Why you should be mad at theory

[m_d]

This is an important part of music education - developing aural competency first and foremost. But for most musicians who don't learn music in the style of a first language, structural understanding is needed too.

How about giving that "important part of music education" equal or more weight than "structural understanding"? Because that doesn't seem to be the case. Because if the former was omitted in a curriculum I'm paying $30k a year for, on the pretext that composition or improvisation can't be learned in three or four years, anyway - I would feel awfully cheated - scammed. Lagrène, Lage or Benson are obviously not theory-first players - the best players do not do as "most players".

[m_d]

Certainly theorists like Guido, Zarlino, the Basso Continuo revolution, the Neapolitans, Bolognese and the Faculty at the Paris Conservatory in the 19th century knew what they were doing in music theoretically and took it to very high levels of craftsmanship.

Speaking of culture wars.
Debussy forever!

[CliffR]

Maybe they do? I don’t know. Anyway I was responding to Cliff. I do hear the overtone sequence referenced often when teaching the basis of theory. I was taught it. Maybe it’s a useful ‘lie to children.’

Yeah, I'd certainly been told, and believed, that all the scale notes are present as overtones of the root. I only ever convinced myself of this for the octave and perfect fifth, being a lazy so and so.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah, I'd certainly been told, and believed, that all the scale notes are present as overtones of the root. I only ever convinced myself of this for the octave and perfect fifth, being a lazy so and so.

The first few octaves approximates the lydian dominant in fact, but some notes are very different from the piano pitches

[Christian Miller]

Speaking of culture wars.
Debussy forever!

Maybe not a certain ragtime styled piano piece … awkward!

[m_d]

Maybe not a certain ragtime styled piano piece … awkward!

Yeah sorry if I kind of interject in those threads - I don't really have the time to think things through and often should abstain from writing anything. They're a great read.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah sorry if I kind of interject in those threads - I don't really have the time to think things through and often should abstain from writing anything. They're a great read.

No worries… I think this is a good one actually.

(I don’t really like Debussy. Does it make me a bad person?)

[m_d]

No worries… I think this is a good one actually.

(I don’t really like Debussy. Does it make me a bad person?)

That period in French culture fascinates me. One of the great ones. I should look more into what was mentioned about the French and Italian "schools" of that period. I'm quite ignorant of that history despite being of French background. Was it Debussy who disliked Wagner's music so much that he wrote a parody piece? I somehow feel those struggles are still quite relevant today...

[Christian Miller]

That period in French culture fascinates me. One of the great ones. I should look more into what was mentioned about the French and Italian "schools" of that period. I'm quite ignorant of that history despite being of French background. Was it Debussy who disliked Wagner's music so much that he wrote a parody piece? I somehow feel those struggles are still quite relevant today...

I love the generation prior to Debussy, Faure, Saint-Saens etc and those Debussy influenced … just don’t enjoy Debussy that much. Some pieces are great.

(Debussy was a monster counterpoint guy btw. He won the prix de Rome for fugue.) Debussy’s relationship with Wagner was I think quite complex. I think puckish Gallic mickey-taking might be nearer the mark.

Gjerdingens second book ‘child composers in the old conservatories’ covers the Paris conservatoire btw. He sees it as an evolution of c18 (Neapolitan) practice. Nadia Boulanger is part of that tradition needless to say and had a huge influence on American music…

[Christian Miller]

If anyone is interested here’s the whole pod

[stratology]

Yeah, I'd certainly been told, and believed, that all the scale notes are present as overtones of the root. I only ever convinced myself of this for the octave and perfect fifth, being a lazy so and so.

I don't believe that there is an underlying physics based universal theory that works for all music - at least not if you go anywhere above the lowest level. Meaning, 'music' is organised changes in air pressure, in a frequency range roughly between 20Hz and 20kHz, which is the range of human hearing.


Even things like the overtone series: yes, you can use it to establish a mathematical relationship. But there was a time and culture where a major third was considered dissonant. There is drum/percussion based music that does not use the same sounds, pitches etc as violin based music. There is tempered tuning, which breaks the rules of mathematical relationships to achieve a - perfectly acceptable - compromise where notes with different pitches, like F# and Gb, are considered identical. There are notes archived by bending that fall between 'regular' note pitches - you hear them all the time in blues and Indian music.



Even when you go so far to try to establish a specific set of rules for a specific style of music of a specific time and geographical area - I remember analysing piano introductions (Beethoven, IIRC) in a college course. And only piano introductions, because the same set of theory rules used to analyse the introductions would completely fall apart, not work at all, when looking at the rest of the same piece of music.

[Christian Miller]

I think a perfect illustration of the gap between theory and musical perception is that I understand the history of temperament and the mathematics behind it very well, but I still find myself thinking ‘get your harpsichord tuned, mate’ when I hear someone playing in the correct historical tuning.

[RLetson]

To build on Stratology's post: The physics governing sound production in the human vocal apparatus or an instrument is one set of things, and the uses put to those sounds is another. The deep history of music is, from one point of view, the process of broadening the range of sounds available in order to play with more sounds. And "playing with sounds" is at least the beginning of a definition of "music."

So there is certainly a material/scientific/engineering side to understanding "how music works"--which may be necessary but is not sufficient (to dredge up some 60-years-back freshman-logic-course language) to account for what happens when we "make" music. Some "theory" is rooted in the physics of sound production and the engineering applied to it. Other "theory" accounts for the bodies of practice that get applied to the material means of sound production--which sounds we (where "we" is not a universal but a social subset of humankind) choose to deploy and organize. And yet another kind of "theory" is indeed prescriptive and arbitrary, or at least advisory: "Don't play this note against that one--the audience finds it annoying."

These senses of "theory" make up a complex push-pull device: together they describe generative or structural matters (and is therefore posterior to practice), but also are extendable and can suggest ways of generating new material. And the new material can invite further extensions of "theory," not in its materiality (physics gonna physic) but in our understanding of how many ways we can reconfigure that material and keep ourselves amused.

[stratology]

...

Some "theory" is rooted in the physics of sound production and the engineering applied to it.
....


"Don't play this note against that one--the audience finds it annoying."

Really good post. I'll just pick up on those two things. Looking into sound from a sound engineering perspective, or even creating sounds with guitar pedals and an amp - that's another dimension, and another perspective that I find really interesting to look into. Like creating timbre via notes and overtones from the overtone series, and, as an expansion of that, creating odd and even order harmonics with a saturation plugin on a vocal track.



Regarding what the 'audience finds annoying' - one thing this thread reminded me of is when I saw Ornette Coleman's double quartet years ago. Don Cherry on mini trumpet.
After the concert, the audience was completely split in half - half of the listeners loved it, the other half hated it. I thought it was great, I could not, for my life, understand why anyone would not like it. But it is entirely subjective.

[Stevebol]

Talking about music is like tik-tocking about first person shooter video games. Or something.

Fallout: New Vegas is a documentary.
Suspiciously, the Fallout series has come to an end.

[Gabor]

The first few octaves approximates the lydian dominant in fact, but some notes are very different from the piano pitches

We could not demonstrate better (western music) theory weak base more with this fact. The very fundamentum of major scale and theory built on that (derrived from physics) is at least raises doubts. Now we have at least three candidates for our base scale:

- major, which we feel the most comfortable (with western ear)
- lydian, which could theoretized "the real major", based on the order of lowering gradually one tone in the scale, we can go from lydian, major, mixolidian, dorian, etc, locrian (Russell)
- lydian dominant, based on physics.

So theory in its very basement leaves us in doubts, (why major), but on this weak basement builds huge systems...an all our fell of tonality based on this basement.

Which interestingly associate a question raised in other thread (solfege), why are not semitones between mi and fa? Physics and Russell say it should be a whole tone. Then Russell and physics disagree on ti do.

[pauln]

I hold the Lydian Dominant as the base scale, because of how it sounds and interacts with other musical structures like augmented, diminished, whole tone...

Christian, my introduction to Debussy was our physics professor playing Isao Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing record every morning as we entered class... even has your favorite song on it.

[BWV]

I hold the Lydian Dominant as the base scale, because of how it sounds and interacts with other musical structures like augmented, diminished, whole tone...

Hard to believe as the scale does not exist in any historical musical tradition, except perhaps an odd occurrence in an Indian raag, but even then its not a recognized thaat

[BWV]

Here is a good example of the type of material that would have been basic to an 18th century musician that does not get addressed in university theory classes

[pauln]

Hard to believe as the scale does not exist in any historical musical tradition, except perhaps an odd occurrence in an Indian raag, but even then its not a recognized thaat

I discovered (invented) it myself before I learned what is was and what it was called. Not sure what you mean about not existing in any musical tradition; it is a mode of Melodic Minor (but I think of Melodic Minor as a mode of Lydian Dominant because I found LD first).

[John A.]

In general, the problem for the higher education system is that you can’t actually teach someone to play, improvise or compose in three or four years

Sure you can. Happens all the time. It's probably true that you can't turn an absolute beginner musician into a pro-level jazz player in 3-4 years. It's probably also true that someone can get through a 3-4 year program without having developed much. But someone who goes into post-secondary music program having already developed intermediate jazz skills and having the right attitude and work ethic can come out the other end pretty well set in terms of ability to make music.

, and accreditation of courses is based on academic criteria appropriate for liberal arts institutions, not the requirements of the professional trade. You can’t award academic degrees without a sufficiently rigorous academic syllabus, obviously. (I remember talking about this with my supervisor at Trinity, quite interesting.)

That's true, not mutually exclusive with learning practical musicianship, or practical [name your discipline] skills.[/QUOTE]

(As Jimmy blue note put it, Berklee used to be a *finishing* school for already excellent young musicians looking to enter the profession.)

From what I've seen, it still does that to (ahem) a degree, but it also let's in a lot of people who are not at that level, so it has somewhat diluted its reputation. Based on the cross-section of players I've run into coming out of there and other places, I think this is endemic.

As a comparison look at when Debussy entered the Paris conservatoire and how long he was there for.

I heard he kept flunking the phys ed requirement.

[BWV]

I discovered (invented) it myself before I learned what is was and what it was called. Not sure what you mean about not existing in any musical tradition; it is a mode of Melodic Minor (but I think of Melodic Minor as a mode of Lydian Dominant because I found LD first).

meaning you would be hard pressed to find any musical tradition that uses the scale, meaning its just a 20th century invention, Scriabin I think being the first to use it to any extent - therefore it cannot be something 'fundamental' to music. Also, the 7th in the harmonic series is so out of tune relative to LD it hardly qualifies as the same scale

[Christian Miller]

Sure you can. Happens all the time. It's probably true that you can't turn an absolute beginner musician into a pro-level jazz player in 3-4 years. It's probably also true that someone can get through a 3-4 year program without having developed much. But someone who goes into post-secondary music program having already developed intermediate jazz skills and having the right attitude and work ethic can come out the other end pretty well set in terms of ability to make music.

You certainly think you can add value (horrible way of putting it), and do useful work. It’s not a waste of time. But you are looking at a slice of a much longer process. Four years at jazz school no more makes a jazz musician than four years of astronomy made me an astronomer. And yes people turn up to jazz courses with a tabula rasa… this does happen.

That's true, not mutually exclusive with learning practical musicianship, or practical [name your discipline] skills.

His take was there was an inherent tension there, not insurmountable. I can see how it would arise. Others in music edu have pointed this out. Even Rick Beato of all people …

one of the interesting things Gjerdingen talks about in his work is exactly what conservatoires were a few hundred years back. They were not universities, but conduits for an (quite Spartan) apprenticeship system that started in early childhood.

Obviously this is not compatible with the modern world and it doesn’t sound like anything I would want to subject children to. But there is something to learn for sure.

The main thing I would like to see as an education system that isn’t full of academics of a similar background talking in a similar way and a system of educational accreditation that sees value in tacit knowledge and embodied skill. But people have been championing that for generations.

From what I've seen, it still does that to (ahem) a degree, but it also let's in a lot of people who are not at that level, so it has somewhat diluted its reputation. Based on the cross-section of players I've run into coming out of there and other places, I think this is endemic.

A victim of their own success…

[Christian Miller]

meaning you would be hard pressed to find any musical tradition that uses the scale, meaning its just a 20th century invention, Scriabin I think being the first to use it to any extent - therefore it cannot be something 'fundamental' to music. Also, the 7th in the harmonic series is so out of tune relative to LD it hardly qualifies as the same scale

Yeah I think it’s a bit of a reach tbh. Also there’s an out of tune major seventh as well.

[Christian Miller]

Here is a good example of the type of material that would have been basic to an 18th century musician that does not get addressed in university theory classes

a new En Blanc Et Noir video I haven’t watched? Wtf is wrong with me? Actually what the hell is wrong with the YouTube algorithm that it hasn’t told me?

Anyway ground bass is the obvious entry point into the world of classical improv and very relatable for any jazz or rock player.

I was teaching a student today and we were sight reading some simple Renaissance stuff in the grade 1-2 classical guitar rep. We were looking at a dance and I showed her the Passamezzo Antico progression that it was based on saying it was kind of like the Axis progression of its era and she said ‘sounds like it would have been good for improvisation.’ I said absolutely and we jammed on it for a bit…. Made me happy she brought it up.

To us that stuff is obvious, I guess. The guitar basics books (beginner classical books) have improv in from the start and really appreciate that.

you know at Trinity everyone was into Lucy Green who wrote some well regarded papers and books (including How Popular Musicians Learn) saying that classical musicians should emulate jazz and rock learning approaches (ie ears and improvisation) - a way of learning that is fading due to YouTube and internet tabs even in rock guitar actually. But the actual stuff Green suggests working on is completely divorced from classical repertoire. Which is a mistake imo because improv can be used in lessons to support traditional rep learning and reading and so on. It’s what we would do in jazz. If you like Chopin why not try to improvise something a little like him?

Theres a huge disconnect in the classical music brain I think even Green can’t escape - the repertoire is on a pedestal. A lot of theory in that world is actually about keeping it on that pedestal. John Mortensen talks about it.