I have trouble with avoidance of some notes in the harmonies structure.

Most of the music theory talks about the consonancy and avoiding dissonancy. Music theory also does not talk much about the frequencies other than our pitch system and they're being remained open subjects to the producers/composers.

By respecting the music theory we can produce pleasant musics but let's look from the other side. Would it be possible to produce a song without knowingly/unknowingly using of music theory that would be like a titbit?

Could someone please tell me which aspects of music are covered by music theory and which aspects are not? Music theory also does not talk much about the timbre that is one of the most important part of music.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 17, 2016

Arnold Schoenberg wrote (in "Opinion or Insight?", 1926):

'The emancipation of the dissonance'. That is to say, it came to be placed on an equal footing with the sounds regarded as consonances (in my Hannonielehre the explanation of this lies in the insight that consonance and dissonance differ not as opposites do, but only in point of degree... consonances are the sounds closer to the fundamental, dissonances those farther away.. .their comprehensibility os graduated accordingly, since the nearer ones are easier to comprehend than those farther off).





Arnold Schoenberg wrote (in "Problems of Harmony," 1934):

Dissonances, even the simplest, are more difficult to comprehend than consonances. And therefore the battle about them goes on throughout the length of music history. The criterion for the acceptance or rejection of dissonances is not that of their beauty, but rather only their perceptibility.





Still another interpretation of consonance and dissonance is suggested by the following passage from Igor Stravinsky's Poetics of Music:

...the concepts of consonance and dissonance have given rise to tendentious interpretations that should definitely be set aright... Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into an harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of his harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word dissonance has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness... Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones which is not complete in itself and which must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance... But nothing forces us to be looking constantly for satisfaction that resides only in repose. And for over a century music has provided repeated examples of a style in which dissonance has emancipated itself...





Although this is a plausible description of certain aspects or late 19th- and early 20th-century developments leading toward what Schoenberg had called "the emancipation of the dissonance," our "lantern" does not seem much brighter than before with regard to the more basic question of the meaning of the words consonance and dissonance. Are we to interpret dissonance, for example, as meaning "not complete in itself," as implied here by Stravinsky, or as less "comprehensible" (Schonberg), less "euphonious" (Hindemith), less "agreeable" or "pleasant" (The Oxford Dictionary, Backus, et al), more "beautiful' ' (Kraft), more "active' ' or "unstable' ' (Kraft and others), etc.- or as some combination of some or all of these meanings?

It seems obvious that our first problem is indeed a semantic one, and that among many other difficulties which ensue from this-until this semantic problem has been solved any speculative theory that might be developed in an effort to explain the nature of consonance and dissonance in musical perception is doomed to failure from the very start, since there is no common understanding about what it is that such a theory ought to "explain." What is perhaps not so obvious is that the semantic problems associated with consonance and dissonance are rooted in the complex historical development of what I will call the "consonance/dissonance-concept" (or CDC) in western musical culture, and that a careful analysis of that historical development is the only hope we have of unraveling the tangled network of meanings and interpretations which so confuse the issue today. In The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance, Knud Jeppesen said:

When we encounter a.. .difficulty of linguistic-psychologic nature, it generally repays the trouble to delve into history and, seeking here anterior forms of the linguistic feature in which we are especially interested, to work our way through its genetic course...

 

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Nearly everything is covered by someone, somewhere and as you philosophize no one understand why people have opinions or why an individual may hear something in a different way to somebody else. If we knew there would be no point.

Knowing and Unknowing is a completely different subject. People who understand theory can still think in an abstract manner. People who don't may well compose a complicated piece of music without even knowing the note names and be completely oblivious to the nature of the theory.

That's the magic of it.

 

@foster911; Music is an open book. The only real question you have to ask yourself is, " What am I going to add to this book, and when am I going to start?"
Billions of people get great enjoyment from music, because of how it sounds and how it makes them feel. Close your eyes listen and feel what your playing. Stop thinking about the math and start thinking about the magic.

If the universe theorized as much about itself as you do music, we'd still be swinging around in the bloody trees mate!

 

i dont get while people pile on Foster... dude has some legit questions.. and his incomplete knowledge is of course going to reflect in his ideas and his analogies.. i dont anyone learning music theory who wasn't like that

to return to dissonance and consonance, i find those definitions to be too pedantic because their connotation of good or bad. A song with only dissonance is difficult to listen to.. a song with only consonance is probably going to be not very interesting musicially.. replace the word dissonance and consonance with tension and release respectively.. then it makes more sense i think..

a song with only tension will.. well,.. make the listener tense.. but that might be a good thing.. im looking at you Jaws theme song..

a song with only consonance will fare better as it strives for pleasing sounds.. but usually it goes nowhere thematically.. because ... welll.. a good song.. a good story requires both tension and release..like what movie does well where the hero only has good things happen to him or her? And what about movies that ONLY have bad things happen to him and her.. it's exhausting emotionally. but if that is what you wanted, then that you have achieved your goal..

tension and release are generally undesirable in their own as a complete song or story... songs and movies share a lot of the same characteristics as far as structure

think of the climax of the movie as the dominant or subdominant.. the intro and conclusion are the tonic.. it feels good to be at the tonic.. it feels tense to be in the climax... but once we are at the climax, and then we go to the tonic afterwards.. it feels wonderful... Tension.. release...

 

Consonance-Dissonance – A Historical Perspective

The phenomenon of consonance and dissonance has preoccupied thinkers over more than 2500 years. All in all, so the author suggests, there are 6 approaches to the issue. These approaches are in historical order: The number ratio theory, Descartes's theory, the prime factor theory, the roughness theory, the fusion theory and finally the cognitive theory. Not quite surprisingly, these approaches themselves have gained complexity in time but interestingly, they all appear to be floating about and being selected by individuals randomly and according to personal and intellectual preferences.

This paper will disseminate all six approaches with the intention to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses. However, this paper will go further by putting to rest those approaches which are so fundamentally flout that they can be dismissed with great certainty.
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Talking about Consonance and Dissonance is enough for me. I don't want to be a part of 2500 years (I like it but it's going to be my musical nightmare. I mean thinking about the phenomena that would be dismissed soon or later is so horrible).

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 18, 2016

I believe our perception of music is primarily cognitive - it is in the recognition of patterns that stimulates us.

While it doesn't really cover the perception of music in any sort of detail, I can recommend the book "An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing" to learn the basics of ear physiology and psychoacoustics if you are interested in that sort of thing and would like to learn a summary of the science.

As for making music, feel free to read much music theory (from a scientific background, I'm more inclined to describe it as principles and hypotheses, but..). But more important than reading the theory, is to try it all out and see what you like.

I personally play with music to step away from my analytical mind and just let ideas flow without too much overthinking, but YMMV.


At the end of the day, music comes down to aesthetics and that is ultimately personal.

 

@Foster If you are so interested in dissonance you should listen to and study Bernard Hermanns score to Psycho and also Ornette Colemans, The Shape of Jazz to Come...

I have spent a few minutes looking through some details of the theories you mention.

It strikes me that you are mixing and matching huge and sometimes completely unrelated concepts. Music/Theoretical Harmony in my opinion is not really the discussion of what constitutes sound design...

I can't really put it any simpler than the following analogy.

White noise cannot be described in the nature of theoretical musical harmony. White noise by simple definition is every frequency at an equal amplitude. Named in comparison to a color wheel spinning so fast that all you see is the color white. This cannot really be described by notes on a stave or by key. It cannot really be described by Hz as it is all of them within the hearing range at an equal amplitude. As opposed to pink noise that has a logorithmic amplitude across it's frequency spectrum.
I am pretty sure if you played either for hours on end no one would eventually find any emotion in it. Granted it maybe the lesser of two evils when compared with some the tripe that exists in the popular music world.

The timbre and tones of sound in relation to consonance and dissonance is almost completely independent of what the musical harmony is. I say completely independent with a pinch of salt. As this is a chicken and egg argument. Instrument inventors and sound designers took a long time to develop what we take completely for granted today. Classical enthusiasts argue over how a particular classical composition should be interpreted, whether A = 440, or what intonation they should use.

Secondly the theory of music harmony does not really include anything to do with Melody or Rhythm. Both of which may(In my opinion), more often than not influence the listeners emotions in a greater manner than harmony. Someone mentioned the Jaws music. Which is just a semi-tone moving up and down at an increasing speed.

Ultimately (and very simply might I add) we are all pre-conditioned to a baby screaming as this has been ingrained via evolution over millions of years. So when our ancient ancestors were out foraging in the jungle they could hear the offsprings cries for help. This is defined psycho-acoustically. Some theorists and evidence suggest that it helped define our own in built equalizer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

Bill Evans, one of the most influential jazz pianists, has this great quote. He is describing the movement of free Jazz and how it's practicioners need to be careful, yet it works for me when describing music in general, "As subjective as an infant crying in it's crib, no one can deny the infant is expressing itself, but no one would call it art"

 

Almost any interval can be made consonant or dissonant by proper choice of timbre


consonance
1- melodic consonance (e.g., of successive tones)
2- polyphonic consonance (e.g., intervals between notes, “sounds good”)
3- contrapuntal consonance (defined by role in counterpoint)
4- functional consonance (relationship with “tonic” or “root”)
5- psychoacoustic consonance (intrinsic to a sound)

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For more info read:



Tuning and Timbre: A Perceptual Synthesis
IDEA: Exploit psychoacoustic studies on the perception of consonance and dissonance. The talk begins by showing how to build a device that can measure the “sensory” consonance and/or dissonance of a sound in its musical context. Such a “dissonance meter” has implications in music theory, in synthesizer design, in the construction of musical scales and tunings, and in the design of musical instruments.
the legacy of Helmholtz continues
sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/HelmTTSS.pdf

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 18, 2016

This is so good. I suggest everyone reads this. Maybe seems elementary but reveals some ambiguities related to music basics. We will well appreciate the value of what we have:
http://www.earmaster.com/music-theory-online/ch06/chapter-6-2.html

 

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Yeah, that's what you should be worried about.

After you conquer that, the next step would be to learn about all the orchestra instruments, their ranges, etc.


When you get tired of trying to explain theory with more theory (and obviously failing since this ain't algebra), then you can forget about all this theory of genres that you don't even care for and start writing your own electro industrial stuff.

I know, you will keep on following the silly path. Why bother?


BTW, you read so much and haven't figured out that music theory is descriptive and subjective? WHy do you take it like math?

WHat is your end goal with all this nonsense? When will you say "that's enough" and begin playing around with music? Are you trying to write and algorhythm for the perfect music based on theory?

You should at least realize that your "academic approach" has very little to do with music so far. You can't even pick out by ear where the tonic is and you keep pounding on all this for what?

Maybe one day you'll learn something about music and realize how silly you've been.

 

Last edited: Mar 20, 2016

Everyone gave you more than direct clues. You're looking for something that doesn't exist, it's just a fantasy concept built by your mind.

That's the reason why you're never satisfied with the answers you find.

It's not even funny at this point, you should detox from all your readings and start playing something.

 

Hi guys!
I know these are stupid questions like my previous ones.

Please take a look at below PDF. It's the prelude of the above book. In which period of music creation, they should be considered? Most of our judges are majorly based on the "Equal Temperament" tuning.

Have you ever tried tunings other than "Equal Temperament"? How would they sound like?

Is this subject being noticed by nowadays sound designers?

Thanks so much!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 21, 2016

Sure. They sound different.


Your head is so buried in words that you can't even be bothered to go have a listen. You should see a doctor.

 

I am no longer a patient. I am a permanent inmate.

 

You could always google different tempered instruments...

Temperament is an interesting subject. It is perhaps a little counter intuitive, especially if you don't play an instrument and already struggle with 12tet concepts. I can't be bothered to go into any detail here.

I didn't really want to post this link for you Foster as I think it's maybe taking you further into madness. But I thought you may enjoy reading about it. Maybe find some inspiration.

http://www.goldennumber.net/music/

Enjoy. Lots of the comments are worth reading.

 

I converted "http://www.earmaster.com/music-theory-online/course-introduction.html" to a CHM file for being archived. Some parts related to scales were good for me.


Pitch
Time
Style
Rhythm
Timbre
Melody
Texture
Harmony
Counterpoint
Range
Classifying Music
Acoustics for MusicTheory
Standing Waves and Musical Instruments
Harmonic Series Timbre and Octaves
Octaves and the Major-Minor Tonal System
Half Steps and Whole Steps
Major Keys and Scales
Minor Keys and Scales
Interval
Harmonic Series II Harmonics, Intervals, and Instruments
The Circle of Fifths
Scales that aren't Major or Minor
Triads
Naming Triads
Consonance and Dissonance
Beyond Triads Naming Other Chords
Beginning Harmonic Analysis
Cadence
Form
Ear Training
Tuning Systems
Modes and Ragas
Transposition: Changing Keys



http://www.mediafire.com/download/0yg6d2mlbw05cc1/Basic+Music+Theory.chm

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 22, 2016

ok, u can read the index of a book,now why dont u start studying rahter than trying to lecture u on a subject that u don t know,u r getting quite annoying now,and ridiculous

 

Do yourself a favor and try out most of the things mentioned in that book before looking for more books/websites on music theory.

 

Our modern music theory and also the predecessors are not trying to invent a logical system of music. They are just trying to explain, describe, and systematize musical practices that were and are flourishing because people like the way they sound. Sorry if I am troubling you.