Most music theory sounds horrible

[black cobra]

Have you ever thought about this? Arpeggios sound awful and boring. Secondary dominants sound so bad. The jazz circle of fifths does not a good song make, jazz or otherwise. Diminished 7th chords and scales are pretty much useless for music and the same goes for whole tone scales. I could go on and on.

 

The only things that have proved useful are the chords and modes of the major scale, and the minor pentatonic scale.

 

Everything else that the Beatles, Bowie, Kinks and the Who have developed they have discovered on their own. You cannot find it in a theory book. And fellows, they are not sharing their secrets and neither am I.

 

I am not a troll, just a music lover who is now standing on his own two feet.

[jonny guitar]

So is any education....physics and chemistry for example are just plain boring and stupid. I love my x-box, the internet and tv though.

I would say you need to investigate the influences of Harrison and Townsend...they both loved people like chet atkins and jazz in general.

[Poparad]

Originally posted by black cobra Have you ever thought about this? Arpeggios sound awful and boring. Secondary dominants sound so bad. The jazz circle of fifths does not a good song make, jazz or otherwise. Diminished 7th chords and scales are pretty much useless for music and the same goes for whole tone scales. I could go on and on.

 

 

I think these are some of the best sounding things of all! Especially diminished chords and scales. I can't get enough of that sound.

 

And I don't know about you, but arpeggios are found in just about every rock song I've ever heard. Sure, they aren't methodically done Root, 3rd, 5th, 3rd, Root, but they're not supposed to be!

 

I'm sure if you experimented with those sounds a little more you'd find a way to make them work.

 

 

Any music theory will sound bad if you don't use it right. People wouldn't be using these musical devices for centuries if they didn't sound good.

 

Music is an aural art, so the quality of the sound of an idea is the ultimate factor in whether it becomes popularly used.

 

The only things that have proved useful are the chords and modes of the major scale, and the minor pentatonic scale. Everything else that the Beatles, Bowie, Kinks and the Who have developed they have discovered on their own. You cannot find it in a theory book. And fellows, they are not sharing their secrets and neither am I. I am not a troll, just a music lover who is now standing on his own two feet.

 

 

 

They have secrets? Their music sounds pretty obvious to me. Not in a bad way, just in the fact that I can tell what they're doing by listening. There isn't any big, hidden secret or formula or trick they have to making their songs.

 

They just take a few musical ideas and put them together how they see fit.

 

What those musical ideas are greatly makes up the style of the song, and the specific sound to the sound. There isn't any secret combination to it, as you can use just about any musical idea and come up with a good song or a bad one.

[Auggie Doggie]

Originally posted by black cobra Have you ever thought about this? Arpeggios sound awful and boring. Scales, arpeggios, and chords are the fundamental building blocks of music. How can any of those things be inherently awful and boring? Secondary dominants sound so bad. Yes, especially when they set up those evil modulations. The jazz circle of fifths does not a good song make, jazz or otherwise. Since when does jazz have its OWN circle of fifths, and how does it differ from the regular old plain circle of fifths? Also, who ever said that the circle of fifths was a song? Do you even know what the circle of fifths is or why it is valuable? Diminished 7th chords and scales are pretty much useless for music I'll be sure to kindly remind Bach and Mozart (among others) that their use of diminished 7ths was a foolish waste of time and entirely useless to the world of music. I could go on and on. Please do...we need posts like yours to demonstrate to the youngsters here exactly why drugs are bad. The only things that have proved useful are the chords and modes of the major scale, and the minor pentatonic scale. Wow...all those wonderful pieces of music written in minor keys, all for nothing. Thank you for pointing that out...I can dispose of a very large percentage of my cd's (those which have music in minor keys on them). My shelves thank you for easing the burden I've so carelessly placed on them. Everything else that the Beatles, Bowie, Kinks and the Who have developed they have discovered on their own. You cannot find it in a theory book. And fellows, they are not sharing their secrets and neither am I. Hmmm....didn't all of those bands have some songs in minor keys? Damn, I guess they didn't quite catch on about how useless those things were. By the way, the Beatles, Bowie, the Kinks, and the Who are certainly not the be-all/end-all of music. They're not even the be-all/end-all of rock. Nor did they make any incredible or unique musical discoveries...they didn't develop in some vacuum either. There are no secrets to what they (or any other musicians) did. None. I am not a troll, just a music lover who is now standing on his own two feet.

Oh, make no mistake about it: you're a troll. And you're clearly NOT a music lover, as you have alienated a whole heck of a lot of music in your post from that which YOU deem 'useful' or 'good'. If you actually meant what you said in your post, then you frankly have no business in the Lesson Loft, which exists for the purpose of allowing us to learn from each other. If you did not mean what you said in your post, then you're blatantly trolling for the sake of trolling.

Either way, you're in the wrong place. Take it to Guitar Jam where you're more likely to round up a bunch of mindless, talentless hacks who will agree with your post simply because it espouses their slacker mentality quite succinctly. People who frequent this forum do so to learn and/or help others learn.

[outtahand4now]

I absolutely agree with you, Black Cobra....sorta. I mean Mozart didn't sit down to compose and say, "lets see, I think I'll start with an elision and establish a retrogression to a secondary dominant, maybe a French Augmented 6th, as a pivot chord into a tonal cell, pivoting back on a neoplitan chord to the vi to establish a deceptive cadence." He just heard it. We analyzed it. Use your ear. Only a "mindless talentless hack" writes music from a text book.

[Poparad]

 

Originally posted by outtahand4now I absolutely agree with you, Black Cobra....sorta. I mean Mozart didn't sit down to compose and say, "lets see, I think I'll start with an elision to establish a regressive cadence leading to a secondary dominant, maybe a French Augmented 6th, as a pivot chord into a tonal cell, pivoting back on a neoplitan chord to the vi to establish a deceptive cadence." He just heard it. We analyzed it. Use your ear. Only a mindless talentless hack writes music from a text book.

 

 

Well, I think you're taking it to two extremes there.

 

While Mozart didn't think exactly like that, he did know what he was doing. It wasn't all his ears either.

 

It was a combination of his knowledge of music and theory, and his ears, mediated by his taste and craft, that made his music so good.

 

 

Theory with no aural perception will not make good music.

 

Using your ears with no idea what you're doing will not make good music.

 

 

Using the two together to compliment and reinforce each other, will allow you to make good music, and make it frequently and sucessfully.

[Poparad]

Originally posted by outtahand4now ... establish a retrogression ....a tonal cell...

Oh yea, retrogressions were avoided in the 18th century, and cells came about in the 20th century.

(Just kidding around here... lighten up)

[outtahand4now]

Actually, I thought I was being funny.

[outtahand4now]

"Using your ears with no idea what you're doing will not make good music."

I'm not sure a person could do that.

I mean, I don't have to know the name of a musical figure to experience it. It's fine, even somewhat useful to know the names of things. But that does not teach me perception. Listening does. I can know it, use it and compose with it without knowing what it is called.

[Auggie Doggie]

Originally posted by outtahand4now I absolutely agree with you, Black Cobra....sorta. I mean Mozart didn't sit down to compose and say, "lets see, I think I'll start with an elision and establish a retrogression to a secondary dominant, maybe a French Augmented 6th, as a pivot chord into a tonal cell, pivoting back on a neoplitan chord to the vi to establish a deceptive cadence." He just heard it. We analyzed it. Use your ear. Only a "mindless talentless hack" writes music from a text book.

 

 

What most guitarists fail to realize is that the language of theory is to be assimilated into the imagination and thought processes...integrated naturally and seamlessly into the musician's vocabulary. Mozart knew his theory inside and out; it was simply a part of how he worked. By the way, he also struggled with the strict countrapuntal style for several years...and didn't fully adopt it into his vernacular for quite some time. He didn't eschew the education, however, nor did he let it go to waste. He certainly didn't make excuses and rationalizations so that he could avoid learning new things and bettering himself.

 

Of course, he'll never be on the same level as the Kinks. They discovered all the secrets of great music on their own, and wouldn't share with Mozart when his corpse (dead for well over 150 years at the time) showed up at one of their recording sessions.

[outtahand4now]

I know my theory quite well thank you. I hold a BA in Music Performance. Looking back it was a waste of time. I wish that I had spent the time pursuing music. Id be a better musician today. If you want to play...practice. If you want to teach...go to school.

However, I write music, not equations. Everyone who was successful did likewise. Music is expression and communication. That's it!

By the way, I kinda like The Kinks. As well as Prokofiev, Merle Haggard, Eminem, Elliot Carter, Woody Guthrie, Charles Ives, Benny Goodman, The Sex Pistols....and even Mozart

[Poparad]

Originally posted by outtahand4now I know my theory quite well thank you. I hold a BA in Music Performance. Looking back it was a waste of time. I wish that I had spent the time pursuing music. Id be a better musician today.

 

 

Why would you be going to school for music and not be pursuing it? Why wouldn't you be practicing and trying to better yourself if you already had the desire to study it at school?

[Auggie Doggie]

Originally posted by outtahand4now I know my theory quite well thank you. I hold a BA in Music Performance. Looking back it was a waste of time. I wish that I had spent the time pursuing music. Id be a better musician today. If you want to play...practice. If you want to teach...go to school. Obviously, you DON'T know your theory very well, if that's your attitude towards it. If it's somehow separate from your 'music-making' process, then you failed to integrate it. That's not the fault of theory; it's yours . By the way, you got a degree in Music Performance, but regret it and wish you had spent more time pursuing music ? What school did you go to that somehow issues degrees for people in the music performance program without preparing them to play music? However, I write music, not equations.

 

 

And who, praytell, is writing equations? What do you consider an 'equation' as opposed to music ?

 

There are many forms of music that require an IMMENSE knowledge of theory to write, far more than the snap-together scales-over-chords that 99.99% of guitarists never move beyond. Those who have integrated that knowledge are able to apply it as easily as they would anything else....naturally, not forced. Those who have not integrated their study of theory into their musical thought processes always seem to accuse those who DO make use of deeper levels of theory of somehow being purely academic or mechanical.

 

Where does this leave Beethoven and Brahms, who used to throw out failed sketch after failed sketch of their initial attempts at working out a single passage? They labored...went through much trial-and-error...were they just writing 'equations'?

[black cobra]

Thanks everyone for responding to my post.

Let me explain what I mean. I submitted a thread entitled, "Can anyone analyze these chords from a 60's hit song?" on the Guitar Jam forum.

The song is "Lazy Day." Spanky And Our Gang. I defy anyone to go to that post and analyze those chords for me. You will see that your answer does not fit into any theory books, yet it is one of the most beautiful songs of all time.

Auggie, I consider the minor key a mode of the major scale. I said that the modes were very useful in music.

[edeltorus]

cobra,

I've taken a short look at the song.. Which part of it do you find difficult to analyze?

[black cobra]

edeltorus:

Do me a favor. Analyze the song using Roman numerals and let me know what you think is going on. For example, Modal Interchange, substitution, modulation or anything else you or anyone can come up with.

Give it a shot. thanks.

[outtahand4now]

Originally posted by Auggie Doggie Where does this leave Beethoven and Brahms, who used to throw out failed sketch after failed sketch of their initial attempts at working out a single passage? They labored...went through much trial-and-error...were they just writing 'equations'?

 

 

No, they were composers, merely translating what they heard from the Muse. Their process was creation, born of inspiration and produced by labor and knowledge that was intuitive. Their work was turned into equations by observers / teachers, who mostly lack the ability to create. Does this make the composition process simple? I never said it was simple.

 

I don't believe that it is wrong to understand what a musical figure is called and that is all that theory is. Knowing that the brief modulation segment I hear is called a tonal cell, doesn't really help me that much. I understood the moment I heard it.

 

Every composer labors (wrestles with the Muse), they are struggling to interpret what they hear / feel, not recall what they learned.

[Poparad]

Originally posted by black cobra Thanks everyone for responding to my post. Let me explain what I mean. I submitted a thread entitled, "Can anyone analyze these chords from a 60's hit song?" on the Guitar Jam forum. The song is "Lazy Day." Spanky And Our Gang. I defy anyone to go to that post and analyze those chords for me. You will see that your answer does not fit into any theory books, yet it is one of the most beautiful songs of all time.

 

 

It's just borrowing the III chord from the parallel minor key. The rest is all in B major.

 

Modal borrowing has been around for 150+ years.

[Poparad]

Originally posted by outtahand4now No, they were composers, merely translating what they heard from the Muse. Their process was creation, born of inspiration and produced by labor and knowledge that was intuitive. Their work was turned into equations by observers / teachers, who mostly lack the ability to create. Does this make the composition process simple? I never said it was simple. I don't believe that it is wrong to understand what a musical figure is called and that is all that theory is. Knowing that the brief modulation segment I hear is called a tonal cell, doesn't really help me that much. I understood the moment I heard it. Every composer labors (wrestles with the Muse), they are struggling to interpret what they hear / feel, not recall what they learned.

 

 

Yes, those composers did use their ears to create music, but they also used their knowledge as a tool to making that music as close as they could to what they wanted to hear.

 

Also, it's not true that a composer always hears exactly what it is that they want in their head. Often they have an idea, but when it comes to actually fleshing it out into a full musical idea, their idea might not have been as great as they thought it might be in their head. This is why composers go through draft after draft of music, in order to take the small idea that had and find a way to make it work.

 

Also, knowing all the theory makes the process of translating what you hear into music a whole lot faster.

 

If I'm hearing something in my head, and I don't know what it is, there's going to be a whole lot of guess and check until I figured out what it is, if I ever figure out at all.

 

If I know what it is that I'm hearing, I can just directly play it because I already recognize it.

 

Knowing a lot about music will also give you a lot of ideas you wouldn't have thought to use on your own. You might hear an idea in your head and write it down, but then take it in a different, more interesting direction that you would have if you knew little about the construction of music.

 

Theory is a valuable to for making music. It is not the only tool, and anyone who does understand theory knows this. However, it is very much an essential tool. For those who know very little theory, they still do know some, and they still do use it.

 

And just because you know a lot of theory, doesn't mean you are going to be using all of it all the time. You will simply have more options available to you and more possibilities to choose from. How can that be a bad thing?

 

Knowledge is never an inhibiting or limiting thing.

[Lee33]

Theory won't make a non-musician a musician.

Theory will only make a third rate technician out of a non-tallented tone-deaf hopeful.

If you've got it - you've got it. If you haven't - you've shot it.


Lee

[black cobra]

Originally posted by Poparad It's just borrowing the III chord from the parallel minor key. The rest is all in B major. Modal borrowing has been around for 150+ years.

 

 

Godammit, first of all, none of this chord progresson is in B major.

[black cobra]

here is the chord progression if anyone wants to give it a shot.

http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/s/spanky_and_our_gang/lazy_day-crd.shtml

[Poparad]

Originally posted by black cobra Godammit, first of all, none of this chord progresson is in B major.

 

 

The Coda is...

 

 

here is the chord progression if anyone wants to give it a shot. http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/s/span...y_day-crd.shtml

 

 

I did...

[Redsweater]

Scales and chords are theory.

[D8rkn3ss]

its basically just a circle of 5ths movements with an occasional chromatic mediant thrown in. Otherwise I'd say in begins and ends in Bb, and poparad was right about the BIII, theres also some BVIIs, depending on how you analyze it. then it switches to B. not that hard.