What is wrong with music theory?

[trimph1]

The differences between what people think they should know and what they could know are vast. One could indeed be very focused. So focused on what they think they need to know they miss the path they should know. Here in lays the failure of independent studies over interactive studies with someone who knows the way.


I seriously studied jazz with serious jazz teachers who were players as well. Sure there was time for improvisation however there also was time between improvisation where critique occured. Along with that critique came an examination of approaches and various methodologies. To discredit a teacher because they are a player as well is folly. The point of a musical education is to embrace the concepts put forth. This isn't something that comes in a vacuum or as an afterthought. It comes thru dilligence, applying yourself to the instrument. It is both physical and intellectual. I've yet to meet a martial artist who learned it all from a book.

Precisely.

In all my years I've never really encountered anyone who did just learn from a book..but I have encountered many who learned through someone else, in a live, classroom/studio/jam session...

[jancivil]

I spent a couple years all told in music school proper. I had a fantastic 'theory' teacher; the main thrust was part-writing, as this was the 'honors' curriculum, which meant this was the theory class for the composition majors (which I was not, I was applied guitar. I was in that accelerated curriculum owing to my previous classes in harmony). Brutal exercises, which I could never devise, no WAY could I make up an interconnected series of problems with one right solution like James Gallatin. Evil Genius. This motherfvcker honed your skills, if you could ace a Gallatin exam, you had your shit together like nobody's bizness. Owing to that class, I was allowed a graduate paper in form and analysis. And some more fear ensues... but I learned to marshall my arguments about what I was playing and how it all worked as a composition.

This is invaluable, this kind of experience. I do not have musical problems in my music I can't solve. I will not get stuck in a composition. The thought is clear. I don't worry about form, I just do it.
Left to my own devices I wouldn't have *become*.

I am loud about this topic, but I'm telling you the truth: this 'I will learn music online just fine and dandy' idea is deficient; if you really care about your chops and are interested in the craft of music you will do what's necessary, you'll work with somebody that *knows* what you do not. Do not kid yourselves people. Random online study might suit a remedial kind of catch up approach, but it isn't going to be really cogent instruction. Most of it's going to be an inefficient use of time, parsing information and wondering where it fits. Information is not knowledge.

[Audiosprite]

^ I looked up Gallatin's name but couldn't find anything relating to music. Could you link me to some theory text he's done? I'd love to go through it.

[adXok]

The most difficult thing in the world is to change people's perspective view. In fact is more difficult to make them pay attention to it.

Imagine how difficult was to make people believe that the Earth is not flat. 1500 they believed such a nonsense as official knowledge.

New revolutionary ideas always follow the next rules:
1. Being ridiculed
2. Being strongly opposed
3. Being accepted as best or official

... till some hundred or thousand years later. It's just the way the things go.

[herodotus]

Do not kid yourselves people. Random online study might suit a remedial kind of catch up approach, but it isn't going to be really cogent instruction. Most of it's going to be an inefficient use of time, parsing information and wondering where it fits. Information is not knowledge.

Didn't FZ claim to learn most of what he knew at his public library?

[A.M. Gold]

Depends on how good you are at teaching yourself. Some need more direct and interactive guidance, others less. Just because someone isn't there to tell you how to apply a piece of information, doesn't necessarily mean you can't figure it out. A lot of it will depend on how much time and effort you are willing to put into your own process of experimentation.

Music theory isn't like chemistry or physics, it is always going to be a combination of rote and application which will be subjectively governed by experimentation and personal discovery.

[japut_99]

Music theory isn't like chemistry or physics, it is always going to be a combination of rote and application which will be subjectively governed by experimentation and personal discovery.

Actually, I think music theory is more like physics or chemistry but still has discovery value like you wrote. Again take a look at the 'grimoire' series especially the charting of the major scale. If you understand the basic framework of the major scale and its modes, then you do understand its really all about length, shape, distance or 'scale.' Very quantitative at its core.

[A.M. Gold]

Actually, I think music theory is more like physics or chemistry but still has discovery value like you wrote.

I disagree, for the simple reason that music can never exist outside of the bounds of personal taste. A historical hero of mine, the American general and president Ulysses S. Grant, was actually a bit of an artist, since he enjoyed painting watercolors while he was at West Point---however, he didn't like music at all. Music was just "noise" to his ears. I can't imagine that, but it is literally the way some people perceive it.

On the other hand, chemistry creates pure physical processes and reactions. If a chemist can make a plastic product, no one can ever say "I have no perception of that plastic product, therefore it has no physical existence to me". It simply exists, physically. Music is not the same as that, it absolutely depends on the perception of the listener.

That's not to say that the listener can't hear a sound, but that is not the same as hearing music.

[herodotus]

Actually, I think music theory is more like physics or chemistry but still has discovery value like you wrote.

I disagree, for the simple reason that music can never exist outside of the bounds of personal taste.

At all?

A historical hero of mine, the American general and president Ulysses S. Grant, was actually a bit of an artist, since he enjoyed painting watercolors while he was at West Point---however, he didn't like music at all. Music was just "noise" to his ears. I can't imagine that, but it is literally the way some people perceive it.

He might not have liked music, but if someone had played a C major chord in his presence, it would still have been a C major chord, whether or not he liked it at all.

On the other hand, chemistry creates pure physical processes and reactions. If a chemist can make a plastic product, no one can ever say "I have no perception of that plastic product, therefore it has no physical existence to me". It simply exists, physically. Music is not the same as that, it absolutely depends on the perception of the listener.

There are many musical phenomena that can be identified with every bit as much precision as chemical phenomena. See Helmholtz's 'On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music'.


Music is a complex interplay of many factors, and is not nearly as subjective as you are making it out to be. Some of it is subjective, certainly, but not ALL of it.

[debra1rlo]

He might not have liked music, but if someone had played a C major chord in his presence, it would still have been a C major chord, whether or not he liked it at all.

Yeah, but he might have made A minor notation about it.

[japut_99]

I thought we were talking about theory? Musical perception, what is musical, these are questions that aren't addressed by music theory. Thats a whole other empirical process.

Again I will say that theory is still closer to math, physics etc...Its formulation. Its quantitative but to be qualitative needs the listener, it needs the expermentation etc..

I will say this about theory- if you want dissonance, its in there, mapped and ready to go. If you want harmony its there too. How you decide to use it -well whole other ball of wax. But to say that theory doesn't exist without listening or personal conjecture is wrong. If you are deaf its still possible to write a great piece for others to listen to by knowing the "rules". Think the 9th one that Ludwig put out.

[japut_99]

[quote="A.M. Gold"][quote="japut_99"]

On the other hand, chemistry creates pure physical processes and reactions. If a chemist can make a plastic product, no one can ever say "I have no perception of that plastic product, therefore it has no physical existence to me". It simply exists, physically. Music is not the same as that, it absolutely depends on the perception of the listener.


What about Stoichiometry? All paper math work describing chemistry. It exhibits nothing but numbers. It is not a physical process but it gleans information at product of chemistry. It is part of chemistry rules. It does not provide 'good or bad' products. It is not bothered by any idea that 'cyanide' is less useful than 'potassium sodium'. It is usually the 1st lessons learned in chemistry.

[jopy]

Your Beethoven example seems strange, since he obviously could hear for much of his life and by the time he went deaf he surely had internalized the sounds of an orchestra well enough to "hear" what he was writing in his imagination. A better example would be someone who wrote decent music who never had an auditory experience; and I personally doubt such a person exists. The meaning of a dissonance to someone who is deaf is like trying to describe green to someone who was blind, which would mostly be a futile exercise.

[japut_99]

but its quanitative not qualitative. True about Ludwig and the 'ear' he developed over the years. Its also true that if you never heard the difference between 'Dorian' and 'Lydian' you probably wouldn't know how to use it or what the difference is even though they are the same notes in the key just started differently.

Music creates waves or vibrations at which there are other ways to receive this information to humans that exhibit the deficiency of sight or sound. I don't know this for certain but I do believe that "green" could be described adequately to a blind person using other methods than sight but that is still qualitative analysis.

[jancivil]

this all points to the knowledge argument, 'qualia'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room

"The thought experiment was originally proposed by Frank Jackson as follows:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?"