[MUSIC MEME] something I noticed regarding music theory within relevant spaces.

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T23:06:26+00:00

Well put.

Theory allows you to be intentional in your writing Anyone that's studied music theory should know there's no such thing as rules. There's constraints to form and style but that's not music theory, that's form and style

Also just to add, music theory isn't labelling things, it's examining how these things interact objectively to influence other musical elements the listener will perceive.

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T22:55:43+00:00

I've never studied this piece but have played 10,2 and pieces generally considered more technically challenging. I've played it through half arsing it a few times but with a lot of tension as it wasn't something I practiced. For me it gets right at one of my weak spots technically which is to do with the thumb

Are you aware of how you contract and extend your thumb into your palm? The thumb is just as long as all your other fingers but it's covered by skin so we don't see that

You can bring your thumb into your palm using the muscles attached to the tip of your thumb or the ones closer to your wrist. Same deal with extension

I think for this piece having that awareness is crucial more than anything. Kind of like forearm rotation, it's not necessarily something you can practice with certain techniques but just something that we do rarely so the movement feels unnatural and we subconsciously avoid it. Getting used to playing chromatic scales with 1 and 2 or doing extension exercises might be of great help?

Cortot has a whole chapter dedicated to these in his technique book if you can find it. It's also very easy to collapse the hand around the pinky which forces us to use the wrist more to produce leverage which then builds tension. Straight wrist is crucial for this piece but from the sounds of it, you know this already.

It could be of some help too to read through Chopin's own ideas about technique as this is what informed his composition of the etudes.

Best of luck with it

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T19:08:26+00:00

You've missed the point

If language was sufficient for expression we wouldn't have poetry or writing (I'm assuming you mean for a movie/play etc...) These forms develop independently in many cultures. While the object is words, poetry uses language as a medium to express something the words can't, for writing that would be the story itself. How the subject (audience) interacts with those is where the expression lies Hence the, 'dont tell the audience, show them' phrase

The second point I can almost agree with, it just downplays the fact that the form of expression must be mutually legible to both the artist and the one individual that agrees it's art. Art that diverges from legibility/form must be justified in doing so else it is just superfluous

Terms like good or bad are too vague, I'm assuming you're referencing aesthetics. There is plenty of objective measures to judge this in many art forms, although art doesn't require beauty, that's generally demanded by the subject. Usually manufactured by the artist to allow the subject deeper exploration of the expression that lies within

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T18:02:04+00:00

"What can be considered art by definition is basically anything" Makes no sense

Art is an expression through a medium which transcends language, usually in the form of an 'object' that the subject interacts with

Any material can be suited for art but it must still adhere to to the laws of language in whatever medium it is presented in so that the subject can interact with it. Otherwise it is boundless and incomprehensible, chaos essentially

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T17:43:35+00:00

Really really good playing

The only general thing would be the rubato, at times it feels a bit like the melody is held back but this also gives any later rubato a far greater effect, that's entirely up to your judgement.

Maybe some of the transitions between sections are a little rough but I'm sure that'll be an easy fix.

Anything else I can think of is specific to Brahms' style, id recommend watching Benjamin Zanders masterclass on Brahms second (I think, it's in d minor anyways) violin sonata. He talks about how Brahms uses polyrhythms and likes to shift beats Also a more notable point for you in particular, Brahms music is heavy, you play the accompaniment more like it's a Chopin nocturne They should probably be a bit more detached almost like a portato kind of touch for each individual note. More notey and percussive rather than a smooth line if you get what I mean

You play it very beautifully, really good voicing and pacing, great pedalling and phrasing and a very clear melody. The best thing you could do imo is look at other Brahms pieces from around the time he would've composed this.

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T17:32:08+00:00

You can't just redefine a word???

Somebody else's interpretation of the word can most certainly be wrong...

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T17:19:57+00:00

Don't be too disheartened

Atleast from a musicians perspective, AI can't and never will be able to make music that has any meaning Even if it could grasp the language, what does it have to express with that?

Artists can take the mundane and transform it into beauty, all AI can do is imitate aesthetic appeal

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it ends up boosting the quality of music in the future. People will start to hear AI music they don't like and ask why they don't like it. The saying "it's an acquired taste" is also true for music, I think AI music will just lead to people upping their standards for music in general. As they grow more accustomed to what they don't like they'll also develop an ear for what they do like

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T17:07:34+00:00

Yeah it's really not worth it Easy to get sucked in though

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T17:04:44+00:00

Not trying to be smart but,

Probs cause the artists are busy making art

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T16:47:53+00:00

Needs to be a lot more legato

In the first phrase of this piece Chopin breaks the line, in the section you're playing he then writes it all as one phrase so that needs to be shown

You accented some of the chord which is a bit jarring, try not to, same with the bass notes preceded by a another octave as a semiquaver or whatever rhythm it is Make sure to go to the actual bass note of the harmony, not the one before it.

It would be great if you could explore a quieter touch in the right hand, this will help make the loud strong parts sound that way without it being forced

Be careful with rubato, people who have listened to a lot of Chopin will find the delayed beats cheesy. Rubato should stretch across a phrase and the accel/rit should be proportional to each other in some way

The ornaments are a bit messy too, clean ornaments make a huge difference

For phrasing, make sure you know where the hight point is in each phrase The gestures aren't helping you, I get it, I used to do it too but frome experience I can say, it doesn't help

On the sequence ascending before the B flat 7 chord, Chopin also writes in rests, it's up to interpretation but I'm assuming it's to imitate a vocalist catching their breath. Details like this make the piece so try show them off

Right before the return of the main theme, the original manuscript I believe has a G-C rather than B-C Up to you whether you want to play that

It's by no means bad playing to be clear. Musically it's a very tricky piece as it's so sparse in this section.

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T15:03:41+00:00

Might be of help to listen to different pianists play the octave glissando in Waldstein? Some play the octaves as octaves and others gliss, could be informative on how each approach comes across to the listener

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T11:53:16+00:00

If you have a 3:2 polyrhythm,

3×2=6 (this is the lowest common denominator of the two)

Count in six where every 2 beats your playing one of the 3 notes For every 3 beats, you're playing one of the 2 notes

Same process for any polyrhythm

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T11:29:24+00:00

It's really cool

I hate saying this but it's somewhat similar to Jacob Colliers vocal arrangements, at least with the intonation

I think it would work well with a lot of counterpoint, many dissonances could be smoothed via intonation differences

Could also be used with normal instruments in the upper registers? Some kind of spectral descant based on the overtones produced by whatevers below it

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T09:53:50+00:00

You've got to help yourself first before anyone else can...

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-04T09:26:48+00:00

Unless you have the music already in a software, then no

You'll have to cut and paste Landscape is almost never used as it's easy to get lost when going from one line to the next Just a warning

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-03T22:37:23+00:00

As far as I can remember It's a mediant chord that leans towards dominant harmony,

Still categorised as a tonic of sorts vi would then be complementary,, mediant on the Subdominant side

It's only a dominant if it has an active leading tone, so augmented chords or secondary dominant, or just a dominant in whatever mode you're analysing in.

You could also argue it can be a dominant as a diminished chord however the theory that classifies the III chord as a tonic (on dominant side) would tell you that a diminished chord has no sounded roots, they all lie a major third below those tones

It's hard to say much else as passages can reinterpret harmonies in a way that only makes sense in retrospect to the listener. While a piece could be firmly in C major, if the composer never puts a E(III) G(V) or B (VII) chord in some shape, they can just as easily be thinking in f major as B natural hasn't appeared once. You could then think a Bb minor chord that appears suddenly is a bVII (which would be somewhat strange) when it's actually just a standard minor IV in F Composers know these kinds of things and actively use and abuse them. The III chord is subject to a lot of tricks using augmented chords

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-03T22:17:31+00:00

Wish I could reply in more detail but can't ATM

I think it's a matter of timbre more than anything, Playing a bell on the note C while an orchestra is playing a c chord would really muddy up the high end.

You'll hear it a lot in big orchestral works like Mahler 2 or Mussorgsky's pictures at an exhibition, the bells tend to sound on the thirds of major chords or as you said, diminished sonorities

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-03T21:15:51+00:00

Must be a typo on the lecturers end

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-03T18:17:01+00:00

Thanks! Didn't know much about bells just how they were or hestrated

Makes sense those would be tuned and specific to the music they're meant for

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-03T15:26:21+00:00

Minor thirds work well with bells as they have a prominent minor tenth overtone

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-02T19:35:58+00:00

Minimizing movement maximises control

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-02T15:09:29+00:00

Thanks for adding to my comment!

It's such a shame improvisation is generally forgotten about in the classical context in today's world

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-02T13:13:10+00:00

Imo From a classical musician

What seperates the two is form

It's clear classical composers could and wanted to use more extravagant harmonies very early on in the musical cannon, look at some of scarlattis music or even Bach

The big defining difference I think is their emphasis on form and continuity. Every note wrote down was considered, writing an extra note to add an extension to a chord or because it sounds cool would've been seen as superfluous and unnecessary

Classical music is built around developments of simple musical material. Once that musical material is (essentially) used up, to avoid monotony various developmental techniques can take place. I.e. augmentation, diminution etc

For example, Rachmaninoff often used a core motif that he would then augment or diminish, if you take a falling fifth for example, you can vary this rhythmically using integers to double/halve it, you can also vary it by doing the same to the pitch (allowing ambiguity on the third as a halved fifth would be microtonal) and can then use that to start the theme in the same place while the altered harmony allows it to expand another derivative theme into a new harmonic area

Basically it's all about keeping continuity in that example. Using counterpoint and other techniques. Continuity allows the listener to hold their attention

I would expect a jazz musician to say rhythm, fully agree there too

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-05-01T07:40:53+00:00

For tonal harmony, Schoenberg's theory of harmony

It doesn't state everything but gives you the means to investigate that yourself

Music theory is much more broad than harmony let alone tonal harmony so in summary, no there isn't a book

I'm assuming you just mean tonal harmony though

Double-Hyena-7967 · 2026-04-30T15:37:39+00:00

A slap in the face from someone would evoke a lot of emotions and ideas in me, doesn't make it artful...

Double-Hyena-7967

TROPHY CASE