How do you call such chord?

[N__K]

You see, many come around with all kinds of revolutionary ideas mainly based on very fragmentet knowledge of music theory and history. But for such a system to be succesfull, you´d have to prove its superiority in a Ph.d. project and several peer reviewed articles and in practise too. Then you´d have to convince people to implement it, retrain them and depart from a very nuanced musical notation system whose inherited musicality you have just eliminated and replaced by sheer numbers.

My experience (anecdotal, humanly fallible and subjective, of course) would suggest that such changes are just as likely - if not moreso - to start from the grassroots.

It reminds me of a few things I've heard in the past, for example:

"Real music is made with acoustic instruments"
"Software synthesizers will never sound as good as hardware ones"
"General-purpose CPUs will never be powerful enough to do high-quality synthesis on"
"CPUs in affordable computers are not powerful enough to make entire tracks"
"Integrated AD/DA chips have inadequate frequency response and are not good enough for low-latency monitoring"
"FL Studio is not enough to make hits"
"Pro Tools is an industry standard [which everyone must learn]"

I strongly suspect that "Staff-based symbolic notation and nomenclature derived from it are the primary choices for music theory" will eventually end up on that list.

A lot of folks I've interacted with in electronic music scene have grown up with 12-pitch piano rolls and MIDI files. Millions of kids start out with a laptop and a DAW. A few years ago I tutored some juniors in the electronic scene, writing emails with chord symbols and roman numerals - but MIDI files were of most use to them.

So I have a feeling that this is another case of "The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote". So I roll with it, although I suspect it will be decades before it settles on a clear direction. And even though the "simple 12-pitch thinking" actually agrees with many of my own preferences, on some days I still find it hard to think of 5 as a "7" and of m3 as a "3", and so on.

But I'm getting there, and it is actually helping me to classify pitch sets like "0,3,5" as their own harmonic concepts. As said, I really like the sound of (0,3,5) both as a "chord" in its own right and as basis for simple melodies.

(sorry for mild offtopic)

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

My experience (anecdotal, humanly fallible and subjective, of course) would suggest that such changes are just as likely - if not moreso - to start from the grassroots.

Only if they have a reason to do so, and you have provided none apart from an argument similar to "you can understand it in pitch-integers too". Yup. Ain´t really news as Jan also suggested, but there is no gain to it, only subtractions of musical terms. If you do not have anything to revolutionize against, do not be surprised if the revolution is strangled in its cradle. Piano roll editing is quite compatible to staff notation and does not require anything beyond. Problem is you have an idea of an alternative notation, but not really any arguments as to its necessity, superiority or effect. You´d had to to pass a Ph.d. exam, and that would be the only level that could convince me too. We are not even close to a main problematization of status quo that would call for an alternative system, so you have a long way to go.

You can start by demonstrating an example and corresponding analysis showing your system to solve a notation problem the established cannot.

Edit: Better yet. Try notate this little passage in your pitch-system and tell us why it is superior:

[N__K]

You´d had to to pass a Ph.d. exam, and that would be the only level that could convince me too.

No offence, but why do you presume that my interest is to convince folks like yourself? You already seem settled on a system that works great for you. I have no problems with that.

***

For the sake of discussion, if you provide a direct IMSLP link to that PDF with decent resolution, I'll present you with those three bars notated with 12-pitch "degree°(pitch-set)" markup, used in similar way as I'd use roman numerals.

I can't promise that the result will agree with your perspectives, of course

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

No offence, but why do you presume that my interest is to convince folks like yourself? You already seem settled on a system that works great for you. I have no problems with that.

Because you write it on the internet and present it as a sound advice, which you have not shown in any possible way. As such, it remains bs until proven, so prove it or get it off the net, for as bs, it will remain useless and correspond to general misinfo.

***

For the sake of discussion, if you provide a direct IMSLP link to that PDF with decent resolution, I'll present you with those three bars notated with 12-pitch "degree°(pitch-set)" markup, used in similar way as I'd use roman numerals.

I can't promise that the result will agree with your perspectives, of course

https://musescore.com/user/181766/scores/2146716

Give me 1) Your terms for the harmonies in use per step, 2) Your terms for movements of voices (e.g. how to tell the singers where to go) and 3) terms for eventual cadances and 4) Why it is superior to staff notation. Roman numerials would certainly not make it, so you have to do better than that. They just designate scale degrees or harmony functions, not necessarily specific notes and note movements like a sheet. All info of the sheet have to be replicated.

Tho, I am off to bed now, but can return some time tomorrow. Likely in the afternoon. So it will give you some time to solve the puzzle. I do not expect you to succeed, but I am always willing to be positively surprised.

[jancivil]

Aside from "A(0,3,5)" I might call "A,C,D" "Am add4 omit5", but that does not seem very sensible either.

Why?

In terms of normal descriptions it is that, if A is the root. It literally, exactly is Am add4 lacking an articulated fifth.
(If the A is low enough to generate an audible third partial, it isn't even lacking that, de facto.)
It does say something about the object to musicians that's easily grasped.
I don't know who looks to stuff like 0 3 5 for musical meaning. There is American pitch class theory, there is Russian pitch class theory. It wasn't how anything was taught where I was, but it was in some locations. But no one serious tries it for functional harmony and here all we have is a naive pandiatonicism to note. We're not getting but 7 tones, max, here.

The OP states and was clear subsequently that there is a tonic A... and their musings were strictly from white keys.

So, root, third, fourth, fr. simple diatonic terms. "not very sensible" means what, now? Bullshit.

[jancivil]

You see, many come around with all kinds of revolutionary ideas mainly based on very fragmentet knowledge of music theory and history. But for such a system to be succesfull, you´d have to prove its superiority in a Ph.d. project and several peer reviewed articles and in practise too. Then you´d have to convince people to implement it, retrain them and depart from a very nuanced musical notation system whose inherited musicality you have just eliminated and replaced by sheer numbers.

My experience (anecdotal, humanly fallible and subjective, of course) would suggest that such changes are just as likely - if not moreso - to start from the grassroots.

Bullshit. This is high-falutin pseudo-philosophicizing, empty of meaning, and flagrantly changing the subject after you're asked to show its value. It's not like the other things in that pile of fallacy, it is a specific subject with specific use value, and this thread has naught to do with that usage at all.

Show us where a grassroots movement has people talking pitch class theory. I happen to have the history of pitch class theory and the reason it occurs: to analyze dodecaphonic serialism. It's done in academia. It's done by "theorists", pioneered in terms of actual usage by certain rather abstruse composers you'd likely call elitists*.
It starts in the US with Milton Babbit in 1953, probably; there is a 1964 paper by Allen Forte that made a splash.
(*: CF: 1958, Babbitt Who Cares if You Listen, High Fidelity Magazine. In which he argues that audiences of laypeople weren't equipped to receive advanced musical works exploring concepts like integral serialism and aleatoric composition, just as they weren’t ready for concepts in physics or advanced mathematics.)

There is a reason for its use. 12-tone serialistic practice, where shades of functional meaning are gone, so a semitone distance hasn't three names for it. Here we have seven notes whose interrelationship isn't a problem.

[N__K]

Because you write it on the internet and present it as a sound advice, which you have not shown in any possible way. As such, it remains bs until proven, so prove it or get it off the net, for as bs, it will remain useless and correspond to general misinfo.

First, good fellow - in life, universe and everything, you are not the ultimate authority on how to conceptualize music. Beyond what's dictated by laws of physics, music theories are human interpretations, and subjective interpretations are at the core of creativity. Strict institutional knowledge is useful, especially for preserveing specific genres - but, obviously, its purpose is not to be prescriptive for every single practitioner of music for the rest of eternity; nor to deny re-invention and recontextualization.

Second, the markup I've presented works for what it is intended to be. Claiming it as bs without understanding its use cases is no different than claiming the same about the staff or roman numerals.

I appreciate your knowledge and efforts, but the only authority I ultimately submit to are the laws of physics

Roman numerials would certainly not make it, so you have to do better than that. They just designate scale degrees or harmony functions, not necessarily specific notes and note movements like a sheet. All info of the sheet have to be replicated.

I think we have a major misunderstanding right there.

The 12-pitch "degree°(pitch-set)" markup is similar, in its descriptive purpose, to roman numerals. The intention is to capture "big-picture" harmonic ideas in a simple way, and to easily decode them to piano rolls. The numbers being in 12-pitch space correlate to 12 pitches on a piano roll, allowing direct visual counting of intervals on it.

In the intended use case, the piano roll is the equivalent of the staff / sheet.

In other words, formulas like "0°(0,5,7) - 1°(0,2,7) - 10°(0,2,7)" are more for thinking and writing down, while piano roll is for realizing actual music on basis of those formulas.

Tho, I am off to bed now, but can return some time tomorrow. Likely in the afternoon. So it will give you some time to solve the puzzle. I do not expect you to succeed, but I am always willing to be positively surprised.

You will be negatively irked for sure, but such is life I hope you have forum quote notifications on silent, or I might have woken you up by posting this. Sorry for that...

[jancivil]

You're seriously way out of your depth here.

[N__K]

You're seriously way out of your depth here.

To some extent, yes, absolutely. If I knew everything about every theory, I would not be asking questions in other threads.

But I also have achieved some of my dreams related to making music, and acquired some experience while at it. Part institutional, part grassroots, part re-inventive. Feel free to disregard and judge, my life won't be changed much by it.

[N__K]

Aside from "A(0,3,5)" I might call "A,C,D" "Am add4 omit5", but that does not seem very sensible either.

Why?

Because, in basic sense, it is both more logical and less cognitively demanding to mark up what there is, instead of presuming that there should be something, and then mark up that it is not there.

"A(0,3,5)" tells only what there is. "Am add4 omit5" requires that reader knows what is "Am" and what 4 and 5 mean in it.

I don't know whether the original poster uses a 7-pitch staff or a 12-pitch piano roll. But on the latter, counting lines to 4 would arrive at a major third, and to 5 at a perfect fourth. Theoretical concepts in 7-pitch space are intended for users of the staff and disregard the needs of people who lack formal education and compose in the 12-pitch piano roll grid of DAWs.

I've seen this happen many times. The result of initial requirements for memorization, and mismatch of number spaces means that a lot of DAW-using people end up not utilizing existing theories, and generally signing off on music theory studies as "too hard for them".

Show us where a grassroots movement has people talking pitch class theory. I happen to have the history of pitch class theory and the reason it occurs: to analyze dodecaphonic serialism. It's done in academia. It's done by "theorists", pioneered in terms of actual usage by certain rather abstruse composers you'd likely call elitists*.

I never mentioned the e-word. I think you are projecting onto me more contrarian qualities than there actually are.

As for grassroots movement, I mean all the people who buy DAWs, have fun making some contemporary genres and never learn the staff and theories which require thinking in "staff paradigm", due to it being "too hard" or "irrelevant" and so on.

And, to them, it actually is both of those. At least, it is unreasonable to ask piano roll users to always do mental translations of symbols and markup systems not intended for their instrument's interface.

***

This is getting wildly offtopic, from a fairly innocent mention of another way to consider a set of pitches. If anyone wishes, we can continue the general "7+5 vs 12" subject in another thread.

[N__K]

https://musescore.com/user/181766/scores/2146716

Here you go, a screenshot and a REAPER .RPP:

12-degree markups.png

Mozart - Requiem In D Minor K626 (first 8 bars).zip

I took a shortcut by using directly the MIDI provided by Musescore. Saved me considerable amount of time. Also, I promised three bars, but there are eight, seemed more interesting that way.

I am certain that you will completely dislike everything about that.
But that is not my problem I'll use methods which work for me, and I'll mention them to others occasionally, since it's generally constructive to share ideas - one never knows if someone else gets something from it. Beyond that I really don't care.


Apologies for offtopics.


EDIT: updated attachments, there was an error in them.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Edited: Think I will stick to the answer below for simplicity.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

https://musescore.com/user/181766/scores/2146716

Here you go, a screenshot and a REAPER .RPP:

12-degree markups.png


Mozart - Requiem In D Minor K626 (first 8 bars).zip


I took a shortcut by using directly the MIDI provided by Musescore. Saved me considerable amount of time. Also, I promised three bars, but there are eight, seemed more interesting that way.

I am certain that you will completely dislike everything about that.
But that is not my problem I'll use methods which work for me, and I'll mention them to others occasionally, since it's generally constructive to share ideas - one never knows if someone else gets something from it. Beyond that I really don't care.


Apologies for offtopics.

I just see a plain piano roll with some markings at the bar lines, where it is the roll whose lines have the musical info. Is that the supposed to be a superior system? The piano roll is already invented, dude, and your markings say absolutely nothing musically that ain’t already said by a staff notation or the piano roll. It says just as litte about the voiceleading as if the markings had designated chords in numerials. But your system is not even as transparant musically as using numerials or plain chord notation for determining overall harmonies. You expect people to read those numbers on the fly and think in pitch divisions instead of notes, chord functions or just piano roll staffs? Its like saying that to write books we should focus on letters (pitches), not words and sentences (music theoretical conceptions in notation).

You act as if music theory is a matter of personal choice and personal gain only, well, it ain’t if you want to communicate music. It is like speaking a language; either you speak it or utter idiosyncratic nonsense to those who do. Consensus about meaning and notation is what makes e.g. me and Jan able to communicate about anything tho we are writing in each our styles, centuries apart from each other. But you want to make up your own theory based on vague knowledge instead of studying, and even pretend you are above it all. Have a nice implicit chat with yourself then. Your fifteen minutes of fame is over afaic. Have fun.

Hopefully, the OP can make the right conclusions as to what is sound or not here, should he still be around.

[fmr]

I don't know whether the original poster uses a 7-pitch staff or a 12-pitch piano roll.

WTF is a 7-pitch staff? Something you invented, too? All the staves I ever saw can accomodate 12 tones and more (like quarter-tones, for example - try to put that in a piano roll).

[N__K]

I just see a plain piano roll with some markings at the bar lines, where it is the roll whose lines have the musical info. Is that the supposed to be a superior system?
The piano roll is already invented, dude, and your markings say absolutely nothing musically that ain’t already said by a staff notation or the piano roll.
It says just as litte about the voiceleading as if the markings had designated chords in numerials.

The purpose of that markup is indeed to describe harmonic snapshots, not voice leading.

For a native 12-TET pianoroll user, a markup in 12-pitch space helps to think about it in same ways as thinking in roman numerals - but without the need to know the staff or related nomenclature.

For example, 0°(0,3,7) - 0°(0,2,5,7) - 11°(0,3,6,8) - 0°(0,3,7) captures with relative simplicity the harmonic differences of those bars. That's what it's meant for. And, as said before, it allows to describe pitch sets like (0,3,5) simply as themselves, instead of an alteration of some chord.

But your system is not even as transparant musically as using numerials or plain chord notation for determining overall harmonies.

Depends on who's using it and how they conceptualize harmonies. Personally, I like that it corresponds to actual perception of 12-TET on a log scale, like the piano roll; and that it allows to easily snapshot harmonic aspects of compositions termed "non-functional" in some theory branches.

You expect people to read those numbers on the fly and think in pitch divisions instead of notes, chord functions or just piano roll staffs?

Again, the utility is roughly the same as roman numerals. Some might prefer thinking "I-V-vi-IV", while some might find "0°(0,4,7) - 7°(0,4,7) - 9°(0,3,7) - 5°(0,4,7)" clearer - as surprising as that may seem to someone who has memorized and internalized the former.

I'm not forcing anyone to use either markup.

Its like saying that to write books we should focus on letters (pitches), not words and sentences (music theoretical conceptions in notation).

Not exactly an equal comparison - in music, a played pitch set has an aesthetic effect by itself. It does not necessarily need to become the equivalent of a word, a phrase or a paragraph.

Music is more like poetry - and even in poetry, there are styles concerned with aesthetics of pronounced sound (or written forms) more than meaning of words.

You act as if music theory is a matter of personal choice and personal gain only, well, it ain’t if you want to communicate music. It is like speaking a language; either you speak it or utter idiosyncratic nonsense to those who do.

There are hundreds of languages in the world, many describe similar physics-based phenomena in ways that makes most sense for each culture.

And in music, there are various notations and markups developed by different cultures and for different genres.

I don't know whether the markup I described will become common someday. But I suspect I'm not the only one to have use for (and come up with) something like it, since it's merely an extension of the idea of roman numerals into 12-pitch space.

Consensus about meaning and notation is what makes e.g. me and Jan able to communicate about anything tho we are writing in each our styles, centuries apart from each other. But you want to make up your own theory based on vague knowledge instead of studying, and even pretend you are above it all.

I never said that emphasized part. You seem to project that onto me, for whatever reasons.

If anything, I am beside some theories. I tend to concentrate on what is most useful for my personal musical goals, within limits of my cognitive abilities. Just like you seem to concentrate primarily on music theories most applicable to music you wish to make.

I agree on usefulness of common languages, as well. It's part of why I have some knowledge of staff-based concepts - albeit surely lesser than your expertise in them. That said, again, there are many different theories of music, and languages and nomenclatures keep changing and adapting to circumstances and use cases.

And yes, I do consider re-invention and recontextualization as a part of creative agency of a music maker - and also as a part of generational change. Much of it does in fact happen at grassroots, through people who are definitely not at the highest echelons of establishments.

For example, I don't suppose hurdy-gurdies were ever mandated by Ph.D.'d theorists or orthodox institutions - they were almost certainly invented by luthiers of the time to make stringed instruments easier to play for common folks. The DAW, removing the need to be skilled at real-time playing of a physical instrument, is an example of similar process in our era.

Right now, in certain segments of musical practice, there is some amount of schism between staff-based concepts and DAW-based ones - and alongside that, differences in musical preferences of different generations. Time will tell how that may (or may not) reflect on theories of music.

Have a nice implicit chat with yourself then. Your fifteen minutes of fame is over afaic. Have fun.

KvR is far from what I consider fame, I am (hopefully) anonymous here.

Hopefully, the OP can make the right conclusions as to what is sound or not here, should he still be around.

I'd recommend to original poster to check all music theory branches available, find the ones most applicable to their use cases, and choose methods which best serve their music-making needs.

I would assume that a music theory forum exists to facilitate that, including mentioning various methods we ourselves may be using. But me doing that seems to have annoyed some here. Curious, that - as if mentioning another way to conceptualize things was taking something away from you.