My begging grovelling letter to our kind hearted moderators @Olymoon and @No Avenger ...

Please, please, pretty please, allow me to change my bet before I lose all my money.

When I originally placed my (hasty) bets I claimed @Freetobestolen and @Fully Operational were Foster + Anti-Foster.

Now it seems far more likely that @Freetobestolen and @Fully Operational are in fact a resurrected MMJ,
plus, of course, the obligatory MMJ's 'second account lackey', required by MMJ to support and promote the MMJ wackiness.

So, I want change my bet, and of course I owe Foster a huge apology.
Foster may have committed more cardinal sins than anyone
but me labelling MMJ as Foster is surely an insult that even Foster does not deserve. (Sorry Foster!)

It all comes flooding back like a forgotten nightmare.

• MMJ posts his "Don't worry you mere mortals, I can save the world" music theory posts.
• He explicitly writes off hundreds of years of music theory publishing as being inadequate
• - a situation he then alludes to repairing with his own messiah-like salvational genius.
  
• and then he delivers nonsense which baffles, misleads, and damages every beginner in the forum.
• The errors in his posts quickly get pointed out and he always totally ignores them - he just pretends they're not there.
• He gets challenged to back up his theories with audio examples and ALWAYS runs away from that.
• He just changes the subject and starts hurling abuse at whoever issued the challenge.

It's all so scary and maybe it's all coming back - aaaaararrrrrrrgggghhhh!

 

Forlorn? Perhaps you are letting it's cultural association bias your perception.

The Last Post sounds rousing to me, just like the other bugle calls that are often played afterwards - the reveille and the rouse.

 

I found this hq site by chance. It has lots of articles and podcasts for beginner and intermediate levels and answering many questions:
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/

Putting them into practice is the most major key (no the minor).

@No Avenger it would also turn you into a passionate teacher.

 

Nice comment.
and of course you could flip it round and it would be every bit as valid
If you had posted this 'Rousing' example, Lenny could have said...
"Rousing? Perhaps you are letting it's cultural association bias your perception. The Last Post sounds forlorn to me"
I think chocolate tastes better than strawberry, you think strawberry tastes better than chocolate.
When discussing social reality - we're both right. (It's not like were arguing about brute-facts like gravity)

Some wacky add-ons...
I think ALL of our perceptions are constructed from (not infected with) biases. Biases are what our sentience is made of.
I think all composers subconsciously recognise that their main instrument is not the piano or the guitar or the orchestra;
it is the listener's brain. We are trying to plant illusions and expectations into the listener's brain,
the same illusions and expectations that we have enjoyed in our own brains.
And (beautifully) it never quite works. Ultimately it is the listener's brain that manufactures their own audio experience.
The listener always hears something different from what you intended.

It's great that how the Last Post sounds to you is different to how it sounds to Lenny.
I just think it's a remarkable achievement that the composer managed to (deliberately?) restrict themself
to using literally ONLY the three notes from a major triad and still pour so much beauty into it.

 

I agree - Out of respect for a friendship with someone on here, I set both to ignore so I cannot see what either post again fortunately, nor am I interested in hearing about what someone so practically inept has to say. It's like the guy in the movie "Good Will Hunting" in the bar who parrots Nietsche from memory absorption, claiming the slightly changed wording to be his own with no real practical skills or original thought of their own. I really do not care what someone like that thinks or says, nor do I need to see it or hear it.

EDIT: To clarify, the practical incompetents (one pretending to be two which is fraudulent) who have put nothing in audio up of their own who represent the guy in the Bar with no practical skills, are those I ignored and would have basically blocked if that was an option. Not AdHeesive.

 

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Nice move! Finally the tensions are going to be resolved. This was the most important criterion for the serious music before almost 1900.

But afterwards, it seems that most music tends to remain unresolved.

 

that is true for everyone... except yourself of course. :D

 

4 over 5 over 7 is the king.

but no chance without computer aid.

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2021

@No Avenger I think this needs to wind up. It has become bitter and ugly, not to mention of no use to the OP. Nothing in the last 8 page has been aimed at helping @FrankWhite23.

 

I'm not doing the d&k pointing, you are

Unless you played in Frank Zappa's bands.

 

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doo dah

wait ... Doo Dah..

THAT'S IT !!!
DOO-DAH DOO-DAH ! DO-DAH-DO-DAH-DAY !!

All the f***ing theory and there it was all the time.

 

No chance of a hit there - you missed out the DIDDY
and a couple of WAHs would have helped too - what were you thinking?

 

The original topic is 'major scale help me understand'
I doubt if the poster wanted techie definitions - more likely he wanted help with working.

But still...
The definition of 'The Major Scale' from @Freetobestolen (the resurrected MMJ) is...

The subsequent mind-boggling incredible brag from @Freetobestolen is...

Now compare his elementary definition AND his brag about it being unique with the stuff below...

Can anyone tell me what @Freetobestolen's elementary definition adds
that wasn't already obvious from these ideas which were written down more than 2,000 years ago?

(from wiki - but very common knowledge - quite literally > 2,000 years old)
12-tone Pythagorean temperament is based on a stack of intervals called perfect fifths, each tuned in the ratio 3:2, the next simplest ratio after 2:1. Starting from D for example (D-based tuning), six other notes are produced by moving six times a ratio 3:2 up, and the remaining ones by moving the same ratio down:
E♭–B♭–F–C–G–D–A–E–B–F♯–C♯–G♯

and let's be clear, this Pythagorean temperament idea is just the tip of a very very old music theory iceberg
- and just that tip already easily eclipses @Freetobestolen's 2nd hand insight.
And that entire iceberg of music theory is indeed free to be stolen. has been for millenia.

Constructing scales from fifths is a neat idea, but when it's > 2,000 years old it doesn't really qualify as a modern breakthrough.

Delusions about being the one and only person to have discovered it do not bode well
but those of us familiar with those endless MMJ delusions will not be at all surprised.

 

Man, I think you enjoy policing and attacking personalities more than music itself. Please be pencil more than eraser.

 

With anyone learning how to play and write if taught that way, there comes a point after a barrage of theory when they are asked to play a song, they sit there and realise that is not how they were taught - that is, they weren't taught to play and write with their instrument in hand and how to transcribe music from audio with their instrument in hand. Sad really. Music is loved because of the performance and audio beauty aspects globally. Always has been, always will be. Nobody in their right mind goes into a shower thinking "Today I will sing a Lydian Chromatic scale in the shower". They tend to whistle a simple melody they found catchy (or annoying sometimes by accident). That is where I told the thread author to focus - writing a great catchy melody in PM.

 

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I've got to tell you that despite trying so hard to be ironic all the time (which is a bummer), you are not and don't grasp what irony is about, inspiring pitifulness afterall.
It's so elementary that you weren't able to understand. Do you want me to explain the concept to you? Ask me politely.
Is the Pythagorean temperament a recent finding of yours? No worries, I'll let that slide so, no bashing from my end.
On his monochord he has conceived and conceptualized the 12 perfect 5ths - the real ones. Problem was the fractional ratio, once the logarithmic concept didn't existed at the time, to the effect that no more than 4 or 5 other pitches could be stacked-up to the fundamental. Welcome then to the Greek Modes.

PS.: Quit the childish act of attributing me claims I haven't done. I stand up for what I've said, not yours and your mentor's twisted versions of them.

 

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Ok, I'm not gonna read like 9 pages so maybe it has been posted already.
For what I see on the first page, orbitbooster is pretty right about what he is writing.
You see, even when writing a melody, you need to know where you are within the song and the scale.
So i.e. you NEED to close your melody on the root. that's it, then it's a full close.
you can go for a half close, but it is unlikely that you would like it.
Writing meldies DOES have rules and we might follow them just out of our experience.
So even if you just write a melody, you need to have that corresponding chords in mind.
Because in a full song, there will be a bass added and another voice and... bam.. here comes the chord.
So it is important to know what a cadence is. I.e. you don't need to start your melody on the root.
But you need to have some I-ish cord in the beginning (like C-E-G).
So sure you can have your first note of the melody be an A, but you will most likely solve it to a G or an C,
while the C-E-G Chord is still on (in your head, or the final song).
And yes, you can do serial music a la webern and berg, you can use jazz modes, you can do whatever you like,
but maybe not at a point where you are like "I begin in C-major, and always end up in a-minor... why??"
I would start with a book of like 100-200 pages explaining basic music theory.
It is best to use something that is written for the instrument you play, with expamples to play along.

 

literally sounds like the same guy that joined our theory discord server a while back

 

Strangely he does have one uniqueness that he never speaks of. He is the only supposedly trained musician you will likely meet who does not have any music of himself performing anything remotely demonstrating what he claims to be an expert in or say 'This is me playing what I just wrote out'. Very unusually unique. He might be a musicologist but most musicologists still have something, not nothing.

As this person below says 'Examples' - Nearly every music book on how to play has the author playing what they are recommending. They walk their talk.

Additionally, two years ago MMJ attacked some people because they corrected him. As it turned out they were qualified University lecturers while he was telling everyone he was an expert in jazz and a qualified lecturer. So they put up a clip and asked him to identify the chords by ear behind a Michael Brecker solo. It wasn't even hard and he got humiliated because he couldn't do a simple ear test which any decent teacher can - simple Rhythm changes I,VI,II,V. Then when he finally put something up it was a terrible punk band. It had to be taken down because even people who would not normally get involved came on and asked if it was a pisstake it was that woeful. SAiNT had to halt the thread because everyone gave him so much crap over the mediocrity of it.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 25, 2021