What exactly is "music theory"?

Well, as a mediocre example guitarists who bother going to lessons will be shown the pentatonic minor scale. Playing random notes from that scale will sound OK over 12 bar blues. But you are restricted to those same 5 notes - gets really samey, then they show you the 'blue' notes and that changes the sound/feel of the improv. Then you chuck in a sixth for yet another 'mood' change.

Then scales like Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian et al become templates for a way of playing without hitting the gutters, but the road is well worn.

This is true, though my own teachers always taught scales with the provision that improvisation was more than just going up and down the scale. They made it clear that the scales were just a starting point, not something to aspire toward. In an ideal world I think you're point would be well-taken, but as a more realistic pedagogical tool it seems better to have a solid starting point than an infinite starting point. I shudder to think what I would have sounded like as a novice if my teacher had played a basic riff on the piano and said: "Now, just play whatever notes sound right to you." Of course, I know many jazz musicians who were talented enough to develop their own styles intuitively... but I know many others who weren't.

Listen to Ted Nugent play scales. Truly amazing.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W0VGFG/ref=dm_mu_dp_trk6

Just click Play (>)

This interesting, are the intuitive ones 'artists' and the rest 'artisans'? Can art be created by artisans?

As someone who likes to compose- I would say that knowing the rules is limiting, but for different reasons that others suggest.
My most freely creative stuff was all the stuff I did when I was about 12. Now I know the rules, I'll think of something really good, then get dissapointed when I play it on the piano and realise it's just chords I, IV, V etc.

I don't see how knowing the names of chords makes them less creative. Why discard ideas just because they are consistent with classification systems (which is what theory is)? Does music have to be completely free of conventions in order to be original? If so, not many pieces of music, in any genre, would count as original. (On the other hand, if the stuff you composed at the age of 12 were I, IV, and V chords, it might not have been as wildly original as you thought it was! It might have felt freely creative to you because it probably was, and that's a wonderful thing. But I don't see how theory "took that away from you," so to speak.)

Seriously, I think one of the big problems with the technical aspects of theory is that we tend to assume that it interferes with the creative aspects, which is of course an arbitrary and needless assumption. I have a friend who frequently berates me for knowing theory because, according to her, "I can no longer appreciate music for the sheer sensual pleasure of it." Nothing could be further from the truth, since I still very often listen to music for the sheer sensual pleasure of it. Again, I would ask whether knowing the rules of grammar interferes with the pleasure of reading literature, or even whether knowing the rules of tennis interferes with the pleasure of watching or playing it. Learning theory has given me an additional tool with which to approach music, but it hasn't replaced pre-existing tools. I don't see the logical necessity of believing that we must restrict ourselves to one tool only.

Well, those jazz musicians I mentioned who had to rely on theory when they were beginning are now among the most talented musicians I know, so it does sound like art can be created "artisans." I don't think one has to look very far in any genre to find top-rate musicians who started off by learning theory. If there is some philosophical distinction between artists and artisans, it seems to not be a very important one, or at least not one that affects the way we hear their works.

I know what you mean, and I get Shapeless's point too. You do discard stuff because you know 'why it works' because of theory. I always found myself playing with dim and aug fifths because they don't resolve well and just sounded different, and I was trying to do something new. If you right a 12 bar blues it might sound good but do you really feel you've created something? And is that important anyway?

A good question, and one that reinforces the point: whether your music resembles stuff that other musicians have done has little to do with theory. If you write a standard I-IV-V progression, it's gonna sound like other I-IV-V progressions whether or not you know what a I-IV-V progression is. Avoiding theory isn't going to help you avoid musical conventions because your ear has already assimilated them. All theory does is give names to the conventions. As Hingehead's example shows, knowing the theory will at least help you explain why your I-IV-V progression sounds so familiar, as well as help you identify what exactly you have to change in order to make the progression sound different.

This is an example of a guy who knows theory, but uses that as a springboard for his own really unique stuff. Steve Vai was heavily influenced by that other theoretic iconoclast, Frank Zappa. The musical genera may not be your cup of tea, but listen to the things he does with some of those scales.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=I92d9JysA_8

Good point shapeless-

it's an interesting issue.
In fact, it's come to light quite a lot recently.
One of my tutors for composition is a bit of a twat. My university is quite an 'out-there' university, or tries to be, and it makes me mad sometimes because it's completely pointless. In my first composition lecture he basically said that there is no point in writing tonal music any more, so we should all go off and find something new and exiting. What utter bollocks. There is very few things that are completely 'new' nowadays. Everything is very close to something else.
In my opinion he is limiting himself by trying to fight off limits. he's so up himself he doesn't even realize. The whole of our music department is full of his work on the walls, just a load of ridiculous stuff like 17ths against 29ths and the like.
In some respects I would prefer to be a popular music student- just in the way that they are all so full of enthusiasm for music, rather than cold clinical analysis or preoccupation with doing something no-one has ever done before. By doing what they want they develop their own voices, and that in itself is far more original and creative.
I try and maintain that attitude- but it's quite hard to, as is not the way i have been taught. Even at A level the emphasis was on the 'new'- 'Was Debussy traditional or original, discuss.' blah blah blah.
Why does it matter?
If it came to it I'm sure most musicians would choose music they could get exited by and 'get into' over something new but unenjoyable- so why is there this constant pressure?
Chords I IV V are almost a taboo. Which almost brings things round full circle- writing a piece using them would be breaking current conventions- would it be traditional or original? It' such a joke.

Very nice post Queenie.

What it is is that music teachers are failed musicians and are envious of those who didn't fail.

It's like when a certain class of people can't get an ego buzz out of eating cabbage because it's cheap and common, which it is because it is tasty and nutritious, with a balanced seasoning I mean, and so have flown in Tibetan mountain asparagus roots which have had to be irradiated to keep them "fresh" for their dinner guests.

The three chord system is like the cabbage. It's cheap and common and you don't need no educashun to be shown how to do it. Merely determination and the "groupies" provide the motivation for it. And with a lot of practice and a musical sensibility things can be done with those three chords which go into those areas of refinement of human endevour similar to that which Olympic athletes aspire to. If your teacher was a failed long jumper he would be trying to get underwater long-jumping brought back and be practicing secretly so he could get the first medal.

Of course, it isn't as simple as that. A banana down the front of your pants is a big help.

But I did warn you. Hold your dominion as the Americans say. Get what you can out of it but don't lose that attitude you so sweetly expressed.

Ugh... don't even get me started on these embittered, alienated academics. The composers of my own institution similarly feel very strongly about not compromising their compositional integrity by selling out to tonality, so they steadfastly stick to the (by now 85-year-old) atonal high road, teaching their students to shun any form of audience appeasement and thus damning them to life in academia, the only institution left that can accommodate composers who won't condescend to audiences, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Don't get me wrong--I love atonal music, as I know you do as well. But describing tonality and atonality as morally obligatory and mutually exclusive choices is what got academic composers into the crisis they now find themselves in. After decades of turning their backs on the world at large, the world has long since moved on, and composers still like to act like it's the world's fault (and still treat it like it's a recent phenomenon).

I told you not to get me started.

I'm glad you both feel the same way as me, even though those two styles of post could not be more contrasting! And nice to see you, as ever, Spendius.

Well I'm determined to stay true to myself and not prostitute myself to their compositional desires just to get good marks.

It still makes me cross though- cross that I can have an idea that I'm really exited by, put lots of work into it, and get the same mark as someone who faked it.
Thats another thing I didn't mention. Because of the approach of our tutor, all the more performance based students, that don't really have a clue about composition are making up all these stupid ideas, e.g. 'A new type of serialism which combines every note in the tone row with a different effect on the violin.' -and they get the same marks as the others who actually care. Grrr. Thats life I suppose, although peoples talents will no doubt sort themselves out into some order over time.
Another thing that annoys me, is that my ideas, which are quite experimental, are probably going to be indistinguishable from the people who are thinking up stupid things just to get more marks.

I'm envious of the people on the popular music courses, or just who compose at home like I used to. No constraints no barriers, just artistic freedom, and the only judge or criticism comes from your own ear.
I suppose it's just a different form of the question about modern art. Put a toilet roll in a gallery and it's art, but in your bathroom it's just another toilet roll.
If you put atonality into the popular music charts and it's 'highly original' but in the classical music world it's just another stereotype.

Don't worry shapeless! Think of all the years you've worked with these people! Get it out of your system at last!

mac 11 wrote-



That reminds me of Holden Caulfield's answer to a history exam question which his professor read back to him, if you remember.

Shapeless wrote-



Well- there's always a crisis in these domains.

If you read my post on blatham's You Tube thread you might see a bit of an explanation. At the politico/religious/economic level they are mutually exclusive. A teacher insisting on atonality might feel an atonal future coming on and thus that it is his duty to prepare his students for it and that those who teach tonal music alongside will only confuse their students and there's nothing anyone can say about the old fashioned tonals except-

Roll out the barrel
We'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel
We've got the blues on the run
Zing! Boom! Ta-rar-rel
Ring out a song of good cheer
Now's the time to roll the barrel
'Cos the gang's all here.

I'll check out Blatham's thread, but off the top of my head it should be pointed out that the crisis in classical music is barely 100 years old--only at the very tag end of classical music's long history have styles become so morally and politically polarized. It may be the case that crisis is inevitable now, but it wasn't always so.



I disagree, though your view has been the prevailing one in academia for most of the twentieth century. There have always been composers who dabbled in many styles simultaneously, and those composers tend to be the ones that music history has not paid any attention to until recently--see Ravel, Britten, etc. There are also canonical composers who have been stylistically diverse but, owing to academia's insistence on polarizing styles, have been made to fit one category at the exclusion of others; this is why Elliott Carter is still described as a serialist in the mold of Milton Babbitt while Gyorgy Ligeti is still described as an avant-garde modernist in the mold of Karlheinz Stockhausen or Pierre Boulez--despite numerous protests from these own composers' mouths to the contrary.

At the "political/religious/economic" level, one does not have to look far to find composers of similar stylistic stripes but opposing political stripes--e.g. Schoenberg and Webern, both 12-tone composers, with the former being a Jewish refugee of Nazi persecution and the latter being a Nazi sympathizer. Conversely, one does not have to look far to find composers of opposing stylistic stripes but similar political stripes--e.g. Copland and Henze, both Communist sympathizers, with the former rejecting the alienating stance of 12-tone music (except when he was "pushed" toward it during McCarthy's witch hunt years) and the latter being drawn to serialism and post-serial techniques.

More later...

Classy-what!

I once heard a radio programme about how American intellectuals (ahem!) used styles of music on the German population after WW11. They invested a lot of money in it.

Government money natch.

But it's a long while ago and I can't remember any details.

I think of music as being to the ears as light is to the eyes.

You bet. After World War II, a music institute was established in Darmstadt for the purpose of introducing Germany to the latest innovations in Western experimental music. The institute was funded by the CIA as part of a very public and explicit project of "reeducating" war-torn countries to the hip new things that were going on in the free West. There is a very informative book about it that was recently published: Amy Beal's New Music, New Alliles.

That's it Shape. Give us a few details.

Despite its fame The Singing Postman's My Little Nicotine Girl ( 'ave you gotta light girl?) is not on You Tube.