Is music just an elaborate arpeggio?

[vurt]

according to at least a couple of authors, music is an elaborate scam by the illuminati to control the populace.

Maybe for the fnording music industry and establishment, sure. But not for those of us who do it simply because we like/have to. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that music is an impulse/need that has largely been manipulated to control the populace. An awful lot of music is formulaic, celebtating order and conformity, after all.

ok, ill give you that...
however, they do stray in to the realms of fantasy quite a bit. i haven't listened to this particular video, but i have heard this guy many times.
id be interested in how long anyone can make it in to this video, before the bullshit meter goes critical

[jancivil]

perhaps more accurate to say that music is an impulse/need that has largely been manipulated to control the populace. An awful lot of music is formulaic, celebrating order and conformity, after all.

[jancivil]

My google search of the two search words 'linear polyphony' gets me such as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint

[vurt]

I wouldnt say I havent listened to lot of music though. After all, lsd takes 12 hours a pop.

its not about time spent, its about varying the things you do listen to.
eg: if youre a rock guy, spend some time listening to jazz, electronic, pop, classical...
you will hear things differently, because when its your regular listening style, youre not expanding your vision any.

its not a critique so much as a tip, you say you are at the beginning of the musical journey, then dive in, no point tip toeing around the edges.

[jancivil]

Here's some young person, kind of linear polyphony approach to "chords"




get outside that box

Can you elaborate?

In that song, the main thing is a melody and a bassline. After it builds, near the 2:00 mark in the video, she overdubs a number of voices; all of the sonority is a result of the lines coinciding. It may seem there is a 'chord progression', but what there really is is root movement in the bass line. A takeaway of that track (and this I'm finding in several new artists today) is that the strength of harmonic movement is out of the strength of the bass line. So this too is contrapuntal.

The main part of that song doesn't go many places, it decorates "I" fairly elaborately, though.
After 2 minutes, there is a section with a lot of polyphony but the harmony - here I mean what most people call a chord change - is i - bVII. Am to G specifically. But they are singing all sorts of things which don't belong to, are not contained in a box, and to try and name all the phenomena as though some triadic chord misses it, and because polyphonic linear stuff doesn't have to; tones may cross the lines, a tone may suspend and stray and never settle down.

At 2:38 'let's make' is a good example; what is that "chord"? The thinking is freer than that concept. But yes, there is a i - VII in natural minor (I'd grant this as "Aeolian mode"). What you do not have to do is ensure everything lands on the C and E in the one part of the harmonic rhythm and B and D in the other. A and G and the mode is enough; in a sense this is modal music now.

[jancivil]

The interest there is melody. The parts which form other sonorities, vertically, are melodic parts.

[Stamped Records]

My google search of the two search words 'linear polyphony' gets me such as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint

Ah, I don't use google

[Stamped Records]

I wouldnt say I havent listened to lot of music though. After all, lsd takes 12 hours a pop.

its not about time spent, its about varying the things you do listen to.
eg: if youre a rock guy, spend some time listening to jazz, electronic, pop, classical...
you will hear things differently, because when its your regular listening style, youre not expanding your vision any.

its not a critique so much as a tip, you say you are at the beginning of the musical journey, then dive in, no point tip toeing around the edges.

Well, I confess to being a beginner because every time I think I know something, I don't. But I've actually been doing this for a lot more than a decade. I listen to anything and everything, except, death metal and r'n'b. I actually produce music that is probably categorised as some form of house or techno, but I don't even listen to house or techno, not really. House and techno is just a carriage for me to insert my music into.

Here's some young person, kind of linear polyphony approach to "chords"




get outside that box

Can you elaborate?

In that song, the main thing is a melody and a bassline. After it builds, near the 2:00 mark in the video, she overdubs a number of voices; all of the sonority is a result of the lines coinciding. It may seem there is a 'chord progression', but what there really is is root movement in the bass line. A takeaway of that track (and this I'm finding in several new artists today) is that the strength of harmonic movement is out of the strength of the bass line. So this too is contrapuntal.

The main part of that song doesn't go many places, it decorates "I" fairly elaborately, though.
After 2 minutes, there is a section with a lot of polyphony but the harmony - here I mean what most people call a chord change - is i - bVII. Am to G specifically. But they are singing all sorts of things which don't belong to, are not contained in a box, and to try and name all the phenomena as though some triadic chord misses it, and because polyphonic linear stuff doesn't have to; tones may cross the lines, a tone may suspend and stray and never settle down.

At 2:38 'let's make' is a good example; what is that "chord"? The thinking is freer than that concept. But yes, there is a i - VII in natural minor (I'd grant this as "Aeolian mode"). What you do not have to do is ensure everything lands on the C and E in the one part of the harmonic rhythm and B and D in the other. A and G and the mode is enough; in a sense this is modal music now.

I think I understand you and I'm moving towards it in my own way. Modes might be a little bit off at the moment. I've really only started to make use of the minor key. I'll look into counterpoint and see where it takes me. Thanks.

[Ou_Tis]

As far as book recommendations go, Philip Ball's The Music Instinct is a pretty good introduction to the science of music and the history of Western music theory, though much of the book is focused on classical Western music (but with many brief but substantive references to nonwestern or non-classical music). But there is some interesting recent cross-cultural research that it doesn't include, and his take on rap is bad (he says rap is really poetry and therefore shouldn't be analyzed as music... (perhaps he'll at least revise it to include a chapter on mumble rap?...)).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/ ... hilip-ball

[jancivil]

Modes are a relatively easy thing to work in, you don't even have to worry about chords or resolution, which is an extra layer of concern.

Modes pre-exist scales, and chords, tonality, all that, note well.

I don't know what's funny about 'google' other than the name, since your search didn't get you anything here.

[spunkmuffin]

Is every arpeggio music?
Is every arpeggio elaborate?
If every arpeggio is music and a non-elaborate arpeggio exists, then not every piece of music is an elaborate arpeggio. Therefore music is not just an elaborate arpeggio.

[telecode]

I hear utter shit with poor excuses for melody every day practically. By people that didn't do their due diligence and learn music.

That's just your age talking. It is irrelevant to modern listeners and modern musicians. Some of the best rock and roll music from the late 60s and 70s had shit melodies -- but it was great rock and roll music that changed the landscape of western popular music. The music did that because it directly spoke to the young generation at the time that were pissed off with the government, pissed off with a war they didn't understand or agree with, pissed off with the unfair draft system that allowed the privileged to easily get out of going to war -- out of all that you got the melting of blues, soul and rock and out of it emerged some very fascinating bands, musicians and records that may not necessarily count as musically well performed and well structured works of great western composition -- but who gives a shit -- the records, the bands and the music stand of for themselves as great works in popular music. Popular music creation is not music school. Its about creating music that connects and speaks to an audience. That audience may or may not give two shits about what is or is not a great melody. All they care about is what they like and don't like. Some hip-hop music contains some very strange chord progressions and melodies in the hooks of the songs -- but the music is still damn good for what it is and miles better than a NSync or New Kids on the Block record.

[Stamped Records]

I think a distinction between formulaic melodies, and actual shit melodies (that go against the grain of music rather than with it), must be made.

As for my google laughter, that was me laughing at the failure of my decision not to use google.

[jancivil]

I hear utter shit with poor excuses for melody every day practically. By people that didn't do their due diligence and learn music.

That's just your age talking. It is irrelevant to modern listeners and modern musicians.

Bullshit. We already did this one. The best you can do addressing what I said is fabricate a straw man, before you even get a glimpse of what examples I mean. Then you launch into a spiel of pure whataboutism fallacy, at which point I just say, yeah, this idiot again, like I have time for this crap.

All of which changes nothing about the quality of the shit I meant, and there's easily more of it, and whole new avenues of lacking the first clue about music have been opened up.

[jancivil]

Nor does all that fallacy change the fact of shitty music or garbage tunes for any time.

I heard several things from cars in the lot and from the upstairs apartment yesterday which were not quite at the level of sophistication or tune craftsmanship of the most rudimentary nursery rhyme. Absolutely gobsmacking.
And some of it is by people that can't even make music themselves, it's loops out of GarageBand or something stuck on a drum loop to rapjaculate over.

I think a distinction between formulaic melodies, and actual shit melodies (that go against the grain of music rather than with it), must be made.

right

As for my google laughter, that was me laughing at the failure of my decision not to use google.

What, you used Yahoo? That would be kind of funny. Or Bing. Yeah, google sucks at life but the search engine is what there is basically.