I said partially explained by the intervals of the guitar. I think your point about gospel seems right, and gospel weighs heavily among the “roots” of rock and roll.
However, conflating quartal chords with IV-I chord relationships is a specious argument. Chord progressions are consecutive phenomena, while chords themselves are simultaneous. A quartal chord is going to frequently sound like shit, or at least not blend well in the texture, because of clashing overtones between members of the chord.
I think Chopin is fabulous, as I assume you do, so kudos on your good taste. I’ve heard it argued, however, don’t ask me for my sources, that we haven’t really surpassed the harmonic complexity evident in the corpus of woks by J.S. Bach. Open to argument.
Well we do get quartal chords in popular music (they define the jazz of a certain era)…from the piano. So there’s plenty of acceptance of quartal harmony. That can’t be the issue. Reasoning based on instrument anatomy would suggest they would come from guitar but they really don’t. I’m just pointing out the limitations of that kind of reasoning. Ultimately, we have to be empirical.
Also Chopin was still basically doing constant dominant-tonic cycling. I was saying things start to get harmonically interesting after that.
I definitely don’t agree with the “everything was already in Bach” cliche, as you can probably tell from my initial post. Bach apotheosis is just like a reflexive move for a kind of pseudo-intellectual snobbery.
That’s like saying “When I learned English I did it without the use of a grammar book”. That’s undoubtedly true, but that doesn’t warrant the conclusion “Therefore grammar is pointless”.
If you want to do something different it helps to know what tthings you take for granted so you can break some of those assumptions. Even if what you’re doing is “I hate your music I’m going to do something that isn’t that” you need you to know what it is about that music that you hate, or else how are you going to do something different?
You’re write that learning all this stuff doesn’t need to come in the form of a classical music theory course, but it does involve thinking about what you’re writing and that, fundamentally, is what a lot of music theory comprises.
The reason theory is useful is that it gives you concepts and concepts (usually) make things easier.
If you don’t know you use 12-tone equal temperament it’s going to be hard for you to break out of that box, unless it’s through a lot of experiementation and/or luck.
If you learn about temperament it becomes a lot easier to formulate the question “OK, so what happens if I try and write something that isn’t in standard temperament?”. And then you turn into Harry Partch.
I don’t agree with your statement here. V I is the cadence that gets emphaszed to give finality to a piece (e.g. https://youtu.be/3WZP7-41iAU?list=RD3WZP7-41iAU&t=599 - the ending of Beethoven’s fifth is just a series of perfect cadences one after the other).
Usually if you encounter a IV I cadence in the classical and early Romantic periods it happens in a coda after the final V I cadence(s) have emphasied closure.
I don’t know enough about the history of popular music to comment on the prevalence of IV I. It might have something to do with the guitar, but a lot of the chord progressions in popular songs have been around for a very long time so I’m doubtful (although not religiously so) about this stuff being something arising because of the guitar’s prevalence in pop music.
There are plenty of instances of V I cadences in guitar-driven singer/songwriter music (first song that pops into my mind is Free Fallin’) as well so whatever role the guitar is playing in this isn’t so driving as to be an overriding factor all the time.
It is also not like IV I would be a shocking harmonic movement to observe. It is really just a fifth up, while V I is a fifth down. Both V and IV are direct harmonic neighbours of I.
a good way of learning music theory or rather applying music theory is to use a piano/keyboard and create a melodic line.
maybe you have a melody in you head, sit and try and play it out on the keyboard, then you use the notes within that melody to structure chords or chord voicings. Piano and keyboards are great for learning practical music theory together with melody. because it becomes very visual with the piano layout.
From the melody you can discern what key you are in. And then you can playaround about with modes, maybe first you try to play chords to the melody which is in a major key and then you could try to play chords in the minor equivalent and see if you like that better.
there can be a lot said about Jacob Collier, but one thing i really agree with him on regarding music theory is that there isn’t really such a thing as right or wrong when applying music theory in composition, its all subjective.
This and the arguments above are the reasons I’ve stayed away from learning theory! Do what you like! Make music you like! By the book or your own thing!
Without meaning to be pedantic, this is not always true. You’re right that melody implies key, but playing one note at a time is never a guaranteed path to discerning key. That’s the beauty of harmony/chords: they give context to the melody and tell you “where you are”.
I’d say this depends on what you’re going for. There definitely are rules, if you’re trying to write something that might be considered “conventional” (pop, rock, EDM) etc., and not knowing those and thinking it’s all arbitrary is going to lead you to a lot of unlistenable dissonance. But you’re right that there’s genres where theory means nothing. Taken to its extreme, that leads you to serialism. Even in more middle ground like (some) jaz and avante garde (20th century) classical music, music theory is somewhat discarded (yet still observed in many ways).
What music theory gives you is a tool to convey musical ideas on other mediums then the instrument you create the music on.
so yeah, you don´t need it, but learning it opens up a whole new level of music making, BUT don´t use it a cudgel for exploration. its just another tool in your toolbox for musical exploration and expression.
maybe i worded that poorly, but yes, you need the context of the whole melody to discern a key. but using this method you can be a bit playful with chords and harmonies.
absoluetly, but if you are just creating something from a melody, you don´t really need rules. But if you have a melody in your head and you want to make a pop song out of it there are absolutely rules to make it a pop song.
There are definitely rules in serialism! Serialism’s probably the most theoretically pure and structured music you could write. You decide what your row is going to be, you make some choices about how that translates to pitch, rhythm, instrumentation, &c. Then you just apply that row in its original order, backwards, upside-down, and upside-down and backwards.
Alas, despite all this rigorous planning, the method usually creates no audibly discernable structure so serialist pieces tend to sound (a) like all the other serialist pieces and (b) like a synthesizer being kicked downstairs for 10 minutes - thus giving rise to the inaccurate perception that it’s just random. It isn’t random - it’s rigidly ordered. It just sounds random.
Piggybacking off this thread, does anyone have an recommendations of programs for learning keyboard? Obviously an actual teacher would be better but I’m wondering if anyone has used anything like melodics etc and got much success from it?
I’ve been working through Chord Mastery Bootcamp. It’s pretty much focused on building up a chord vocabulary for R&B/neo-soul, learning the theory that goes with that, applications to real songs, etc. Advancement from one phase to the next requires posting videos for the teacher to review and approve. He failed me on my first video lol, but has been letting me advance for the most part. I shared some of those videos on the piano thread. Opinions on other online piano learning resources have been posted as well on that thread.
I recently got recruited into a band as a guitarist so piano progressed has stalled while I spend time learning the guitar parts to songs that the band wants to cover, as well as creating guitar parts for some originals. But I intend to get back into the piano game eventually.
This is only covering just a little bit of the topic, but Ricky Tinez unlocked a lot for me when it comes to the very basics of chords and how to make inversions on keyboard.
Just want to mention a couple of music theory resources that might be of interest.
Ethan Hein does a great podcast about music theory of popular music. He talks a lot about blues harmony, and how it doesn’t fit classical music theory. His recent episode about rock harmony is a great starting point.
I can also recommend the book “Everyday Tonality” by Philip Tagg, which looks at popular music harmony. Lots of interesting stuff about chord progressions that are just loops of two, three or four chords, and even one chord “progressions”. ie. things are common and work perfectly in popular styles, but make no sense in classical music theory. Info and links for Everyday Tonality .