Experiential discovery vs. formal training in music theory

[N__K]

Everybody gotta start somewhere, but writing music is not your first step (unless you're, like, a genius).

Not sure if I understood that correctly - and I'm certainly not a genius - but here are some possibly-related thoughts anyway.

I think that experiential discovery without prior knowledge is as good a way to start as any.


It could be compared to cross-country hiking, skiing and other such activities:

A) one could learn the possible routes, terrain etc. beforehand from maps
B) one could just start moving and see where that leads

In the latter, physical boundaries will steer one onto some paths in any case. Re-discovery of some previously known paths / segments is unavoidable, but it's not something to worry about.

Admittedly, if one already has a destination and wants to find the quickest routes there, maps are of great help. But for some, personal discovery is what gives the journey most of its meaning, regardless of whether the paths one ends up on are already known and named by others. And nothing stops from looking at the maps later on.


***

Back to music: in my experience, even when one does not know note names (let alone chord theories etc.), the physics of music will lead to learning some elementary basics.

Personally, I learned to recognize qualities of some intervals before knowing their commonly accepted names, and made a number of compositions while knowing little else beyond that. Perhaps predictably, that ended up in being perplexed by some theoretical guidelines later on.

Suffice to say, by the time I encountered the infamous "avoid consecutive fifths" guideline, I started to question the sanity of people who claimed that functional harmony - as well as representing pitches on the staff - can be thought of as any kind of universal basis for understanding music

Thankfully, I later learned that theory of functional harmony is just one "map" among many others - and that any map is merely a representation of the discoverable reality...


TL;DR: "Traveling somewhere, could be anywhere"

[donkey tugger]

I don't think anyone's saying you need to know tons of theory (as has been correctly pointed out to me, I knows loads of it without knowing the names of weird roman numeral stuff, without having sat down and learned it - all from experience and trial and error).

What's a really good idea though is to play as all the book learning or chord plug-ins in the world won't give you the originality of ideas that playing will. Once you start playing, you start writing - the two go hand in hand.

[jancivil]

"I started to question the sanity of people who claimed that functional harmony - as well as representing pitches on the staff - can be thought of as any kind of universal basis for understanding music"

I don't know why I'm quoted there.
You're not sure what I'm saying, really? looks like plain English to me, people figuring to write music yet haven't done any music sure looks like what this is, as so many of these threads are.

So question #1 is 'what do your observations of music that's already happened tell you about chords to melody so far'.

To reiterate my own experience, I had several things under my belt, arranging and performing before I took formal theory at a community college.
If I'd had a piano at home I'll have taken the jazz reharmonization course in the same bldg.
In my years here I have been really clear about the whole horses for courses thing (as well as the definition at bottom 'doing music theory') so it doesn't make a lot of sense to launch into this verbose strawman off of a remark of mine.
I don't get a sense of conversation, but a disconnect.

Music theory, as DT has just pointed out, is done by everyone that's sorted how a chord progression works in this or another bit of music. <I'm in E, I've noticed a lot of this [] stuff goes to A. back to E, and then the next one, B gets back to E in a way that feels like it's turned around and started again> - however verbal, articulated or not, is doing music theory.

I'm saying play music if you think you want to make music. People that think to write short stories, or novels, will have read quite a lot of those things and have an idea, or wish to have, in those forms, I would guess.

[N__K]

I don't know why I'm quoted there.

Sorry, I didn't mean to "strawmanize" - was just sharing an experience.

For what it's worth, I'm English-as-a-Second-Language, and not guaranteed to communicate effectively even in my native one

I don't get a sense of conversation, but a disconnect.

I seem to have a habit of eliciting that feeling in people, when I launch into monologues / essays on tangents. No offense intended.

Music theory, as DT has just pointed out, is done by everyone that's sorted how a chord progression works in this or another bit of music. <I'm in E, I've noticed a lot of this [] stuff goes to A. back to E, and then the next one, B gets back to E in a way that feels like it's turned around and started again> - however verbal, articulated or not, is doing music theory.

I'm saying play music if you think you want to make music. People that think to write short stories, or novels, will have read quite a lot of those things and have an idea, or wish to have, in those forms, I would guess.

Yep, I mostly agree with that.

In case of music, I'd say that one doesn't need to have even heard any before playing (and depending on instrument, effectively writing at the same time).

Stories in the sense of prose and poetry are another matter, but arguably, one can try to create them too without having heard or read any - or, in extreme, even without the ability to speak in any language, in which case the result would probably resemble music in some way, or pictures if one tried to "write it down".

I don't think anyone's saying you need to know tons of theory (as has been correctly pointed out to me, I knows loads of it without knowing the names of weird roman numeral stuff, without having sat down and learned it - all from experience and trial and error).

What's a really good idea though is to play as all the book learning or chord plug-ins in the world won't give you the originality of ideas that playing will. Once you start playing, you start writing - the two go hand in hand.

Yep, indeed. The interesting thing nowadays is that writing can actually come before playing, by clicking or drawing notes into DAWs / sequencers before hearing the computer play them.

Personally, by now I've done more of the "write into computer, hear it on play" than any real-time playing - to the point that I consider my Wacom Cintiq to be as much of a tool (interface?) for making music as the digital piano below it.

I did start by playing - badly, continuing to this day - non-sequenced instruments first, but only because my caretakers did not know enough about the possibilities of using computers for musical purposes. Looking back, even at an early age I would have been more comfortable with sequencing than real-time playing. That situation got corrected eventually, but arguably not early enough...

[jancivil]

You post consistently at cross-purposes to where the thread is, regressing it, and the look is someone trying to look above it.
It's gross and a waste of everyone's time.

[N__K]

You post consistently at cross-purposes to where the thread is, regressing it, and the look is someone trying to look above it.
It's gross and a waste of everyone's time.

Was that meant for me?

[jancivil]

It was.
"I started to question the sanity of people who claimed that functional harmony - as well as representing pitches on the staff - can be thought of as any kind of universal basis for understanding music"
regresses the thread from where it was. and there had been a series of this with a lot of text walls veering way off course.

At the time I typed that it seemed like that was... I don't know, and it's hard to say this and it not be taken wrong here, it seems 'on the spectrum' rather than being deliberately contrary or that, so over time my attitude to you has softened

[jancivil]

To wit, I would strongly recommend learning to play music before thinking you can write it.
and "more comfortable with sequencing than real-time playing" is basically off-topic. (and I discourage taking this to heart if yer a noob or like that)

So when this is where the forum goes, I may go into old-person storytelling mode myself.
We were still on page 1 FFS. No problem, you seem nice, I'm a bitch.

[vurt]

I don't think anyone's saying you need to know tons of theory (as has been correctly pointed out to me, I knows loads of it without knowing the names of weird roman numeral stuff, without having sat down and learned it - all from experience and trial and error).

What's a really good idea though is to play as all the book learning or chord plug-ins in the world won't give you the originality of ideas that playing will. Once you start playing, you start writing - the two go hand in hand.

play like no one is listening!
making mistakes is how we learn, you hear what works and what doesnt.

and if you find yourself treading old ground, try something different, its not hard

[jancivil]

So, rather than just react badly, I can address the substance?

Thankfully, I later learned that theory of functional harmony is just one "map" among many others - and that any map is merely a representation of the discoverable reality...

The reason I was not impeded by this misconstruction is I did music for a while before I encountered that, and it was clear that the course's emphasis there in community college was style-bound.
By "did music" I mean I played music and went with the, to me natural assumption that playing music is primary, no one writes music without having done, that would be bizarre.
People that write literature do not simply start writing not knowing grammar or syntax well or they're lost.
It has seemed to me from my earliest experiences with the internet, that we're in a brave new world where music is so special it can be considered to be approached with no basis, as though we can walk having no legs, no problem.
Construction kits, loops, clip launchers are where ideas are born, all of that... ok, but this is the forum set aside for this other thing where you seek to know what you're doing. Yes/No?

So, you being more comfortable to sequence than to play, to this day, tells us a story, but it's not so much in affirmation of music theory, it seems to want to suggest this may be bypassed.
Formal theory has definite points it's after, eg., the parallel fifths proscription is style-bound. Ever heard hard rock or metal? Debussy? https://sites.tufts.edu/markdevoto/file ... bussy1.pdf

So the miscontruction is avoidable, through understanding a bit of music first*. I don't know why someone would engage in a course that instructs such without a purpose. But this is where wholesale reliance on the internet as a school leads people sometimes.

So the main thing I wish to convey here is that playing music is where writing music comes from organically. Now, many seem to want their clicks with a pencil tool in a GUI in a sequencer ex nihilo to be as good as having experience, and actually argue the point vehemently at times.

*: There's a good reason that, at least during my day, music theory is not a class for younger children. 10th grade it was for me, and you had to qualify.

[jancivil]

So. From the pdf I just posted.
---

parallels.png

---
Guiraud had played some full-on parallel chords and asked CD if he found it lovely. Answer was an enthusiastic yes.
I very much recommend reading this paper btw.

In my own music, there is no theory, that's another whole job. I'm absolutely free.
But I can channel something from previously to the extent I know it. So one has vocabulary to draw from. One stands on the shoulders of giants if you will. Knowing is conducive, there's FLOW.

[N__K]

[...] spectrum [...]

You're in the right general direction about that.

***

Regarding "ex nihilo" discovery, here's an example related to parallel movements: a three-oscillator sine wave patch that itself constitutes a "sus4" chord - that is, intervals "1,4,5" (or in 0-11 12-TET pitch range "0,5,7") - and a sequence with "1-b3-4" (0,3,5) arpeggios alternating on i and v (0 and 7) degrees, with C being i (or 0).

A screenshot of that done with Absynth and a piano roll (those are 1/8th notes, tempo is 130, and envelope is a gate with about 1/16th long release stage):

0,5,7 chord sound played as 0(0,3,5) - 7(0,3,5) arpeggios.PNG

The result is something that my brain seems to perceive as a hypnotic "aural drug", for lack of better words. Could listen to such stuff for lengthy periods of time on loop - and I have - also made with shapes other than sine, and with varying timbre-altering programming and effects applied etc.

I've found such things "ex nihilo" by experimenting with synths and MIDI controllers and piano rolls, without knowing any traditional theory (or who and when may have done such things before).

As long as I have made notes of what I've learned in such ways, and can recall it at will, I think that it does indeed count as experience, even if the way I personally remember it - as constructs in 12-pitch number range - is not common in traditional music theory.

As I studied traditional theory, I came to know how to describe those ideas in more traditional terms. But such sequences and synth patches I had already made long before that.

***

Apologies for my offtopic posts - it's a justified complaint and I am aware of often being guilty of that.

Perhaps offtopical parts could be split into their own thread?

[N__K]

This topic is for discussing various approaches to gaining theoretical/systematic knowledge about making music; in particular, learning by personal discovery, "ex nihilo" etc. in comparison to learning from traditional music theories and previously existing knowledge.


Some of posts here may have been split from other topics.

[CrystalWizard]

For myself it's been mostly make a buncha (psychedelic) noise. i did get about 10 bass guitar lessons but they always turned to "let's smoke some hash." The thing for me is that i'm often not interested in making western 12 tet or even anything close. One of my early interests was the sounds between the notes. I'm definitely more interested now but still only to a small degree.
I like lots of western music, as well as gamelan, and just about everything else for listening.

[Winstontaneous]

I like lots of western music

What about the other kind of music...country?
Good to see you back, CrystalWizard!