im enjoying this thread......i have had foster and his cronies on ignore for a month...try it....its great you get all the great material from MMJ and fararo etc...without having to read ANYTHING from foster.....heaven

 

I've never ignored anyone before, but for foster I make an exception now at the request of my nerves...

 

Here's a good technique :

 

Without math you wouldn't be able to spam forums and we would be still living on the trees. Btw, similar "math" theory exists in any equal temperament. I suggest checking 22 ET, if you are interested in authentic tuning for jazz/blues and arabic music + harmony. It's pretty good. The Western diatonic scale is also better there than in 12 ET, but is made of 17 notes, because syntonic comma is not tempered, so traditional chord progressions involve coma shift of you have to play new progressions based on symmetrical system of 17, not 7 notes.

I guess you haven't checked any orchestral score written in the last 70 years. Even in film music you see such time signatures sometimes (when the composer is ripping off some avantgarde or minimalist stuff).

http://www.paulsteenhuisen.org/non-dyadicirrational-time-signatures.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature#Irrational_meters

Indian and African music also don't use time signatures, but additive timelines. Notating this in Western notatation can be a nightmare with every few bars having a switch in the time signature. Add the traditional poly- and crossrhythms = good stuff.

 

I'll be so happy that happens because people that are fearful of self-experimentations and doubtful about their capabilities add nothing to my threads and please stop amusing people with non-musical statements.

 

Am I compelling people to read my threads or put them under duress to agree? I just open some threads and you're free to participate or not.

 

Thank you so much but they're so basic and impose lots of limits on your choices.

 

I think you've concentrated your musical experimentations on mathematical relationships and your problem with the tunings still exists. You usually don't talk about practical harmony and think you can answer all questions with some mathematical ratios. Math doesn't help in music. It just explains some simple phenomena.

 

Man, it is obvious that you math doesn't help you, but certainly does help me to compose very fast anything. For you, it may be not practical, because you have never practiced any of it, but for me it is, but I've spent many years (most time on orchestration) to master the basic musical skills, so I can focus now on unexplored in popular culture topics.

Unless you have improved your compositional skills recently, you have to focus on them, not on forum postings...

 

Kinda sure it's just a slogan. Math practically in the music realm has nothing to say except some strange experimentations with the tuning side and so-called rationalizing why some note-blendings work but at the end the result would be anything except a commercial work or artwork.

Everyone has done it and it seems you've not believed in them enough to associate your future artistry with them. Why? Because you have still tuning problem.

I personally have problem with their understandings deeply too (western 12 TET harmony) according to the traditional ununified methods of learning but on the other hand, working with 12 TET in my experimentations to understand them.

 

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The traditional way of teaching music is based on the fact that 17-18th style music theory is pretty applicable almost everywhere with some modifications and is a tested methodology unlike something based on pop/jazz or ethnic style. And any style/era based teaching will be limited.

If you want the most abstract and generalized music theory - say "hello" to modern mathematical music theory.

There is no tuning problem - I hope you understand that all such system are way of quantizing infinite continuous pitches into discrete system. Of course, that there will be alternatives - it's up to you what to system choose in a composition.

You clearly don't understand any mathematics, if you think that it's not applicable to music - think for a little about rhythms, form, harmony, scales, pitches and timbre, melody. Have you heard words like number sequences, partitioning, algebraic structures, metric spaces, functions, vectors etc.

The only thing that can't be studied using math is emotion and associated feelings, but this stuff is somewhat subjective, based on cultural conditioning and listening habits. It's useful to know some cliches, if you have to compose program music for theater or cinema, but there are no real rules outside of some trivial associations like dissonant = bad etc

 

I really appreciate your great explanations. Would you please post only a good example of how these mathematical relationships lead to a admirable artwork? A deep one. please! Not analyzing the existing scores but generating a piece based on math.

Still I think you've not spent more time on experimenting with the western 12 TET musical system. Why, because you're looking at music like the theoreticians look or maybe you're from a different musical culture and think 12 TET doesn't sound beautiful to your ears.

 

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Your thesis statement (title) is itself confusing at different levels. But of course, the more complex or complicated the theoretical concepts, the more confusing they are to the unintiated or disinclined. Whatever, man. Do you know tonic, subdominant, dominant . . . ? Do you know what a relative-minor key is? Not knowing rules of syntax nor grammar, one can string together any verbal diarrhea that one may and consider oneself "free from linguistic constraints." If you don't know, or don't want to know, advanced musical theory, then don't bother. If knowing some theory better enables you to express yourself or articulate ideas, then there's hardly any shame in knowing what you know. If you're making dance-oriented or trance-inflected music, you probably won't be inclined to do anything in 5/4 time – though it might be cool to try, no?

 

Music theory is so diverse. Diversity in experimentations and interpretations. If you follow one rule and allege you've made your compositions rightly based on that, another one can allege you've done wrong according to his/her favorite guidelines or your compositions is not so strong because you've not respected other rules as well.

There's not a definitive foundation in music theory and the title alludes to that. Everything you believe is definitive can be changed in the future with your new discoveries or other ones'.

 

Western music theory is HARDLY ununified.

 

Well, I tried. I don't think I can take this topic seriously anymore. If you've already given up on modal interchange after 24 hours, then you are not putting in the time on any of these tactics. It takes being able to execute chords on your instrument and putting the pencil to staff paper. The language takes work, my friend.

 

Wow, I've composed all my life with 12 ET and probably less than year with microtonal. Definitely have to experiment more with 12 notes...

Foster, I don't know how old are you, but starting to see patterns and abstractions should be achievable for anyone after some point - let's say early 20s. There is little randomness in art and it usually looks/sounds awful/incomprehensible. As long as there is symmetry and methods, you can formalize the art.

I hope you don't expect to give you a compositional masterclass using this forum formatting (not like I have the time for this). There are more than enough composition/theory books out there (focusing on ancient, medieval , 16th/ 18th/ 19th/ 20th century methodologies ), don't be a lazy bastards - the best composers and performers have spent all their life perfecting their craft. Even becoming a one trick pony - let's say a X pop/ethnic genre player/composer takes some time.

Imagine if instead of bitching about music theory in 2700 forum posts, you actually learned music notation, historical musical styles, worked through the exercises, analyzed some music on your own, learned about modern rigorous and formalized abstract musical theories. Anyone can choose what to do in his/her free time, but as long you have passion for music, there are better methods to become good than procrastinating.

Human's nervous system is basically a supercomputer - just because you can talk, move etc without efforts using the subconscious part doesn't mean that you can't achieve and describe (using math) all complex processes in it consciously.

There is nothing mystical in the act of composition, theory of anything or nature in general (even weird paranormal shit is just some phenomena that may be explained by the science some day in the future).

PM me, if you want some book suggestions, but also say what you already know and what you want to actually learn and accomplish.

 

You can get away with some trial error when it's just you but the real purpose behind music theory is to be able to communicate with other musicians you're playing with. You don't have to be fuckin' Beethoven or have PhD from Julliard to have a basic understanding of how chords work. It comes in handy when you're working with 4 or 5 other musicians. Combine some knowledge with trial and error so you can make at least an educated guess as to what happens when you change the last chord of the progression to it's relative minor or how to use a suspended chord to build tension.

 

@foster911
Yes, you can view music theory this way, but if one wants to learn something, that something must be in some form, not undefined or void of any structure.
Our processing ability relies on patterns and structure. It does no good to be mathematically rigorous about music, but some level of structure is necessary, otherwise it's no different to the cacophony of noise.