Rolling Music Theory Thread

(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.

Finally figured that out this evening:)

Instead of trying to give you a comprehensive review of that book maybe I will drop in now and then with a short post about what I think he is trying to get at at certain points.

Going to have to return that book to the library since someone else -a reader of this thread? - has requested it, so I have to see how far I can get and give you some idea about what's going on.

I guess just about forty days and forty nights have passed since the last big thread revival.

So what did I get out of that Ken Stephenson book, what I was able to read of it?

The big takeaway is that in the music under discussion there is not one clear cut resolution point- the rhythm, the harmonic cadence and the melody may not all resolve on the last bar of a phrase but instead, point to the next phrase. It is a kind of perpetual motion machine, always pulling itself forward. This is why, according to Stephenson, the fadeout is such a popular ending, there is no natural place to end. In a live setting, of course, the band may have to choose a chord and end on it.

By the same token he says that using the cadence to determine the key is like putting the cart before the horse. Instead, he starts by citing the following remark by David Butler: "Any tone will suffice as a perceptual anchor - a tonal center - until a better candidate defeats it." To determine the key, one should listen to the opening triad, and see if it consistently appears at the beginning of phrases, if it is, you are probably done. Also one should listen for a perfect fourth or fifth repeating in the melody. If this occurs these, notes are probably the root and fifth of the tonic chord.