Music Theory vs Chord VST

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
Locked New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

In eighth notes (4/4):

|CDE (5 eighth rests) | 4x= 4 bars: so |CDE|CDE|CDE|CDE|

'Simple' exercise: write a chord sequence.

Post

herodotus wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:53 am
It still blows my mind when I write a song that uses some obscure symmetrical mode, and my friend Charles can adapt and play an appropriate solo against it without even knowing that he is doing so..
I'm reminded of rehearsals for this album I helped a drummer with, he had this very tricky thing going and I made the mistake of counting it out, out loud (if I was going to work with it, absolutely had to have it) and he started f**king his own lick up, completely.

Post

SoundPorn wrote: Wed Feb 06, 2019 7:39 am Never forget that Music Theory is just a THEORY anyway. And never forget 90% of music for the last 3 decades use the same couple chord progessions anyway.
90% of music in the last 3 centuries use the same couple chord progressions.
Tonic-Subdominant-Dominant-Tonic (and substitutes and extensions) have been used since forever.

However 90% of music is boring.

And music theory is not just a THEORY, it's a set of rules derived from historic musical practice and it's a constantly evolving set of knowledge regarding music structure.

The whole trap/hiphop/alterpop/rnb/electronic gets so ridiculously atonal it doesn't even have chords anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDZX4ooRsWs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfAqtFuGjWM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CybO7XtYpdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL6sjdbIAXI

Not to mention the whole Film music which is often atonal or at least explores Tchaikovsky's extended palette of harmonies.

I won't even go into the part where "chord" itself is not at all the most defining factor of what music is.

as @jancivil already explained there's voicing, arrangement, inversions, etc...
Then there's timbre and colour of the sound, style of production.

In the end, there's 12 notes in ET, but if you're not so daft you go out of that restriction pretty fast.
check the slightly detuned piano here, it's subtle but it's there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Na4j8AVgA

anyway, great music that makes history is not done with Chord VSTs and great artists for the most part aren't dilettantes, formal education or not.

edit:
I deliberately left out classical heritage, but iconic pieces done by ligeti from culturally defining movies such as odyssey 2001 and the shining are anything but the 90% chord progression you speak of.

f**king educate yourself.
Image

Post

^^^ Jesus, and now something completely different

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3a9ktgNozE

this is where the magic starts to happen (for me :) )
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

Post

nice
Image

Post

- as to this "90% of music...", of course if your notion of 'music' is not global, is culturally narrow on top of being within borders so to say, and really refers to popularity, you can end up with the resultant notion like that.

The thing that Ploki said above, that breaking rules is where history happens, it's where interest happens is the truth.
If, however, all you want is to copy what's popular, say nothing at all, there's nothing to know, it's all done for you; t'was ever thus.
You're incurious and pretty much useless, only underscored by making the all-caps clue-free statement it's all just a THEORY "anyway". What, so you want everyone to be the same as you, being the same as what you strove to be same as? Jesus. It's beyond boring.

You're rationalizing not knowing anything for another person. Are you convinced yet, that you don't need to? The question in the OP indicates a suspicion in a person, that not knowing may not be the best sort of experience.

Even if it's just strictly from this supposed 90% of chord progression, purely the received and unexamined conventional practice, if one wants to be musical, one wants some control over the product. I suppose people are writing algorithms to more or less voice progressions but if you don't know the techniques, you don't know what to trust. You may be in a vicious loop of not knowing what you don't know so you... ... ...

Post

:)

Not to interfere with the above, but to add another viewpoint... Being a language/semantics nut, I've pondered whether I should weigh in on the other ways "music theory is just a THEORY anyway" is so problematic and grating. I've written on this subject before, so I'll just cobble something together based on my previous comments on the matter.

"Theory" is indeed the exact term used when referring to the methodology and principles, and the analysis and meta analysis thereof, dealing with a given art/craft. When someone says "music theory is just a theory anyway", they are thinking of a theory (countable) in the way the term is often perceived to be used in natural sciences, for example. "That's when theory fades away and evidence show up" kind of thinking -- which in turn is actually a colloquial, informal use of that specific kind of "theory", and the correct term even there would be hypothesis.

In other words: nobody is saying "I have a music theory" while referring to "music theory" (i.e. the abstract knowledge of methods and principles and the analysis of that subject matter) in the manner this term is usually used, like on this forum.

In turn, someone might say "I have a theory on how this musical practice evolved when these people migrated over here and combined their earlier knowledge with the possibilities of the instrumental heritage of this area" or "I have a theory on how the early civilizations here treated their drums using the sap from this type of tree, leading to new types of instruments" (completely improvised examples). In both of those cases, you are dealing with a theory dealing with music, yes, formed and researched using the data and means available. But it's also easy to see the difference.

So, when considering "theory" (uncountable) as a term meaning the amalgamation of knowledge in a given field, and the further study of that field and its principles, consider something like different fields of mathematics, for example: set theory, game theory, group theory, and so on. Compare the way the term is used in those cases to music theory, literary theory and the like. They are of course different in content, yes, but obviously these are valid academic uses of "theory" in that other sense, not "just a theory" but a distinct field of knowledge someone operates in, and so as a term they behave very much in the same way as music theory.

This is why even from the language perspective (not commenting on the actual musical content as that has been dealt with above), saying "music theory is just a theory anyway" is simply just misunderstanding a term and how it's being used.

Post

Here's my take - producers of yesteryear had the job of bringing together the artist, other supporting session artists, the recording engineers & mixing engineers, etc., into a studio - then gave them nudges in certain directions, molded them how they saw fit to try to work with the artists and achieve a common vision. Now, the modern (bedroom) producer has the luxury of having many or all of those roles available to them, but at the expense of a dilution of their time & learning capacity. For me: I have *some* aptitude for understanding music theory - but I haven't played an instrument since the trumpet in MIDDLE school, so...for me: having the 'auto' composing VSTs like Melody Sauce or Captain Chords et. al, is more like bringing a session artist into MY studio, telling them what I generally want, then winding them up, letting them go, and seeing what they can do for that particular track. I think of them like an employee, as if THEY were the session musician, not simply a piece of software. But hey, I guess whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

Post

herodotus wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:06 pm
jancivil wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 8:33 pm Some understand it without being able to specify it in the terms availed, through the lingua franca; I mean by ear and through internalizing the shape and form; particularly via modeling the conventions... and may wind up capable of creativity.
That's an area of talent which can't be taught or shown, though. And if one is this creature, one isn't reliant on an algorithm for the multiple choice question, I wouldn't think.
Yes.

It's a horrible thought: the idea that you either have it or you don't. It's undemocratic and it seems unfair. It's the sort of thing that college students would protest if they knew that people believed it.
I may not be 100% on topic here, but I just wanted to say that I absolutely detest the notion that somebody like, say, a Jimi Hendrix or a Frank Zappa, should be made/expected/encouraged to dumb themselves down to the musical level of someone like, says, me (and then, when asked, insist that they're not really dumbing themselves down and that we REALLY, REALLY are all the same). I don't care if it's undemocratic or unfair, I simply do not have the musical chops of a Hendrix or a Zappa (nor do I have the genetics of an Arnold Schwarzenegger) and to pretend otherwise would be attempting to bend reality. And I don't care who protests.

Now, more to the point, I have tried to forego learning "too much" music theory, but I was too curious (in fact, it was just that curiosity - which clashed with my inability to understand certain concepts just yet - that made me try to forego music theory - because it was very frustrating).

That said, am I gonna just not touch any instrument or any workstation/music generator, etc. until I've learned "all" of the theory? Absolutely not. I learn by doing. I just put my hands on the piano until I've found something that seems interesting AND I fully accept that all the music I've made/tried to has a lot of happenstance (as opposed to premeditation) in it. But I will arrive at that point some day.

Post

I wouldn't have the ear to know what Zappa is doing in some of the stuff without knowing things. Some people are born with an ear that I just wasn't, but I don't even really know what that's like.
I am a quick study, however. I could put together a couple of concepts eg., 'linearly you can devise a scale your own self', and eg., 'mixed quartal stacks in parallel follow that line' and approach the thing I am hearing. I wouldn't know what other avenue to take.

OTOH you can take 'he's interested in cross-rhythm as a dissonance against a pulse' and learn the expression to recreate it looks a certain way, 'nested n-tuplets' and so forth but also get that a central idea is conversational speech as material for rhythm and just do it (and worry about it technically if you have to, or want to reproduce it with a modi operandi in the abstract).

Post

"I think of them like an employee, as if THEY were the session musician, not simply a piece of software. But hey, I guess whatever helps you sleep at night, right?"

Trust me, working with people > working with a prefabricated thing you bought.
Producing as supposed to be replacing composition leads one to that kind of falsity and kidding yourself about what it _is_.
Love the aggressive projection in your concluding sentence. One thing I def. do not lose sleep over is what people that don't know don't wanna know.

Post

killahpl wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:48 am
That said, am I gonna just not touch any instrument or any workstation/music generator, etc. until I've learned "all" of the theory? Absolutely not. I learn by doing. I just put my hands on the piano until I've found something that seems interesting AND I fully accept that all the music I've made/tried to has a lot of happenstance (as opposed to premeditation) in it. But I will arrive at that point some day.
id say theres a huge difference between "i don't need to learn subject a because i have tool b"
and "while ill learning subject a ill use tool b to get me there and maybe it will also teach me something along the way"

the tool isn't the issue, its the users goals.
not something id use personally, but if people want to, not my call.

Post

Well, the notion using a 'Chord VST' is to be put on the same plane as working with session musicians is self-delusion. One will have read in a magazine 'producers' do something something. But someone in the production knows from chords reliably, or there's chaos.





Literally nothing anyone that isn't me does is my call.

Post

i was answering the other guy :hihi:

im not sure about software as session musicians.
do i need to make them coffee?
might they sue me for royalties at some point when the ai gets to be in charge?
the future dangers is what puts me off.
rise of the robots, this is how theyre going to infiltrate!

Post

although, have you seen that phone that finished schubert's unfinished?

Locked

Return to “Music Theory”