A level of music theory I wish I possessed

[Bassfinger]

On 21/03/2024 at 17:20, TimR said:

Theory is a model.

 

You can use a model to predict what might happen given a set of initial conditions.

You can use a model to explain why something happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 By chance I was watching a Rick Beato video today and he touched on the subject.

 

He says that as an already avid listener and player of music his music degree didn't fundamentally teach him anything he didn't already know about theory.  All it did was teach him the formal names of the different phenomena.

[ambient]

On 20/03/2024 at 14:19, Baloney Balderdash said:

To be perfectly honest I am not impressed.

 

Also, what exactly is this supposed to proof?

 

Where is the version where you don't base the solo on music theory but primarily use your ears and intuition, so we can compare and see which is better?

 

 

Ears aren’t necessarily foolproof. A student proudly presented me with a piece of work earlier that sounded awful - he’d paid no attention to the harmony of the piece - and was hopelessly out of time in places.

 

I know what will work in a given context and how it’ll sound. No guesswork involved. Your ears will only tell it sounds okay after the event. Knowing it will sound bad will save you from that in advance.

[Baloney Balderdash]

35 minutes ago, ambient said:

Ears aren’t necessarily foolproof. A student proudly presented me with a piece of work earlier that sounded awful - he’d paid no attention to the harmony of the piece - and was hopelessly out of time in places.

 

I know what will work in a given context and how it’ll sound. No guesswork involved. Your ears will only tell it sounds okay after the event. Knowing it will sound bad will save you from that in advance.

Isn't that exactly why you should focus on training your ears rather than theory?

 

What is music if not sound?

 

If you can't hear what you play, your can't play it properly.

 

What is that joke about the blind and the deaf guy: "Can you hear what I see?"

 

 

Edited April 9 by Baloney Balderdash

[ambient]

7 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Isn't that exactly why you should focus on training your ears rather than theory?

No, your ears will only tell you after the event. Knowing theory you know what you can do and how it’ll sound.

 

Do you think Miles Davis, John Paitucci or Chick Corea etc., played random notes in the hope they’d sound good?

 

My point was that he ‘thought’ it sounded good.

Edited April 9 by ambient

[Baloney Balderdash]

6 minutes ago, ambient said:

No, your ears will only tell you after the event. Knowing theory you know what you can do and how it’ll sound.

 

Do you think Miles Davis, John Paitucci or Chick Corea played random notes in the hope they’d sound good?

Absurd!

 

Now I can't find it, but there is this YouTube clip where a highly acclaimed music professor explains and demonstrates how you need to hear in your head what you play while you play it in order to play it properly.

 

Edited April 9 by Baloney Balderdash

[wateroftyne]

4 minutes ago, ambient said:

No, your ears will only tell you after the event.

 

Cobblers.

[ambient]

1 minute ago, wateroftyne said:

 

Cobblers.

 

 

Charming, and you’re a moderator.

 

So your ears will tell you how something will sound before you’ve played it?

 

I know what something will sound like and how it’ll work against what’s being played. 
 

Anyway. Life is too short to be arguing with rude people online. I’ll take my leave. 
 

Bye!

[wateroftyne]

9 minutes ago, ambient said:

 

 

So your ears will tell you how something will sound before you’ve played it?

 

 

Yes. There's no way I have theory thundering through my head while I'm playing. In short, I know where my hands need to go on the fretboard to play a note I know will work.

 

I suspect we're wired differently, and you know what? That's fine.

[wateroftyne]

p.s. - cobblers.

[ambient]

1 minute ago, wateroftyne said:

 

Yes. There's no way I have theory thundering through my head while I'm playing. In short, I know where my hands need to go on the fretboard to play a note I know will work.

 

I suspect we're wired differently, and you know what? That's fine.

Yes, we’re wired differently. I treat people with respect. Unlike you.

 

[itu]

1 hour ago, ambient said:

No, your ears will only tell you after the event. Knowing theory you know what you can do and how it’ll sound.

I get your point. Too well. A looper has revealed many faults from my playing. I've had a feel how do I sound, but the looper doesn't feel anything. It just reveals everything I've played. Then I have fixed the wrongs, or at least few of them. Overplaying is my biggest mistake, and really hard to avoid.

 

Theory has helped me a lot. I consider it as a toolbox, although I just have a hammer, and a Phillips #2. Hoping to get few more, but an old dog like me has already issues in learning those old tricks.

[peteb]

1 hour ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Isn't that exactly why you should focus on training your ears rather than theory?

 

If you can't hear what you play, your can't play it properly.

 

 

Yes, I would agree that having good ears is by far the most important factor. But, if you have a working knowledge of musical theory then it makes playing by ear much more powerful and straightforward, not to mention making it much easier / quicker to learn new songs, etc. 

 

For example, I play in a Led Zep tribute band, and when I had to learn the San Francisco section of the live version of Dazed and Confused, there is a lot of nice but pretty busy bass playing that sounds quite complex at first. However, when you realise that he is playing over a repeated Em > C lydian phrase, then it is a lot easier to work out what he is playing and to work out what the right part should be. But if you don't know what a lydian mode is, then you could take forever learning it and still not get it right! 

 

By the way, I have had next to no formal musical training and still get the names of the modes wrong sometimes (I double-checked that I had got correct mode before I typed the above paragraph), but it is understanding and applying the concept that is important. 

 

Edited April 9 by peteb

[EssexBuccaneer]

Some of the greatest guitarists and bass players around are self taught and have little theoretical knowledge - Steve Harris springs to mind.

 

i never learned theory. I wish I did, and I’ve tried the ‘for dummies’ book but ditched it very early on. When I want to create something I’ll hum it in my head and figure it out from there. Is that common? I have no idea, but it works for me.

[TimR]

10 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

There's no way I have theory thundering through my head while I'm playing. In short, I know where my hands need to go on the fretboard to play a note I know will work.

 

That's exactly what theory is.

 

Just because it's not written down doesn't make it not tberoy. You know what it's going to sound like, and you know what notes to play to make it sound right.

[SumOne]

46 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

That's exactly what theory is.

 

Just because it's not written down doesn't make it not tberoy. You know what it's going to sound like, and you know what notes to play to make it sound right.

I know this gets into silly semantic stuff, but for sake of Internet argument:

 

A Dog can walk, but it doesn't know what muscles, joints nerves etc are used or the physics of gravity, acceleration, momentum etc. Could we say the Dog knows the theory of walking because it knows how to do it?  I can play 'Creep' and understand it sounds right, but couldn't explain the theory like the video on the first page. Can I claim to understand the music theory though? 

[dclaassen]

Music theory, as it was taught in my uni classes, focusses almost exclusively on 18th-19th century composition rules and techniques. This is helpful in a lot of way to understand why certain things sound the way they do, but, at best, it is used to mostly describe what has already been composed. Jazz players, and, more importantly, jazz composers, need this, plus a whole range of other tools to understand and compose that music. 

 

I honestly think that the ear training that almost always goes along with theory classes is more important when gigging. I can't remember the last time I worried about parallel 5ths or V of V pivot chords in a piece of pop/rock/country music. Good for you if you know theory. I don't think it gives those of us who have gone through that training any especially vital information when playing "Mustang Sally" down at the local. I sure would not wear my "I have a MuED degree" t-shirt to one of my country depping gigs.....might make me look like a bit of a ......(fill in appropriate descriptive word here).    

[cheddatom]

12 hours ago, ambient said:

No, your ears will only tell you after the event...

 

This is obvious isn't it. Your ears can only hear sounds, and no sound is made until you play a note, so your ears cannot be involved in that note choice

 

If you've been using your ears to build up your own "theory" of which notes will work and when, in a sort of trial and error fashion, then your ears were involved in a way, but not in a literal one. 

[TimR]

55 minutes ago, SumOne said:

I know this gets into silly semantic stuff, but for sake of Internet argument:

 

A Dog can walk, but it doesn't know what muscles, joints nerves etc are used or the physics of gravity, acceleration, momentum etc. Could we say the Dog knows the theory of walking because it knows how to do it?  I can play 'Creep' and understand it sounds right, but couldn't explain the theory like the video on the first page. Can I claim to understand the music theory though? 

 

Yes.

 

Theory is just a model. The dog knows from it's experience and the model of the world it has whether it can jump across a stream. 

 

It's not until he puts the theory to the test and jumps that he knows it's right.

 

The only issue is there's a lot of snobbery (and inverted snobbery) around musical theory which puts people in separate camps and disuaudes a lot of people from looking at 'complicated' theory.

 

If you know the names of the strings - you know some theory and if you know what an octave is and the fret board, you know some more. If you know a song has 4 beats in a bar and some notes are 1 beat long and other 2 or 4 or half's and quarters you know more.  And I'd say that's the bare minimum to be able to play bass. 

[Baloney Balderdash]

On 09/04/2024 at 21:31, ambient said:

No, your ears will only tell you after the event. Knowing theory you know what you can do and how it’ll sound.

 

Do you think Miles Davis, John Paitucci or Chick Corea etc., played random notes in the hope they’d sound good?

 

My point was that he ‘thought’ it sounded good.

19 hours ago, cheddatom said:

 

This is obvious isn't it. Your ears can only hear sounds, and no sound is made until you play a note, so your ears cannot be involved in that note choice

 

If you've been using your ears to build up your own "theory" of which notes will work and when, in a sort of trial and error fashion, then your ears were involved in a way, but not in a literal one. 

That doesn't however mean that you can't hear stuff in your head and play accordingly, simply based on experience.

 

Also your ears are more than the meat pieces on the side of your head, they are connected to your brain, your ears as such doesn't hear anything, they just pick up vibrations and transform them to electrical impulses for your brain can interpret. 

 

This is however not what you usually mean when saying "using your ears", it actually means using your sense of hearing.

 

I don't know why anyone with any degree of common sense would take this so literally, it's absurd.

 

 

Edited April 11 by Baloney Balderdash

[Baloney Balderdash]

Also I think I did quite alright just using my experience and ears composing, programming, playing/singing, recording and mixing this piece:

 

Edited April 10 by Baloney Balderdash

[MacDaddy]

2 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Also I think I did quite alright just using my experience and ears composing, programming, playing/singing, recording and mixing this piece:

 

 

To be perfectly honest I am not impressed 😉

[cheddatom]

11 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

That doesn't however mean that you can't hear stuff in your head and play accordingly, simply based on experience.

 

 

You actually quoted me saying "If you've been using your ears to build up your own "theory" of which notes will work and when, in a sort of trial and error fashion..." which is basically the same as what you've written there, but confusingly, at the start of your sentence, it reads like you're disagreeing with me. 

[Baloney Balderdash]

9 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

 

To be perfectly honest I am not impressed 😉

I do realize that you're being ironic, but did you hear it to an end?

 

4 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

 

You actually quoted me saying "If you've been using your ears to build up your own "theory" of which notes will work and when, in a sort of trial and error fashion..." which is basically the same as what you've written there, but confusingly, at the start of your sentence, it reads like you're disagreeing with me. 

Not disagreeing, just saying/pointing out...

 

Edited April 10 by Baloney Balderdash

[cheddatom]

14 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Also I think I did quite alright just using my experience and ears composing, programming, playing/singing, recording and mixing this piece:

 

 

I just listened to this whole piece as I'm bored at the office in my day-job. It's not to my tastes as it doesn't really go anywhere, just a solid hypnotic groove that randomly crosses the bar about half way through (the most interesting bit for me) but I know people who would like it.

 

If you'd like any constructive criticism I could give you a paragraph or two. It'd be based on what I've heard and I wouldn't use any music theory terms as I hardly know any

[SumOne]

I think, in the example of a Dog knowing how to walk, the point is that a Dog doesn't formally study the theory of how it is creating movement and it can't explain about energy and muscle groups and the physics of gravity and movement. It has learned by doing. Sure, it is useful for some people to formally study these things in-depth and knowledge is always a good thing, but you don't usually need to study in that level of detail to achieve your objective.

 

It's semantics whether the Dog knows the theory of walking or not, but in science a Theory is quite a specific formal thing "supported by evidence: a principle formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data." You can apply Laws of Motion & Gravity and  conservation of Energy and the Theory of General Relativity and use data and evidence to explain how the Dog walks, but generally speaking - in scientific terms, you wouldn't say the Dog understands the theory of what it's doing - it doesn't comprehend how it works, just that it works.

 

In the same way, to play (or write) 'Creep' you don't need to know if chords are Secondary Dominant or Chromatic Mediant. In all likelihood, Radiohead didn't know in-depth theory of it, they listened to the Pixies and Bowie songs with the chord progressions and learned by doing, and they in turn had listened to the Elvis song that had used it, and that was influenced by the Ink Spots, who listened to the Shep Fields song - who probably heard it somewhere else. I wouldn't be suprised if none of them (and whoever originally did it) knew or spent time considering the theory of whether they are using a Secondary Dominant or Chromatic Mediant, they noodled about and made a chord a minor and thought it sounded good.

 

Personally though, I'd say some formal understanding of music theory goes a long way and is pretty much essential, it makes playing a lot easier if you know something about timings, notes, chords, triads etc, you could figure it all out by listening/doing but you'd save yourself a lot of time and effort to just do a bit of formal learning. But for me, when it comes to more advanced music theory, learning about things like the difference between Secondary Dominant and Chromatic Mediant, personally, I think my time is better spent playing with bands and listeing to music to learn by doing. I don't think that's snobbery, I think most of those artists that recorded songs with that chord progression would probably say the same thing.

 

 

Edited April 10 by SumOne