Rolling Music Theory Thread

Maybe if I had fleeter fingers or a better ear or a satisfied mind I would have just accepted these flipping thirds and fourths and moved on, but I couldn't and it was really affecting my ability to memorize the piece. Also, felt like in some sense it was my punishment, if you will, for too much time playing in the lower positions and not shifting, and liking to be in one 'macroharmony,' as it were, for a longer period than is allotted at faster tempos or with more busy chord changes. On the other hand, if I had been born into the style, I wouldn't have to ask questions I would just know, but unfortunately I don't have that luxury. But now I have a name, 'escala nordestina' which is enough for now. At this stage I don't need some kind of Euclidean axiom proof of something ('alpha' theory) just a name to tag it with and a pigeonhole to put it in ('beta' theory)

Back to the general theme of the revive. In jazz, you are frequently given a set of chord changes and asked to improvise over them. You can play the chord tones on the appropriate beats but then what scale tones (assuming you've chosen an appropriate scale) or chromatic tones do you play in between? There is some balance to be struck between playing scalar and playing chromatically. Too scalar and it might be boring, too chromatic and it ends up sounding like what one Berklee instructor (Bob Pilkington?) calls "the drunken line."

As far as the scales you choose you can get a lot of mileage out of the more neutral scales, especially if you are playing bass:) If you want to get beyond and use some slightly more exotic scales then maybe you've got to do more work. The reason Hurting (no real names on the theory thread when screennames are available) disapproves of a certain kind of paint-by-numbers pick-a-scale-any-scale approach is that presumably the players aren't really listening to the others in the ensemble or even to themselves.

( running out of road. See what the subconscious mind sorts out overnight )

(Tom, delete the Rolling Music Theory Thread now please)

(One man's scale choice is another man's chromaticism)

lol
baião please

Haven't caught up with recent posts but I kind of wish I were going to this:
http://www.mtmw.org/docs/MTMW_program_2014.pdf

I wish you were too.

If the geirfiddler could see you now!

How many heptatonic (seven note) scales allowing one augmented second, no chromatic clusters?
Spoke too soon. Just looked at some Jimmy Wyble etudes that are way over more head and they use a seven-note scale which is basically a diminished scale with a note deleted. The augmented second is not contained in a perfect fourth which makes it more out sounding.

didn't explain that well, didn't say that right, try again. Augmented second is not bracketed by two half steps. One of the thirds ends up being a perfect fourth!

One of my jazz school classmates used to say that he hated when people improve using the whole tone scale because it sounded like a cartoon character who just got bonked over the head.

*improv

There was a guitar player in this weird band in Austin back in the day who almost always played whole tone scales-his name was the same as one of the top sixties studio drummers- but I was too busy being creped out by the borderline offensive wardrobe of his bandmembers to notice.

My advisor advised me against writing with it (at least straightforwardly) because everyone has already heard Bartok and Debussy. Worked when Crimson did it, though.

Why would you not want to sound like a cartoon who just got bonked over the head??

A fair question.

For me it actually most evokes Monk, who does kinda sound like a bonked cartoon in the best way possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSoQ9Augp0Q

In the Mick Goodrick book he says something about the symmetric scales not having "handles."

The riff to Born on the Bayou is mixolydian, isn't it? Just a b7th within a major scale?

Yup. Sweet Home Alabama is the same chord progression just spaced differently. The C - G functions the same way in SHA that the D - A does in Born on the Bayou.

just spaced differently

Just a little.

When I-bVII-IV and V-IV-I are both common progressions, I don't think it's obvious that the progressions are functioning the same way in these two songs, given how fundamentally different the weighting and phrasing are. (As mentioned above, "Werewolves of London" is a V-IV-I song with a similar harmonic rhythm to SHA.)

I could argue that Werewolves of London is in D too. The only thing that keeps this from being obvious to me is that the vocal melody hovers around the G so much.

When you always have the D on a strong measure and the G on a weak measure (Werewolves, SHA) it's hard for me to hear it in G.

Think this one is almost done to death. May be time to move on to study the Andalusian cadence.

Meanwhile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4&feature=kp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy0urWBt5e8
"Tim. Help me out, Tim"

http://www.guitarplayer.com/miscellaneous/1139/under-investigation-the-soulful-guitarists-of-james-brown/23315

"Scalar Shift in Popular Music," by David Temperley featuring the Supermode and a cameo by our favorite chord progression: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.4/mto.11.17.4.temperley.html

Something to read over the weekend: http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/rock_corpus/2011_paper/declercq_temperley_2011.pdf

Full website for that: http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/rock_corpus/index.html

Maybe you should just read this guy's blog post about it first: http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2013/toward-a-better-music-theory/. Feel like I read it a few months ago, but not in the context of this thread.

One more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOzaVpgeHJg

Realize in the cold light of day that I was using Mixolydian in the very broad sense of "static elaboration of a seventh chord, often including blue notes and passing tones, especially the sharp nine but even sometimes the major seventh, as in the James Brown example" as opposed to the other meaning which apparently is "a piece of music which, upon inspection of the harmonic and melodic elements, turns out to use the scale tones of the Mixolydian mode."

NB to classical conservatory-trained musicians, Canadian or otherwise: "seventh chord" without any qualification is usually assumed to mean "dominant seventh" in many circles
/smiley /Wikipedia /smiley

Lol.

Temperley wrote a whole article about the cadential IV in rock: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.1/mto.11.17.1.temperley.html

His work is interesting. That Ethan Hein blog post and this one annoy the heck out of me unless I think of them as undergrad reflection papers, in which case I'd probably give him an A-.

Like Sponge Bob and Squidward fine, but that image grab was a missed opportunity to post Biz_Mozart.jpg.

I've got to point 2.4 in the "Scalar Shift" article and am not sure that Temperley has said anything very interesting yet. I have basically no jazz theory background but even I know that bVII can be a substitute for dominant harmony. His 'supermode' is basically the major scale + standard modal mixture.

B-b-but the name is so much catchier.

I'm burning out on this topic but last night I went to to library out got a copy of What to Listen for in Rock: A Stylistic Analysis, by Ken Stephenson, and the initial chapters I read on the subway this morning were pretty good.

Also, new screenname.

First chapter, "Phrase Rhythm" is a keeper.

Love to hang around and discuss modal cadences in the Renaissance and Rock, Common Practice and Post-Tonal strategies in Classical, but right now I've got to put my Jazz D-hat on.

When you come back, I'm interested to know what you like about the Stephenson book. That "Scalar Shift" article really made me start asking these questions again:

it's 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.

Like, the very recent phenomenon where classically trained musicians with PhDs in music theory seem to be writing about pop music for each other as often as they write about art music IS kind of curious.

(Still wearing the D-hat. Will answer later)

Will see if you can answer you in the morrow.

I'm afraid it is going to take me longer than I thought to answer your question and I am not even sure I am the one to do so.

Ha, I mean, you're probably the only person who can answer the question "what do you like about the book?" But yeah, it's totally all good. I'll keep an eye out.

Oh wait. I thought I was going to have to answer all your other questions:) It's going to take me a while to read that book, there's some stuff that seems interesting I'm not quite getting and don't have a lot of time to focus on it right now. I'll let you know if and when I get somewhere.

Oh, no, the rest of those questions are ones that I am trying to work out for myself.