Strange cadence

[A.M. Gold]

A professor at U.C. Berkeley who taught a class in psychoacoustics that I took said he once made a bamboo flute and he just drilled random holes in it, the idea being to walk around playing it as often as possible and to see if he could acclimatize himself to a totally new (and totally random) scale. He was testing his theory that our way of hearing harmony is purely conditioned and in no way innate. He said he gave up after a week or so with the random scale flute. After that he decided there was some innate sense that attracts humans to the diatonic scale and strong relationships like the tonic-dominant.

[Highvoltage]

isn't that called mathematics?

[jancivil]

A professor at U.C. Berkeley who taught a class in psychoacoustics that I took said he once made a bamboo flute and he just drilled random holes in it, the idea being to walk around playing it as often as possible and to see if he could acclimatize himself to a totally new (and totally random) scale. He was testing his theory that our way of hearing harmony is purely conditioned and in no way innate. He said he gave up after a week or so with the random scale flute. After that he decided there was some innate sense that attracts humans to the diatonic scale and strong relationships like the tonic-dominant.

'to the diatonic scale'

What does that definition exclude*?

I am repelled by nature by V7-I, unless there's something compellingly lovely about how it's approached or its resolution elided. (Which is why I was always struck by that passage in Tristan.) I don't dig Beethoven, for instance. I can't go for much that uses it, until they began to subvert or pervert it.

I do not like the major scale. I don't even use it. It's ugly to me.

I do think, eg., the mixolydian mode (*is that diatonic?) is very natural; based in acoustics (which as people with hearing organs on a planet with those characteristics, we're naturally geared towards), you hear it all over the world in musics.

He could mean something far more inclusive than his language suggests. But 'humans' (globally, universally) attracted to the 'diatonic scale' I have to question.
It does appear as if his questioning of his own conditioning was rather limited and lacked stamina. And judgment. Why 'random'? That would be an extreme tack to take to disprove conditioning, seemingly designed to fail.

[A.M. Gold]

I'm not even sure he said "diatonic scale" but at least he did refer to triadic relationships. And why he chose random, well he had to choose something and he wanted it to have nothing to do with any of the structural relationships he was used to hearing. He wanted to see if pure repetition would be enough to make the new relationships sound "natural". I think he probably gave up too quickly to really find out if this new scale would be easier to listen to and even sound "musical" after a while, but he did come out of it believing that, in particular, the tonic-dominant has a perceived significance that he didn't feel could be replaced purely through reconditioning.

[jancivil]

That makes more sense.

Especially if what is meant by 'tonic-dominant' is actually more like: 'interval of a rising perfect fourth'.

Which has an objective basis* that "tonic-dominant" as a linguistic construction, which refers to a chord progression event (does it not?) and requires context, hasn't.

* - eg: The reasons we like a 'major triad' are the same reasons we like fifth harmonic distortion in a Marshall amplifier, it follows the laws of sound vibrating on this planet. Fundamental, third and fifth partial.

The language is interesting, that you use: 'perceived significance'.

Let me give a for instance: in places like Bali, they build instruments that, they perceive as having very significant sound. To many if not most westerners, these sound out-of-tune. Pentatonic and hexatonic scales, static structures. Sound to some over here as terrifically out-of-tune.

Now! If one analyzed the 12-tone equal temperament piano versus these Gamelan, guess which is closer to acoustically *right*?

Both are conditioned, you could say, by a certain metric.
One is more 'natural'. The more natural one doesn't rely as much, when at all, on 'tonic-dominant', or anything like it really, in its actual practice. (They employ higher overtones in their constructions, they like it.)

Do you see my problem?

[A.M. Gold]

Yea, as I recall he actually just cited the interval of the fifth so I embellished by referring to a I-V relationship, which can mean either the ascending fourth or descending fifth. This was mentioned totally off hand and I never asked him more about it. I just thought it was interesting that he had a behaviorist viewpoint about this and was convinced he would come out of it with a new musical scale invention but he gave up rather quickly. As I said, if he stuck with it longer it might have worked.

As to your point about perception of different harmonic constructs, here is where one can get into arguments that are difficult to resolve concerning what the proportion of objective vs. subjective content in art is. The extreme view on the subjective side is that there is no inherent structural significance in any art form and it is all pure psychological response, which would entail that anything could become a work of art. It's hard to know if that is true, though. My argument would be that there are structures that tend to be perceived as "pleasant" or "beautiful" more often than others, but that as you narrow the size of your sample audience down more and more, you get a wider and wider range of things that are considered artistic, beautiful, creatively inspired, etc.

Now this is reminding me of philosophy of art class at Berkeley.

[jancivil]

I don't think it wise to go to one extreme or another with that.

That said, I really do believe there are objective criteria that are, well, global. Our ears are constructed the way they are. Our air is what it is. We might find music from a world with a different atmosphere, by beings with different ears, impossible to completely adjust to.

I think the proportions of subject v. object would vary according to culture.

As I suggested, in a differently conditioned culture (than say in Europe, Western Hemisphere), the object is the subject. The sound is the thing. To a degree that when -

You get into more layers of history, eg., 'European Concert Music', it - the sound - isn't as object-defined, the product is more subject-oriented. I think.

I never bought into that to the degree I might've been expected to. A piano, as an object, isn't for me the most satisfying sound to begin from, for one. It's thin, and your tonic right away is compromised as far as the rest of the strings vibrating with it. (Cf. a sitar) And, history, it tends to carry a lot of baggage.

So I judge from sound first. That's just me.

[herodotus]

The harmonic series isn't a hypothesis.

And it has no more than an historical relationship to our equal tempered scale. If one is discussing a piece written and performed in just intonation, it would be relevant. But our modern tempered scale ravages the overtone series beyond recognition. That's why composers like Lou Harrison are often revisiting just intonation.

per Examples Given: Making a distinction between this or that context, I haven't guessed at that, I have employed something from experience. A purely modal context leads one's ear, in experience, towards certain expectation that functional harmony, in a chromatic texture, does not, in fact gives altogether nother expectations.

Please understand that I am not 'calling anyone out' or finding fault with any explanations. I am referring to the fact that music theory is not a science the way astrophysics is. The fact that there are several different explanations given here for the same musical passage attests to this. Nor is this a shortcoming of yours or llatham's reasoning. I have seen Heinrich Schenker and Walter Piston give different analyses of the same passage from the same Chopin Prelude. And I mean very different, mutually exclusive analyses.

I think you will have to acknowledge that Piston and Schenker are major names in the theoretical literature. And yet they disagree on the meaning and import of a standard work of western music. In astrophysics, such a disagreement would lead to an argument of which there could only be one victor, because such inconsistency is antithetical to a 'hard' science. In music theory, on the other hand, such inconsistencies are, when they are noticed at all, explained away as 'differing interpretations'.

Calling the 'V chord' a 'V chord' is a naming game, yes. In functional harmony, it does have a certain function, which to you may be down to making a guess, it's hard to say, I don't know you.

An inconsistent naming game, yes.

But before this gets out of hand, let me explain my point of view:

I have found this thread to be one of the most heartening and interesting I have seen here on kvr.

I simply have a huge series of problems with the way music theory operates. This is not an ignorant rejection. It is a reasoned argument. I have rather a large number of theoretical texts, from Fux and Rameau, to Schoenberg and Salzer, Antokoletz and Perle, along with standard anthologies. And I have rather more on musical history. I have, sadly, sold many more such books than I have kept.

I have been banging my head against these books for a very long time.

I say all this merely merely to avoid the giving the impression that I am one of the minions of anti-theory. I am not. I find discussions like this fascinating, even if I do think there are flaws in the ultimate assumptions of the methods involved.

But this thread is not the place for such a 'meta-level' discussion. I do have an unfinished and rather lengthy blog post on these matters. And I will definitely post a new thread in this forum when it is posted. I would quite like to 'have it out' over these issues, when I have time. (My latest band is about to have it's first gig on Saturday, and it's a really complicated show, and my brain hurts.)

In any case, this is just kind of a big 'don't mind me', with a rather lengthy apologia appended to it

Carry on.

[A.M. Gold]

Maybe we are dealing with a "discovered" structure in mainstream Western music, rather than an invented one, but that system, while discrete, is only one among many possible alternative structures. If you attend a mainstream music theory course at a Western university, you will be exposed to a rather huge volume of structural analysis that has come about in Europe and North America, mostly, within the past 300 years. So that's fine, but it isn't necessarily an ultimately limiting framework because I think it is reasonable to say that it is a fairly exhaustive analysis of one system of musical structure.

That system works, truly, for many listeners around the world (myself included), but it says nothing about possible alternative structures. I've often wondered what scales and consequently what kinds of structures of progression and modulation would evolve if we in the West started using a 24 tone chromatic foundation rather than a 12 tone one (or some other number greater than 12).

Certainly modern jazz introduces many aesthetic innovations that would have seemed absurd to music teachers in the Baroque era (though an innovator like Bach might have liked some of it).

[A.M. Gold]

I am referring to the fact that music theory is not a science the way astrophysics is.

This is true by virtue of the fact that, ultimately, music has no solely objective foundation. You can't say that music per se exists as a natural structure (although you can say that the overtone series exist as a natural structure and you can say that consonant and dissonant intervals exist as natural structures).

Ultimately it is up to the listener to decide what music is and so music theory can never be like physics or geology because it starts with natural structure and adds an indispensable subjective element to that structure. There is no subjective element to the fact that the Earth revolves on a tilted axis or that the Sun fuses hydrogen into helium. Without the subjective/objective interplay, though, there is no emergence of musical phenomena.

[herodotus]

I am referring to the fact that music theory is not a science the way astrophysics is.

This is true by virtue of the fact that, ultimately, music has no solely objective foundation. You can't say that music per se exists as a natural structure (although you can say that the overtone series exist as a natural structure and you can say that consonant and dissonant intervals exist as natural structures).

Ultimately it is up to the listener to decide what music is and so music theory can never be like physics or geology because it starts with natural structure and adds an indispensable subjective element to that structure. There is no subjective element to the fact that the Earth revolves on a tilted axis or that the Sun fuses hydrogen into helium. Without the subjective/objective interplay, though, there is no emergence of musical phenomena.

The fact that music isn't 'solely objective' doesn't get music theory off the hook. The fact that people are trying to extrapolate rules and explanations of compositional practice from the overtone series, despite the fact that we have long since abandoned the acoustically pure intervals of the overtone series for the tempered intervals of our modern 12 tone scale, is a good example of this.

As Peter Yates put it, much more eloquently than I can:

Modern harmonic theory is based partly on the simple arithmetical relationship of concordant intervals established by Pythagoras (but applied instead to our discordant intervals), partly on the modulatory coloring among the unequal intervals of the scale in meantone (which went out of music about 150 years ago) and partly on rationalizations of these conflicting systems in terms of the tuning we use today, equal temperament. Harmonic theory, as we learn it, is made up of three mutually exclusive sound systems, which are taught as if the three were one.

In short, the undoubted fact that music has a non-rational element doesn't justify the same non-rationality in what is supposed to be a reasoned explanation of it.

[jancivil]

The harmonic series isn't a hypothesis.

And it has no more than an historical relationship to our equal tempered scale. If one is discussing a piece written and performed in just intonation, it would be relevant. But our modern tempered scale ravages the overtone series beyond recognition. That's why composers like Lou Harrison are often revisiting just intonation.

So, I can't get away with calling a #11th in a Major/minor 7th harmony the 11th partial. It's close enough for rock 'n roll! It sounds pretty much the same as: odd-numbered partials. And, you may note that in an orchestra the strings and winds are NOT playing ET! they are adjusting according to vast experience of hearing it, to get a Harmonic Effect. You won't get that sound out of a piano. Trust me.

You are so very correct! ET compromises harmonic relationships, I even discussed that.

I prefer just intonations. I have delved into Indian music for a long time, I even made up plans for an electronic instrument based on a particular take on 22 Srutis. EG:

1:1
256:243; 16:15
10:9; 9:8
32:27; 6:5
5:4; 81:64
27:20; 4:3
45:32; 64:45
3:2
128:81; 5:3
27:16; 8:5
16:9; 9:5
15:8; 243: 128
(2:1)

I can play those relationships on my Fender Strat. Good ol' ET'd gittar. I do it all the time! Bend the string like reentoon teentoon teenoo neenoo nee. I understand the technical measurements, but I use my ear. That is what I mean, I wasn't making hypotheses.

Somebody after the fact, A Schenker or a Piston may have their own take, on what I did - but! They are acting as Theoreticians when they do. They're not in there getting their hands dirty.

per Examples Given: Making a distinction between this or that context, I haven't guessed at that, I have employed something from experience. A purely modal context leads one's ear, in experience, towards certain expectation that functional harmony, in a chromatic texture, does not, in fact gives altogether nother expectations.

Please understand that I am not 'calling anyone out' or finding fault with any explanations. I am referring to the fact that music theory is not a science the way astrophysics is. The fact that there are several different explanations given here for the same musical passage attests to this.

Well, there is one reasonable explanation to me: It. Is. A French Sixth. I am confident from substantive experience and discussions with superior musicians of more substantive experience than mine, that that is what Mr Wagner was doing. It's called Common Practice. There were other guesses, and you'd be right, those are hypotheses.

Nor is this a shortcoming of yours or llatham's reasoning. I have seen Heinrich Schenker and Walter Piston give different analyses of the same passage from the same Chopin Prelude. And I mean very different, mutually exclusive analyses.

I think you will have to acknowledge that Piston and Schenker are major names in the theoretical literature. And yet they disagree on the meaning and import of a standard work of western music. In astrophysics, such a disagreement would lead to an argument of which there could only be one victor, because such inconsistency is antithetical to a 'hard' science. In music theory, on the other hand, such inconsistencies are, when they are noticed at all, explained away as 'differing interpretations'.

Calling the 'V chord' a 'V chord' is a naming game, yes. In functional harmony, it does have a certain function, which to you may be down to making a guess, it's hard to say, I don't know you.

An inconsistent naming game, yes.

But before this gets out of hand, let me explain my point of view:

I have found this thread to be one of the most heartening and interesting I have seen here on kvr.

I simply have a huge series of problems with the way music theory operates. This is not an ignorant rejection. It is a reasoned argument. I have rather a large number of theoretical texts, from Fux and Rameau, to Schoenberg and Salzer, Antokoletz and Perle, along with standard anthologies. And I have rather more on musical history. I have, sadly, sold many more such books than I have kept.

I have been banging my head against these books for a very long time.

I say all this merely merely to avoid the giving the impression that I am one of the minions of anti-theory. I am not. I find discussions like this fascinating, even if I do think there are flaws in the ultimate assumptions of the methods involved.

But this thread is not the place for such a 'meta-level' discussion. I do have an unfinished and rather lengthy blog post on these matters. And I will definitely post a new thread in this forum when it is posted. I would quite like to 'have it out' over these issues, when I have time. (My latest band is about to have it's first gig on Saturday, and it's a really complicated show, and my brain hurts.)

In any case, this is just kind of a big 'don't mind me', with a rather lengthy apologia appended to it

Carry on.

Ok. I see your idea. But I raise you this, and it's the thing I'm on about, per theory: I am not a theorist, I don't have a whole lot of regard for the Schenkers of the world. I think it's all a lot of talk, and I don't have much if any use for it.

I think the case of 'Tristan Love-Death chord' is very simple, and that the assumptions I and Mr Llatham use are tried and true, and likely what a Wagner had, as a practicing musician, to work with also.

It's not rocket science! There is a convention. It's built as I described. If this was the first use of it, which I seriously doubt, then calling it something is strictly a posteriori, and I would have to submit a mea culpa on the, any! assumption. But, as far as understanding how he arrived at the sound, which I adore, and was a significant 'discovery' in my path, it works for me. I had VERY good teachers in harmony, when I was interested in that. So I did well as a result, and had that late romantic harmonic style pretty much sussed. It was very useful, and eventually I was able to do some things of my own.

Other people had Schenkerian analysis, and they worried some things to death, and, lotta 'em, wrote crappy music, IMO.

When I bend the string like: reentoon teentoon teenoo neenoo nee, it is an exact science. IE: If I don't get '1:1' all the way to '9:8', I for sure know it. Exact science, in a way that putting it down as words can't be. But, in my mind, the symbols are correct; if you're someone else, it may not travel.

In other words, some physical sciences seem to have their language more together than music theorists (you're talking about consistent measurements, I think. Language of acoustics is about as set as anything.), but it's sure a moot point to me.

Any way thank you for your thoughts. I am looking forward to your other thoughts.

[jancivil]

Maybe we are dealing with a "discovered" structure in mainstream Western music, rather than an invented one, but that system, while discrete, is only one among many possible alternative structures. If you attend a mainstream music theory course at a Western university, you will be exposed to a rather huge volume of structural analysis that has come about in Europe and North America, mostly, within the past 300 years. So that's fine, but it isn't necessarily an ultimately limiting framework because I think it is reasonable to say that it is a fairly exhaustive analysis of one system of musical structure.

That system works, truly, for many listeners around the world (myself included), but it says nothing about possible alternative structures. I've often wondered what scales and consequently what kinds of structures of progression and modulation would evolve if we in the West started using a 24 tone chromatic foundation rather than a 12 tone one (or some other number greater than 12).

Certainly modern jazz introduces many aesthetic innovations that would have seemed absurd to music teachers in the Baroque era (though an innovator like Bach might have liked some of it).

Per the emphasis in what you wrote: you can hear such a system in use, actually, it's been done. I recall one example, I wish I could cite it, that sounded fantastic. It won't be common practice owing to the sort of thing you say isn't an ultimately limiting framework (I understand that you meant something else by that) actually. I wonder if our ears are prepared, or our minds, for modulating structures in its framework though.

I think the thinking is sound behind '12 equal tones for a modulating harmonic system'. It isn't what I'm interested in any more; I like other things that focus on really exploiting a given area. Or, a full chromatic that doesn't prefer one area as 'home', '12-tone' music I really think is the logical end for the means of '12 more or less equidistant tones'.

Analysis of structure is very interesting to me, up to a point. Some of it is a little overwrought though, I think.
I'm feeling very overedumacated at this point, sheesh.