Rolling Music Theory Thread

HI DERE

Anyway, this is definitely true and I think any sensible theorist would agree:

I guess what I am trying to say is if you define theory as something like "the study of what chords go together and what melodies go with them" then there are different approaches to theory and some explain certain things better than others. What is surprising or not done in one theory is not surprising and done all the time in another. If you don't take this into account then theory is kind of a strawman.

so what is the difference between "technical discussion" as in guitar player magazine (or some better representative mag, or any of them, i don't know them very well) and "technical discussion" in an academic context? do they discuss the same sorts of things? are there lacunae in either that the other addresses? or is it just audience and intent?

(my guess is that trade mags care _way_ more about equipment, partly because they exist as part of a complex whose purpose is to sell equipment, but my question is, does the lack of attention to equipment hurt academic writing? also i know some academic writing cares about the craft and production of instruments v. much. also a guess would be that the academic and the trade approach both don't address the social as much as some [we?] might desire, but fail to address it in radically different ways.)

guitar mag discussion is often looking at playing technique rather than the music in itself, but there is definitely overlap discussing innovation, phrasing w/e

Couple thoughts on Owen's pieces:

Sympathetic to the premise that "Get Lucky" is in the Dorian mode.

When "Teenage Dream" switches from the I chord in the intro to rooting that harmony on the fourth, it creates a major seventh chord on the IV. The softness of that chord is sort of the consolation for the song's weightless state of flux.

Yes, exactly. Theorists are more concerned with the larger-scale questions of what the vocabulary and syntax of a music are, how pieces of music can be understood structurally. Ogmor is definitely right that there can be some overlap, and in these areas, I would think that the difference is comparable to the difference between the academic and popular versions of any field of discussion (Psychology Today vs academic psychology journals, CNN or Fox vs a political science symposium, etc): the level of training that is usually expected and the peer-review process do imo tend to promote a certain level of rigour and originality, if not always readability. Honestly, discussion of theory in guitar magazines is often even riddled with incorrect terminology even for basic things. Doesn't mean (at all) that there's nothing useful there.

Where fgti and I might be on the same page is that its not always entirely clear to me what the ultimate goal or purpose is with a lot of academic analysis of popular music, aside from sheer scholarly interest (and lines on the CV, ha). With guitar mags, it's usually clear that the articles are there for people to learn specific techniques from. With the analysis of art music, it's easy for me to see how the work is useful for people who want to compose and/or play art music (who are the usual audience for these journals). While I still disagree with him that Radiohead (or, say, "Close to the Edge") is too easy to parse for someone with art music training, it's not 100% clear to me what the readers are going to gain from the exercise: it does not seem that this is going to have the direct benefit of helping (most) people learn how to write and play rock music. There can still be some value in understanding how the music 'works' or is put together, though, and it is actually possible for it to influence art music composition tbh (because those artists have probably influenced mine!).

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Don't know what academic discussion you might be referring to, s. clover. You should realize that a good part of academic music studies- Sund4r can correct me if I am wrong- consists of professional programs offering Bachelors or Masters degrees in performance and education. Of course as part of this they teach composition and give instrumental instruction. The purpose of this is to give the students the skills -and accreditation - to enable them to hopefully make a living as player/teachers, so these institutions are not necessarily doing academic research as the word theory might lead you to believe. The theory as such is supposed to aid the awareness of students as composers and improvisers of what notes and chords are available to them at any given point. I haven't read any guitar mags in a bit, but in between the gear articles and the player interviews they always have transcriptions of tunes and, more to the point, regular columns where somebody explains that if you want to play in a certain style these are typical chord progressions and typical things you might play, with a little theoretical gloss thrown in. For instance, Bass Player magazine might have an article entitle "Funk 101: Dorian Octaves." This kind of thing is a bite-sized version of what you might get in one of those programs. Actually one of the authors of a long running popular and useful column in Bass Player was (don't know if he still does it) none other than everybody's favorite Daft Punk bassist, Nathan East.

well if you look at english departments, their main (or at least one main) social role is really to produce people capable of teaching undergrad level reading and composition, but also by dint of being part of the "academic world" one also produces analyses of rhetoric in milton or what have you, and one can argue that this is a good or a bad thing or was a good thing but now is in some ways a bad thing (by obscuring the labor function of academia as a way to explain away low salaries 'for the love of the discipline' or etc), but in any case, is this somewhat the situation in music/musicology depts?

Yes, but the majority of the guys I'm talking about don't have to publish anything like the equivalent of Milton Studies you mention. They are part of the professional side of academia, not the research side, and don't have to go through the same hurdles: orals, writtens, postdoc, maybe another postdoc, tenure track, etc, they just have to come out of a program like the one they end up teaching in, more or less.

That's only true of instrumental teachers (who are generally contract instructors), surely? Neither University of Ottawa nor University of Toronto will even consider someone for a sessional (adjunct) teaching position in composition, music theory, or musicology if he or she does not have a PhD in hand.

(I'll have a lot more to say later on. This is a big question, far bigger than a 'Rolling Music Theory' thread can support if we're going to really get into it.)

Interesting. From what I know in NYC a PhD is not required to teach at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, nor at the Columbia University Department of Music, The New School, or the Manhattan School of Music. A music professor with a PhD, such as Chris Washburne, is the exception not the rule.

Anyway I wanted to ask what people thought of Chord Scale Theory, it's uses and abuses, but maybe we've already bitten off more than we can chew on this thread.

Link to Sund4r's new thread: Music Academia

Still trying to get some eyeballs on this interesting, original idiosyncratic work: http://www.modalogy.net/. I was thinking about it in the context of the mother thread to this one, where the guy talks about the harmonic trick. Not so tricky when you realize that the resolution of modal cadences at weaker than those of a major/minor tune.

Also interested in the question of

• difference between a mode and a scale
• difference in use of term modal in Renaissance/ pre-equal temperament music and in "model jazz"

Ha, "modal jazz"

Thread of missing the "Greensleeves" thread.

Clearly there is some overlap between modes and scales, given that the major scale is also called the "Ionian" mode.

I'm not actually sure if there's a meaningful difference.

I think there might be, maybe. I think the scale is just the set of pitches plus the starting point and nowadays mode usually means exactly the same thing but in ye olde time Renaissance music the mode meant the, um, ordered set of pitches, plus the various conventional practices that went with them. This is something I feel like I have seen out of the corner of my eye somewhere , I'll have to track down a reference.

As I understand it, the standard modes are identical to major keys except the root note is a different step in the scale.

Mode is closer to key, while the scale is the ordered sequence of notes in the mode or key.

Yes, something like that. There is a discussion of this on pages 158-159 of Lewis Porter's John Coltrane bio. I can't type it in right now so you will have to refer to your own copy.

He refers to a paper called "Three Pragmatists in Search of a Theory" by Harold Powers which I find a brief reference to and quote from here: http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.3/mto.13.19.3.judd.php although I can't quite make head or tail of the quote or the surrounding article yet.

Then there is this

http://www.jazzstandards.com/theory/modal-jazz.htm

One contemporary (and widely-taught) approach to improvisation views every chord as having one or more scales that can be played over it. Although it involves the use of modes, this approach to soloing does not necessarily make a tune “modal.”

The language is too academic for people who're interested in Radiohead, and Radiohead is too easily parsed for people who can comprehend an academic theoretical approach.

I think I actually disagree with the first part of this too (sorry fgti): almost everyone in my PhD program was interested in Radiohead! I'm pretty sure I'm more interested in them than in Brian Ferneyhough.

Anyway, I think that this discussion has been helpful for me. I haven't written a theory paper in years and now I realize that it's because I wasn't actually sure what the purpose/value of it would be. I think that talking about this has helped me clarify what it could be; I actually feel enthusiastic about attempting it this summer.

I've read several rollicking music theory nerd discussions of radiohead songs.

Interested to hear what exactly inspired Sund4r in this discussion but maybe it's best just to wait for the paper.

It was this train of thought, where I started questioning the use of this kind of analytical work, then realized that this doubt was what was holding me back from doing any of it, then started thinking about what its use could be. (The last part is not completely fleshed out in the post below but I think I will articulate it when the time comes):

Where fgti and I might be on the same page is that its not always entirely clear to me what the ultimate goal or purpose is with a lot of academic analysis of popular music, aside from sheer scholarly interest (and lines on the CV, ha). With guitar mags, it's usually clear that the articles are there for people to learn specific techniques from. With the analysis of art music, it's easy for me to see how the work is useful for people who want to compose and/or play art music (who are the usual audience for these journals). While I still disagree with him that Radiohead (or, say, "Close to the Edge") is too easy to parse for someone with art music training, it's not 100% clear to me what the readers are going to gain from the exercise: it does not seem that this is going to have the direct benefit of helping (most) people learn how to write and play rock music. There can still be some value in understanding how the music 'works' or is put together, though, and it is actually possible for it to influence art music composition tbh (because those artists have probably influenced mine!).

Here is a guy talking about a few ideas that I found interesting but haven't fully digested yet in that book Modalogy I have been plugging: http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/theory/22308-modal-cadences-modal-interchange.html

"Get Lucky" doesn't really have a Dorian feel to me. It just starts on the iv chord. B is never a point of resolution for the melody; it tends to resolve to F# ("like the legend of the phoenix"/"we've come too far") or A ("we're up all night to get lucky").

like, I wouldn't say "Get Lucky" is in the Dorian mode for the same reasons I wouldn't say a song with a looping ii-V-I-vi progression is in the Dorian mode

crut otm. nailed it imo.

I mean the "ky" in "lucky" isn't an F#, it's an A, but I agree that generally the song pulls toward F#.

Oh, I very much hear B as a point of resolution for the chorus melody. I hear the melody as a sequence that descends until it gets to B with that A as a blue note lower neighbor.

Where is the pulling toward F#? B minor is the chord that occurs in the strong measure. For me, the song pulls toward that.

http://forum.emusictheory.com/read.php?5,13517

Eg, a while back there was a long-standing (apparently interminable) debate on another site (or two) about whether Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" was in G major (V-IV-I-I) or in D mixolydian (I-bVII-IV-IV). Each camp was vociferous in its own absolute conviction.
The reason was that almost everyone genuinely heard it as definitely one or the other, and couldn't hear it the other way. Those who thought differently were simply "wrong" (and maybe deaf and stupid at the same time).

I'd agree that it's ultimately a matter of perception, but my gut tells me that F# minor is the resting chord. pretty sure the tempo & key of the song are an homage to Billie Jean, which is in F# minor.

I'm used to hearing minor key songs with a VI-VI-i-VII progression & I hear the Bm7 as a substitution for the first VI chord

obv the ambiguity of having two "strong" chords is part of what makes the chord progression infinitely loopable

I hear Sweet Home Alabama as G major fwiw

"Get Lucky" is clearly in Aeolean, but in the comments there are those who think it's in Dorian, and a guy who wrote an analysis for CoS who said it was in A-major (?!), and another guy who thought "Dreams" was in Aeolean???!!!

With the Gaga bit people I think are starting to pick up on the futility of this column I hope. All of the comment arguments we have been having have been about "oh you notated it wrong" or "oh you're writing about this in base-C? why?" or debates about differences between IV7 (classical) and IVma7 (jazz). Because of the disparity of language I can't help but just... feel like it's so fruitless. Even that Elton John "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" piece there was a part of me that was like "dude it's called a Neopolitan 6th let me introduce you to Strauss" which is of-course a bullshit response, that modulation is fantastic

I think there's something about Get Lucky that sounds almost like it would be a break or b-section in a song in F# minor, only it just keeps repeating instead of going back to the A-section.

Wait, did somebody day Aeolian?

Say.

(S is next to D, sorry)

Scanning through that blog, it looks pretty good, actually! I don't like the "learn the secrets" kind of angle but I'm all for introducing people to iiis and bVIs and correctly pointing out the link between The Crickets and early Beatles.

Marcello tweeted that it's unfortunate that people talk about "Born This Way" = "Express Yourself" but not "Holiday" = "The Look Of Love", (which I don't hear in the slightest)

With the Gaga bit people I think are starting to pick up on the futility of this column I hope. All of the comment arguments we have been having have been about "oh you notated it wrong" or "oh you're writing about this in base-C? why?" or debates about differences between IV7 (classical) and IVma7 (jazz). Because of the disparity of language I can't help but just... feel like it's so fruitless. Even that Elton John "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" piece there was a part of me that was like "dude it's called a Neopolitan 6th let me introduce you to Strauss" which is of-course a bullshit response, that modulation is fantastic

Are you saying that pop music analysis seems futile because there are different systems of terminology?

(But these debates about what the tonic even is in Lynyrd Skynyrd or Daft Punk songs demonstrate my point about why I don't think pop music is too easy for theorists to bother parsing. No one debates what the tonic is in a Bach chorale or Mozart piano sonata, at least most of the time.)

Well Sund4r there's "what do I think" and "what do I feel". I think that the kind of analysis that you read in that "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" piece where it's like "oh! this guy is identifying the most defining trait of this song and probably the cleverest harmony-coup of Elton's career". I think that when I scan through the "Aeolean" blog linked above it's like "oh! how interesting that they started using iii-chords in pop songs at a specific point".

But "what do I feel"? My own ears hear music in the abstract. I hear, say, a I-iii-IV-bII-V-I movement (and most movements that would be contained within pop music) without thinking about what chords or key it's in. My fingers naturally move to the keys, to the guitar chords. Most pop musicians I know work the same way-- even asking somebody "what key is the song in?" you've got a 50/50 chance that the musician knows or cares. I think a lot of pop music + music theory has misidentified the point of translation, if that makes sense? Using numerals and words to describe what's happening in a song is a compromise.

There's something especially awful about it when the chords go from 4 to 5 and the melody goes 5 - 3 - 2 -3, or 5 -3 - 2 -1, it's like nails on a chalkboard for me.

This one is not as awkward, but it still sounds like it was spit out by a diatonic melody generator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ9pHBEUWPo

The first example sounds like an instance where the lyrics were written in advance of the melody. The composer was tasked with having to make something "poppy" and "hooky" but also keep the same rhythm of a recitative. It reminded me most of the "verses" on uh "Hakuna Matata" where a very-hooky chorus had to be cut with narrative-narrative-narrative and Elton John just kinda wrote some notes down and hoped it'd work. I don't think it's anything new, there are similar kinda "the music suffers at this point because we got a lot of words to get through" moments in a lot of pre-1980 musicals. Good recit is challenging, I would imagine? the part of "Guys And Dolls" I admire the most compositionally isn't any hook at all but a recit: "I've imagined every bit of him / from his strong moral fibre / to the wisdom in his head / to the homey aroma of his pipe..." "You have wished yourself a Scarsdale Galahad / the breakfast-eating Brooks Brothers type..." "Yes! and I will meet him when the time is ripe." (Is it "right"? I forget I'm just quoting from memory.)

So yeah it doesn't sound to me like any modern tendency so much as the collision of lyricist: "here are a lot of words" and producer: "get it done by the weekend and make it hooky"

That song from The Greatest Showman sounds so uncannily like another song I can't place. Is it Adele? That song sounds to me that it wasn't written cold but was written as a copy of another song. Lyricist: "here are some words", producer: "make it sounds like Adele", composer submits, producer: "make it sound more like Adele", composer submits, producer: "have you even fucking listened to Adele? I want it to sound like ADELE", composer writes something that exactly follows the tempo and chord progression of an Adele song but sounds obtuse on its own, producer: "good enough"

So yeah in short the former just sounds like big-budget recit written with the pressure of time and producer expectation

And the latter just sounds like the composer was working with a temp score and being pressured by producers to cut closer and closer to the source

I don't hear what you're hearing on "Waiting On A Miracle" though, it sounds about as well-written as your average 6/8 Kate Bush song, that is to say, it's not bad? Moving to the III at the end of each eight bar phrase (after swaying between IV and V for the rest of the phrase) is definitely "not exactly great", and the modulation at 1:45 is a real clunker, but it doesn't really bother me. Totally serviceable Disney song.

Upon hearing that song from "The Greatest Showman" my boyfriend popped around the corner to say that it was his parents favourite musical ever, that they couldn't stop talking about how amazing the music is. Something I always tell myself is that the producers are almost always right, that when they are pressuring the composer to dumb something down they DO in fact have the best interests of the shareholders at heart

Maybe more appropriate for the "Homemade Jokes" thread, but I just typed:

"I call my man Neapolitan because he wasn't my first choice, but he's a close second"

Oh wow, I must have accidentally deleted my bookmark for this thread. So many messages I've missed. Going to catch up!

I was going to say something about how it's interesting that Ed Sheeran's "Shivers" is built from the exact same chord progression (Bm-G-D-A) as "Despacito" and does a lot similarly but the melodic movement in the Sheeran song seems more clearly centred on an Aeolian B minor tonality while "Despacito" seems a little ambiguous between D major and (modal) B minor but it seems v possible to hear D as a tonic.

I was waiting for the awkward melody in the Encanto song and it never happened so I don't really know what you're driving at, man alive

also lol fgti

Hey Sund4r, are you sure on that G# in the fermata chord on "Reaper?" I hear a G natural in the guitar that's panned a little right (which is kinda cool because it makes it momentarily a seventh resonance on the tonic minor chord).

You're totally right. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

How did I never learn the phrase rhythmic displacement before today?

I wanna talk about the pre-chorus on Portishead “All Mine” and how unprecedented and amazing those note choices are

And how she changes it up on the last pre-chorus to make it even more unhinged

It seems that the vocal melody is in the E♭ minor of the verse, while the chords underneath go up and down on B min, C# min and D min? Then in the last prechorus, she's singing a semitone higher, so the melody more-or-less matches the chords underneath for the first time.

yeah this is really something -- the instrumental mods but she...declines to do so?

I don’t have perfect pitch so I couldn’t name the keys in the car yesterday while listening, but yes, the two primary chords on the pre chorus are bm and then dm, an attractive mediant association

But Beth sings a single same pitch over both chords and it is not the shared pitch (not the D)

Prechoruses 1 and 2, she picks a pitch that clashes with the bm

Prechorus 3 she switches it so it flashes with the dm

And it REALLY clashes, she sounds like she’s losing her mind. My friend Jessie once said “my god Portishead and their middle-class white lady having a breakdown vibes, it’s irresistible”

Wow

TIL about the augmented sixth chord from Sund4r.

A google about something else suggested that I read an article about Jacob Collier's use of microtonal modulation within his pop constructions. I read it. Then I listened to him for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPZn4x3uOac

What he does at 4:00 is as impressive as was advertised tbh. Good writing, Jacob!