How useful is theory, and musical education

[DWb]

People are always trying new things. Nasty semitone riffs and tritones. Drones and pedals. New rhythms. Polyrhythms, new jack swing, reggae. I think it's just plain useful to know what people are doing.

That's true.

Has anyone come up with a theory of rhythm that can talk usefully about what Omni Trio or Danny Breaks (for instance) are doing? I'd have thought that the small scale tension / release of a delay before a snare hit or a repeated hihat is just susceptible to analysis as the tension/release coming from V7 resolving to I. Maybe a bit harder because of the connection to timbre, I suppose...

[VicDiesel]

I'd have thought that the small scale tension / release of a delay before a snare hit or a repeated hihat is just susceptible to analysis as the tension/release coming from V7 resolving to I.

Sounds like you'd have to talk to a psychologist, someone who investigates how we experience perception.

Victor.

[jplanet]

Has anyone come up with a theory of rhythm that can talk usefully about what Omni Trio or Danny Breaks (for instance) are doing? I'd have thought that the small scale tension / release of a delay before a snare hit or a repeated hihat is just susceptible to analysis as the tension/release coming from V7 resolving to I. Maybe a bit harder because of the connection to timbre, I suppose...

This is fascinating stuff...I think it's best covered by the study of psychoacoustics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics

It's bigger in scope than music theory, because so much of it is based on human perception...

[bernhardtjeff]

i wish someone would put up another pictures of miles davis...

what exactly are people considering "music theory"? i mean i know what the dictionary would say, but i get the feeling that people use if differently.

[bobtheburninator]

well seeing as how music theory is what has been passed down century after century as what sounds good to the human ear, my thought is if a person is not taught any theory, and are given an instrument, they will eventually figure it out without ever knowing it

[No name]

I think, personally, that a good analogy would be Einstein and his theory of special and general relativity. As a lot of you probably know, Einstein was famous for being able to picture his theory in his head, and that was good. But, without his understanding of physcics, it would just have been a correct idea, but that's as far as it probably went. Now, even to come up with that idea in his head, he had to have had SOME knowledge on mathmatics and physics. The man who thought up E=mc2, and who found that light traveled at a fixed speed by imagining himself traveling right next to a beam of light, and wondered what a single beam of light would look like only to find out that you could never see such a thing, did this all in his head, as an ideal, an inspiration, and then he used his understanding on physics to put structure and substance with this ideal, and we have theories of his that have turned the world upside down.

I think that, to whatever extent, you have to have theory of music. Some flourish without a lot, but it never hurts you to know unless you become so saturated in music theory that you forget what a big part of music really is, inspiration and ideals that are somewhat seperated from theory, but at the same time depend on it in order for it to even be conceived in the first place.

[No name]

well seeing as how music theory is what has been passed down century after century as what sounds good to the human ear, my thought is if a person is not taught any theory, and are given an instrument, they will eventually figure it out without ever knowing it

Yes, but would you rather spend 60 years figuring out certain tricks and what not, or understand a theory that has evolved and progressed for centuries? In the end, if it doesn't work for you, what have you lost? I feel that there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by learning theory personally.

[VicDiesel]

well seeing as how music theory is what has been passed down century after century as what sounds good to the human ear,

What sounds good is a function of the time you're living in. Bach would not immediately have understood twelve-tone music. He'd probably learn quick (in fact, some of his themes are close to dodecaphonic) but it wouldn't be intuitive to him.

Conversely, some of the music of foreign cultures or bygone times sounds weird and/or unpleasant to our contemporary western ears. Think ragas, gamelan, organum.

my thought is if a person is not taught any theory, and are given an instrument, they will eventually figure it out without ever knowing it

No. Bach lived a long and creative life, and he didn't even exactly figure out some of the music that was being made during his lifetime. He definitely did not figure out the things that people a mere 30 years after his deatch found quite normal.

In other words, without being exposed to other music (for instance by learning the theory explicitly) you're likely to stay stuck in a pretty narrow area. Some people are very creative and invent something completely new, without refrence to what's going on around them, but for each of those there are a 100 that make music that has been done better before, and you'd wish they learn something so that they can really develop themselves.

Victor.