Music Theory

the worst thing I found about learning music theory is using a traditional instrument and spending more time learning the chords and scale placements then having to learn to play them well and getting stuck into bad habits

to get around this I highly recommend Tenori-On which is also available as an app and anything with a 'force to scale' you can transpose

Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say.

Music theory is definitely enlightening, yet provisional just like any other human system of knowledge. It's immature to ignore it. Only the naive reject it as authoritative. This is because they don't understand "it" well enough to know that "it" is merely descriptive. What is right is to take it on so you have some way of modeling aural phenomenon in terms of a larger temporal framework. For instance you hit a note that sounds "bad"; now instead of having a bias against that note you now know why it is sounding that way relative to other notes. It gets you out of a limited space and allows you to see relationships of pitch and rhythm in terms of broader meaning and schema which is fluctuating in time. In other words it helps you move from a static comprehension of sound to a relativistic one. You gotta' know the rules to break the rules.

  On 6/28/2013 at 11:13 AM, maersk said:

Music theory is definitely enlightening, yet provisional just like any other human system of knowledge. It's immature to ignore it. Only the naive reject it as authoritative. This is because they don't understand "it" well enough to know that "it" is merely descriptive. What is right is to take it on so you have some way of modeling aural phenomenon in terms of a larger temporal framework. For instance you hit a note that sounds "bad"; now instead of having a bias against that note you now know why it is sounding that way relative to other notes. It gets you out of a limited space and allows you to see relationships of pitch and rhythm in terms of broader meaning and schema which is fluctuating in time. In other words it helps you move from a static comprehension of sound to a relativistic one. You gotta' know the rules to break the rules.

Yeah, that.

  On 6/28/2013 at 11:13 AM, maersk said:

Music theory is definitely enlightening, yet provisional just like any other human system of knowledge. It's immature to ignore it. Only the naive reject it as authoritative. This is because they don't understand "it" well enough to know that "it" is merely descriptive. What is right is to take it on so you have some way of modeling aural phenomenon in terms of a larger temporal framework. For instance you hit a note that sounds "bad"; now instead of having a bias against that note you now know why it is sounding that way relative to other notes. It gets you out of a limited space and allows you to see relationships of pitch and rhythm in terms of broader meaning and schema which is fluctuating in time. In other words it helps you move from a static comprehension of sound to a relativistic one. You gotta' know the rules to break the rules.

Read the rules.

...no I'm only kidding;. Seriously though, this is really a beautiful description of music theory.

holey cod..should brush up on that talk bot though

  Quote

The Exciting Universe of Music Theory

The place for all you music theory nerds to geek out. Bask in the warm bath of wisdom, and be envied by all your peers with your deep knowledge of musical lore.

https://ianring.com/musictheory/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc6BBUE5zmmLMT-NQ_8sTzQ

  On 3/16/2021 at 8:03 AM, iococoi said:

holey cod..should brush up on that talk bot though

 

 

https://ianring.com/musictheory/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc6BBUE5zmmLMT-NQ_8sTzQ

 

 

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My goodness! This is all of the scales. All of them!

haha decatonic scales. Right then.

i’m happy with my knowledge of heptatonia prima and secunda, plus a smattering if folk music scales. 

  On 3/21/2021 at 9:01 PM, sheatheman said:

haha decatonic scales. Right then.

i’m happy with my knowledge of heptatonia prima and secunda, plus a smattering if folk music scales. 

I'm pretty sure there is not a person on the planet who knows all of those scales. The guy probably invented or generated the names for most of them too. After a certain point you're not gaining anything musically by learning more scales so this is more a mathematical curiosity than anything.

Although who knows? Maybe there is music to be written in the... phraptimic... scale?

  On 3/22/2021 at 11:52 AM, ArtificialDisco said:

I'm pretty sure there is not a person on the planet who knows all of those scales.

If you think of the notes as binary bits you don't need to know "all the scales" any more than you know all the numbers between 1 and 2048 (which is the possible combinations of two to twelve notes, excluding enharmonics). It's simply an incremental system, you can pull them out at will.

Another angle is that they are all variants of the diatonic major scale, which you can notate as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. The minor scale then becomes 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7. The chromatic scale becomes 1-b2-2-b3-3-4-b5-5-b6-6-b7-7, the blues scale is 1-3-4-5-b7, the lydian scale 1-2-3-b5-5-6-7, etc.

They all have their own sound, though, so figuring out how and when they work musically is another matter. And that's the interface between the theory and the music.

  On 3/22/2021 at 12:11 PM, psn said:

If you think of the notes as binary bits you don't need to know "all the scales" any more than you know all the numbers between 1 and 2048 (which is the possible combinations of two to twelve notes, excluding enharmonics). It's simply an incremental system, you can pull them out at will.

Another angle is that they are all variants of the diatonic major scale, which you can notate as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. The minor scale then becomes 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7. The chromatic scale becomes 1-b2-2-b3-3-4-b5-5-b6-6-b7-7, the blues scale is 1-3-4-5-b7, the lydian scale 1-2-3-b5-5-6-7, etc.

They all have their own sound, though, so figuring out how and when they work musically is another matter. And that's the interface between the theory and the music.

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My earlier comment about "all the scales" was a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but I wanted to point out what kind of a madman the guy who made the video is. His channel has indeed named every scale there is and he's made a video about each one of them. Granted, those videos were generated by a program, but still. He also used the binary bits method and has assigned each one a number based on it.

One point I would like to make, though, is after a certain point, learning scales is just going to be useless. When they have too many chromatic notes in them, they'll just turn into the chromatic scale with jumps, or diatonic scales with chromatic passing notes. Chromatic passing notes are something  jazz musicians use a lot and learning all the scales that result from this would drive you mad, whereas adding a few chromatic notes here and there is easy.

  On 3/22/2021 at 12:11 PM, psn said:

the lydian scale 1-2-3-b5-5-6-7 

it's #4, instead of b5  

Nah, it's ##3. 

  On 3/22/2021 at 12:11 PM, psn said:

the blues scale is 1-3-4-5-b7 

also, technically speaking this is mixolydian pentatonic   

don't be mad at me, i'm just having fun with you. i didn't even know the terminology, i used the scale finder on ian ring's site (which i already knew). all i know is when i saw your post, my 1st reaction was 'huh, i didn't know this was the basic blues scale, interesting' then i moved on since i don't know enough about blues scales

is this considered a blues scale? 

  On 3/22/2021 at 7:21 PM, psn said:

Nah, it's ##3. 

i believe you mean ?3