Music Theory vs Chord VST

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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^^^^ btw. captain chords, AFAIK it not supports free playing with extensions etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRrp1cpEAjw
has been added to it already?
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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no idea, just saw one of their ads on a youtubes about the hoaxed moon landing :hihi:

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xbitz wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 11:38 am ^^^ nope, it's a quite big help in quick chord progression sketching ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igNnv2ozdlU
especially in voice leading
I hardly think this is as fast as counting as Jan says. Once you learn to do it there's no way that it's not faster than a few mouse clicks.

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^^^ definitely don't want to fight against any professional musician :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yyYqz-WHrY
without software help, I even struggle with a proper sounding tonic-predominant-dominant progression, not to mention the predominant substations(predominant extensions)which were created on the video and borrowing chords :D (and where are the progression chains ...)

btw. if somebody would like to learn the basics > https://www.udemy.com/user/jonathanpeters/
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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deastman wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 6:16 am Why learn music theory when a program can do it for you? Why learn a foreign language when you have Google Translate? Why learn mathematics when you have a calculator?

The journey should be it’s own reward. I’m also always dubious when people talk about the tools allowing them to make music faster. It’s as if making music is some unpleasant task which they want to race through as fast as possible and get it over with.

Now, that being said, I actually love these kinds of tools. I understand music theory to an intermediate level. Not to the extent of some members posting here *cough jancivil cough* but well enough to accomplish whatever I want. I just enjoy interacting with generative tools. It’s like collaborating with someone else, being inspired by their ideas and coming up with my own in response. I also think that tools which generate pleasing chord progressions can be an excellent teaching tool, if you have an inquisitive mind and want to figure out why you like the results it produces.

On the other hand, if you just want a big red Easy button, that’s your prerogative too.
It’s hard to get people to understand that when all they see and hear now is about how technology makes everything faster and easier.

We learn so much information in school and college and unfortunately we don’t even use half of it in our daily lives. Who needs to know what an eigenvector is to count money and pay bills? Who needs to know what iambic pentameter is to fill out a job application?

On one hand, the journey is rewarding. But on the other hand, people’s attention spans are dropping and they expect quicker and faster and simpler results. It’s a conundrum for sure.
To the stars through desire.

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What helped me most was liking music and happening to have an acoustic piano around. I took lessons for a very short time when I was a kid but as soon as I'd gathered the courage to defy my parents' will I quit because I wasn't enjoying it.

When I was about 18 I somehow got into classical music and really just wanted to create that music with my fingers. Because I had been typing on a computer and playing video games since I was about 10, and enjoyed many sports, I had the dexterity to just start playing. I'm not a musical prodigy, I found all the sheet music on the Internet and printed them, or bought them, and bugged my two friends who had taken about a decade's worth of lessons in playing piano, about how to interpret musical notations and what fingers to use in difficult sequences.

I learned everything that I need to know about music on a theoretical level, through practice. I learned that thirds, fifths, and fourths are the most central building blocks of [western] music, how the melodic progression always returns to the fundamental, what dominant, subdominant etc. signify at different parts, about arpeggios, tremolo/trill, where the most consonant and dissonant intervals can be found, how the structural "context" in music is a dynamic, moving entity, standard rhythms and rhythmic patterns, "syncopation", counterpoint. I learned everything I needed to know before I knew there were fancypants terms for every little trivial detail that never tried to hide from me.

I didn't think about it as much as I felt it, but it sure was easier to think about it with that first-hand experience, because mostly everything was already in order in my head, and when I later found myself reading about styles, forms, composition techniques, idiomatic patterns (in western classical music), it felt like learning the alphabet after you already know how to read and write. It isn't about the categories, terminology and formalisms - it has always been about tension. Everything that exists in music can be thought of as different forms of tension.

Coming from such background I'm not constrained by "correctness". I create my own rules. The rules are not there to prescribe what I can do in music, they exist to describe the statistically prevalent patterns, i.e. trends, that constitute the music. The least occurring patterns don't become a "rule" because by definition they're more of an "exception". The exceptions are not less "correct" to me - I don't care about correct - they are just more rare. Usually, unsurprisingly, the stuff that sounds good becomes a rule, and stuff that doesn't becomes an exception. This may seem like empty rhetoric, but it's a central paradigm in my creative way of being; it's putting the horse before the cart, and its value is not in allowing you to actively break the rules - it's in freeing you from your own prejudice, expectations, conformism, and needing to rationally validate what you feel.


So to actually answer OP's question in clear terms;

1. If the automagical music-generation software helps you to immerse yourself in music - like listening to thousands of hours of classical music and playing an instrument did to me - then by all means use that.

2. I do think using melody and rhythms generators and randomization, and too heavy recycling of material (such as beats, loops or melodic phrase samples, etc.) is indeed cheap, not respectable, and contributes to the gigantic amount of uninspired, unimaginative, useless sound being produced that is only nominally music. Now shoot me! :-p

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I recommend to explore alternative harmonic systems, maybe the functional harmony became "deprecated" on this times.. lol

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stearine wrote: Thu Aug 22, 2019 10:16 pm randomization
If you're not going to use your share of randomness, I'll gladly use it. Thanks!

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flowsnice wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 10:51 pm Im just getting into learning music theory but I have a delema. I have come across a ton of VSTs that produce chords for you and I have a question. When applications like these become more popular what will this mean for those that want to learn/use music theory the old fashion way? Should I spend double or even tripple the time sitting learning music theory or should i resort to these chord generators and learn music theory by generating the chords that sound nice to me? I kind of feel like thats cheating :scared:
Technology has caused the need to feel instant enjoyment instead of learning to play and enjoy an instrument. This is a problem. I can play the piano fluently and I could think of nothing worse than having to click and program chords in. That seems so boring to me and super time consuming. It's just short term training for long term efficiency and enjoyment. You should definitely still learn an instrument such as the piano.

Learning chords is one thing, learning to play melodies that fit with them, counter melodies, harmonies and such is another. Anyone can make a boring song with block chords. Playing in all of your sounds, instruments and parts into a song is the enjoyable part of creating music. If you want to create music, you should understand it the best you can so that you can enjoy it.

Here is an example of me playing creating a song from scratch by literally playing in all the parts. Doesn't this look like more fun?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B52-7NED5Hw ... hare_sheet

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Desire Inspires wrote: Fri Aug 16, 2019 10:46 pm It’s a conundrum for sur
it isn’t, nor is there any dilemma. Either you want to know it and stand on your own two legs or you’ll do ‘even the tonic-predominant-dominant... is a struggle without help from software’, and never quite ambulate.
Last edited by jancivil on Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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currentsound wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 11:35 am
flowsnice wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 10:51 pm Im just getting into learning music theory but I have a delema. I have come across a ton of VSTs that produce chords for you and I have a question. When applications like these become more popular what will this mean for those that want to learn/use music theory the old fashion way? Should I spend double or even tripple the time sitting learning music theory or should i resort to these chord generators and learn music theory by generating the chords that sound nice to me? I kind of feel like thats cheating :scared:
Technology has caused the need to feel instant enjoyment instead of learning to play and enjoy an instrument. This is a problem. I can play the piano fluently and I could think of nothing worse than having to click and program chords in. That seems so boring to me and super time consuming. It's just short term training for long term efficiency and enjoyment. You should definitely still learn an instrument such as the piano.

Learning chords is one thing, learning to play melodies that fit with them, counter melodies, harmonies and such is another. Anyone can make a boring song with block chords. Playing in all of your sounds, instruments and parts into a song is the enjoyable part of creating music. If you want to create music, you should understand it the best you can so that you can enjoy it.

Here is an example of me playing creating a song from scratch by literally playing in all the parts. Doesn't this look like more fun?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B52-7NED5Hw ... hare_sheet
From my observation, (and no, i can't prove it. there is no research paper. this is just one guys personal observation from one particular geographic region on this planet). , there is a divide between traditional music theory and education and training and music content creation or music production (which ever way you want to name it).

Electronic music production using home computers seems to be an extension of other computer activities such as gaming, social media interaction, programming e.t.c. Hence, a lot of computer savvy folks seem to naturally gravitate towards music production and learning DAWs and VSTs and synths -- its fun to do, its using computers, its a way to express yourself creatively and its' a lot more fun and exciting than writing a poem in Microsoft Word.

Traditional music lessons and music classes are a whole different ball game and there may not necessarily be a direct link between traditional music education and modern electronic music production/creation.

We force one of my kids to practice piano to pass conservatory of music level exams in our area. He also happens to do the FL Studio EDM chillstep music production thing with his friends in high school. The piano practice is a chore and he hates it. The FL Studio he likes to do because its fun and its on a computer. I see him sometimes working on FL and drawing notes in the midi editor and i keep asking -- why are you drawing notes when you can actually play those notes? The answer is, the creation of his electronic music and the way they collaborate seems to be a separate process from practicing and playing short classical piano pieces for a music exam. He prefers to use the midi editor and chord helpers because that's how he sees other more famous EDM artists do it on YT and what not.

I don't think music software companies will displace music teachers who teach students how to play instruments or learn traditional music theory. What they might do is displace book publishers of beginner music howto books . If your only goal is to quickly understand something musical, why would you waste $20 on a piano beginner book when you can get scaler and get results faster?
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Gear & Setup: Windows 10, Dual Xeon, 32GB RAM, Cubase 10.5/9.5, NI Komplete Audio 6, NI Maschine, NI Jam, NI Kontakt

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You’d have to make an argument for the understanding gleaned from Scaler.
And there’s nothing.

As it is you’re confident enough to have formed a rhetorical question. Which is you bullshitting, as per usual here. Whole lotta words trying to make a lazy, feckless disposition appear as though it’s thoughtful.

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jancivil wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 10:27 pm You’d have to make an argument for the understanding gleaned from Scaler.
And there’s nothing.

As it is you’re confident enough to have formed a rhetorical question. Which is you bullshitting, as per usual here. Whole lotta words trying to make a lazy, feckless disposition appear as though it’s thoughtful.
I see. okay then.
🌐 Spotify 🔵 Soundcloud 🌀 Soundclick

Gear & Setup: Windows 10, Dual Xeon, 32GB RAM, Cubase 10.5/9.5, NI Komplete Audio 6, NI Maschine, NI Jam, NI Kontakt

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Somehow you manage to deceive yourself that bypassing the experience of actually playing “scales” in the fullness of some music in favor of a program (which doesn’t actually think) you need to tell you WHAT KEY and “suggest chords” to you would compete w that experience. Seeing, hearing what chords are doing in context, how the chords relate to melody, how harmonic rhythm operates, etc. You give up all agency to an app in this case. What chord, I’ll say it again, is about an idea. You aren’t actually interested.

And we see what your understanding is from that.
You know f**k all.

:shrug:

And the impression you give arguing this like you absorb nothing, finally we’d have to conclude you, in fact, have zero interest in learning music really. Would one argue that the person who has to strictly rely on presets in an EQ or compression application is doing just as well as those who actually fully grok it? In the Effects forum. I tend to figure you troll here out of resentment.

This is the hill you choose to die on. It’s just idiotic and totally vacuous. It’s just crap trolling, and it is truly hard to feature any adult behaving this way.

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I wrote:It took far longer to find 'sus2' and 'minor' harmonies by that interface than the fraction of the second it takes to do it if you can count.
xbitz wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 11:38 am ^^^ nope
Yeah it did, in that video. FAR longer than the ~12 milliseconds of thought.
The video was supposed to demonstrate the use value. Then you state how you totally need the app to do anything. You’re just proving the point against the thing.

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