Rolling Music Theory Thread

I’m a rank amateur and a non-music maker but I do wonder what you knowledgeable folks make of this piece:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/08/the-musicological-zest-of-switched-on-pop

@ Jordan, considering the work re: Allami's adjustments to tuning, and that there are already existing workarounds (you can just load up a preprogrammed scale, ne?), and my own stumbling blocks in music creation, it just occurred to me that rebuilding the way DAWs address "time" would be (in my view) a good contribution to serving Allami's thesis. "Hwwambo" is far more complicated, in my view, than you've described! Already, dealing with compound time (the track is in 6/8 or 3/4, depending if you're prioritizing the hook or the beat) makes swing functions weird and nigh-unusable...

but @ esby, if these methods exist already and I just haven't read the manual, then... I'm gonna read the manual :)

That's probably true re: the swing function getting confused. But still, if I want to make a beat like that I would start by programming most of those parts as 1/4 note triplets over a 4/4 grid, turn off quantize/snap to grid, and then slide the notes around until it felt right. Personally I don't know that I'd ever trust a DAW with that because I know what I want to hear and I'm used to these types of rhythms, but sure, it would be great if it was natively supported!

I wonder how that track was actually produced...my guess is that he based it on a sampled hand drum loop, and manually played/triggered the rest of the samples and synths over that? But it could have been sliding one-shot samples and midi notes around with a mouse (how I would do it), who knows.

Yeah I would guess that's the case! I know it was made in FL that's all I know

What did you think, pom? I've never listened to Switched on Pop, in part because I'm not into podcasts and would rather read a transcript every time. I really hated their Vox piece about Beethoven but I gather from the Ross piece that the actual podcast was better and more nuanced? I tried to follow Asaf Peres's Top 40 Theory for a little while but I just don't share his passion for contemporary chart pop and don't really have a professional reason to keep up anymore. (He at least actually works with songwriters and producers from what I understand.) I do appreciate really deep dives like the things that MTO publishes and it's fun and sometimes helpful to break down these things once in a while e.g. on here, among other repertoire.

Yeah, I'm with you on all that. These podcasts have much to teach me due to my lack of musical training, but I just can't bring myself to sink even an extra second into contemporary chart pop.

*washes hands*

Haha. Pom, are you just looking for some music appreciation/analytical listening material? There must be lots out there on classical and progressive or heavy rock, surely? Have you read John Covach?

I can't read sheet music so if Covach is layman-friendly, I'd be interested in checking out his writings, sure.

(Sorry for shitting up this thread btw. I am a dreamer of dreams but not a music-maker.)

I'll look for things.

Is something like this layman-friendly?: http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/ct.shtml

I'd say so, yeah (it helps that I owned a guitar when I was a teenager). Thanks!

Pollack analysed every Beatles song that way.

This is one of my favourite papers. I think it's pretty readable without needing to read notation, although being able to read rhythms would help: https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.09.15.5/mto.09.15.5.adams.html . MTO provides audio and video examples with the articles, which also gives you some of what the podcasts can provide.

I do get what's going on when there are audio samples. Tbh I could probably learn to read notation if I set my mind to it, and I've been meaning to for ages, it's just very time-consuming. But I'll get there soon enough.

https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.3/mto.11.17.3.osborn.html ?

Random thing I have always wondered:

How would you describe the meter of Steve Howe's guitar solo section at 4:46? It seems to shift in a way that I can't quite get a handle on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUudna1Xuw

Video not available here. Which piece is it?

It's the part where the band drops out and he plays that open string e blues lick that's slightly offset and then the band comes in intermittently with those slide shots.

In which song?

Oh sorry, Yours is No Disgrace by Yes.

Is this the one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx_GIji9EGw

Huh, it sounds to me like it's in essentially 4/4, but they're messing around with different groupings within that? Like for the three bars of solo guitar, I hear it as a 9 beat phrase + an 8 beat phrase + a 7 beat phrase (which of course comes out even if you count straight through). Then there are those 8 beat phrases where the slide-up hits are on the first two 1/4 notes, followed by 6 beats of guitar. This weirded me out at first because the slides make it sound like a pick-up, but I think it's better to consider them starting on a downbeat. Then one 4/4 bar of transition into the next section.

That sounds right to me. Tricky!

Yeah, this song just feels like they have 5/4 bars thrown in at their leisure to transition from section to section... the two note rising added upbeat into 4:32... the first bar of the guitar solo at 4:46... another added beat at 4:58.

Isn't it a little bit early to be getting this Yessed out

I have the Yes songbook published in 1981... but none of these sections of the song are included!
The descriptions given here seem right to me, though. But who knows how they would have actually conceived the bar lines, especially before Wakeman was around to give them the "academic" perspective.

I mean, they might have thought of 9 + 8 + 7 as six syncopated bars of 4.

Jordan, sund4r and FGTI are the people I would most expect to be able to answer this, and the fact that even you three don't think there's an obvious/clear way to describe it makes me feel a little better.

One thing that really throws me off too is that when it goes into the very next part in D, they have similar "slide hits" but the slides start on the 1 of the second bar of each two bar phrase, whereas they don't seem to be starting on the "1" during the E guitar part.

Personally I do think they start on the 1 during the first part, partly informed by that next section. But if I've learned one thing it's that even people in the same band might hear things differently, and as long as they're not improvising (or as long their interpretation still enables them to play together) it's fine.

The most extreme example was a bass player who started a song, and heard his part as starting on the 1, whereas the rest of the band heard his notes as a pickup. So he heard the beat as this weird syncopated thing rather than the snare on the 2 & 4, but it all worked out!

I mean, they might have thought of 9 + 8 + 7 as six syncopated bars of 4.

This is p much the same thing tbh, as long as they're hearing the accents in the same place.

That's my point, it sounds the same and it was unlikely to have been written down either way.

iiuc you can already do exactly this in logic if you pick a region and go to 'make groove template' in the quantize dropdown, it will create a quantization preset based on the exact timing fluctuations of whatever midi you give it.

― exist in theory (esby), Monday, March 1, 2021 3:55 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, you just click edit > decolonize software

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epqYft12nV4

I've never heard this version of the song before, or heard this key change. I was talking in the Fav. Chord Change thread about a very similar modulation - this is C minor with an A bass to C♭ major.

The key change is down to Rachmaninoff not Eric Carmen, right?

Think it is down to Celine's producer or arranger if I heard correctly.

David Foster's arrangement, if I understand that video correctly.

Classic producer's trick of pushing the key a bit higher to make the singer work and add emotional impact by having the audience hear a bit of strain, although often done over the whole song and not just a key change. Believe HDH did this with Levi Stubbs, for example.

take away chord scales from jazz education and replace them with repertoire https://t.co/irMEj1yCGY

— Ethan Iverson (@ethan_iverson) August 23, 2021

^thoughts?

Agree? Mostly.

CST kind of like a cheat sheet approach. At least one younger guy who is doing pretty well for himself now once refused to answer my question in that line and said “I don’t like to think of music that way.”

I mean I have used that cheat sheet but I don’t feel good about it, as Jon Stewart said about a certain crossword, although that has since upped its game.

Wonder how many will participate in this discussion?

Wait, I see we almost talked about the same thing two yrs ago here, also bc of Iverson.

Ha, was it the thing he wrote about Jeff Goldblum and the Dorian Mode?

Yeah, I think you linked it.

I really dislike grandstanding statements like these... it tries to codify something that cannot be so easily codified. Learning jazz theory is useful to those who have facility for it and find an application for it in their practice. Others may not find they have a facility for it, and may question the validity of it being taught. Others may have a facility for it, but not find an application for it, and may question the validity of it being taught. I have met too many spectacular musicians who process musical information in jazz theory terms, and generate amazing music while applying jazz theory concepts to say that it is "less important" or "more important" than learning repertoire.

When presented with arguments like these, or the "Western music theory is racist" one from a few months back, my mind tends to get all bifurcated. Of course I agree. Of course I also disagree. I feel like I could provide a wealth of points and counterpoints that prove and disprove either side of such an argument. In my subconscious, though, there's another voice that is screaming: why are we making grandstanding statements like these? Why have I made similar statements, myself, in the past? I feel as if these statements express far more about the individual who is making them, and their private points of concern, and psychological projection, and their own personal frustrations, than they actually do about larger truths about music education and/or music appreciation

I don’t have time to scroll up right now, but I’m sure whatever I type now will be similar to what I typed then. Like a few hours ago I heard “Hit the Road Jack” and thought “I wonder if I should mention The Andalusian Cadence?” but I figured we already must have done it.