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RE: Music theory is way too complicated
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 RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to marduk)
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quote:
ydian concept of tonal orgainisation?
yes
george russell's 1960's book
mmmm dont go there...i did and look what happened!
explaining music in words is like dancing about architecture...
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Date Nov. 16 2010 3:56:31
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to yourwhathurts69)
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cheers
yes
my baroque musician friends actually have a discerning difference between F# and Gb...it may be microtonal but they Hear the difference...so to them they actually are 2 different pitches...ah! tempered tuning!
thanks for the point..quote:
Gb is the same note as Gb. It is not the same note as F#. However, Gb and F# are the same pitch, meaning they sound the same. 
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Date Nov. 16 2010 4:07:45
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Ramon Amira
Posts: 1025
Joined: Oct. 14 2009
From: New York City
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to Rain)
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quote:
quote:
I'm here to discuss the art of Flamenco, not to discuss politics, but thank you for asking.
As a student of language you should clearly understand the above statement, it need not be clarified, but understood as a response to a posed question.
The question he posed was a simple non-political question – "are you a Palestinian?" Your reply, which correctly should have been either "Yes" or "No," instead was one which, as I said, you turned into a gratuitous and misplaced political editorial opinion. One which in fact did exactly what the questioner stated he wanted to avoid – he prefaced his question with the comment "I don't want to hijack the thread, but," and then you proceeded to do precisely that.
Here is your entire statement, which you edited.
" No I'm not Palestinian nor does one need to be to understand the suffering of the Palestinian people, one Just needs to understand as to why and more importantly HOW the fabricated state of Israel came to existence.
I'm here to discuss the art of Flamenco, not to discuss politics, but thank you for asking."
It's really disingenuous of you to make a political comment and then follow it with a disclaimer, and expect us to accept that somehow that negates the political comment. It's an old trick of language, like someone saying, "I think you are a lowlife piece of s—t, BUT I am not here to make disparaging remarks." It's the same construction – make a comment, then disavow it, but of course the comment still stands.
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Classical and flamenco guitars from Spain Ramon Amira Guitars
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Date Nov. 16 2010 4:19:20
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turnermoran
Posts: 391
Joined: Feb. 6 2010
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to XXX)
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Indeed, music theory is complicated, but much of what I've read in the thread is really based on a "vertical" way of thinking. Which is probably the most complicated, and the most mathematically involved.
Most, if not all, is correct, but it's very..for lack of a better word: jazz like. In other words, when Charlie Parker and the be-boppers came along in the 1940's, jazz - and the music theory used to explain it - became all about vertical stacks of notes, and how melodies fit against those stacks, as a way of explaining if a given pitch sounded consonant or dissonant against the sound of the underlying chord. Thus we talk of Amin(maj7)9/13, etc etc and whether a melodic minor fits better than a dorian-add major 7 scale, etc etc
Which, IMO, is a complicated way to get into harmony for the uninitiated. Yes, sooner or later you have to study chords, and intervals, and all that. But personally, I'm a fan of looking at it this way:
the first instrument is the voice
"music", in the very beginning, was probably just rhythm (banging rocks, natural objects, etc), and melody, in the form of the voice
and despite the fact that 1000's of years past between the cavemen and classical music, where much happened, what we have ended up with (in Western music; as opposed to Indian classical for example) is The Major Scale.
And the major scale has 2 important features:
If you go Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti.... and stop right there on Ti... it sounds off. It wants to to all the way and stop at Do, one octave above the starting point.
A similar thing happens with Fa and Mi (although less intense). In other words, the 1/2 steps in the scales have tendencies to want to resolve. The 4th note of the scale (Fa) wants to go to the 3rd (Mi), and the 7th note (Ti) wants to go to home to the 8th (Do).
If you look at the V7 chord, you can see that it wants to go to the I chord because the scale tones of a V7 are Sol+Ti+Re+Fa (5th, 7th, 2nd, 4th), and the scale tones of the I are Do+Mi+Sol (1st, 3rd, 5th). The 4th and 7th, contained in the V7 chord, resolve to the 1st and 3rd, contained in the I chord.
All "harmony" does is play with this, either by using it directly, or by playing with our expectations and conditioned ideas of what sounds resolved, unresolved, dissonant or consonant. I think every aspect of our musical system can be traced back to this. Secondary dominants, false resolutions, modes and modal music, atonal music.
Now, I'll confess that saying it's all about melody is a simplification, because the interval created between the 4th and 7th of the scale (contained in the V7) is just that: a interval. a stack. not a melody. And that interval (the #4/b5) - and how it resolves to a major 3rd interval - is chord based. But I still think it's melody based, since the first chords were probably created by 2 singers, who thought they were each creating melodies...or thinking melodically at least. But that's pure conjecture for sure!
So is any of this babble relevant to defining what a Adim7 is? No. But if we make harmony the pursuit of naming big stacks of chords without looking at the melodies created by the notes in the stacks and how the notes move from chord to chord, then harmony is really just a bunch of math, and "play this on that", "make this chord by stacking this on that". To me, harmony is just a lot of melodies, moving at the same time.
But that's just me..
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Date Nov. 16 2010 9:02:30
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to turnermoran)
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quote:
So is any of this babble relevant to defining what a Adim7 is?
lol 
no it was just semantics...is it an F# or a Gb....i'm not sure ...i lost the plot in there somewhere by introducing the major 7th in the chord ala Gismonti.. Vicente..Tomatito [and many others] voicing...still think of F# or Gb as some type of 6th...but i guess it is a double flattened 7th...just trying to work out what the G# [or is it an Ab?] was called...no reply on that one...so felt i confused the issue..
Like the view of melodies...
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Date Nov. 16 2010 9:16:57
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to Joven35)
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quote:
You and I need to talk.
that would be great
a few things i learnt on this thread
1. to get my enharmonics correct when describing a diminished chord [thanks yourwhathurts69 ]
2. that a diminished chord can have two sevenths [ a double flat7th and a major 7th..a chord Manolo uses btw ...what is this chord called? ... notes/pitches A Gb C F and G# ..[or is it Ab?] ?
3. and more importantly to think before i post....
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Date Nov. 16 2010 12:30:10
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JasonMcGuire
Posts: 1141
Joined: Apr. 10 2007
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to turnermoran)
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quote:
the first instrument is the voice
"music", in the very beginning, was probably just rhythm (banging rocks, natural objects, etc), and melody, in the form of the voice
sounds like flamenco
quote:
So is any of this babble relevant to defining what a Adim7 is? No. But if we make harmony the pursuit of naming big stacks of chords without looking at the melodies created by the notes in the stacks and how the notes move from chord to chord, then harmony is really just a bunch of math, and "play this on that", "make this chord by stacking this on that". To me, harmony is just a lot of melodies, moving at the same time.
nice! I have been asked way too many times about chords and harmony and "what chord book should I buy"..... chord books just show a fingering, but as Brian has put it.... harmony is way more about the musical effect created by the placing of chords next to each other as well as other mysterious effect created by placing certain melodic fragments or groups of notes near or on top of certain chords. The blues scale is a great example that defies the logic of "music theory." In a blues scale in E (damned guitarists)
you are superimposing E,G,A,A#,B,D over an E7 chord...... E7 contains G#.... that right there should drive music theory nerds forking bonkers But it sounds wicked and the phenomena has made a lot of guitar players very wealthy both in terms of money as well as poontang. After hearing so often that scale (blues scale) over a Dominant chord, people got so used to hearing both the major and minor 3rd stacked vertically that people started making that an altered dominant chord. E7(#9).... Think Purple Haze or Foxy Lady.... a wicked cool chord indeed. For me it was THIS that led to the more interesting things that can come about and more importantly BE CONTROLLED by knowing more about scales and harmony. Another bizarre coolness is that in an Octatonic scale (half-whole diminished) there is both major and minor 3rds possible when stacking the notes to create chords. Then there is the wealth of coolness created by harmonizing the Melodic Minor scale. F melodic minor over an E7(alt) chord.... oh man...... then we get all the coolness that comes about through the improper  use of pentatonic scales. G minor pentatonic over that same E7(alt) chord.....
Now..... back to flamenco....... what does any of this have to do with flamenco?
Check this thought out...... flamenco is created using the same 12 pitches as all other western music. Yes the vocal makes some limited used of quarter tones, but they are never really a place a singer dwell on for long enough for it to have much if any impact on the harmony....... if so they sound out of tune. 
Of course its not necessary to learn all of this theory. Wes Montgomery didn't need it and he did just fine.
For myself, I enjoy knowing what I know so that when I hear a musical effect that I like, I can reproduce it because I know what its made out of.
Chord names (nomenclature) are good to know because they enable us to easily tell each other things about what we are playing. Its a lot easier to say Esus4(b9) than it is to say:
-----0---------------
----10--------------
----10--------------
-----9---------------
-----7---------------
-----0---------------
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Date Nov. 16 2010 17:07:09
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El Kiko
Posts: 2697
Joined: Jun. 7 2010
From: The South Ireland
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RE: Music theory is way too complicated (in reply to Rain)
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@Jason
Yes first comes the music (the sound, the chord, the scale) just as it is, that sounds good .... but we need to talk about it so lets give it a name ( word) ,,, and so here we are, maybe it's not a perfect system but it's the best one we got ...and its served us OK so far ........
Its a bit like talking about smell, you can only describe it in terms of another smell.
( try describing the smell of lemon without involving any another smell !! ) luckily we all agree what it smells like however its written.
Flamenco in particular should be heard to be learned , its the only way to get all the info you need to reproduce it ,,,,
so if you hear a chord ..........CHING !!
you find it and reproduce the same chord..........CHING !!
by its name you may not do that because of the voicing , unless it is written down on a staff........
So you dont need to know anything except sound to play ... right ........
all the theory is an extra , optional //////
People still study what Django Rhienhardt played in the thirties,they write it down , name it , catagorize it and analize it ... but he himself couldnt read music and did not need to ...............
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Date Nov. 16 2010 17:36:42
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