Neo-Riemann theory and beyond

[Dewdman42]

I have recently been absorbing whatever I can get my hands on in terms of neo-riemann music theory, which is new stuff for me, even though its been around for about 30 years. In a few places I have read that now, 30 years later, people have moved beyond neo-riemann theory to other stuff. Does anyone in the know care to comment on what we have moved on to? I would really like to know what to direct myself towards in terms of music studies.

I am very interested in film music, so I have found neo-riemann theory has provided some patterns to digest related to some non-diatonic, tonal music, which is so common in film music, in the flavor of late romantic and post romantic music. There are other ways to think about some of this stuff and its all kind of inter-connected, I have also gotten into modal interchange and dabbled a bit with the Equal Interval System, both of which also can lead to some non-diatonically functional chord harmony, without moving all the way to completely atonal.

what do people feel neo-riemann music theory has evolved into, if at all, is it over and out already or still relevant? I know it can get crazy complex when talking about 7ths and 3D structures and stuff, most of which I'm not interested in anyway, I'm just wondering, in practical music composing terms... where are we now in the tonal music composition field?

[Gamma-UT]

Does anyone in the know care to comment on what we have moved on to? I would really like to know what to direct myself towards in terms of music studies.

The jury's still out. There's some work by people such as Dmitri Tymoczko who has pushed into geometry rather in place of the set theory of the Neo-Riemannians like Cohn. He has some interesting ideas but I can't help feeling that they all wind up in this idea of parsimonous or efficient voice leading because that's the way composers were taught voice leading – the voice-leading techniques developed in the days of church modes work for non-tonal music with a few changes because, well, they're non-tonal. But would voice leading be such an important part of the theory had music evolved differently?

I feel the big problem with approaching it from a strongly mathematical basis is that the theories start off well but quickly run into the sand because real music doesn't reduce very well into neat patterns. It's the same problem the medieval and Renaissance theorists had when trying to build up a theory of the music of the spheres – neither the solar system nor real music are that neat. And they don't take into account the emotional impact of music – anticipation, tension, release etc. It's all very well building a network of related chords into some kind of torus, but it doesn't tell you anything about why you might hop from one chord in that torus to another. I'm not convinced the triad focus is helpful in the long term either.

I think people approaching it from the psychology standpoint are probably going to win in the long term. I think work along the lines of that of David Huron is more promising as it provides the missing link in music theory – why things work the way they do rather than a list of rules of thumb – though it's not likely to yield a practical theory for some time.

[Winstontaneous]

Dewdman42, can you please give a brief definition of Neo-Riemann theory in your own words?

My own background is in jazz/improv and my observation is that much non-diatonic tonal music is based on patterns and permutations of figures.

Sometimes this comes from an intellectual/theoretical perspective - like Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales & Melodic Patterns, which is a systematic approach to dividing up both the octave and the entire audible range intervalically. At other times it's idiomatic to an instrument - transposing the same chord shape around a guitar can take you outside a key pretty quickly, but you can maintain a tonal center. Or certain notes may just sit better on a keyboard even if they're not "correct".

Also my training as a jazz bassist taught me both the value of 1) how the lowest note really does affect how the notes above are perceived 2) how non-diatonic passing tones can sound correct due to proximity to chord tones / direction of motion.

[Dewdman42]

Winstontaneous, I will look into that thesaurus and see if it provides anything useful. I have at this point only the simplest understanding of neo-riemann, but from what I have seen, it can get rather mathematical and complicated depending on how deep you want to get into it. The simple essence of it that grabbed my attention is that I can chart out on a tonnetz chart some patterns with different R,L,P and compound operations...and look for patterns around the chart that sound good basically. Pretty simple use I realize, but finding repeatable patterns or patterns that cycle, I hope can lead to non-functional harmony that still sounds ordered and reasonably tonal... I find that when I do voice leading between chords with two common tones, it sounds totally uninspiring anyway. The interesting part about the NR tonnetz chart is looking at patterns of compound operations. moving by the simple operations works...but is generally uninteresting.

I have spent a fair amount of time staring at the tonnetz and looking for patterns, for example, moving diagonally one way is basically by major thirds, diagonally the other way is by minor thirds, horizontally is by 4ths or 5ths and is very diatonic. I can make dim chords by using notes on a diagonal line, and aug chords on the other diagonal line and then I can try moving to triads with one or two common tones, but I have found through experience that some of the more interesting chord changes have no common tones at all, but the triangles still seem to be close by each other and moving from from triangle to triangle using some of the compound operations basically ends up giving me progressions by thirds and other things that can easily be thought of other ways..etc. so some of he benefit of the tonnetz is lost on me, other than looking visually for patterns which might be heard by a listener as harmonic structure.

I have identified what modal interchange chord set looks like on the tonnetz diagram also, which is interesting. That's about as far as I've gotten with it, but I'm curious about how people have used it and as I said, I have read that people have "moved on" to other things as neo-riemann is somewhat interesting way to analyze some late romantic or film music, etc, but apparently people have moved on to something else, whatever that means, so I am just wondering what that is.

what you are describing in your last paragraph sounds a lot like the Equal Interval System, which I have been starting to study a bit too.

[Dewdman42]

I feel the big problem with approaching it from a strongly mathematical basis is that the theories start off well but quickly run into the sand because real music doesn't reduce very well into neat patterns. It's the same problem the medieval and Renaissance theorists had when trying to build up a theory of the music of the spheres – neither the solar system nor real music are that neat. And they don't take into account the emotional impact of music – anticipation, tension, release etc. It's all very well building a network of related chords into some kind of torus, but it doesn't tell you anything about why you might hop from one chord in that torus to another. I'm not convinced the triad focus is helpful in the long term either.

I think people approaching it from the psychology standpoint are probably going to win in the long term. I think work along the lines of that of David Huron is more promising as it provides the missing link in music theory – why things work the way they do rather than a list of rules of thumb – though it's not likely to yield a practical theory for some time.

I tend to agree with you about the pyschological aspects. Music theories that got so mathematical during the atonal period of history, in my world, detracted from music in the world. However repeatable patterns are useful for creating music, our brain does latch onto even quite atonal musical ideas, if there is some recognizable pattern that it can descern. However, I agree with you that when people have attempted to write music that is patterned after the solar system dimensions or the golden ratio, etc...apparantly these patterns were not simple enough for the typical brain to recognize. Its actually much much simpler.

I also think that diatonic music has a pattern, but this pattern is governed by the tritone and leading tone resolution more than anything else. The sound itself drives the patterns that emerged. NR has some of that aspect as well because of the common tone idea and the idea that the voice leading with the common tones makes things "acceptable", but it doesn't really explain WHY one chord would tend to want to move to another chord or resolve...like diatonic patterns do. In fact that aspect is devoid from the theory. Nonetheless, as you explore the tonnetz you find non-diatonic chord progressions that have strong pyschological undertones and in some cases want to resolve to certain chords, not always based on diatonic principles. This, I don't think is explained by NR theory, NR theory merely says, hey, you can get from this chord to that chord in one two or three voice leading jumps and it will sound ok because of the common tones...but that's about it. And I find that the most interesting chord changes in NR, are definitely compound operations which defy the entire basis of the theory, which is the smooth voice leading.. but at least we can recognized some commonly used non-diatonic patterns on the tonnetz.

Can you tell me a little more about David Huron?

I did find some interesting papers that relates film music to NR theory, and film music is VERY psychological. See below.

NR leads to music which ALMOST sounds diatonic, even though its not functionally diatonic, completely. Maybe partially in some cases.

Modal interchange also provides for some interesting opportunities, but I find that modal interchange still tends to keep the listener in a diatonic key center, while NR can easily lend itself to wandering around without a well defined key center, yet sounds "tonal" and functional in some way that is not diatonic. That is one reason it is particularly useful for film music where you need the music to wander around a lot and constantly bring emotional peaks or surprises to the listener.

Here are some papers I have been studying about NR theory, in particular related to film music, and they do get into pyschological aspects.

"The Musical Conventions of Star Trek - A Search for Musical Syntax in Science Fiction"
https://www.academia.edu/13616260/The_M ... ce_Fiction

"Music Theory Through the Lens of Film"
https://www.academia.edu/4309552/Music_ ... ns_of_Film

"Reading Tonality Through Film: Transformation Theory and the Music of Hollywood"
https://www.academia.edu/4309608/Readin ... ssertation_

"Film Music and Neo-Riemannian Theory"
http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10. ... 5321-e-002

"Essential Neo-Riemannian eory for Today's Musician"
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcont ... k_gradthes

Here is one paper I found about John Williams and modal interachange, which I found very interesting. There are useful things that can be analyzed with NR that can't be explained in modal interchange, and visa versa since NR doesn't really have a clear path for diminished and aug chords (a little bit), nor for 7th cords and other tensions...it just really explains the simple triadic movement and provides some ways to think about moving through chords in a non-diatonic way. Modal interchanged is still based on diatonic principles mostly.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... n_Williams

[MadBrain]

Do any composers talk about using this as part of their composition technique? Any music samples that were explicitly composed using this?

It seems very interesting for styles with lot of triad chords with non-obvious jumps between them... so movie music, indeed.

For how tonal it is, I think you could maybe say that the result is locally tonal, but less tonal over a large scale?

I don't think it's particularly descriptive though for Jazz with chords with lots of 7ths and 9ths and 13ths and bass moving mostly in 5ths and steps (where roman number analysis works well).

[Dewdman42]

Neo-Riemann is defInitely triad based and while you can certainly throw in some 7ths to any chord you want, the essence of the theory is about voice leading and the non triadic tones are not accounted for. Some people have tried to extend it and in my view it became unworkable, too complicated but I didn't spend that much time with those. There is one paper about new-Riemann jazz I found i will post it later.

I think most people view neo-Riemann as a way to analyze after the fact, romantic music that was composed in the 1800's. Those composers were not using it. They were experimenting and coming up with new sounds beyond strict classical diatonic. Film music tends to follow similar patterns as the late romantic period, with a bit of post tonal thrown in at times. So neo-Riemann is a great way to analyze a lot of that stuff. As to whether contemporary composers use the theory to compose, who knows. Most music theory was conjured up to analyze music previously written and of course later composers use that theory to effect their composing. So why not? There isn't that much to it though.

The word "tonal" seems get different definitions depending on who you talk to and when you talked to them.

[Gamma-UT]

Can you tell me a little more about David Huron?

David Huron's main claim to fame is the book "Sweet Anticipation", which is now about ten years old: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sweet-anticipation

It covers quite a lot of ground, including trying to work out whether aspects of music understanding are universal, using research into Gamelan players to see how they respond to western music and if their responses are different – working on the basis that they are not immersed in tonal music or the same temperament system. He uses statistical analysis a lot (though not in gory detail within the book itself), which gets to be fun when the analysis turns to 12-tone atonal music and the not entirely surprising result that the composers don't follow their own rules on how to use tone rows.

He has a new one out on the psychology of voice leading (and why voice leading still works), which I just got but haven't started reading yet – I only saw it by accident while browsing in a bookshop for the first time in ages.

[Dewdman42]

Thanks I will check him out for sure

[Dewdman42]

I don't think it's particularly descriptive though for Jazz with chords with lots of 7ths and 9ths and 13ths and bass moving mostly in 5ths and steps (where roman number analysis works well).

Here's a paper about jazz analysis with NR

http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cg ... t=notabene

[StudioDave]

Greetings,

This topic is beyond my expertise, but I have worked with some software you might find relevant.

IRCAM's OpenMusic

http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home

http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/overview (see the Math Tools section)

Guerino Mazzola's Rubato

http://www.rubato.org/

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

Apologies if this stuff is already old news.

Best,

dp

[woggle]

Do any composers talk about using this as part of their composition technique? Any music samples that were explicitly composed using this?

It seems very interesting for styles with lot of triad chords with non-obvious jumps between them... so movie music, indeed.

For how tonal it is, I think you could maybe say that the result is locally tonal, but less tonal over a large scale?

I don't think it's particularly descriptive though for Jazz with chords with lots of 7ths and 9ths and 13ths and bass moving mostly in 5ths and steps (where roman number analysis works well).

i have written a bunch of stuff based around theoretical propositions that are consistent with Huron's work. Eg this written based around the proposition that note order is not important in Part's spiegeleisen I'm spiegel once the form had been chosen and the set of notes chosen. https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/impart



f**k shitty iPad autocorrect lol

[JoaCHIP]

Do you guys know this stuff? One of my friends called it "a well kept secret" of the music composition world:

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

[Gamma-UT]

I think he had interesting ideas about self-similarity – he was born a little too early to exploit them given the work on chaos theory later. But composers already exploit self-similarity intuitively without needing to translate it into some form of algebra – think of fugal composition.

Personally, I think it goes back to my first answer in this thread: psychology trumps maths. However, using mathematical transformations and approaches can yield sources of inspiration. The problem is trying to push everything into mathematical transformations – sooner or later the output sounds like setting the telephone directory to music.

[jancivil]

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