What one bit of Music Theory was really helpful that caused your songwriting to improve ?

[telecode]

I am just curious jancivil. what did you think of Steve Reichs stuff when it was released. Was it music to you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P_9hDzG1i0

[vurt]

im gonna grab some snacks, grapes probably, no popcorn for me! my body is a temple.
its crumbling and i leave my shoes outside...

[Distorted Horizon]

If you could choose one or two bits of music theory that were a lightbulb moment that really enhanced your songwriting, what would it be ?

Snap to scale in Reaper.

[fmr]

Ah, this is where the chord helper tool thingy was kinda mentioned and someone wanted to talk

Did they stop making keyboards?

Usually synthesizers came with keyboards attached (at least back in the days).

Obviously he meant the kind of "electronic musician" clicking on something in a chord helper 'vst', which is apparently a thing.

Oh boy. Here we go again.

Don't tell me, you have never heard of west coast electronic music or Suzanne Ciani (even though she has been around since the late 60s) and its all shit because it's not jazz?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFD72PXOmxA

Who said Suzanne Ciani is "shit"? Caertainly Jan didn't.

Actually, you CAN connect a keyboard to that stuff (you don't have to, but you CAN), As you can connect several other controllers that play notes. Anyway, that kind of stuff is for people who have a structured musical thought (which may even have nothing to do with notes, but just sound), which means they already got over that initial stage of I-IV-V, and even the stage of "chord progressions" (which, believe it or not, is still a rather primitive way of thinking music).

Actually, way before Suzanne Ciani was making music with that "stuff", there were people making music with the first tape recorders, and even vynyl records (before they had tape recorders), and very primitive devices like sine generators, noise generators, ring modulators, and things like that, painfully recording the sounds one by one, and then assembling pieces of music with the small sound pieces. And there were even people using computers already to make music. All before that, go figure.

[jancivil]

Nah, I actually think for the person that is tempted to buy into this nonsense it needs to be really explained:

because you approach the music making differently. you aren't navigating the way you have been accustomed to traditionally (by consciously thinking in terms of I - IV - V e.t.c.) .. you are navigating based on how the tool is design to function

I IV and V. The reason I said it looks like at best you know how to say it is these are the three basic functions of common practice harmony. Tonic; Subdominant; Dominant. (Another harmony might fit this paradigm as a 'substitute' or a slight offset of the full function. vi for I in major, for instance. Or not, 'passing' for instance.) There is no changing out IV for V or V for I or what-have-you being coherent. This is a basic building block. So the use of those particular Roman Numerals is a sign you don't know what you're even talking about. You're trying to fake it. You can call that characterization flaming you personally but I would have the exact same assessment of it - bullshit - no matter who did it. I'm not inclined to coddle you particularly having seen the arrogance before.

Either you can make a common practice chord progression happen or ya can't. Frequently the melody has some influence on what is possible, and the harmonization has *integrity* with that *idea*. There is music OTOH which is based in a known chord progression, and either you know it or you don't. If the idea is there will be a melody at a later date based in supposedly a novelty of a chord progression, you need to have a working grasp of the language as well.


"because you aren't navigating traditionally by consciously thinking according to basic building blocks" is the real meaning of this bogus sentence. It is total non-sequitur. One will remedy making bogus statements with some basic knowledge.
You can be butt-hurt by that assessment if that's how you roll. As far as a flaming, yes, my attitude is a bit colored by your prior fraudulence, and I'm noting the same tendency here. You're muddying the waters with shit.

[jancivil]

Did they stop making keyboards?

Usually synthesizers came with keyboards attached (at least back in the days).

Obviously he meant the kind of "electronic musician" clicking on something in a chord helper 'vst', which is apparently a thing.

Oh boy. Here we go again.

Don't tell me, you have never heard of west coast electronic music or Suzanne Ciani (even though she has been around since the late 60s) and its all shit because it's not jazz?

And you weren't going to participate in further flaming.

I'm just explaining that there is A TYPE which someone else brought in that does that. And you ran with that. As though a proof there is that type! Are you on something which addles your brain to this extent? Jesus F Christ man.

It has nothing to do with anything else. As a point of fact, I went to school - San Francisco Conservatory of Music - with an Electronic Music emphasis and if I'd continued in school this was going to be my major. The tools were the Buchla II (the whole basic for this West Coast school of thought with the no-keyboard) and Tape. NB: the San Francisco Tape Center was tied into this. Which turned into the Mills College program.

You are making shit up to put words in my mouth which have NOTHING to do with, or any relationship to the remark.
PURE fabrication; 100% unadulterated bullshit.


I would have to say the extent of what you "know" about this subject you toss at me would have to be you read it in some journalism at some time. You have to bullshit, you can't honestly address the content of what is said because you lack the basic communication tools to, let alone the capacity to talk intelligently about musical concepts. And you're the sort of person to see if you can try and fake it.


"and its all shit because it's not jazz?"

You're really just too lacking in the basic wherewithal to read statements and get your sense of the person's thoughts or whatever through that, aren't you. Let alone trying to get a sense of where you are and who the person you're having it at is, may have done, their interests, their posts in the past, anything.

You just run with your own nonsense trying to fake something. I sincerely feel pity for you, because all of what keeps a person from growing is in full display for all to see here. It's self-inflicted, and it comes out of a fundamental streak of dishonesty. It's painful to witness.

[fmr]

And it seems like you are replying to me

[Stamped Records]

Generally, I'm against the word "making" being applied to music at all. I've been close to physically sick every time I've seen a new device to leapfrog musical experimentation. You can now get the midi to pop out of an audio track, right into your DAW. These chord helper tools, man. I think we need terminator to go back and sort this shit out.

[vurt]

Generally, I'm against the word "making" being applied to music at all. I've been close to physically sick every time I've seen a new device to leapfrog musical experimentation. You can now get the midi to pop out of an audio track, right into your DAW. These chord helper tools, man. I think we need terminator to go back and sort this shit out.

i said it elsewhere (maybe earlier in this thread?) what if chord helpers are the spark that initiates skynet?

[jancivil]

And it seems like you are replying to me

ach, the nested quoting fuckup

sorted

[vurt]

You are making shit up to put words in my mouth which have NOTHING to do with, or any relationship to the remark.
PURE fabrication; 100% unadulterated bullshit.

i was impressed by her buchla vst though

[jancivil]

If you could choose one or two bits of music theory that were a lightbulb moment that really enhanced your songwriting, what would it be ?

Snap to scale in Reaper.

That's not a bit of music theory, that's you avoiding it.

[Stamped Records]

If you could choose one or two bits of music theory that were a lightbulb moment that really enhanced your songwriting, what would it be ?

Snap to scale in Reaper.

That's not a bit of music theory, that's you avoiding it.

Avoiding it, and avoiding good music in the process I believe. I have never done anything remotely close to beautiful using only major or minor. This opinion that runs around that says minor is sad and meaningful and major is upbeat and happy, well, that's a load of bolocks. The saddest and most beautiful music I've ever done was 3 sequential major chords, not in any scale. Let them have their white keys and their scale tools, it's a limitation, not an advantage.

[jancivil]

Yeah, Suzanne Ciani is not my go-to at all. What is that, the one name you could pull out here?


oral history project: Alden Jenks

[jancivil]

You can now get the midi to pop out of an audio track, right into your DAW. These chord helper tools, man.

I used Audio to MIDI in Cubase or Nuendo last year literally experimentally, though. It's designed strictly for a monophonic line but the audio I fed it was the delay return of an Absynth track which was anything but. Then I transformed that somewhat surprising result into a two-part invention.

fuggit, I'll cue it here:
https://youtu.be/VBDr2HmkMMw?t=103

[URL cues it at the Youtube]
Warning: not jazz or any genre, and no chords.