back to my original point.)

Mathematics is the science of necessary truths. Insofar as statements about music are universal, they are consistent with and likely a consequence of mathematical theories: For example, one cannot understand tonal music, particularly octaves, without an elementary understanding of logarithms.

Mathematical knowledge is acquired by deduction from basic principles. Musical knowledge is little more than the local convention. Math does not vary by region or culture, music definitely does. To my knowledge there are no basic principles, no universal truths in music other than most people, not all of course, enjoy various forms of it. Why some of us enjoy it is yet to be answered.

I never needed math or logarithms to understand octaves, I could hear them. In fact the only math I ever applied to music was to designate generic scale degrees, i.e. 1 2 3 etc. I could have used do re mi or some other system. Again the notes and the music came first, the theory was way, way after the fact.

Perhaps the higher theoretical competence of pianists explains why pianists have been more innovative harmonically than guitarists.... Almost all pianists can read music and discuss music with other musicians.

I think it's more likely that pianists have two hands and can play chords and ideas simultaneously with ease, i.e. it's more a function of the ergonomics of their instrument.

Discussing music doesn't need theory and neither music notation nor the reading of notation is theory. Probably most guitarists here can read music and discuss music with other musicians but I dare say the majority are not conversant in theory, I'm certainly not.

This will be my last post on the subject. My apostasy is obviously touching nerves. I will check in occasionally in hopes that someone can make an argument as to the practical application of theory, i.e. its value. I'm always willing to learn new and useful things.

[larry graves]

i hate music theory and never found a use for it. It seems mostly made up academic nonsense after the fact for something that is entirely subjective. Music isn't string theory.

bravo!....

[GuyBoden]

music is not string theory.

M-Theory the Theory Formerly Known as Strings.

Theoretical physics has moved to combining the string/superstring theories into what is now known as "M-Theory".

I personally don't know what the "M" in "M-Theory" represents, but rumor in physics circles says that it could be "Music".

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Message understood! I will immediately stop liking theory. Check in later to see how we're doing...

[pkirk]

It was not a straw man, it was an analogy. Perhaps you can point to a theoretician who used his/her theory to generate great music? (of course, 'great' is subjective which gets back to my original point.)



Mathematical knowledge is acquired by deduction from basic principles. Musical knowledge is little more than the local convention. Math does not vary by region or culture, music definitely does. To my knowledge there are no basic principles, no universal truths in music other than most people, not all of course, enjoy various forms of it. Why some of us enjoy it is yet to be answered.

I never needed math or logarithms to understand octaves, I could hear them. In fact the only math I ever applied to music was to designate generic scale degrees, i.e. 1 2 3 etc. I could have used do re mi or some other system. Again the notes and the music came first, the theory was way, way after the fact.



I think it's more likely that pianists have two hands and can play chords and ideas simultaneously with ease, i.e. it's more a function of the ergonomics of their instrument.

Discussing music doesn't need theory and neither music notation nor the reading of notation is theory. Probably most guitarists here can read music and discuss music with other musicians but I dare say the majority are not conversant in theory, I'm certainly not.

This will be my last post on the subject. My apostasy is obviously touching nerves. I will check in occasionally in hopes that someone can make an argument as to the practical application of theory, i.e. its value. I'm always willing to learn new and useful things.

4rthtuning: I'm in basic agreement with a lot of what you posted on the topic, particularly that jazz as it is practiced is an aural tradition, not a set of rules, and that academic music theory is not the point when your goal is to be a jazz musician. As far as academic music theory goes, I'm in general aligned with what my friend Rob Schneiderman (a great jazz pianist and mathematician) says about music theory here: http://www.ams.org/notices/201107/rtx110700929p.pdf
which you might enjoy.

But: most of what is called music theory in forums like this is very different from Music theory in academia. Lots of players come to jazz from backgrounds where "play blues licks in a box based on the 3rd fret" is all you need to know to improvise. They've rarely thought any other way and don't know the basic terminology (how to build a major chord, what a scale is, etc) they call this music theory. Your earlier post show that what you already know and use (you mention chord/scales, II-V-I, hearing the harmony, pentatonic scales, substitutions, etc). You may view this as grammar and not music theory, but most discussions on this board about "theory" are exactly about these kind of topics.

So if you want to argue the lack of value of some theory (say in jazz improv) you need to point to specific examples of theory (Triad pairs? George Russell lydian chromatic, Barry Harris min6 approach?Garzone's thing? or academic stuff like 12 tone rows? ) you think are not useful. Likewise, if someone says theory is important in jazz, they should make clear what they mean by theory. Otherwise its just an argument without content.

I guess you sort of did that when you said Logarithms are irrelevant in playing jazz, but that is clear. They are also irrelevant in music theory, as far as i understand, but are related to acoustics.

[P4guitar]

Okay, I'll post again as pkirk is making some interesting points

4rthtuning: I'm in basic agreement with a lot of what you posted on the topic, particularly that jazz as it is practiced is an aural tradition, not a set of rules, and that academic music theory is not the point when your goal is to be a jazz musician. As far as academic music theory goes, I'm in general aligned with what my friend Rob Schneiderman (a great jazz pianist and mathematician) says about music theory here: http://www.ams.org/notices/201107/rtx110700929p.pdf
which you might enjoy.

Actually I have rules or guidelines for playing. That's what for example chord scales/tones are. Theory they ain't.

I'll check out the Schneiderman paper when the muse strikes and the flesh is willing

But: most of what is called music theory in forums like this is very different from Music theory in academia. Lots of players come to jazz from backgrounds where "play blues licks in a box based on the 3rd fret" is all you need to know to improvise. They've rarely thought any other way and don't know the basic terminology (how to build a major chord, what a scale is, etc) they call this music theory. Your earlier post show that what you already know and use (you mention chord/scales, II-V-I, hearing the harmony, pentatonic scales, substitutions, etc). You may view this as grammar and not music theory, but most discussions on this board about "theory" are exactly about these kind of topics.

I would agree that some here call this theory. I don't have a name for it but I don't call it theory as it doesn't explain anything...they're just rough tools that are only applicable for some sub-genres of western music and wouldn't apply for example to Indian or other musical cultures. So to your point, there is some semantic confusion here as to what theory actually is.

So if you want to argue the lack of value of some theory (say in jazz improv) you need to point to specific examples of theory (Triad pairs? George Russell lydian chromatic, Barry Harris min6 approach?Garzone's thing? or academic stuff like 12 tone rows? ) you think are not useful.

Are these theories? I have varying degrees of familiarity with them but I would not call them theories. They are approaches, techniques, etc.. I have studied Russell's lydian chromatic approach (abandoned it), use triad pairs and mess with Barry's m6 stuff occasionally and find them fun and useful, but again, they're not musical theory, they don't allow me to compose or explain good music. To me they're just more advanced forms of "play blues licks in a box based on the 3rd fret" - possible tools, nothing more.

Likewise, if someone says theory is important in jazz, they should make clear what they mean by theory. Otherwise its just an argument without content.

I guess you sort of did that when you said Logarithms are irrelevant in playing jazz, but that is clear. They are also irrelevant in music theory, as far as i understand, but are related to acoustics.

Agreed.

[teok]

I don't play Sudoku, I just read books on Sudoku theory.

[pkirk]

To me they're just more advanced forms of "play blues licks in a box based on the 3rd fret" - possible tools, nothing more.
.

I think you nailed it perfectly here.

[pingu]

I like a bit of theory ....... just a bit can be very useful
like say .... learning to play 'out' by putting the 7th mode of MM on a V chord or whatever

But a little bit of that stuff can go a VERY long way
Its too easy for me to get bound up in the understanding of
the mathematical analysis side of music
and forget to just listen and play and feel the feelings

Theory is like salt and pepper in a stew

[fep]

There's a bit of a semantics issue/discussion going on here. I think theory is anything you might find in a "Theory" book.

An example of how theory has helped me... I heard that melodic minor "was the sound of jazz". I suppose that's a bit of theory, right? That didn't really help me, I tried it but couldn't get happy with the sound.

What did help me was having it explained in a book along with the exercise of writing a bunch of licks using the concept/theory. The theory took all of maybe 10 minutes to understand. The exercises... maybe I spent 20 hours initially working with it and now it's "in my playing" and I continue to work with it.

After playing for decades, a 10 minute theory lesson plus the many hours of practicing finally put the altered scale into my playing. I don't think this is something that would have happened had I not been exposed to the theory.

Just an intermediate player I think, glad to have added the altered scale to my playing. And I no longer have to think of the theory when playing the altered scales, it's just become part of my stuff.

Some of the writing exercises:

[JonR]

Music, like art, has temporary and often local conventions that some accept and others don't. Some artists do indeed speak their own private languages - they subscribe to unfamiliar conventions.

Still conventions though. Which means previously existing, and shared with others.

Different regions of the world developed different musical conventions that those steeped in the traditions could understand but outsiders couldn't.

Yes.

What music is seems to be completely arbitrary - perhaps there's an underlying universal theory but that's likely to come from a linguist, not your local music professor.

Quite possibly, yes. Music theory is not interested in origins, or the physics or psychology of music.

Theory is not the grammar of the language - theory attempts to explain grammar. Grammar is a convention and an arbitrary one as best I can understand.

Right -which is exactly what I mean. Music theory doesn't "explain" anything, in the sense of giving reasons why music is the way it is. In that respect it's the same as the grammar of a spoken language. It just describes the way in which the language is spoken, the various conventions, habits and idioms people use (which are mostly learned by mimicry as infants).
Music theory is the same. Musicians make music, and theorists come along later and try to make sense of it. Then the next batch of musicians might learn something from what the theorists write, but mainly they learn from listening to older music and copying it. And if they find new sounds they like, they'll use those; and then theorists have to come back and fit those new sounds into the old theories, or write new theories to accommodate them.
And so the process evolves, but always led by the musicians (composers and improvisers) not by the theorists.
Sometimes, forward-thinking musicians try to set themselves up as theorists, promoting new systems, but those systems won't survive unless they catch on with enough other musicians.

Different languages have different grammars. All languages freely morph over time without benefit of orthodox rules of grammar or tests against theory. No native speaker studied grammar to learn to speak. Many learn other languages without studying grammar at all, they simply mimic the natives and incorporate their conventions and idioms. Furthermore there is no such thing as correct grammar, there's only a current convention that history shows varies considerably over time.

All totally agreed. And all resembling how music theory works, as I see it.

Most everyone on this board plays jazz, a western convention. Some hope to use theory to guide them in their development. In my opinion, and borrowing your analogy, they conflate theory with grammar and grammar with art.

But for me, "theory" and "grammar" are the same thing (it's how I make sense of what theory is for and what it does). "Art" is, of course, something different. Just as knowing English grammar won't make you a great poet.

This is not to say that they shouldn't learn the tricks of the trade, but the tricks required passing the ear test first and were mostly developed prior to theory, and when enough ears learned to accept them they became conventions. Theory doesn't and can't predict what people's ears will like.

Well, yes and no.
It predicts very well what most people will like, simply because it spells out the familiar conventions. The same way the grammar of a language spells out the way most people speak, or think it's "proper" to speak; the way the language is understood by the majority of speakers.
Naturally there are those who like to speak a different way, and invent their own slang or dialects. Jazz (and most popular music) is a little like that. There are still conventions in slang, because it needs to be a shared language between those people that choose it. And therefore we could establish a grammar of slang.
Likewise, we can build a theory of jazz, but obviously we accept that it will always lag a little behind what the avant garde at any point are doing.
Music is always a mixture of the old and familiar on the one hand, and the new and surprising on the other. Too much familiar = boring. Too much surprising = baffling. (Music that was totally new simply would not sound like "music" at all.)

Here's a question: does the great music come from the great theorists, like it does in physics or math, or does it come from the great artists? I argue it's the artists, not the theorists

Agree. Totally.

hence music is not string theory.

I don't see how that follows. (But then I guess I don't know what you mean by string theory in the first place, not being a physicist...)

[JonR]

There's a bit of a semantics issue/discussion going on here. I think theory is anything you might find in a "Theory" book.

Seems reasonable.

An example of how theory has helped me... I heard that melodic minor "was the sound of jazz". I suppose that's a bit of theory, right? That didn't really help me, I tried it but couldn't get happy with the sound.

Right, me too. Not all theory is good theory. Not all of it is helpful.
It begins from giving a name, a label to a sound. The problem with most labels is they start off with other meanings, which can confuse the new usage.
"Melodic minor" derives from a piece of classical theory which is totally unconnected to how jazz musicians (supposedly) use the scale.
Moreover, most of the instances of what jazz theory calls "melodic minor" (or modes of that scale) is arguably better described and understood using other terms.
Eg, the connection between an "altered dominant" chord (a good piece of descriptive labelling, IMO) and the 7th mode of melodic minor is pure coincidence. A "7alt" chord is not derived from the 7th mode of melodic minor; it's derived by - er - altering the 5th and 9th, in order to provide some interesting chromatic voice-leading to the tonic. It so happens that the set of notes one arrives at by doing that happens to match that scale - it's nothing to do with how the chord functions.
A theory built on coincidental resemblance may be a handy shortcut for practical application ("oh yes, I can apply my melodic minor scales there"), but is never going to be very helpful for understanding what's happening, or for creative adaptation. It's superficial, IOW, not deep. A useful theory is one which inspires or suggests new creative directions; not one that prescribes one fixed course of action.

What did help me was having it explained in a book along with the exercise of writing a bunch of licks using the concept/theory. The theory took all of maybe 10 minutes to understand. The exercises... maybe I spent 20 hours initially working with it and now it's "in my playing" and I continue to work with it.

Right. It was realising the voice-leading angle that did it for me. Realising that the chord-scale angle was superfluous.

After playing for decades, a 10 minute theory lesson plus the many hours of practicing finally put the altered scale into my playing. I don't think this is something that would have happened had I not been exposed to the theory.

There are various bits of jazz theory that I found intriguing (even eye-opening) to begin with, but couldn't see how to apply (musically). With most of them, it was working from the sounds to the theory that gave it meaning. With the rest, they remained as purely intellectual concepts with no practical application (at least in the jazz I was interested in).
IOW, the only theory that's worth anything in the end is the theory that simply labels the sounds you already know (or can discover for yourself).

So...

1. You can start with the sounds, and be perfectly satisfied.

2. You can start with the sounds, and be theoretically curious. Maybe you discover new sounds that way. Maybe you just get baffled, and can't connect it at all. Or maybe (relevant to this topic), you just discover a whole new world of intellectual fascination, not requiring any connection back to music itself.

3. You can start with the theory. But if you're a musician, you have to tie it back to the music for it to make any sense. Ie, you have to get back to the sounds. And start from the sounds again.

IOW the sounds can (and should) make complete sense to us as sound. Theory is totally unnecessary in that sense. (In the same way that we speak our mother tongue with no assistance from any conscious understanding of academic grammar. We use the grammar, inevitably, but we don't need an intellectual appreciation of it. Or, as another analogy, we can walk down the street without having to know the biology of how our muscles works.)

Even if we use theory to go that extra step beyond what is intuitive - and I think most jazz musicians will do this, even if very few rock musicians do - it has to connect back and become intuitive as sound in the end.

Just an intermediate player I think, glad to have added the altered scale to my playing. And I no longer have to think of the theory when playing the altered scales, it's just become part of my stuff.

Exactly!
You don't (I guess) even think "altered scale" while doing it, it just flows into your usual phrasing.
For me, it was basically just "chord tones to chord tones", #5 going to 9, or whatever.
IOW, one can discover all this stuff for oneself, by enough trial and error.

In fact, if one is too respectful of theory, it can be inhibiting, because you think you need justification for what you play. You think there ought to be some kind of guidelines for your experimentation, although you're not sure what they might be; so you play safe.
So the less one knows and cares about theory, the freer one's sonic experimentation can be. You just have to hope your ear (and experience and taste) is good enough to guide you... (and that's probably where many of us fall back on theory as a crutch now and then...)

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

Mathematical knowledge is acquired by deduction from basic principles. Musical knowledge is little more than the local convention. Math does not vary by region or culture, music definitely does. To my knowledge there are no basic principles, no universal truths in music other than most people, not all of course, enjoy various forms of it. Why some of us enjoy it is yet to be answered.

I never needed math or logarithms to understand octaves, I could hear them. In fact the only math I ever applied to music was to designate generic scale degrees, i.e. 1 2 3 etc. I could have used do re mi or some other system. Again the notes and the music came first, the theory was way, way after the fact.

J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier is the most famous example of music inspired by theory.

Octaves are important in all musical systems with which I am familiar. While you may hear octaves, you might consider that a guitarist's fingers raise the open-string pitch an octave when playing at the 12th fret, and might measure the lengths of the string towards the nut and bridge....

[P4guitar]

J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier is the most famous example of music inspired by theory.

Octaves are important in all musical systems with which I am familiar. While you may hear octaves, you might consider that a guitarist's fingers raise the open-string pitch an octave when playing at the 12th fret, and might measure the lengths of the string towards the nut and bridge....

I didn't see any theory there, simply tuning preferences or more accurately tuning compromises to allow playing in other keys. As for your comment on octaves, this is more basic physics (frequency multiples) than music theory.

As I asserted earlier, most people here conflate theory with 'how to'. That's fine and I won't argue that anymore, I won't agree either.

When it comes to 'how to', I'm from the kiss school (you'll have to look that up) and boil it down to just a few things to play jazz:

• scales: major, mm, pentatonic, blues, dim (these are the most important IMO)
• building chords (chord tones)
• application of scales and chord tones
• chord patterns (building blocks of most tunes)
• rhythmic patterns
• and finally the hard part, practice putting it all together and learning to tell a story (where the art comes in - it is an art after all)

(yes, there's more and I may have left something fundamental out , but the items above take a person a long way down the jazz road.)

[Doctor Jeff]

Interesting discussion--I admit I vacillate between the 2 poles of theory is essential and it isn't. I wish I had more time to study theory and technique, also more interest in didactics in general.

Just a thought: I wonder how many of the jazz musicians we revere ever studied or even know much theory? Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck come to mind as jazz composers who studied music academically. But Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum--didn't they develop their awesome technique on their own? (In fact I wonder how many famous jazz musicians could even read music off a printed page, not to mention MOST rock musicians?)

As far as guitar's influence on other instruments, as mentioned in a post above, mostly in jazz it's the other way around, but I would say Charlie Christian influenced Benny Goodman, flamenco guitar influenced Chick Corea among others, Bossa Nova guitar influenced Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, and there may be a lot more influences out there than we realize.

And for gosh sake the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix almost made keyboards and horns irrelevant to popular music. All kinds of musicians spent the last 50 years trying to imitate them on their instruments (Keith Emerson, Jan Hammer) or at least find a way to reinsert their instruments into the mix. Miles electrified his horn to keep up with Jimi and John McLaughlin after all.

[GuyBoden]

Even fooball players learn the theory/science of ball angles, training techniques, strategies, diet, physiology, psychology, investment portfolios and where to find the best looking girls.

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

As far as guitar's influence on other instruments, as mentioned in a post above, mostly in jazz it's the other way around, but I would say Charlie Christian influenced Benny Goodman, flamenco guitar influenced Chick Corea among others, Bossa Nova guitar influenced Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, and there may be a lot more influences out there than we realize.

And for gosh sake the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix almost made keyboards and horns irrelevant to popular music. All kinds of musicians spent the last 50 years trying to imitate them on their instruments (Keith Emerson, Jan Hammer) or at least find a way to reinsert their instruments into the mix. Miles electrified his horn to keep up with Jimi and John McLaughlin after all.

Thanks for good examples, of which I should have thunk!

[JonR]

Bossa Nova guitar influenced Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie

With Dizzy, you may be thinking of his strong influence from Afro-Cuban music, which goes way back to the 1940s. Bossa nova (Brazilian) didn't arrive (as a style of music) until the late 1950s.

[GuyBoden]

Lets be totally honest here, music theory isn't a difficult subject, anyone who has studied a technical subject like, engineering, maths, science etc to a high level, knows that the old cliche "it ain't rocket science" applies to music theory. The difficulty with playing an instrument is the enormous amount of disciplined practice it takes to be proficient.

[AlsoRan]

Lets be totally honest here, music theory isn't a difficult subject, anyone who has studied a technical subject like, engineering, maths, science etc to a high level, knows that the old cliche "it ain't rocket science" applies to music theory. The difficulty with playing an instrument is the enormous amount of disciplined practice it takes to be proficient.

You have brought up the exact roadblock I am trying to go past - being disciplined enough and having enough time to be proficient at applying theory on the fly, much less technically proficient. And by "theory," I am referring to the relationships between the different facets of music, (i.e.) chords, scales, modes, etc...

For instance, when I am comping a minor passage that goes Amin7 to Bbmin7, I like to know I can do a mini 2-5-1 and approach the Bbmin7 with Cmin7b5 - F7 - Bbmin7, just to keep it interesting.

And by using theory, I continue this with different substitutions that are "supposed to work," at least according to theory, and go on to create interesting comping lines.

But unfortunately, with my priorities, I can only get practice a little here and a little there. Theory has been a way to help remember just what the heck I did that sounded so good, and repeat it in different keys.

But you never know, I may get stranded on an island for six months with my guitar. With my luck as of late, I would probably break a string.

[JonR]

For instance, when I am comping a minor passage that goes Amin7 to Bbmin7, I like to know I can do a mini 2-5-1 and approach the Bbmin7 with Cmin7b5 - F7 - Bbmin7, just to keep it interesting.

Personally, I find I can play plenty of interesting stuff on a 2-chord vamp without any such substitutions.
I'm not denying things like that are interesting, but it's possible to be too interesting....

[AlsoRan]

Personally, I find I can play plenty of interesting stuff on a 2-chord vamp without any such substitutions.
I'm not denying things like that are interesting, but it's possible to be too interesting....

True.

One has to be careful not to ruin a song with the misapplication of principles such that you adversely affect the effect of the song.

[JensL]

It's true. I find myself reading Jazz theory like it is a puzzle. I spent years buying books and DVDs and have a great handle on how theory says things are "supposed" to work. I have slowed down considerably in the last few months, since I am startin to see the same things repeated.

Am I the only poor sot that enjoys the theory (and it application) as much as the playing?

Hm.. heated discussion over theory, how surprising

I really like the study of theory as a means to understand what I am doing or what the people I listen to are doing!
Though not nearly as much as playing.

Jens