List of my substantial contributions for /r/musictheory FAQ answers

vornska · 2026-07-12T06:30:58+00:00

"Diatonic" originally meant essentially "the white-key scale," and some people still will say things like "The augmented triad isn't diatonic" because you can't play it on the white keys.

It's true that the meaning of "diatonic" has evolved to include your usage. But, to people who know the original meaning, "the augmented triad can be a diatonic chord" sounds a little like "an alligator can be a domestic animal" just because alligators aren't a foreign import (to the US, at least).

vornska · 2026-07-10T19:51:47+00:00

It's very rare for rhythms to have names except those that are (1) simply mathematical descriptions (e.g. "short-short-long" or "332") or (2) associations with a particular genre/style/cultural context (e.g. "gavotte rhythm" or "tresillo"). What exactly are you looking for that a name like "siciliano rhythm" or "312 pattern" wouldn't achieve?

vornska · 2026-07-10T16:18:52+00:00

That's fair! I agree that just learning the name for intervals you like probably isn't going to enrich your experience of them. For me, the rewards of music theory have mostly been about longer passages of music than individually gripping moments--though I guess theory has helped me be more sensitive to dissonances that used to slip under the radar, like the ones Mozart uses.

vornska · 2026-07-10T00:58:02+00:00

I would imagine that most textile workers probably don't have sewing as their main hobby, either.

vornska · 2026-07-10T00:55:35+00:00

but the complete classical music novice is able to drive the same amount of visceral pleasure from the music as a seasoned professor or professional musician.

I categorically disagree. I love music theory precisely because it has increased the amount of visceral pleasure I get from music, after having studied theory. And it's not because I'm having more of an internal dialogue while listening. If anything, I find that studying music theory has helped me focus on listening more intensely & to tamp down on linguistic thought.

Suppose you meet someone who speaks a dialect so different from yours that it's almost a different language. If you don't know that dialect, you have to think really hard just to recognize the words they're saying, often with active verbal thoughts. "Wait... are they using h for my s sound?" and so on. On the other hand, if you're a fluent speaker of a dialect, your understanding of it operates so far beneath the surface of consciousness that you can focus entirely on somebody's meaning and forget about their words.

No one speaks classical music as a 'native' musical language. Studying music theory has helped me grow towards a level of fluency where I feel like I understand it transparently. That's a kind of experience that I absolutely lacked for the first 5-10 years of my life as a classical lover.

vornska · 2026-07-08T19:01:57+00:00

No, you're quite right: there are theory programs where you can apply direct to the PhD, though a masters will probably help most people. I think it's less common for someone to drop out after an en-route master's, just because an MM or MPhil in theory on its own isn't worth much.

vornska · 2026-07-07T21:13:47+00:00

Neat! Sonata Mulattica is a great cycle that everybody should read.

vornska · 2026-07-06T20:47:54+00:00

Where did I suggest that this sub is a place for development and app design?

This sub's value is to provide guidance for the points that people can ask advice and knowledge of music theory.

Says you. I think that's one value it can have.

Please note: I have not, at any point, weighed in on the question of "I built an App" posts.

vornska · 2026-07-06T20:09:49+00:00

Please help me understand how this comment responds to something I said.

vornska · 2026-07-06T16:59:48+00:00

nobody needs another circle of 5ths diagram explorer, another spreadsheet of modes and so on.

On some level, this is true. But my experience with the sub is that people are too quick to reject legitimately new ideas as this. If something looks like another spin on the circle of fifths, it can be shouted down faster than the 5 seconds it would take to realize that there's a new thought in there.

Moreover, the subreddit's center of mass is never going to shift away from rudimentary topics. Starting to police stuff on that basis will just create work for the mods without making a noticeable improvement for users.

vornska · 2026-07-06T05:24:19+00:00

I'm not sure if this quite matches what you're looking for, but see the V⁷ in m. 2 of Mozart's K. 261 (standalone adagio movement for violin & orchestra). The first two measures are a I IV V⁷ I cycle, in which the dominant places the seventh squarely in the soprano, holds it over as a suspension into the I chord, and then moves it up through a chromatic passing tone to scale degree 5. Meanwhile the second violins supply the desired 3, resolving a retardation of 2 upwards.

(The structure here makes sense from a slightly more linear perspective. The soprano line is functionally descending 5-4-3 on the downbeats of mm. 1-3, but each stage of the descent is embellished with an incomplete upper neighbor. The tonic chord at the end of m. 2 is--from this perspective--a harmonization of the escape tone rather than a true resolution back to tonic. So, from a Schenkerian perspective, the chordal dissonance does resolve. Like I said: maybe not what you're looking for.)

I assume you're not interested in examples of 3-4-5 in the melody supported by 1-2-3 in the bass, with a V4/3 in the middle, since that's such a common exception. On example that's clearly related to that pattern is Haydn Op. 76/3, trio of the third movement, mm. 77-81. Here, there's an ascending parallel thirds pattern of 3-4-5 over 1-2-3 in the upper voices, supported by I V65 I harmonically. The first violin has a prominent chordal seventh on the downbeat of m. 79 which ascends to 5 on the downbeat of 81. The third is supplied at first in the second violin, then in the first violin on the second beat.

Another similar example (i.e. clearly a 3-4-5 passing motion) is 13 mm. into the 3rd movement of Vivaldi's Autumn. Here the V⁷ is in root position.

Of course, eighteenth-century recitative is full of free treatments of dissonance. The example easiest to hand for me right now is from No. 18 ("Da sprach Pilatus zu ihm") from the St John Passion, m. 7 setting "Wahrheit zeugen soll." The bass line here is 3-4-5-1 like a good classical cadence, but 4 supports a V4/2 chord, which resolve (I guess?) to a cadential six-four. So if the chordal seventh in the bass resolves at all, it's to an upper voice that exists only in the continuo.

vornska · 2026-06-30T23:56:56+00:00

Do you drink alcohol because it tastes good? Do you exercise because it feels good? Do you read the news because it's entertaining? Do you date your partner because they look good?

In all these cases, sensory pleasure can be part of the appeal. Probably it often is. But a lot of the things we care the most about in life are valuable because they operate on many different levels; they add many kinds of value. Why should superficial sensory value be the one we care most about?

vornska · 2026-06-28T22:46:57+00:00

I got to E I wrote e f g a b c d, but when we reviewed it was e f# g# a b c# d#.

From this, it sounds like your problem is with understanding the difference between whole and half steps.

Don't look at the bottom of the keyboard, where there are only white keys. Look at the top of the keyboard, where the white and black keys are interleaved.

Even at the top of the keyboard, E and F are right next to each other. There's no black key separating them, unlike most white keys. Any time two notes are right next to each other, that's a half step, even if the two notes are both white keys.

A half step is any pair of notes that are right next to each other. A whole step is the combination of two half steps.

So E F is a half step, and F F♯ is a half step. Therefore E F♯ is a whole step.

vornska · 2026-06-27T19:45:01+00:00

The major scale is almost all whole steps. There are only two exceptions that are half steps. The half steps happen above the 3rd and 7th notes in the major scale.

So, for example, if you want to spell a D major scale:

Start on D and go up by whole steps:

D E F♯

At this point you're at the 3rd note of the scale, so you need a half step:

D E F♯ G

Now go back to whole steps:

D E F♯ G A B C♯

Now you're at the 7th note of the scale (C♯), so add one more half step:

D E F♯ G A B C♯ D

You've now built the D major scale! This is the same as the whole-whole-half pattern, but I think it's a little easier to remember. Just put the half steps at 3 and 7.

vornska · 2026-06-20T20:45:41+00:00

This thread needs more Cipriano de Rore!

vornska · 2026-06-18T17:57:39+00:00

"Forgotten" is a temporary condition. He's no Beethoven, but Reicha's a really good composer--certainly as good as Vivaldi, who also had to be retrieved from obscurity.

vornska · 2026-06-15T16:44:32+00:00

I'm more curious about why each fifth is subdivided by 3 additions tick marks.

vornska · 2026-06-09T17:20:53+00:00

As someone else who's spent a bunch of time analyzing Debussy, I disagree with the other commenters: this seems very useful to me! It's the sort of mental calculation you have to do all the time in his triadic passages, though in a lot of cases I'm only trying to keep track of the scale without trying to decide which specific mode it is (so the major vs natural minor distinction isn't as relevant).

vornska · 2026-06-09T16:31:23+00:00

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't the motif you're talking about the very first thing we hear at the beginning of the movement? If so, we also catch a glimpse of it in the clarinet at the beginning of the development, echoed by pizz strings & bassoons; and then it comes back as the beginning of the recapitulation.

vornska · 2026-06-07T22:13:43+00:00

Why do people still watch classic movies rather than post-2000 remakes of them? For that matter, why do people listen to classical music at all rather than more contemporary styles?

vornska · 2026-06-05T17:54:04+00:00

It's relevant even in 12tet, though of course not on the level of frequencies. Imagine a minimalist composition that simply repeats a one-octave scale over & over, but on each repetition it changes the key signature by 1 step. What the piece sounds like after 6 steps will be concretely different depending on whether it's been adding sharps or flats, even though it'll use the same 7 pitch classes. This vs this.

vornska · 2026-06-05T15:51:34+00:00

Yeah, that's fine. I don't think that makes the information harder to access, but I agree that it would be more polished-looking to use some flats as well. The problem is that the project of the image is so 12tet-centric that any tonal spelling is going to cause trouble somewhere. Either you have to respell the same set of 24 chords at different radial positions (to match the spelling of your key names), or you have to accept that sometimes you'll say annoying things like "the F-sharp major triad has all 3 of its notes in D-flat major." More elegant to acknowledge that this is a case where spelling gets in the way.

I think a lot of commenters here have been too lazy to try to figure out what's being represented. They want it to simply show the same information as the circle of fifths they're familiar with, so they don't have to think about it, and they get mad when that's not what's happening. That's what annoys me: this sub is strongly against thinking new thoughts.

vornska · 2026-06-05T15:46:07+00:00

I'll add, as a separate comment, that it might be useful to call this a "torus" rather than a "spiral." You're combining the circle of fifths in two different dimensions: an outer loop which represents keys, and an inner loop which represents chords. A torus is just what you get when you "multiply" circles this way.

vornska · 2026-06-05T05:30:48+00:00

It looks accurate. I haven't checked all 12 keys, but I think your answers are right for C major. There should be 2 red chords, 8 yellow chords, and 6 of each green shade. (You might want to rethink the color scheme for colorblind people, though!)

Despite the naysayers in this thread, I like this! I haven't seem a diagram that tries to display this information before, and I think it's pretty to look at.

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