Endless possibilities - but everyone thinking along the same route?

[harryupbabble]

But absorption is not replacement. It's more like adding a little flavour using atonal means to the bulk but the bulk is tonal?

Hey isn't Stairway To Heaven in the key of Am. And if atonal means Am then how can that be atonal? I've listened to Arnold S's music before and that music seemed to forever hang, goes nowhere. But Stairway To Heaven seemed so opposite of that. It's got tension, climax, release. So how can Stairway To Heaven be labelled atonal music?

[stratum]

There is no "natural rule" as to what is seen as "harmonious" vs. "dissonant". It's NOT nature.

I have seen evidence that there is a natural rule. I'm living in a country where music was different after all. There were two different traditions that had their share of influence from western music. The 'makam' music, which has roots in Arabic culture uses very complex scales. Making that polyphonic was an intellectual exercise that hasn't been very successful.

On the other hand there is Turkish folk music. That wasn't polyphonic either for cultural reasons, but it meshed well with western pop/rock music because it uses simpler scales, pretty much like western music. These scales are 'mildly' microtonal, only.

When the reason for the difference was merely cultural, it was resolved easily.

[nineofkings]

But absorption is not replacement. It's more like adding a little flavour using atonal means to the bulk but the bulk is tonal?

Hey isn't Stairway To Heaven in the key of Am. And if atonal means Am then how can that be atonal? I've listened to Arnold S's music before and that music seemed to forever hang, goes nowhere. But Stairway To Heaven seemed so opposite of that. It's got tension, climax, release. So how can Stairway To Heaven be labelled atonal music?

If by "the music theory of JS Bach" you mean "anything that's at all tonal, at least for the majority of the time," I guess you're right bud.

Also, on the culture vs. nature thing, I like to compare it to light in visual art. It's a scientific fact that certain wavelengths of light correspond to certain perceived colors. Sure. That's just a physical property of light. But whether or not that is considered beautiful, that's where the culture part comes in. So while a fifth will always be a frequency ratio of 1.5:1, in context it may be used differently.

[stratum]

If by "the music theory of JS Bach" you mean "anything that's at all tonal, at least for the majority of the time," I guess you're right

That's not just it, changes from harmony to dissonance, as well as creation of stress and resolution of it, is intentional, and that works mostly because, a ratio like 1.5:1 creates a sensation of harmony while 1.45:1 would create dissonance. That is the reason that atonal music is an intellectual excercise, because they know that it's against the basics and they still did it. Perhaps they were thinking that they knew the theory so well that they could use it in another way or create another perceivable structure.

[harryupbabble]

True, true. Music is subjective. But the thing is more subjects of the West seem to prefer tonal music to pretty much everything else and all that atonal music assault didn't seem to make a dent. Maybe it's one of those "stumble upon" thingies. Like E=MC2. Okay, I'm not sure if Einstein stumbled upon that, maybe he did, but the word Eureka seem to be associated with scientists and inventors.

Anyways, back to tonal music... it just works? And maybe another formula (cos really, isn't tonal music formulaic) will be stumbled upon but it may take a while and atonal music just wasn't it because it didn't work? Not in its purest form at least?

Okay time to un-neglect other stuff. Thanks for the education, ladies, gents. I didn't know about that "All atonal music is in the key of Am" idea. Seems faulty though. Have to reread it later. Okay. Adios pantalones.

[foosnark]

So, skimming over the last pile of pages...

The argument is, apparently, that nobody is ever creative because when they are creative it isn't popular. Even though some of the composers who did some of those (non-existent) creative things are known to us by name a century later.

[Aleatoriac]

Human thought is essentially a cluster of contradictory propositions. A Penrose triangle of tangled nonsense, really. Each corner is all the Human can perceive, but if it seeks to evaluate the totality it must dissolve even its own arbitrary distinctions, or endure cognitive dissonance.

The Humans will be absorbed.

[herodotus]

True, true. Music is subjective. But the thing is more subjects of the West seem to prefer tonal music to pretty much everything else and all that atonal music assault didn't seem to make a dent.

OK, there is a lot to unpack here.

In the first place, it isn't the atonality that seems to alienate people about the music of, say, Schoenberg. He was pissing people off long before he made any atonal music, because his music was dense, complex, and unconventional.

In the second place, it is quite possible to write atonal music that is almost completely consonant. It is also possible to write tonal music that is dissonant and hard to understand, as for instance, early Schoenberg, like Verklärte Nacht.

Tonality and atonality are abstractions that describe the underlying structure of music. Tonality simply refers to music built around a tonal center. It doesn't mean it is pretty, or even consonant. And the tonal center is not exactly obvious in many beloved pieces of tonal music. There are many passages in Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and Wagner that have only the most remote relation to their supposed tonal center. Most people neither know nor care about such matters. If one of Beethoven's late quartets were to end in a key far removed from their home key, would anyone without a score in their hand even notice?

And as for atonal music, there is a ton of it in the world. Any song that employs the diminished scale is technically atonal, and this scale is in use all over the place: heavy metal bands and action movie soundtracks make constant use of it. And the atonal whole tone scale is used so often that it is a hollywood cliche.

[nix808]

1.5:1

E->A ==
1:1.3333333333333

ftfy 8D

[camsr]

Temper temper

[nix808]

..... a temporal temperament

it's weird how cool 4/3 delay is and 5ths

[harryupbabble]

So, I reread the article that ghettosynth provided a link for, this:
http://www.submediant.com/2015/11/02/st ... all-along/

I am so confused. Isn't the Am scale a tonal scale meaning it is made up of these 7 musical notes: A B C D E F G
Doesn't atonal music use all 12 notes? Isn't serial music the same as atonal music?
I seem to remember reading that serial music, as a rule, has to always use all 12 notes.
So, again, if that article is serious and true, how could most atonal music be in the key of Am when the Am scale doesn't have 12 notes?

Also, metal music is heavily atonal? Really? If that's true then that's interesting. Does that mean that the general public hates metal music? I have to Google that tomorrow. Plus, if Hollywood movie soundtracks are also mostly atonal, does it mean that the general public likes it or do they react the same no matter where atonal music is placed?

Now I am wondering if Metallica's Enter Sandman song is atonal music. More things to Google D. Morrow. Anyways, Goodnight y'all.

[stratum]

I'm not sure having a tonal center is technically important. Maybe having one simply makes it easiler to set expectations and perceive an overall organization.
Ability to easily change between harmonious and dissonant sounding sounds is. Maybe atonal music has stated with this observation and continued as an intellectual exercise and the article above claims it simply was a gimmick. Who knows that's their business but I do not hear their theory in action (in simple words, that's the way I would express it), and many others do not either. If there is no key, what is harmonious and what is not is simply a relation between chords and the melody. What about the progression of chords, how one does set expectations in harmony if there is no key? From what key do we pick those chords from? Maybe we could simply change chords and keep the harmony continous simply by keeping a few notes common in subsequent chords? Would the listener agree to that?

Also, metal music is heavily atonal?

Not really, if an electic guitar is playing a C chord heavily distorted, it's still a C chord plus some noise. It could be either way. Somebody should have given Schoenberg an electric guitar first, I guess.

Temper temper

Yeah, that's an interesting point, actually there are no perfect ratios like 1.5:0 between note frequencies, but some combination of frequency ratios sound harmonious and others sound dissonant nevertheless.

Any song that employs the diminished scale is technically atonal.

How that does happen?

[nineofkings]

Submediant is a joke website, that article is satire.

Having a tonal center is literally the core definition of tonal music. The relationships that it's founded on only make sense when you have a home key. Part of the point of post tonality or atonality is figuring out how to make coherent musical systems without tonal centers. There's nothing saying atonal music can't have consonant chords as long as they're not related in that way.

I used to think all non tonal music was intellectual wankery until I learned more about it and realized I was thinking of the most alienating examples. Some of it is even quite pretty.

This isn't Bach but it isn't alienating. The way it uses harmony is very different in very real ways from the baroque and classical worlds. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hyiu7fBUk7o

[stratum]

This isn't Bach but it isn't alienating. The way it uses harmony is very different in very real ways from the baroque and classical worlds. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hyiu7fBUk7o

That does not sound bad at all. Still, its overall structure is somewhat less recognizable. Is that atonal? This website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy mentions "frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities". Maybe an adventure in tonal music? Definitely does not sound as if it was intended for an horror movie.