https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ link takes you to the homeworks/assignments and everything else for a self-study/auto-didact to follow along. Neat!
If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music theory, art, mathematics and you have a lot of books with identical boring titles.
Music theory for the 21st century with notation from several centuries earlier. Hmm.... sorry but tracker's table-like views are much easier. And so are most DAWs gantt-like editors. 100 times easier to comprehend than notation having the same not written in three different ways, and then some.
The English language is messy as hell, and yet, here we are using it because it's a shared set of rules and symbols that pretty much everyone who wants to join in on this conversation already knows.
Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
I was hoping to see if by "21st-Century" it meant "music theory that is applicable to the way modern music is generally written and interacted with". With details on things like microtonal music, increased focus on rhythmic theory, an increased appreciation for the role that timbre plays in the sound of music, the theoretical frameworks that underpin long standing musical traditions of other cultures and contrasting what makes each musical theory unique as a way of better understanding both western theories of music as well as the breadth of musical expression....
Nope! Just the same old, well beaten, rotting corpse of a horse in the form of a musical theory that entirely exists to prop up schenkerian analysis. The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. (The way you can tell is because it includes figured bass, which is totally irrelevant to any discussion that isn't about the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians.)
God forbid I want to, oh I don't know, make music that's similar to the kind that I actually listen to on a regular basis? Better understand its underpinnings and what makes it work in the ways that it does? No. Figured bass.
How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.
Am I the only one who thinks that the classic music notation is 3x harder to learn than the basic music theory (without the rules of notation)?
I think that you can learn music theory (to play an instrument or to compose music e.g. in a "piano roll tool" / MIDI editor) much faster if you skip the classic notation. And I think that it is even better to learn the notation AFTER you understand the music theory.
This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide:
I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.
Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote.
In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.
It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).
It kind of reminds me of the periodic declaration someone makes on HN that textual programming sucks and we all need to switch to something else, usually visual programming in this case.
If someone takes time to deeply understand the advantages of the textual approach and then builds an alternative, I'll listen.
But at this point, anyone who is doing this and their criticism of the original approach is shallow and uninsightful, where it's basically just "it's old and it must therefore suck", is unlikely to produce a good answer.
I think that applies to the music notation case too. "Conventional" music notation isn't just a staff and a couple of types of notes. By the time you handle all the use cases that conventional notation handles, or even just a solid subset of it, your brand new notation is probably a lot less elegant than it started out as in someone's head.
I know neither is about music notation per se (but about fixing the piano), but it is analogous: Music notation has exactly the same problem as the piano -> it defaults to C, which makes everything else relative to C and overly complicated.
For the record, I don't think this means we should switch to a new system, but it is usefull to recognize that it is suboptimal, if only to be able to accept it and continue (because nobody is going to translate everything to some new notation)
Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance.
Unlike most languages it's inherently two dimensional because music includes both horizontal (time, rhythm) and vertical pitches (chords/colours, harmony) information.
And - especially important - melody is an element that needs both.
You can't represent the same information with text without losing a lot of important content, which is why toys like Sonic Pi are more limited than they seem.
You can kinda sorta represent the same information on a piano roll, but it's not any easier to read than dots - in some ways harder, because you're not going to see the relationship between a bass line and chords as clearly.
Is it a good programming language? It's quite dense, but not denser than some code idioms. The 2D element is unique, and hard to represent in other ways.
The learning curve is steep, but it's probably as good as it can be given the requirements and constraints.
love that video, it made me lol so hard the first time I saw it :D
Classical composer and software engineer here. One of my goals is to help update score notation. I use something called "harmonic coloring" which is like a reduced MIDI notation: You color a note by its functional role (harmonic value) rather than an arbitrary hue in 0-11.
What this view shares with MIDI: Long rectangles representing the applied durations.
How it is different: Occupies a minimal amount vertical space.
The color palette I'm using is intended to support people with colorblindness. The shades/hues of a color encodes the functional harmony. The root key signature (origin) is always the same color; and chords some distance r away on the circle of fifths is the shade/hue at that offset r.
There is a similar concept described in the Tantacruel video towards the end.
You can explore it here on Monic Theory.
(mobile view should be fixed within 48 hours)
Note that in historical Byzantine musical culture, there are no absolute pitches at all. Their notational form is entirely intervals from some arbitrary root note.
Similarly, in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, the note names (Sa, Re, Pa etc) do not denote pitches - Sa is always the root, whatever it is, and the rest have a somewhat well defined intervallic relationship to it.
I personally would not use "harmonic value" to describe this, since it occurs in music that (broadly speaking) lacks harmony. The key point, IMO, is that what matters are sets of intervals (ratios, if you prefer) rather than actual pitches (as frequencies).
Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be).
A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2]
I suppose it makes historical sense, and even ingeniously designed.
But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I've picked up a new instrument since ~2 months, and 1 month in I could already play all scales by by deliberately staying away from music notation, learning the raw distances/steps that make up a scale and how to play them, rather than the 'delta from C', which is how classical training taught me to think. (Same story for chords etc)
> But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard.
I don't think this is true—I was under the impression that, at least on piano, keys other than C major are sometimes chosen specifically to make things easier on the fingers.
Easier on the fingers - maybe (I don't know what you reference), but not easier on the mind: Instead of learning each chord once, you have to learn it 12 times (for each key).
I feel that quote more likely is pointed at "music appreciation" as a written work, versus understanding the theory. I know a few musicians who are happy to use terminology from theory, "I love to write songs with diminished and sustained chords".
This seems like a great resource to me, a classically trained pianist who is now playing different types of music.
https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ link takes you to the homeworks/assignments and everything else for a self-study/auto-didact to follow along. Neat!
Very cool but what does this have to do with "21st-Century Classroom"? Is that just a meaningless phrase to make it sound modern, not old-fashioned?
If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music theory, art, mathematics and you have a lot of books with identical boring titles.
Could just be because it is the 21st century and this was written for classroom use.
It's a new presentation, an online hypertext, and uses YouTube publications of 21st Century music as example.
https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter-5.html
Music theory for the 21st century with notation from several centuries earlier. Hmm.... sorry but tracker's table-like views are much easier. And so are most DAWs gantt-like editors. 100 times easier to comprehend than notation having the same not written in three different ways, and then some.
The English language is messy as hell, and yet, here we are using it because it's a shared set of rules and symbols that pretty much everyone who wants to join in on this conversation already knows.
Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
I’m sympathetic to this viewpoint, but most music students in the classroom will be playing instruments or singing rather than working in DAWs.
I was hoping to see if by "21st-Century" it meant "music theory that is applicable to the way modern music is generally written and interacted with". With details on things like microtonal music, increased focus on rhythmic theory, an increased appreciation for the role that timbre plays in the sound of music, the theoretical frameworks that underpin long standing musical traditions of other cultures and contrasting what makes each musical theory unique as a way of better understanding both western theories of music as well as the breadth of musical expression....
Nope! Just the same old, well beaten, rotting corpse of a horse in the form of a musical theory that entirely exists to prop up schenkerian analysis. The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. (The way you can tell is because it includes figured bass, which is totally irrelevant to any discussion that isn't about the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians.)
God forbid I want to, oh I don't know, make music that's similar to the kind that I actually listen to on a regular basis? Better understand its underpinnings and what makes it work in the ways that it does? No. Figured bass.
> On the piano there are 88 notes.
88 keys (usually) and unlimited notes.
Happy to see serialism covered! thanks
How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.
Book: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
by Robert Hutchinson
Am I the only one who thinks that the classic music notation is 3x harder to learn than the basic music theory (without the rules of notation)?
I think that you can learn music theory (to play an instrument or to compose music e.g. in a "piano roll tool" / MIDI editor) much faster if you skip the classic notation. And I think that it is even better to learn the notation AFTER you understand the music theory.
I even made my own guide to music :D https://www.jampea.com/learn
This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide: I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.
To give an example, this it of course not true:
> Only a limited set of frequencies is used in music. All these frequencies (that exist in music) can be played by a piano.
You're saying its not possible to tune a piano to an arbitrary set of 88 pitches?
That's clearly not what was meant, even without the context of this following bit:
> To describe tones that exist in music, we can describe tones that exist on a piano. There are only two rules:
> the first key must play a tone of 27.5 Hz each next key must play a tone 6% higher than the previous key
(This is not to mention that at a 1.06x increase per half step you're going to be sharp by 1 cent / octave which starts to add up).
Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote.
In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.
Also quarter step bends in guitar and vibrato in general.
there are absolutely pitches that an arbitrary piano cannot be tuned to. it is also non-trivial to tune a piano.
It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).
> It's all about the integers modulo 12.
Only in 12TET.
https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 explains why music notation is the way it is. There are very good reasons for it.
The parts that are really weird (like the C clef) have mostly been obsoleted, unless you play the viola I guess.
It kind of reminds me of the periodic declaration someone makes on HN that textual programming sucks and we all need to switch to something else, usually visual programming in this case.
If someone takes time to deeply understand the advantages of the textual approach and then builds an alternative, I'll listen.
But at this point, anyone who is doing this and their criticism of the original approach is shallow and uninsightful, where it's basically just "it's old and it must therefore suck", is unlikely to produce a good answer.
I think that applies to the music notation case too. "Conventional" music notation isn't just a staff and a couple of types of notes. By the time you handle all the use cases that conventional notation handles, or even just a solid subset of it, your brand new notation is probably a lot less elegant than it started out as in someone's head.
Have a look at https://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/ and the janko keyboard
I know neither is about music notation per se (but about fixing the piano), but it is analogous: Music notation has exactly the same problem as the piano -> it defaults to C, which makes everything else relative to C and overly complicated.
For the record, I don't think this means we should switch to a new system, but it is usefull to recognize that it is suboptimal, if only to be able to accept it and continue (because nobody is going to translate everything to some new notation)
Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance.
Unlike most languages it's inherently two dimensional because music includes both horizontal (time, rhythm) and vertical pitches (chords/colours, harmony) information.
And - especially important - melody is an element that needs both.
You can't represent the same information with text without losing a lot of important content, which is why toys like Sonic Pi are more limited than they seem.
You can kinda sorta represent the same information on a piano roll, but it's not any easier to read than dots - in some ways harder, because you're not going to see the relationship between a bass line and chords as clearly.
Is it a good programming language? It's quite dense, but not denser than some code idioms. The 2D element is unique, and hard to represent in other ways.
The learning curve is steep, but it's probably as good as it can be given the requirements and constraints.
love that video, it made me lol so hard the first time I saw it :D
Classical composer and software engineer here. One of my goals is to help update score notation. I use something called "harmonic coloring" which is like a reduced MIDI notation: You color a note by its functional role (harmonic value) rather than an arbitrary hue in 0-11.
What this view shares with MIDI: Long rectangles representing the applied durations. How it is different: Occupies a minimal amount vertical space.
The color palette I'm using is intended to support people with colorblindness. The shades/hues of a color encodes the functional harmony. The root key signature (origin) is always the same color; and chords some distance r away on the circle of fifths is the shade/hue at that offset r.
There is a similar concept described in the Tantacruel video towards the end.
You can explore it here on Monic Theory. (mobile view should be fixed within 48 hours)
https://monictheory.com/project-templates
Note that in historical Byzantine musical culture, there are no absolute pitches at all. Their notational form is entirely intervals from some arbitrary root note.
Similarly, in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, the note names (Sa, Re, Pa etc) do not denote pitches - Sa is always the root, whatever it is, and the rest have a somewhat well defined intervallic relationship to it.
I personally would not use "harmonic value" to describe this, since it occurs in music that (broadly speaking) lacks harmony. The key point, IMO, is that what matters are sets of intervals (ratios, if you prefer) rather than actual pitches (as frequencies).
^^ THIS
Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be).
A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2]
[1] The Ragas of North Indian Music, N.A. Jairazbhoy, https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725
[2] Rāgs Around the Clock, A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style, https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#r...
I suppose it makes historical sense, and even ingeniously designed.
But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I've picked up a new instrument since ~2 months, and 1 month in I could already play all scales by by deliberately staying away from music notation, learning the raw distances/steps that make up a scale and how to play them, rather than the 'delta from C', which is how classical training taught me to think. (Same story for chords etc)
> But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard.
I don't think this is true—I was under the impression that, at least on piano, keys other than C major are sometimes chosen specifically to make things easier on the fingers.
Easier on the fingers - maybe (I don't know what you reference), but not easier on the mind: Instead of learning each chord once, you have to learn it 12 times (for each key).
See http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/
I have some great news: you're a nerd ! :))
... or is it geek, i can never remember the difference ...
didn't find a single audio file; only links to unaffiliated YouTube videos which want me to watch ads first.
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
I feel that quote more likely is pointed at "music appreciation" as a written work, versus understanding the theory. I know a few musicians who are happy to use terminology from theory, "I love to write songs with diminished and sustained chords".
This seems like a great resource to me, a classically trained pianist who is now playing different types of music.
There are several music samples in there...
Example: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMaj...
skill issue.