What key is this in?

[Fox Crazy]

You two have a bizarre and mistaken notion of what I'm getting at here. At least I hope it's that, because the other options are much worse. But keep up the pointless ego stroking and useless musical dogma (mostly aimed at jan with this, since the year I've been lurking that's about all I've seen from this poster), you're really helping people out here. Rather than, y'know, trying to lend a hand in people's ability to intimately understand music.

An intimate understanding of how music actually functions is the greatest thing that led a certain renown composer to continue composing despite deafness. One can write a piece of music without being able to hear it. Furthermore, despite what you seem to think, one does not need to be a performer to be a composer anymore. This actually never was the case, it's just until recently the structure of things made it difficult to be one without the other. Is it useful? Once again, yes. Necessary? Not by a longshot.

Music, like many things, can be created by way of intuition, can be represented mathmatically, and can be looked at as a network of logical interactions. Also, like many things, it's completely and entirely relative. The end result of this is that there are many angles to approach it from when the useless roadblocks are removed and one is allowed to go at it from whatever direction suits their personal skills best. Now, maybe I'm wrong about THIS part, but: I reckon most people have SOME manner of logical skills that could afford them the ability to comprehend music.

[Nanakai]

An intimate understanding of how music actually functions is the greatest thing that led a certain renown composer to continue composing despite deafness. One can write a piece of music without being able to hear it. Furthermore, despite what you seem to think, one does not need to be a performer to be a composer anymore. This actually never was the case, it's just until recently the structure of things made it difficult to be one without the other. Is it useful? Once again, yes. Necessary? Not by a longshot.

Beethoven's musical memory was built from years of practicing with music. You know, hearing sound. He didn't write from some encyclopedic knowledge of tonal theory, he wrote from experience.

You aren't understanding the argument here. "How music functions" and "how music sounds" are not distinct things. The theory of tonal harmony is a construct meant to explain tendencies in western music and is by no means some Newtonian understanding of fundamental musical laws - this is your dogma showing. In order to understand vocabulary words like tonic, resolution and harmonic function, you must (as in, it is necessary to) have primary experience with the musical phenomena they reference. Otherwise, you're just parroting words. A person born blind can describe the physical properties of color just as well as someone who can see, but only one of those people has the primary experience to know what red looks like, what red feels like and how red looks with other colors. You want to believe that you can type music into a calculator and get the "correct" answer. I think that makes as much sense as studying linguistics to be a poet, or physics to be a footballer.

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture". What do you think that means?

[Fox Crazy]

They are not distinct things, but what you fail to understand is that how music sounds isn't some magic thing that pops out of the Aether in a cloud of fairy farts. How music works leads to how music sounds. I'm pretty sure someone a hell of a lot better at math than me has at least attempted breaking the entirety of music down into a set of complex mathematical equations, and I know for a fact science has made plenty of attempts at understanding why we perceive music the way we do.

Whether you like it or not, literally everything can be analyzed and broken down into a methodical practice, to the point where someone can use their intuition to compose something on paper (or a computer) that's absolutely astounding and groundbreaking without ever touching an actual musical instrument. Likewise, someone could theoretically learn enough about music that they could create at least decent compositions if not actually good while being deaf their whole life, though it'd be a hell of an uphill battle. Come to think of it, that'd make them the Hellen Keller of music. Linguists treat language as an art, no?

Once again, no matter how great his pitch recognition was when he wasn't deaf, his compositions would fall apart if he didn't have a logical understanding of them. This is what is most key, because music is a logical thing, even if our reactions to it aren't exactly. From what I remember he actually altered his composing practices to avoid producing bad results due to deafness, if that isn't knowing your music inside and out I don't know what is.

And FYI, that means someone is bad at analogies.

EDIT: Also, I think part of the problem here is people gratuitously overvaluing a high level of pitch recognition. Forgetting deaf people for a moment, just about anyone with functioning ears can get to know what minor sounds like in opposition to other things, and learn to recognize other similar things, with a fairly minimal amount of effort. This sort of thing is what's most important. People are going to have different skills, past that.

Either way, I don't have much more time to piss around with this, if people want to keep riding their illusions so be it, not like these forums are going to change in a day.

[sjm]

How music works leads to how music sounds.

Only if you think the cart goes before the horse.

Caveman Ugga didn't sit down and work out a mathematical basis for music and then proceed to make a sound. Instead he probably beat some sticks on something else and made some noise using his voice. The theory came a lot later and is based on what people had been doing for years.


Anyone, Jan is totally right in this case. If the point of the exercise is to determine the key, then telling someone the key won't help them complete that exercise. It just prevents them from having to perform it, and by extension, figure out how to perform it.

[Nanakai]

They are not distinct things, but what you fail to understand is that how music sounds isn't some magic thing that pops out of the Aether in a cloud of fairy farts. Cultural convention leads to how western tonal harmony sounds.

Fixed that for you.

What you fail to understand is the definition of the word 'theory', and the difference between music and musical conventions.

I'm pretty sure someone a hell of a lot better at math than me has at least attempted breaking the entirety of music down into a set of complex mathematical equations, and I know for a fact science has made plenty of attempts at understanding why we perceive music the way we do.

What part of this statement do you think is your point?

Whether you like it or not, literally everything can be analyzed and broken down into a methodical practice, to the point where someone can use their intuition to compose something on paper (or a computer) that's absolutely astounding and groundbreaking without ever touching an actual musical instrument. Likewise, someone could theoretically learn enough about music that they could create great compositions while being deaf their whole life, though it'd be a hell of an uphill battle. Come to think of it, that'd make them the Hellen Keller of music.

Whether you like it or not, no such formulation has produced art. Computers, programmed with the tendencies in western music, have produced music. Some of that has been considered good (though not great). That's not the point. Computers don't understand, they simply produce output from an input. They have inherently perfect memories. We do not, and our output must be shaped by interpreting input.

Linguists treat language as an art, no?

No.

Once again, no matter how great his pitch recognition was when he wasn't deaf, his compositions would fall apart if he didn't have a logical understanding of them. This is what is most key, because music is a logical thing, even if our reactions to it aren't exactly. From what I remember he actually altered his composing practices to avoid producing bad results due to deafness, if that isn't knowing your music inside and out I don't know what is.

And FYI, that means someone is bad at analogies.

You have an extremely ethnocentric view of music. Beethoven held to some conventions, and others he revolutionized. What he considered "bad results" was forged by years of experiencing western tonal harmony. That's different from what a classical Indian composer would consider "bad results", which is also different from what players of folk instruments around the world would consider "bad results".

Music is not math. Your inexperience is evident.

[Nanakai]

EDIT: Also, I think part of the problem here is people gratuitously overvaluing a high level of pitch recognition. Forgetting deaf people for a moment, just about anyone with functioning ears can get to know what minor sounds like in opposition to other things, and learn to recognize other similar things, with a fairly minimal amount of effort. This sort of thing is what's most important. People are going to have different skills, past that.

Either way, I don't have much more time to piss around with this, if people want to keep riding their illusions so be it, not like these forums are going to change in a day.

No one has said anything at all about needing to have perfect pitch. In fact, my first post said "... you don't need perfect pitch". No edits. Go back and read. Your strawman has fallen.

[Relative pitch] is what's most important.

How music works leads to how music sounds.

Likewise, someone could theoretically learn enough about music that they could create at least decent compositions if not actually good while being deaf their whole life,

you have a bizarre and mistaken notion of how music works, if you think 'how it works' is different than 'how it sounds';

I wish this were just permanently on display in the Theory forum. You aren't going to understand music any better from memorizing vocabulary words than you are just watching paint dry. Primary experience is primary. That's simply taken for granted by people who actually play music.

[Fox Crazy]

I was going to be mostly done with the people displaying this faulty mindset but this was too much to not take a shot at:

Caveman Ugga didn't sit down and work out a mathematical basis for music and then proceed to make a sound.

Caveman Ugga also didn't sit down and write up an essay on thermodynamics when he made fire for his woolly mammoth soup, that doesn't stop fire from being a completely explainable phenomenon that can be completely understood.

More relevant to this conversation, ancient Sumerians and Egyptians didn't develop a theory of fusion to explain the glowing ball in the sky showering light down on the fields of crops they were farming, supplying them free energy. On the other hand, some really idiotic people went out of their way to suppress anyone who suggested that said ball in the sky didn't revolve around us.

I also find it cute you people think I like memorizing buzzwords any better. Oh, I hate it quite a bit, in fact I think most of the way we display musical concepts to be an intractable mess. Not to say at its core it's horrid, but man do people go out of their way to make simple concepts horribly complicated. Nor to say music is the only thing people do this with.

I suppose I should just be thankful some people on here are a bit better about seeing the duality in things and understanding there's a method to the madness, but man do some of you make boards like this outright toxic. Enjoy your... Whatever it is you enjoy, I'll just continue not wanting to ever ask any questions.

[Nanakai]

I also find it cute you people think I like memorizing buzzwords any better. Oh, I hate it quite a bit, in fact I think most of the way we display musical concepts to be an intractable mess.

Well, we have something in common. You know how I wish people would learn music? By experiencing music. Without the primary experience of music, or "knowing how music sounds", you're just memorizing vocabulary. It's a simple dichotomy that you've convoluted with arrogant sophistry.

I find it ironic that you're placing yourself in the aura of someone with newfound wisdom, and anyone who disagrees with you is some stuck up conservative. Really think about what you're saying. I really wish you would ask questions, so that you might learn about these topics you pass yourself as an expert on.

[Nanakai]

More relevant to this conversation, ancient Sumerians and Egyptians didn't develop a theory of fusion to explain the glowing ball in the sky showering light down on the fields of crops they were farming, supplying them free energy. On the other hand, some really idiotic people went out of their way to suppress anyone who suggested that said ball in the sky didn't revolve around us.

This is completely irrelevant, as music is not physics. I challenge you to show me an example to the contrary.

[Tricky-Loops]

Some research to think about:

http://www.livescience.com/4929-music-r ... -math.html

"A lot of people say, 'Will this help us understand which Britney song is going to be a hit and which one isn't?'," Tymoczko said. "There's no hope of that. There is no way that geometry is going to help you become a great composer. Understanding the geometry will help you become a mediocre composer much more quickly, but composing is an artistic achievement. There's no royal road to becoming a great musician. We're not taking the mystery away from music."

[someone called simon]

Sigh. It's always such a minefield here. "What chord is this" often seems to d/evolve into "How do we understand reality?" Quite fascinating. Studying theory forum posts compared with those in other forums would probably be an interesting psychology project.

[Tricky-Loops]

Sigh. It's always such a minefield here. "What chord is this" often seems to d/evolve into "How do we understand reality?" Quite fascinating. Studying theory forum posts compared with those in other forums would probably be an interesting psychology project.

There will always be people whose greatest hobby is to gather arguments against the opinion of other people...seems to be even some kind of "polemic sport" in certain wealthy countries...

[A.M. Gold]

Could somebody please identify what key this is in? Its for a project

It's in a mixture of D major and the D Phrygian mode.

[A.M. Gold]

Sigh. It's always such a minefield here. "What chord is this" often seems to d/evolve into "How do we understand reality?" Quite fascinating. Studying theory forum posts compared with those in other forums would probably be an interesting psychology project.

There will always be people whose greatest hobby is to gather arguments against the opinion of other people...seems to be even some kind of "polemic sport" in certain wealthy countries...

And also on this sub-forum, maybe more so than any other at KVR. Very curious, that.

[Nanakai]

Sigh. It's always such a minefield here. "What chord is this" often seems to d/evolve into "How do we understand reality?" Quite fascinating. Studying theory forum posts compared with those in other forums would probably be an interesting psychology project.

There will always be people whose greatest hobby is to gather arguments against the opinion of other people...seems to be even some kind of "polemic sport" in certain wealthy countries...

Them's fighting words. I challenge you to a flame war.