def great literature there you have included, yet what you have listed does not begin to explain the language in totality. sure some books get into some isolated aspects but not how it all fits together and what order it fits and what available options you have at every turn.
if you think something i have talked about specifically is inaccurate lets get into it.
you keep referring to me and saying the words "jazz theory" "jazz theory" , are you under the impression that tonal music excludes jazz and jazz theory is some type of external theory not included in tonal music? (jazz is tonal music (there is also modal polytonal and atonal jazz too)
just wondering your train of thought for repeating the words "jazz theory" when not in any single instance have i used the words jazz theory on this thread. i talk about ALL tonal music as a language and the exact order it unfolds by implication of dissonance to consonance.
the material i have presented relating to tonal music is independent of genre and a larger structure than genre (jazz is a genre) tonal music contains hundreds of genres jazz is just one , albeit one that expanded the language considerably
are you under the impression that before the genre jazz lived and died, that the book was closed regrading what tonal music language was? or are you under the impression that the jazz genre from its birth until its death expanded the language of tonal music as a whole to now be used independent of genre? ( due to over a century of jazz musicians uncovering more about how the language of tonal music works.( genres are a tiny thing compared to the whole larger structure of what a music tonal language is.)or the whol elarger structure of what modal music is or what polytonal music is or the larger structure of atonal music. ( there are types of jazz in all those)

my point is other than to account for jazz expanding what tonal music language is considerably.
jazz has no other context to this thread about the language of tonal music. you can many many hundreds genres in tonal music category and yet all of those hundreds of genres will function language wise as i have outlined here in this thread .
thank you for posting your lists of books to read im always loving a new read if i find out about a new one. but it would be great if you wanted to talk more specifically about the actual workings of the language as i have presented it, so that we can conversation very specifically ( this idea of satan in the music lol)

anyone looking to use the info on this thread can create with it thousands of different genres

ps no goats were harmed in the writing of this comment box.

regarding studying music outside of history comment you wrote.

my hope is to excite people with this thread so that they actually DO go back through the whole history of music , because in my opinion the thing that has impacted me musically more than anything else i can think of, is the studying history of music as it unfolded the last 10,000 years. the people and theirs lives what they uncovered it is amazing to me.

i wanted to create this thread about the language of tonal music, so that a person could read a few pages and find out thousands options available to them at any moment in their writing or playing, in such a accessible way that i myself have never seen before in any book or stack of books. just directly access how it works and what you can do and what order it works
giving the reader the ability to do with it anything they want create thousands different genres if they want.

i outline in this thread how to start from a single note. then turn that into a key, then turn that into home chord and dominant chord, then turn that into any of the other 7 chords of the key, then turn that into a substitution from any other key that resolves back to the original starting point. all 12 notes all 12 keys available to you at any place your at any moment of time you are in depending where you began and where you would like to end up its all there the ability to use the language to express anything possible that will ever be possible in tonal music. this was my goal and i accomplished what i set out to do for this specific task.
please get into specifics if you think anything important needs to be said regrading that specific goal i had set and the outcome of what i posted if you like to dig deeper into any particular chapter let me know. judging from the books you listed it seems you havnet yet unlocked the totality of the tonal language just chunks you understand and some missing areas ( that was me too for most my life)nothing wrong with it, read the thread and give it a chance without attaching symbols in your head "jazz theory jazz theory" jazz is about rhythms and certain instruments more than any type of language there is a type of jazz that is atonal or poly-tonal or model those have nothing to do with the language of tonal music in any way at all.read through the thread and unlock each step for yourself.

 

Last edited: Dec 11, 2017

Man cool down! You and @23322332 both are from the same origin. His interest is MicroTonal, yours MacroTonal and mine NonTonal. Really isn't worth to be in dispute just because of these insignificant differences.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 12, 2017

MMJ, the problem is that the language of tonal music doesn't exist. Even the biggest theoretists will have difficulties with defining what is tonal, tonality etc. I suggest picking the "History of Western music theory" for the genealogy of this concept in the standard Western theory and see that it has meaning which is different than what you describe in your writings.

See also this article (from the grove dictionary dealing with tonality as a concept).

http://www2.ouk.edu.tw/yen/grove/Entries/S28102.htm

Jazz tonality is different from the italian "galant style" of Mozart, medieval polyphonic tonality which is based on 4ths and 5ths structures see, here:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/2voice.html
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth3.html

romantic music of late Wagner, Verdi, Liszt etc, modern music of Bartok, Stravinsky or gypsy music in Eastern Europe (which is usually based on blending arabic/indian modal scales with the standard 18th century triads ) etc.

What you describe is a system of rules and symmetries. The elementary 17-18th century harmony that is taught in school is a such system, based on the major/minor scale concepts.

I don't say that any of these systems is better than the others. The difference is mainly in the style. All of these deal with the resources of 12et, but your approach to the general harmony is based on just a small fraction of the avaliable options.

The most interesting aspect of studying music in historical context is that you can recognize unexplored paths and learning various styles (if someone starts using your "tonal language", he will sound in a certain way).
But is really wrong to say: this is the language of tonal music. Well, it isn't, it's more like a subset of it.

 

23322332 thank you for your "contributions".

 

Bawk bawk bawk? (Not what you think, just practicing The Language of Chicken)

Spoiler

Finish Him!!

 

Regarding the title of your post MMJ2017, I agree with the common sense that music ends up being understood as an analogy with language (in certain ways, functioning in a manner similar to a language), but, in the face of what is currently known, still it is not possible to say with certainty that it is a language. The most that could be said is that music is a language of its own, with its own senses, that we end up mapping cognitively, on a personal and general level, with emotions and historical events (and here I make it clear that music has meaning, even though it is produced in an associative way by the listeners).

What I can understand from the statements made by 23322332 is that with the advent of the twentieth century music, there has been an expansion never seen in theoretical thinking in all its various forms: speculative, practical and analytical, which has led to a sense of loss of a common language of harmonic tonality.

But, another thing is someone tell me that this expansion has changed the music we hear in the mass media (and that's the target audience defined by MMJ2017: music being widely sold - billboard charts, radio, music made for TV, advertising, movies - which the average listener is accustomed to hearing, not an academic community)... that's the big fallacy. This expansion is widely manifested in environments directed to the study of music in a broad spectrum (here I refer to universities, specifically, where a minority, funded through scholarships distributed by their respective governments, studies experimental music.

I really think it's right for universities to take on the responsibility of keeping research on peripheral genres because the mass media and the market do not give a damn about this kind of music (restricted to a minority's appreciation). Rather, to say that the market does not give a damn is too strong: it uses musical genres according to sensations, emotions and senses associated (composers rooted in experimentalism become pissed when they see that the music they love is associated with emotions as fear and senses of terror/confusion/disorganization and do not understand why).

MMJ2017, your posts are instructive in the sense that it helps many musicians here who do not have ample knowledge of musical theory. And your passion for the topic justifies your commitment.

Postmodern academics on duty always tend to consider statistical studies referring to stylistic patterns related to genres as low-brow activities 'cos they insist on dictating how people should enjoy music (perhaps because the music of their choice has no appeal to the masses or market). Immersed in their tiring militancy, they simply do not understand that not everything has to do with innovation, breaking established milestones and avant garde/experimental music research. I even think it is a lack of purpose to criticize a post that deals with (some partial aspect of) the schematic nature of tonal music. And it is precisely this that annoys me, this kind of academic neurosis from which someone tries hardly to propagate spectral, microtonal, acousmatic, atonal, twelve-tone or even new complexity music as if everyone should be interested in this type ideological indoctrination.

Relating to the post, the dream of studying the Neo-Riemannian theory (still a collection of loose ideas) as a discipline common to the different practices of teaching and performance will have to wait: i'll continue to be restricted to the academic chairs of composition and (not always)musicology indefinitely. And good luck for who wants to try to explain voice-leadings to lay and semi-lay musicians through models based on the rotation of 3D geometric figures!

 

thank you for you insight here sir, i appreciate it.
my goal is to present what i can to give people more than they might already have to inspire, create and make passionate music, see many options.
I always hope they dig deeper than what i present that it gives them a tiny bit of excitement to go deeper,
that it gives them something they may not have seen yet a way to to things they didn't know about.
A way to see many options for them to ultimately choose from.
my goal is to EXPAND the free will of the reader.( sometimes we fall short of our goals though)

i present information the way i wish I always could have found it years ago, but never could find it that way. there may be times that a reader does not feel like they connect with what and how i present information, i accept that. im just a human being. I consider myself always and forever a student .above nobody ( however i try to fathom music as it actually exits( what music is how it works) and differentiate reality from my imagination.)

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2017

I want to renovate my illegal activities in this thread too. If someone reports me to Introninja again, would say cheerio to his life and God blesses his soul.