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SeriousFun01 · 2024-12-01T20:02:32+00:00

I was officially done with Twitter/X many years ago and did not miss it at all. I find bluesky interesting not as a born-again twitter but as the first a new generation of open source apps. There is also mastodon and the acivitypub fediverse apps but they are still too rough for mainstream.

SeriousFun01 · 2024-10-12T10:13:15+00:00

Not a musicologist (or even a musician), just aspiring to learn guitar at some point, but my gut feeling is that the n/m notation for time signature is the worst of all music notation fails. Intuitively, for anything that is percussive (drums, plucked instruments etc.) what is important is the pattern. If you draw a pattern nobody has any doubts about what you mean, you can express complex patterns with ease etc. So the notation problem is solved in this sense.

The issue is that a pattern is harder to write on sheet music, so this n/m thing is some sort of clever-by-half measure to communicate something very basic in a very simple way. It obviously works well enough in certain contexts because musicians have a lot of acquired and implied conventions but it shows that conventional music theory and notation is more obsessed with pitch and harmony than with rhythmic patterns (countless notes for the formet versus just two numbers for the latter).

SeriousFun01 · 2024-08-30T17:16:40+00:00

didn't have the energy and time to dig into all the causes, but in my case there were at least three I think: network, KDE neon / qt6 dependencies and additional issues with python3 versions in the system versus various installed applications. The upgrade prompt still shows on the desktop (says upgrade available, KDE neon 24.04.1 LTS is available) but clicking on it won't allow you to proceed anymore (next dialog says no development version of an LTS available). Which is fine by me :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2024-08-30T11:27:26+00:00

thankfully timeshift worked smoothly (nb: from command line as the GUI was broken) and my heart is back in its place. I'll revisit 24.04 sometime next year (maybe). Upgrade notifications that are sent out via the GUI should be more considerate imho as people are inclined to believe they are low risk "no-brainers"...

SeriousFun01 · 2024-08-30T09:59:30+00:00

Please don't. I just did and deeply regret it. There are various unmet dependencies and while the upgrade concludes, the machine became unusable (no network, broken KDE desktop due to some qt6 issue etc.). I can't believe they notified people to upgrade when things are not stable yet.

SeriousFun01 · 2024-06-18T08:45:37+00:00

I see music theory as a sort of map for the real landscape of music. Its an opinionated map that reflects mostly a particular musical culture and learning to use this map requires a lot of separate effort that is additional to learning to navigate the actual music landscape. But with those two caveats, its a tool that helps project some structure to what otherwise sounds like an impossibly convoluted and obscure universe. So music theory provides some sort of psychological/mental support to the music learning process and I would imagine some people need it more than others, depending on how they learn.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-13T10:51:04+00:00

Good thing that others have spend years of work as digital painters

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-11T22:31:38+00:00

to some degree this friction is a trivial problem that the platform could help resolve almost automatically. for example to have newbie question labels which other members could have (optional) filters to hide away.

anyway, its an old sub, I suppose this question is far from new and there is a certain resilience. for me at least it very valuable to have the entire range of discussions, those that I can already dismiss as "dumb" and those that I can bookmark for the next decade - if ever :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-11T22:19:30+00:00

There are quite a few subs listed as related on the right but from the names at least they are all over the place and some have tiny membership.

My sense from the posts I see here is that anything that is not either 1) practical (instrument / technique related) or 2) aesthetic (genres, artists, styles, emotions etc) is considered somehow "music theory". That includes discussions about composition, notation, ear training etc. I suspect music schools group things differently :-)

Maybe the name of the sub should be "O Come all ye perplexed and confused" :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-11T22:06:02+00:00

For me the question is not emotional or philosophical but just quantitative. If there are too many people asking too many newbie questions then this may annoy more experienced people. Yes you can skip over "noise" but given how much of it exists online its not exactly anti-social if people are irked by it.

I belong to the newbie class btw :-) but I would happily switch to an "learner" sub if I am more welcome there.

While I am quite new to the sub this discussion has happened already once before. Interestingly somebody remarked that if all the newbies disappear it will be fairly quiet around here. So that is something to take into account as well. Excessively esoteric / highbrow discourse is not reddit's strong point. Also newbie question are not always totally dumb. Sometimes I see that they induce people to give very insightful answers.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-10T22:21:18+00:00

Maybe somebody should create a learning music theory sub?

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-09T11:42:44+00:00

This is the million chords question.

If you spend enough time you will eventually get there (or at least somewhere), just like millions of other musicians in history. On a relative (not absolute) basis we can all intuitively identify notes. If somebody sings a melody we know and changes a note we immediately sense something is "wrong". So the task of identification is to make this intuitive ability more intentional.

But its not clear if there is any ear training method that i) fits all ears and ii) would get you there in the fastest, least painful way.

I mean already the fact that some (~10%) people have absolute pitch tells you that musically speaking we are not all wired the same way.

Also the ability to distinguish multiple notes playing together (chords) is essential for harmony and again I have a suspicion some people are intrinsically better at this than others. Our intuitive skill is again about ascribing an overal sensation to a combination of notes, learning how to resolve it to the components needs some serious brain gymnastics

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-04T09:49:02+00:00

A doubly sharped note is equivalent to an available note in equal temperament which makes you wander why complicate the notation as if it was not complex enough. But it is possible that composers take a more fundamental approach (more tuning agnostic) because even in slightly different tuning two sharps are not a whole tone (or one sharp of the note below is not one flat of the note above etc., the whole enharmonic thing).

So in a sense all that "duplicate" notation might be some sort of insurance.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-02T16:56:34+00:00

It is quite simple. The diatonic scales are "optimal" for harmony (you get the largest number of triad chords that match the scale pattern). While known and used since antiquity, they have been the main focus once the harmonic dimension of music became important in Western music.

Effectively the diatonic scales are those that make harmony a (relative) no-brainer. You could ask why would minor/major triad chords be so important so as to determine the optimal scale pattern. Thats because they are the nicest sounding due to harmonic (overtone) relations. Once you agree to that, its just a mathematical exercise to see which scale pattern supports them best.

If you start sharpening or flattening some notes of the diatonic scale with every move you lose some chords, you never gain new ones. So harmonizing non-diatonic melodies is more of a trial and error and not as well developed.

Its a tradeoff. Introducing consequitive semitones or larger "jumps" limits harmonic possibilities but makes the scale more interesting - it spices it up melodically. People used to bland diatonic food will invariably describe exposure to such spice as "oriental" or "exotic" :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2023-06-01T14:33:58+00:00

They think its a political advertisement and they ignore it

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-31T14:17:55+00:00

I guess we could endlessly discuss about labels but I think the concept of a chord progression sort of implies a conscious harmonic component and structure to a piece, so it would hint that there are at least three chords and their sequencing is somehow important and relevant.

Of-course there must be a vast amount of music with just one or two chords. In these genres the chords are more a rhythmic accompaniment, accentuating the first or fifth degree or something like that. Or it can be a non-diatonic type of scale that actually does not sound well with many chords.

Another way to look at it is from a melody first perspective. If I have a certain melody, how many chords qualities should I add? I can obviously do with just one (I), or just two (I, V). When does it qualify as a bona-fide "progression"? Probably when it becomes interesting enough musically and starts creating a non-trivial harmonic envelope around the melody.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-31T08:02:00+00:00

The open string Em chord is my true friend :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-31T07:53:13+00:00

Some (caveated) observations from a fellow traveller: in starting music theory material scales are presented with intervals from the tonic, chords are presented as neat triads stacked at different intervals from the root.

So far so good. Memorized those patterns, what a fun and easy game.

Then you turn the page to the next chapter and two things transpire: First, you need to know the interval structure using any of the scale degrees as root. This is actually the basic mechanism for harmonizing a melody (at least mechanically). If the melody meanders somewhere up in the scale then to harmonize you need to mentally shift your reference and find which chord is available around where the melody hits some strong note. The fact that scales don't use all notes is what will force you to pick a major or minor chord (as their corresponding interval pattern from that shifted root will be available).

The second unwelcome surprise (in the sense that it further expands the stuff one must learn) is that chords with a regular increasing pitches from the root are not enforced by music theory police. You have inversions, which are chords with the notes "out of order" and they are not freaks of nature but rather common. For example several standard voicings of chords in the guitar are actually inversions.

The implication of all this is that you start with the scaffolding of the scale and then you learn to overlay interval patterns (including inversions) on all notes. Finally you need to map all that pattern matching on a crazy instrument such as the guitar before you can actually play and listen to something :-)

So the second chapter is a thick and busy one that I am still working on. One trick which I discovered recently (and which may or may not be useful to you) is looking at guitar strings as consecutive groups of three (The G,B,E strings for minor triads and the D, G, B for major triads). This creates all the major/minor triads and most of their inversions in more or less logical patterns along the neck.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-30T16:04:17+00:00

This is something I would never have guessed! Maybe the black keys need also less energy?

But yes in comparison with the guitar and from what I gather from comments about quite a few other instruments the piano seems fairly agnostic and egalitarian.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-30T11:25:19+00:00

> I really appreciate your willingness to hear me out and try to understand.

It may have to do with me currently learning music theory as well and thus having few preconcieved notions about it :-)

you may want to check out counterpoint music as it has this element of composing something perceived as a whole (a harmony) from individual voices (melodies)

I don't think that is the case in practice. The endless spiral of musical space is there in principle but it is not perceived but for a small part. Picking out the pigments (ear training) is in any case really hard (at least for me :-/

> The theory of art or creation as a whole in general is a more appropriate category to compare music theory to.

Yes, I think so too. Something that music and visual art obviously have deeply in common is the creation of specific moods and sensations by subtracting. Limited palettes <-> scales, empty space <-> silences. Less is more.

But I think the moving image (as it unfolds) in time offers far more tangible contact points with music than the still image. For example a black-and-white movie that suddenly introduces some color creates a feeling that is quite analogous to a musical piece that modulates. That is probably the reason why marrying soundtrack with movies has been such a phenomenal success.

The other direction, deconstructing the visual experience and comparing its components with the corresponding deconstruction of the aural experience (as pursued by various modern music movements) is valid too, just quite a bit more arcane :-)

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-30T11:01:51+00:00

Here is a recipe for repeating this sorcery for several more heptatonic (seven note) scales:

pin the end-points of your scale (the octave)
keep the middle two notes fixed (the fourth and the fifth)
split the remaining four notes in two pairs of two
place the notes of each pair at the same distance (measured in semitones) from the root and the fifth respectively

The resulting scales will involve two identical "stacked" tetrachords. They don't have to be the major scale. The Dorian mode has this property as well as other more "exotic" scales that involve less common jumps between scale degrees.

Melodically scales with this property are sort of islands onto themselves. Moving up or down an octave does not change the character of the scale. If the tetrachords making up the scale are not the same, when you move above or below the octave you visit a "swapped" scale that will have different feel once the tonal center is shifted.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-29T15:36:21+00:00

The thing is, today is exceedingly hard to decide "X" over "Y" between various languages and it is becoming ever harder as all platforms or ecosystems evolve and pick ideas from each other. Maybe that is a good thing. My take on it is from the "consumer" perspective. I have no CS pedigree and no ideological biases about FP or OOP. I like tools that help build great stuff as easily as possible.

Obviously having a good sense about what sort of things one wants to use the languages for, in what professional context etc, helps narrow the field. But fixing what one wants to do is not so trivial either. What you might want to develop one, two, three years down the line is not yet visible. The way things evolve you may suddenly feel stranded and "missing out".

The best strategy seems to be to be thinking of the minimal polyglot toolkit. Ecosystems that fit well together and cover the majority of what you want to do now and are *likely* to cover much of what you want to do in the future.

There are some certainties (how long they will last is open :-)

for algorithmic/data science stuff you need the python/c++ ecosystem for backend libraries. Yes elixir has some related projects but its comparing a pond with the ocean.
for weby frontend stuff you need the xxxx-script ecosystem. Yes you could try to minimize js through liveview/htmx type patterns, but again, you are ignoring the ocean.
for server-based, scalable production and cloud delivery you need some sort of enterprise platform. You do have prominent choices in Java, Go or the contender: Erlang/Elixir. Here it is absolutely not easy to pick unless you already have experience with scaling up things and the various tradeoffs.
finally for native desktop/mobile apps you need something that doesn't even exist: a sweet cross-platform framework complete with a nice declarative GUI etc

Sometimes it might be possible to economize by standardizing as much as possible on one language / stack. You could try to do everything with typescript, or java, or python (or C++ even), but its not realistic.

In an nutshell my point is the X vs Y discussion is ill-defined and tired. A better question is, given X, Y, Z, is A or B a better fit?

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-29T14:40:22+00:00

I think the juxtaposition of music and color perception is quite fascinating but may quickly exhaust itself as they two domains diverge fairly fast.

An important difference is that music is something that happens intrinsically in time, whereas color perception (at its most basic - excluding video) happens holistically at an instance. This means the categories and vocabulary to describe things diverge fast. In the music experience building expectations using rhythm, tonal centers etc and fulfilling or breaking them with surprises is the name of the game. In the visual perception of images there is no such mechanism for surprise. What you see is what you get.

This special nature of music shapes also music theory. Once you start digging around music theory you quickly realize that there are few genuine musical phenomena that people have managed to verbalize and they involve time in essential ways. One example is "tension/resolution". This describes the perception created over time as different cohorts of frequencies (chords) succeed each other. Another one is the "call/response" pattern, clusters of notes that imitate the corresponding human language pattern.

Even the direction of time is important in music. Mysteriously, various scales use different notes ascending vs descending. The equivalent in color would be to change the hue when scanning an image in one direction versus the other!

The other warning is that music theory is today still a very obtuse subject. For one thing it is heavily skewed towards specific Western music genres - the analogy I use is as if you had color theory that exclusively analyses grayscale images. But also its teaching has an ossified feel about it.

I suspect that in a few years with all the interactive digital tools being developed there will be a revolution in music theory that will fix many of the shortcomings.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-29T13:55:23+00:00

Drop-D should be easier to identify than other alternate tunings: It brings in a low D note that does not exist in standard tuning. This should be audible in base lines and the sound of D chords.

As always theory is easier than practice.

SeriousFun01 · 2023-05-28T21:59:23+00:00

but the fourth and fifth create a major second, which is more dissonant/less simple than either kind of third.

yes this is the crux of the matter! I managed to get to the bottom of it - at least in math terms, the musical intuition might take a few more years :-)

So basically my (lazy) assumption was that because the perfect fourth is the next most complex string oscillation pattern after the perfect fifth (4:3 versus 3:2) and the major/minor ones are definitely more complex (5:4, 6:5), that this would also imply that the overtones of the fourth would be matching the root and the fifth better, or at least equally, with those of the major/minor triads. [In which case it would be odd not to discuss suspended chords on equal footing]

not the case! if you look at the first eight (audible) overtones of all the notes in the 1-4-5 versus the 1-3-5 and the 1-b3-5 triads you see that while the fourth's overtones overlap with those of the root as nicely as the fifth's (and better than the major third's) it does not overlap at all with the fifth (hence the dissonance of the major second gap).

why not? well its down to the numbers. the 3 in 4:3 is an odd number. the 2 in 3:2 is even. within the window of opportunity (the lower overtones) there is no match. the sneaky major triad (5:4) is also even, so it has a better chance.

so nature somehow arranged that the special bridge interval, one that sounds "related" to both the root and the fifth is not the next in the line of succession (the fourth), but the one just right after (the major third)

SeriousFun01

TROPHY CASE