8 ms·

Suffers from the same problem that all music theory texts seem unable to avoid: they require the reader to simply accept a bunch of random facts to memorize wit

Suffers from the same problem that all music theory texts seem unable to avoid: they require the reader to simply accept a bunch of random facts to memorize with no context. Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so. Similar: in a major scale all notes are played and none are skipped or repeated. Except if your scale goes D–E–F#–G, in which case you skip F. The only way for this to be correct is apparently we consider F and F# to be the same note for purposes of scales even though this directly contradicts a previous section. I was expecting a “21st century” music theory reference to have an emphasis on building intuition. Music theorists are apparently allergic to good pedagogy.

scottious 6d ago
A better way to think about it is that all letters in the musical alphabet are represented in a musical scale. Some are sharp or flat D major: D E F♯ G A B C♯ D minor: D E F G A B♭ C Db major: D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C Db minor: D♭ E♭ F♭ G♭ A♭ B♭♭ C♭
- stackghost 6d ago
  Sure, I knew what they meant. But if they are sloppy with their terminology on the knucklehead stuff then it doesn’t bode well for the esoteric stuff to follow. My point was not to showcase my confusion, rather to reinforce the fact that music theory texts are just generally low quality, and music theory as a field seems to be okay with that.
  - deadfoxygrandpa 6d ago
    but it doesnt say that. you paraphrased the book in a way that makes it look sloppy but it was your paraphrased version which is sloppy. if you read through the book when it defines this stuff, it introduces accidentals as "characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them" and then in the section on the major scale it says "All major scales use the notes of the musical alphabet in order; no notes are skipped and no notes occur twice." i dont think this is ambiguous
strenholme 6d ago
We recently had a long discussion about this. I come from the “music theory makes a lot more sense once one understands that 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 sound really whole and good to the human ear, 5:4 has a little more tension, and 6:5 has even more tension” school of thought [1] but for other people it is a distraction from understanding basic stuff like “this is a minor scale”. See here for the long discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541888 [1] I understand ancient scales were 3-limit instead of 5-limit scales, and that modern equal temperament has thirds which significantly deviate from 5:4 and 6:5, but once polyphony became a thing, 5-limit temperament made a lot more sense because they reduce beating.
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
- Drupon 6d ago
  Man that top comment is such a combination of "sneering to show off" and completely wrong that I'm shocked I'm not on reddit. Recommending The Jazz Theory Book to someone starting from scratch, especially someone self studying, is like recommending CLRS or TAOCP to someone who asks "I'm curious about learning the basics of algorithms and data structures, any good books for self study?" And of course that happens all the time too. Chapter 1 is "here's what intervals like major 3rd and perfect fifths are", Chapter 2 is "here's the major scale and all its diatonic modes and ii-V-I progressions", Chapter 3 is "here's how you might use the Phyrigian mode to play over a Sus flat-9 chord" (pg 48). Recommending Schoenberg and Messiaen as steps to get a sufficient surface of topics covered for "music theory" is performance art in its own regard. Bravo!
  - strenholme 6d ago
    Yeah, that guy tried to argue that Grade 5 ABRSM [1] is “very basic”. Like, excuse me no. “Very basic” is knowing the notes in a major key, and knowing the I IV V chord progression, as well as a basic 4/4 rhythm (8th note hi hats, quarter note kick drum, snare on alternating quarter notes). I IV V chord progressions and major scales are basic enough I can explain them in a 400 word post from first principles (where no music theory exists except the assertion that the human ear finds the pitch ratios of 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, and 6/5 pleasing to the ear, that the human ear wants at least three notes in a chord, and that the human ear wants at least three chords in a progression). Those books get very complicated very quickly, and cover music that only a relatively few people actually listen to. It was pure gatekeeping, and I’m disappointed people pointing that out were voted down. Not a good moment for Hacker News. It would be like me recommending Lisp or Forth for one’s first programming language. [1] https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theory-syllabus-outline-grades-1-5-from-2020.pdf https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theo...
ChadNauseam 6d ago
> Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so. I recommend "What Makes Music Sound Good?" by Prof. Dmitri Tymoczko: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/pdfs/MUS105handouts.pdf https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/pdfs/MUS105hando... There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles. (There is a sequel as well, and a book if you prefer to read it in book form)
- mrob 6d ago
  >There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles. I skimmed through the whole article and only found some brief mention of Helmholtz, which no clear route from his research to the scale. As a better derivation, I recommend this paper by William Sethares: https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/consonance.pdf https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/consonance.pdf Or the informal summary version: https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html But note that Sethares's work assumes the Plomp and Levelt curve is correct, which is only approximately true. In practice there is also "higher order beating", which causes additional dissonance at ratios close to small integer ratios. This means the most accurate model of dissonance combines Sethares's approach with ratio complexity as in just intonation. This is backed by listening tests: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z The best informal overview and demonstration for this concept I know of is this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqxfE2nfGhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqxfE2nfGhY Note also that there's a strong cultural/training component to dissonance perception. To minimize this you should ignore the preferences of musicians and only ask untrained listeners.
acjohnson55 6d ago
You might enjoy this unfinished project of mine: https://fakestory.acjay.com/ https://fakestory.acjay.com/ It's the culmination of years spent chasing an explanation of where all this stuff came from. Highly informed by Tymoczko, who was mentioned in a sibling reply, and a bunch of other thinkers on the topic.
- stackghost 6d ago
  I will check it out, thank you.
onlyrealcuzzo 6d ago
Yes, I was hoping for something different, but as best I can tell this is a slight rehash on more of the same. Ableton's teachings are far more interesting in my opinion, even if extremely more limited.
deleted 6d ago
[deleted]
Al-Khwarizmi 6d ago
Yes, this is what has always blocked me from learning even basic music theory. I get that maybe it's just the way it is, perhaps the underlying logic is so complex that it would be counterproductive to present it up front. I'm not saying that the theory should adapt to my pet peeves. But I'm very prone to learn things by understanding first principles and building from there. Having to memorize scales where suddenly you need to skip keys or use black keys without much apparent logic is a real deterrent for me considering it's something I learn as a hobby. This is also the reason why I like algebra, calculus, etc. but dislike statistics... in algebra or calculus you start from first principles and work up from there understanding everything. In statistics (at least the way I was taught) you are shown the formula for the probability density of the Gaussian distribution and need to accept it as an act of faith.
- analog31 6d ago
  Depends on your stats class. The one I took in college started from first principles, and was focused on proofs.
- raffael_de 6d ago
  what you seem to look for is a book about psychoacoustics. but even on that level you'll just have to accept that for some unknown reason humans consider certain pitch ratios as pleasant and even those that sound unpleasant have their place to express dissonance and tension and it's culturally dependent also. eventually there will be first attempts at a general music theory of which the western key based frameworks are special cases.
- simonask 6d ago
  The problem is that understanding everything from first principles is often the longest and least efficient road to learning the things that are actually useful. Psychoacoustics is interesting, but it's not something that really helps you become a better musician for at least a couple of _decades_ of your journey. For the vast majority of students, it's a complete waste of time. It's extremely unlikely that you learnt algebra or calculus from first principles, either. You started from the other end, learning the tools and skills to put it to good use, and then dove deeper with those tools already under your belt. Musicianship is no different.
MSFT_Edging 6d ago
Glad I'm not the only one with this complaint. I've been playing music for 20 years, learned and forgotten plenty of music theory. The only way I actually "grok" it, is by re-deriving the whys, but then that slows my learning to a crawl and I begin to forget the earlier lessons. The memorization doesn't work well for me. I can read music, I can derive scales and chords, but the memorized knowledge of "this chord is technically the same as this one so we'll start calling things other things but it all means the same thing" gets me totally lost.
tarentel 6d ago
I don't know your background but I've talked about music theory with a lot of non-musicians who tend to have the same complaints. A lot of what you describe I learned when I was like 5. I don't really think about it anymore, it is second nature on any instrument I play. Even if I don't know the instrument, if you show me how the notes work I can play any scale without really putting any thought into it. This is supposed to be a college level text book. Likely, if you have to think that much about how a major scale works you probably don't have an adequate background to study this. It's not that someone can't but it'll obviously be more work. These sort of traditional music courses are designed around understanding western classical music. There are some scientific reasons for the way things are but they weren't developed by scientists. This sort of music theory will 100% help build an intuition into western, mostly classical but not exclusively classical, music. If you want to know why the major scale is the way it is, go take math classes, a few physics courses will likely help as well, probably by the time you're in graduate school you'll understand it and can explain it better than 99% of musician. It'll help you in no way in creating music. Essentially, what these complaints boil down to would be something similar to someone trying to learn to drive by first learning how an entire car works. It might be interesting to some, but it isn't the point.
otabdeveloper4 6d ago
"Music theory" is not a theory per se, it's mostly a fancy way of saying "rules for notating piano". In the linked textbook the real actual theory only starts in chapter 33, "Set Theory". (The exposition of the actual theory is pretty bad, though - zero explanation of what consonance/dissonance is, where the 12 notes come from and the reason why our particular scales exist.)
HelloNurse 6d ago
I'm starting to read the course at the beginning, and a depressing aversion to explaining why and not only what seems apparent, probably motivated by a desire for brevity and informality that also causes serious defects. For example: - 1.3 grand staff: "Note that middle C is always clearly notated in either the upper or lower staff and never floats between the two staves." It doesn't tell that the choice of which staff the notes belong to indicates which hand should play them. - 1.4 accidentals "... are characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them." Not to reuse staff locations to distinguish the notes one needs to use. - 1.5 Enharmonic notes: "When two notes sound the same but are written as two different notes on the staff, the written notes are said to be enharmonic." This is totally wrong, not merely maddening, but before discussing scales any decent explanation is impossible. - 3.3 Scale Degree Names: in the middle of chapter 3 (minor scales) because there's no f** definition of what a scale is. - 6.1 Introduction to Triads: "A triad consists of three notes stacked in consecutive thirds. A triad is also called a chord as well as a harmony. (Harmony also refers to chord progressions.)" It's sad because many other places benefit from the concise and elegant treatment, for example: - 5.5 Augmented and Diminished Intervals: "Augmented intervals are one half step larger than perfect or major intervals and diminished intervals are one half step smaller than perfect or minor intervals."

scottious 6d ago

A better way to think about it is that all letters in the musical alphabet are represented in a musical scale. Some are sharp or flat D major: D E F♯ G A B C♯ D minor: D E F G A B♭ C Db major: D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C Db minor: D♭ E♭ F♭ G♭ A♭ B♭♭ C♭

stackghost 6d ago
Sure, I knew what they meant. But if they are sloppy with their terminology on the knucklehead stuff then it doesn’t bode well for the esoteric stuff to follow. My point was not to showcase my confusion, rather to reinforce the fact that music theory texts are just generally low quality, and music theory as a field seems to be okay with that.
- deadfoxygrandpa 6d ago
  but it doesnt say that. you paraphrased the book in a way that makes it look sloppy but it was your paraphrased version which is sloppy. if you read through the book when it defines this stuff, it introduces accidentals as "characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them" and then in the section on the major scale it says "All major scales use the notes of the musical alphabet in order; no notes are skipped and no notes occur twice." i dont think this is ambiguous

strenholme 6d ago

We recently had a long discussion about this. I come from the “music theory makes a lot more sense once one understands that 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 sound really whole and good to the human ear, 5:4 has a little more tension, and 6:5 has even more tension” school of thought [1] but for other people it is a distraction from understanding basic stuff like “this is a minor scale”. See here for the long discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541888 [1] I understand ancient scales were 3-limit instead of 5-limit scales, and that modern equal temperament has thirds which significantly deviate from 5:4 and 6:5, but once polyphony became a thing, 5-limit temperament made a lot more sense because they reduce beating.

deleted 6d ago
[deleted]
Drupon 6d ago
Man that top comment is such a combination of "sneering to show off" and completely wrong that I'm shocked I'm not on reddit. Recommending The Jazz Theory Book to someone starting from scratch, especially someone self studying, is like recommending CLRS or TAOCP to someone who asks "I'm curious about learning the basics of algorithms and data structures, any good books for self study?" And of course that happens all the time too. Chapter 1 is "here's what intervals like major 3rd and perfect fifths are", Chapter 2 is "here's the major scale and all its diatonic modes and ii-V-I progressions", Chapter 3 is "here's how you might use the Phyrigian mode to play over a Sus flat-9 chord" (pg 48). Recommending Schoenberg and Messiaen as steps to get a sufficient surface of topics covered for "music theory" is performance art in its own regard. Bravo!
- strenholme 6d ago
  Yeah, that guy tried to argue that Grade 5 ABRSM [1] is “very basic”. Like, excuse me no. “Very basic” is knowing the notes in a major key, and knowing the I IV V chord progression, as well as a basic 4/4 rhythm (8th note hi hats, quarter note kick drum, snare on alternating quarter notes). I IV V chord progressions and major scales are basic enough I can explain them in a 400 word post from first principles (where no music theory exists except the assertion that the human ear finds the pitch ratios of 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, and 6/5 pleasing to the ear, that the human ear wants at least three notes in a chord, and that the human ear wants at least three chords in a progression). Those books get very complicated very quickly, and cover music that only a relatively few people actually listen to. It was pure gatekeeping, and I’m disappointed people pointing that out were voted down. Not a good moment for Hacker News. It would be like me recommending Lisp or Forth for one’s first programming language. [1] https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theory-syllabus-outline-grades-1-5-from-2020.pdf https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theo...

ChadNauseam 6d ago

> Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so. I recommend "What Makes Music Sound Good?" by Prof. Dmitri Tymoczko: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/pdfs/MUS105handouts.pdf https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/pdfs/MUS105hando... There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles. (There is a sequel as well, and a book if you prefer to read it in book form)

mrob 6d ago
>There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles. I skimmed through the whole article and only found some brief mention of Helmholtz, which no clear route from his research to the scale. As a better derivation, I recommend this paper by William Sethares: https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/consonance.pdf https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/consonance.pdf Or the informal summary version: https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html But note that Sethares's work assumes the Plomp and Levelt curve is correct, which is only approximately true. In practice there is also "higher order beating", which causes additional dissonance at ratios close to small integer ratios. This means the most accurate model of dissonance combines Sethares's approach with ratio complexity as in just intonation. This is backed by listening tests: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z The best informal overview and demonstration for this concept I know of is this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqxfE2nfGhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqxfE2nfGhY Note also that there's a strong cultural/training component to dissonance perception. To minimize this you should ignore the preferences of musicians and only ask untrained listeners.

acjohnson55 6d ago

You might enjoy this unfinished project of mine: https://fakestory.acjay.com/ https://fakestory.acjay.com/ It's the culmination of years spent chasing an explanation of where all this stuff came from. Highly informed by Tymoczko, who was mentioned in a sibling reply, and a bunch of other thinkers on the topic.

stackghost 6d ago
I will check it out, thank you.

onlyrealcuzzo 6d ago

Yes, I was hoping for something different, but as best I can tell this is a slight rehash on more of the same. Ableton's teachings are far more interesting in my opinion, even if extremely more limited.

deleted 6d ago

[deleted]

Al-Khwarizmi 6d ago

Yes, this is what has always blocked me from learning even basic music theory. I get that maybe it's just the way it is, perhaps the underlying logic is so complex that it would be counterproductive to present it up front. I'm not saying that the theory should adapt to my pet peeves. But I'm very prone to learn things by understanding first principles and building from there. Having to memorize scales where suddenly you need to skip keys or use black keys without much apparent logic is a real deterrent for me considering it's something I learn as a hobby. This is also the reason why I like algebra, calculus, etc. but dislike statistics... in algebra or calculus you start from first principles and work up from there understanding everything. In statistics (at least the way I was taught) you are shown the formula for the probability density of the Gaussian distribution and need to accept it as an act of faith.

analog31 6d ago
Depends on your stats class. The one I took in college started from first principles, and was focused on proofs.
raffael_de 6d ago
what you seem to look for is a book about psychoacoustics. but even on that level you'll just have to accept that for some unknown reason humans consider certain pitch ratios as pleasant and even those that sound unpleasant have their place to express dissonance and tension and it's culturally dependent also. eventually there will be first attempts at a general music theory of which the western key based frameworks are special cases.
simonask 6d ago
The problem is that understanding everything from first principles is often the longest and least efficient road to learning the things that are actually useful. Psychoacoustics is interesting, but it's not something that really helps you become a better musician for at least a couple of _decades_ of your journey. For the vast majority of students, it's a complete waste of time. It's extremely unlikely that you learnt algebra or calculus from first principles, either. You started from the other end, learning the tools and skills to put it to good use, and then dove deeper with those tools already under your belt. Musicianship is no different.

MSFT_Edging 6d ago

Glad I'm not the only one with this complaint. I've been playing music for 20 years, learned and forgotten plenty of music theory. The only way I actually "grok" it, is by re-deriving the whys, but then that slows my learning to a crawl and I begin to forget the earlier lessons. The memorization doesn't work well for me. I can read music, I can derive scales and chords, but the memorized knowledge of "this chord is technically the same as this one so we'll start calling things other things but it all means the same thing" gets me totally lost.

tarentel 6d ago

I don't know your background but I've talked about music theory with a lot of non-musicians who tend to have the same complaints. A lot of what you describe I learned when I was like 5. I don't really think about it anymore, it is second nature on any instrument I play. Even if I don't know the instrument, if you show me how the notes work I can play any scale without really putting any thought into it. This is supposed to be a college level text book. Likely, if you have to think that much about how a major scale works you probably don't have an adequate background to study this. It's not that someone can't but it'll obviously be more work. These sort of traditional music courses are designed around understanding western classical music. There are some scientific reasons for the way things are but they weren't developed by scientists. This sort of music theory will 100% help build an intuition into western, mostly classical but not exclusively classical, music. If you want to know why the major scale is the way it is, go take math classes, a few physics courses will likely help as well, probably by the time you're in graduate school you'll understand it and can explain it better than 99% of musician. It'll help you in no way in creating music. Essentially, what these complaints boil down to would be something similar to someone trying to learn to drive by first learning how an entire car works. It might be interesting to some, but it isn't the point.

otabdeveloper4 6d ago

"Music theory" is not a theory per se, it's mostly a fancy way of saying "rules for notating piano". In the linked textbook the real actual theory only starts in chapter 33, "Set Theory". (The exposition of the actual theory is pretty bad, though - zero explanation of what consonance/dissonance is, where the 12 notes come from and the reason why our particular scales exist.)

HelloNurse 6d ago

I'm starting to read the course at the beginning, and a depressing aversion to explaining why and not only what seems apparent, probably motivated by a desire for brevity and informality that also causes serious defects. For example: - 1.3 grand staff: "Note that middle C is always clearly notated in either the upper or lower staff and never floats between the two staves." It doesn't tell that the choice of which staff the notes belong to indicates which hand should play them. - 1.4 accidentals "... are characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them." Not to reuse staff locations to distinguish the notes one needs to use. - 1.5 Enharmonic notes: "When two notes sound the same but are written as two different notes on the staff, the written notes are said to be enharmonic." This is totally wrong, not merely maddening, but before discussing scales any decent explanation is impossible. - 3.3 Scale Degree Names: in the middle of chapter 3 (minor scales) because there's no f** definition of what a scale is. - 6.1 Introduction to Triads: "A triad consists of three notes stacked in consecutive thirds. A triad is also called a chord as well as a harmony. (Harmony also refers to chord progressions.)" It's sad because many other places benefit from the concise and elegant treatment, for example: - 5.5 Augmented and Diminished Intervals: "Augmented intervals are one half step larger than perfect or major intervals and diminished intervals are one half step smaller than perfect or minor intervals."