Theory vs. playing by ear

[Christian Miller]

Western Canada huh?…..I’m more interested in knowing if Sasquatch is real than onion nomenclature. Have you seen him by any chance?

Is he not working in an artisanal coffee place in Banff?

[Christian Miller]

Fixed it for ya.

We don’t do any of that young man. This is the land of tea and passive aggressive remarks, not wanton rudery.

[kris]

I'm bored with theorists... I prefer practitioners...

[Chris236]

You have not lived until you try blood squidge and cockenballs. If will make you grateful for all those other moments in your life.

But seriously do Americans beat their chest about their food? I suppose most haven’t traveled much.

Which is not to say I ate badly in the states, but I wouldn’t say there’s much difference to here.

I also object to the suggestion that Brits eat British cuisine. It’s all disgusting apart from the puddings and fish and chips. The latter is now so expensive that no one can afford it and the former is available only at posh schools and ‘Modern British restaurants’ who employ all the culinary arts of Paris to render our traditional faire palatable. For everyone else it’s the nosh of our former vassal nations.

How do you talk anyone into eating something called ‘cockenballs’?

And I thought ‘bangers and mash’ was strangely profane coincidence.

[Christian Miller]

How do you talk anyone into eating something called ‘cockenballs’?

with great difficultly seeing as Jeff made them up

And I thought ‘bangers and mash’ was strangely profane coincidence.

I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

Anyway bangers and mash is a perfectly acceptable meal, but much improved through the addition of Yorkshire pudding into Toad in the hole.

[Chris236]

with great difficultly seeing as Jeff made them up



I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

Anyway bangers and mash is a perfectly acceptable meal, but much improved through the addition of Yorkshire pudding into Toad in the hole.

Incidentally, I’ve never tried these
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-G...ucts/282049626

The cockenballs thing is honestly nothing short of a relief.

Here in the states ‘banging’ is one of the plethora of terms used to describe the reproductive act so a ‘banger’ as you might imagine could be thought of as a umm….sausage?

So a meal alluding to this act that’s composed of sausages seems like a profane coincidence at best.

If this all sounds nuts ,well, you already thought so after I explained how V7/IVmaj7 can never *actually* resolve to the ‘IVmaj7’ chord.

[pamosmusic]

I'm bored with theorists... I prefer practitioners...

An earthshaking observation.

[CliffR]

Let's not forget spotted dick or Eaton mess.

[Christian Miller]

Regarding the ghastly and immoral practice of music theory, I’d like to quote Baragwanath from the paper I posted above (the Supremicist’s toolbox - it really is a good paper and quite short.)

‘…universal systems will alway trump historical reality [in the textbooks and schoolroom]…’

this is why I get cross when people accuse me of music theory just because I know what things are called, but I will admit when I’ve done it in public as I did on this thread.

In B’s case he’s discussing German functional music theory (designed to shore up notions of German cultural supremacy in the post-Bismarck era). There is a teleology to the music theory of this era …

However I think the greater danger for us jazzers is emulating the model of the German theorists in creating neat systems. I think most real world practitioners avoid this - mark Levine’s foreword to his (‘the’) jazz theory book is revealing of a discomfort with the whole project - but education and publishing has a use for neat theories.

as a general caveat it’s worth remembering. As the jazz version of this goes ‘the records are the textbooks….’

So yeah Kris, I get tired of people quoting theory books as if they are holy writ. Beware neat systems.

[pamosmusic]

If this all sounds nuts ,well, you already thought so after I explained how V7/IVmaj7 can never *actually* resolve to the ‘IVmaj7’ chord.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that I got a site-wide database error as soon as you posted this.

[Christian Miller]

I don’t think it’s coincidence that I got a site-wide database error as soon as you posted this.

he broke the matrix

[Christian Miller]

The worst thing is, that sort of makes sense…

but the IV chord has always been more unsettled within the key. It takes a 6th or even a 7th in c18 harmony without resolving even if you tonicise it - not true of the I

Which I am tempted along with the major seventh in the melody of the Cmaj7 in JF is one reason I don’t hear the move as a modulation…. but as we have maj7 an all the time on I chords in jazz repertoire I think that would be not true.

[emanresu]

Dunno, whenever playing or inventing stuff, theory would be the last thing to think about.
When practicing, theory is just "there". But so very rarely, it gets exiting unexpectedly. Random encounters then.

[Chris236]

Hah! It was that ‘bangers and mash’ thing that did it. I’m still not okay after momentarily believing that there was a British dish called cockenballs.

With regards to music - I’m perpetually a work in progress but my truth is that I abandoned any ‘textbook’ dogma when I started to feel the reality of how melody and harmony work as a late teenager. In fact,(and not to get too new agey) I feel that having to think about music while engaged in playing is a weakness that cuts off flow if that wasn’t obvious. Can’t think AND listen at once….and if you’re not listening, what are you doing?!? So, textbook quoting isn’t part of my algorithm. I could definitely write a few though.

[pamosmusic]

Hah! It was that ‘bangers and mash’ thing that did it. I’m still not okay after momentarily believing that there was a British dish called cockenballs.

With regards to music - I’m perpetually a work in progress but my truth is that I abandoned any ‘textbook’ dogma when I started to feel the reality of how melody and harmony work as a late teenager. In fact,(and not to get too new agey) I feel that having to think about music while engaged in playing is a weakness that cuts off flow if that wasn’t obvious. Can’t think AND listen at once….and if you’re not listening, what are you doing?!? So, textbook quoting isn’t part of my algorithm. I could definitely write a few though.

I think I’m just a little skeptical of the idea that there would be a single reality of how melody and harmony work. My first classical guitar teacher was a music history PhD and was big renaissance music guy. At the time I was not into classical music at all and he was hitting me with da Milano and all this other beautiful stuff. That stuff was really eye opening because the way I thought about about theory just didn’t apply. And to your point, that was not an evolution in the way people notate or think about music but a change in the way it’s heard.

I got super interested in Carlo Gesualdo for a minute. He was writing stuff Wagner would’ve thought was out. But a few centuries later the same harmonies started turning in late romantic music. It’s interesting to think that he might’ve been producing some of these same harmonies but hearing a totally different through line. Kind of wild. Sort of humbling to think about what a small slice of music history we’re living in. And it might be based loosely in physics, but music isn’t physics. It’s subjective. It’s hard to imagine what another person sees when they see the color red or look at a particular scene in particular lighting, and I’m not sure harmony is different.

[pamosmusic]

And even if music were physics, just ask someone about “time” and you pretty quickly lose the immutability of the whole thing.

[pamosmusic]

There’s this interesting debate in language about whether you can separate our concept of what a thing is from our word for the thing. Like the way certain languages might have numerous words for certain colors but very few for others. Do they perceive finer distinctions in those colors than I do? Maybe.

Anyway … the way we think and talk about music might have a bit more to do with how we hear it than we care to admit.

To that end, it bears mentioning that we’re still all calling it a V/IV to IV.

EDIT: here’s a fun one. I used to work at a swanky jazz club and sometimes we would get to taste and talk about new menu things. Anyway … I know Jack about wine, but we were tasting wine one time and I tasted it and it tasted fine and then someone said “it tastes like rubber” and I was like “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” And then I tasted it again and absolutely tasted rubber. Deep down there’s some biochemical explanation for this, but it would be a bit weird to say there was a fundamental reality to taste. And I truly didn’t taste it until I had a word for it. Which is weird.

[Chris236]

There’s this interesting debate in language about whether you can separate our concept of what a thing is from our word for the thing. Like the way certain languages might have numerous words for certain colors but very few for others. Do they perceive finer distinctions in those colors than I do? Maybe.

Anyway … the way we think and talk about music might have a bit more to do with how we hear it than we care to admit.

To that end, it bears mentioning that we’re still all calling it a V/IV to IV.

Only to contextualize.

but yes! The ‘thing’ and the ‘word’ are different. I like using the most honestly descriptive words possible when describing things I care about.

[pamosmusic]

Only to contextualize.

but yes! The ‘thing’ and the ‘word’ are different. I like using the most honestly descriptive words possible when describing things I care about.

Me too. And those words won’t be the same.

[Chris236]

I think I’m just a little skeptical of the idea that there would be a single reality of how melody and harmony work. My first classical guitar teacher was a music history PhD and was big renaissance music guy. At the time I was not into classical music at all and he was hitting me with da Milano and all this other beautiful stuff. That stuff was really eye opening because the way I thought about about theory just didn’t apply. And to your point, that was not an evolution in the way people notate or think about music but a change in the way it’s heard.

I got super interested in Carlo Gesualdo for a minute. He was writing stuff Wagner would’ve thought was out. But a few centuries later the same harmonies started turning in late romantic music. It’s interesting to think that he might’ve been producing some of these same harmonies but hearing a totally different through line. Kind of wild. Sort of humbling to think about what a small slice of music history we’re living in. And it might be based loosely in physics, but music isn’t physics. It’s subjective. It’s hard to imagine what another person sees when they see the color red or look at a particular scene in particular lighting, and I’m not sure harmony is different.

yes, everyone’s lense through which they view reality is different….both musical and otherwise. But it’s the same gravity that pulls the 5th of the ii chord down to the b9 of the V chord to the 5th of the I chord if you catch my drift. Like surfing, lots of ways to carve.

[Chris236]

Me too. And those words won’t be the same.

Imaj7 and IVmaj7 are ‘words’ with very different meanings.

[pamosmusic]

Harold Bloom’s big Shakespeare book is called “The Invention of the Human” and it’s because he out and out says that Shakespeare changed the way human beings conceive of the experience of being human. Which is an extreme case, but interesting. Hard to separate what you experience from what you have words to describe to yourself.

(If you couldn’t tell, I also rather enjoy writing.)

[pamosmusic]

yes, everyone’s lense through which they view reality is different….both musical and otherwise. But it’s the same gravity that pulls the 5th of the ii chord down to the b9 of the V chord to the 5th of the I chord if you catch my drift. Like surfing, lots of ways to carve.

Speaking of gravity, that’s another one that a physicist would say isn’t quite so well-understood as high school science class would like us to think.

[Christian Miller]

There’s this interesting debate in language about whether you can separate our concept of what a thing is from our word for the thing. Like the way certain languages might have numerous words for certain colors but very few for others. Do they perceive finer distinctions in those colors than I do? Maybe.

Anyway … the way we think and talk about music might have a bit more to do with how we hear it than we care to admit.

To that end, it bears mentioning that we’re still all calling it a V/IV to IV.

Hey! I’m not. It’s a I7 to me, pal!

[Chris236]

Breaking news: 1st time through the form I hear IVmaj7 at the top - so my apologies to whoever I insulted with regards to that. Each subsequent time after the turnaround however, I hear Imaj7.

I guess that’s not really news although it shows I’m subconsciously aware of the prevailing key in the song on the downbeat, and just need that little shove the subV/IV provides to recenter my ear. Neat trick.