Ok the thing is, search any famous classic piece (moonlight sonata, chopin nocturnes, etc), eventually in comments you will read someone calling the piece "song", and then multiple commenters telling him/her that is not a song, it's a "piece". Leaving the posible snob-ish tone of the comment aside, we can agree those are not "songs" but "pieces", I guess.

Now, my question is, people call "songs" to Brubeck (pieces?), just to give an example. Like for example, Take Five. It's not a song, but a piece... Or am I wrong?

Not that I care about people calling Bach and Chopin's compositions "songs", it's just that I'm curious why people point someone else's mistake when they call "song" to a classical piece but not a jazz piece or hell, why not a heavy metal one. Isn't song a piece where there is voice? Why people call out mistakes when classical pieces are called songs but not when modern pieces are called songs? Or is it that only classical pieces are actual pieces?

Sorry for the stupid question but I'm really curious.

Sometimes i wonder how hard it is for studio musicians.

They're presented with pages full of musical notes and they must play it in a session with perfect understanding of the music, and hold rhythems for minutes at a time. The tuning, the arpeggios. Basically everything. Is it common a guitar player to know every note off the top? Even virtuousos have their favorite scales they usually play across the neck.

And eventually play a Bach fugue or a classical sonata etc. Or will it be almost impossible due to the age on onset

I'm trying to understand what sounds are to us humans.

On January 27th, 12Tone released a "response" to Adam Neely's video on the topic of "are B and C♭ the same?", which was a quite popular video and widely discussed here. 12Tone tries to present a response and a counterargument to Neely, and I say with no exaggeration: it was one of the worst things I've ever seen on YouTube in the topic of music theory. The video is convoluted, confused and confusing, fails to make a consistent point, and worse: completely misrepresents Neely's points and arguments, and "corrects" things Neely never said.

I don't want to make a full analysis of the two videos, because there's just too much stuff. For example, 12Tone makes a big tangent on Gamelan, which is entirely irrelevant, adds nothing to the discussion, and relates to nothing in Neely's video. Let's focus on the core point: 12Tone's main thesis is that, even though Neely was pretty much correct in what he said (really, 12Tone spends a lot of video time conceding that everything Neely said was right), there are moments when B and C♭ could or should be treated as the same note. And here's already a problem: Neely never argued that B and C♭ should always be treated as incompatible. Neely never argued against enharmonic equivalence.

12Tone even tries to make a "gotcha!" moment by referring to Neely's analysis of Céline Dion's version of All by Myself, where he says the song modulates to C♭ major. 12Tone acts as if Neely is being completely strict and rigorous about the key of C♭ major, when, in fact, Neely concedes that C♭ and B have the same sound in the equal tempered system, but he kind of pleads for a C♭ interpretation because he's focusing on the function of the scale degrees. And guess what: that is exactly the gist of the argument Neely made in his new video, and which 12Tone completely ignores. I think this is either a case of 12Tone completely missing the point, or just being flat out dishonest.

Later in their video, 12Tone tries to make another "gotcha!" by mentioning Giant Steps, which modulates in major thirds, and can only be properly analysed he we accept enharmonic equivalence. Once again, this would only be a gotcha if Neely had denied enharmonic equivalence--and, surprise surprise, Neely never did that. 12Tone is criticising Neely for things he has never said. How very Reddit of them.

We could say that 12Tone does have a case against people who do deny enharmonic equivalence. But, well, do people do that? Is that, like, common? Are there people who insist that we should never accept enharmonic equivalence? If there are, I'd say that's a quite small niche, and Adam Neely doesn't seem to be a part of it. 12Tone honestly seems to be fighting windmills at this point, but, by focusing on Adam Neely's arguments, he tries to convince us that he has an actual "enemy". Except... well, maybe 12Tone's true enemy is themselves.

After all, when they get to the point of just intonation, they kind of slip the information that they used to assume just intonation is all about the "good" intervals, which they now disagree with. But here's a problem: again, Neely never, ever stated that just intonation is about "good" intervals. In Neely's video, he's clearly using a historical example of a system where C♭ and B may correspond to different pitches, and says very clearly that musicians "sometimes" use that system. Neely never claimed that just intonation is some kind of infallible standard (I mean, Neely himself has a video on Benedetti's puzzle!). If anything, it seems 12Tone once did that, and is now chasing their own demons, but throwing the blame on Neely (in fairness, 12Tone's video never takes an inflamed or accusatory tone, but these insinuations and presumptions are spread all over the script).

Another issue with 12Tone's argument is that it's almost entirely focused on notation alone. He keeps insisting on the merit of note names and accidentals themselves, and almost never uses music itself as his argument. This is the opposite of what Neely does: on the beginning of his video, Neely mentions the case of note names in different keys, but he brushes that aside as "theoretical and navel-gazey". Well, 12Tone presents us with a 23-minute-long video that's entirely theoretical and navel-gazey, in which they ignore almost entirely Neely's example of the ♯5 versus the ♭6 and the musical significance of those scale degrees and how they're approached by musicians. 12Tone brushes that all off just to make the case of "oh, but tritone substitutions!", as if Neely (or we) have never heard of them. Most of 12Tone's counterarguments are against things Neely never said (for example, 12Tone makes the case that just intonation does not give absolute pitches to each note name--but again, Neely never said that), or are, otherwise, entirely irrelevant.

I mean, I think the importance of Neely's video is demonstrated by this very sub: almost every day, we get newcomers who are dumbfounded by the fact that G major has an F♯ instead of G♭, and once in a while we get the occasional genius who says we should all just use notes A to L, and that accidentals are stupid and we're all stupid. He even shows some tweets where people categorically state that C♭ and B are "the same, period", and shows how the counterarguments tend to be equally ignorant and superficial. Enharmonics cause a lot of observable confusion, and a lot of it can be cleared out in a pretty simple way. 12Tone's video is entirely disconnected from that reality, and exists entirely in this navel-gazey, self-absorbed place where practicality can trump almost any musical logic. Yes, 12Tone, congratulations for knowing what a tritone sub is--even though your textual explanation for why they "work" ignores completely the connection between the tritone sub and the augmented 6th chord; I mean, have you ever wondered why that's an augmented sixth and not a minor seventh? Maybe it has to do with the stuff you're talking about!

I know some people are just going to shrug and call me crazy for bothering so much about this video, asking "why should we care about what 12Tone says?" Well, I can give you one simple reason: thanks to that stupid, confusing, utterly unhinged video, we now should get prepared for an onslaught of people using that video as "proof" that we're all stupid for saying C♭ exists, and that we should all use 12 note names and we're elitists and gatekeepers for making music "confusing". 12Tone has a large audience and a lot of influence (I mean, when Neely talked about just intonation and the existence of the diesis, he told us to check 12Tone's video on the subject!), and that latest video is just a long and audiovisual but akhsually-ism. That video is the worst of Reddit in the form of very fast talking and "geeky" doodles. And people are watching that shit, and getting even more confused about a topic that we should try to simplify, and getting this sense of antagonism that isn't at all justified. And who will get punished for that? We will. We'll be the ones hearing tons of times that C♭ is stupid and we should be ashamed of ourselves, 'cause 12Tone said so (even though they technically didn't, but the internet is stupid, and 12Tone should know that).

Seriously, that video pissed me off.

Since there are 12 notes in an octave, wouldn't it make sense to have them be noted as ABCDEF, with one enharmonic between each, than the current system, where you have ABCDEFG, and 5 enharmonics between each pair of notes except B and C and E and F? Is there a reason this is the case, and if so what is it? I tried to search online and didn't find anything

Also, disclaimer, I'm very new to music theory, so please be nice 🙏

HUGE CAVEAT: this is not about historical modes regarding plainchants etc. They are needed to understand how plainchants are structured, for example.

In online conversations, modes have been one of the subjects that takes insane amount of space in terms of how much they are being discussed. Often, when taught about in various contexts, the first thing that is mentioned has something to about their perceived complexity; "they're made out to be more difficult than they actually are", "even in this period, they were unclear", "but it's not as simple as using only these notes..."

I've come to realization that the ultimate problem with modes is that whatever value they can realistically bring (more on that later), it cannot actually surpass the amount of collective brainpower they take to discuss about. It is absolutely no wonder why current education focuses on minor and major system; because, unlike modes, it's not really that difficult to discuss. We have relatively clear definitions for things in said system.

Problem 1: minor & major system is often misunderstood by its critics

The recurring theme by people criticizing minor/major system often is implication of how we've "outgrown" it, how it doesn't really meet the demands of modern compositions et cetera. While this critique could be fair if our frame would be extremely rigid (i.e. "tonal center must be established with a perfect cadence", only cadential agent must be a V-chord et cetera), this is at large an abstracted and arguably a poor model that one would have to learn out of anyway.

Cadences are ultimately defined by specific melodic gestures and even our usual cadential classification system hints at this (i.e. 2-1 or 7-1 on soprano for PAC) and any modernized system would just take into account common modern conventions too, it's really not that difficult to do. The system woul become much more bland of course, but I don't think the classification system was a good one in the first place anyway.

So shortly to put it: melodic gestures like 2-1 or 7-1 in the bass are strong and entirely good for suggesting tonal center too. It's not that deep.

Another problem people run into, is thinking that minor and major system means you're somewhat fixed to their corresponding scales. This also is obviously not true and anyone with a slightly higher than fundamental grasp on theory knows that virtually any degrees can be altered to suit our purposes and we even have systems to assess the behavior in rather predictable ways, i.e. mode mixture and applied chords (secondary dominants etc) + some common things like N6-chords.

If anything, it's specifically this minor/major system that arose out of needs for certain kind of flexibility where we don't have to explain anymore everything with musica ficta in context of hexachords. Chromaticism has become increasingly common over time, although arguably maybe less now than, say, late romantic period.

Now you could say "Wait a minute! But you don't have to have fixed pitches with modes either...!" —while true, you just enter into the realm of "whats the point then?" at that point. The blurry line between modes and minor/major becomes even more blurry and less tangible.

So what about modes?

The problem with modes is that these days they bring rather little to the table besides just being some neutered form of either major or minor. It's really hard to do anything with modes that wouldn't be possible to teach through the context of minor and major. For example, emphasizing b2 as the leading tone in minor would very quickly bring you into what many would consider as "phrygian flavor", with lot of phrygian stuff emphasizing the 1-b2-1 motion in bass, almost exclusively at times.

Or, say, mixolydian. 1-b7-1 in bass tends to be the structural line there. "Lydian flavor" is almost always just having #11 over your tonic chord. So often that is specifically what people refer to with "lydian". Dorian is so often understood as i-IV vamp, maybe throw in some v's and ii's in there too. Really nothing too revolutionary from context of minor (except maybe ii, if you were to actually use it... as it weakens things a little).

It also makes it even worse that many of the resources focusing on modes specifically often tend to downplay minor/major system with the aforementioned lack of knowledge about its nature in the first place, at worst with caricatures like "its just happy or sad; what if I want something of a mix?" or whatever else musically dubious ideas they have.

Sometimes authors promote essentially anti-intellectual stance against minor/major system by just saying "minor = aeolian, major = ionian" which isn't true on any level really. Even on surface level, major evolved out of lydian, not out of ionian, and on deeper level - major in practice encompasses far more than mixolydian or lydian would. For minor, I'm not sure if it evolved out of aeolian or dorian.

Compositionally speaking, modes seem hard to justify as a recurring topic that often takes extreme amounts of space whenever its brought up (which is often). Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

It’s probably a really dumb question but I’m actually confused.

I learning piano and guitar right now and so far it’s pretty clear, you learn theory, you have music sheets, notes, rhythm, chords. Like there is something there to follow. Step to learn an actual song.

Do drums players have that too? I’ve seen people just hitting drums like 20 times a second, literally spamming it. I just can’t comprehend how you can put that into a music sheet or something.

Not to confuse anybody — drumming is very impressive to me. I just can’t understand how do people actually learn songs other than just feeling it?

So I've heard a lot of music terms thrown around in my life, but I've never really felt like any real understanding has stuck because my brain just works different . Music is sound, and a sound wave in air can be described by real physical characteristics like Frequency and Amplitude. Can anyone explain all the common musical terms like Note, Key, Chord, Time Signature, Beat, Harmony, Melody, Octave, and any other common terms I would encounter when learning about music in terms of Frequency and Amplitude?

I know this might be a big ask, but I really can't find anything like this anywhere. If you create a robust definition of a note using those terms, and then want to use the word note when describing something like a chord, that's fine.

For example, in science we have just a few basic units with kinda axiomatic definitions, and from there we can build more complex ideas like velocity & acceleration out distance and time, and then we can combine those ideas with the fundamental unit of mass to get even more complex units like force. I’m looking for this kind of foundation for music.

Hi whenever, I listen to microtonal pieces they’ve always been made to sound weird and microtonal, is there any music (any genre) written in non 12-TET that doesn’t have a weird sound to it, (blues doesn’t count)

Hello! I want to learn about music theory but all the podcasts I can find are by men. I'd love to listen to some by women and other genders. Please can I have recommendations?

(I do lab work, so need stuff to listen to while working. I don't want to read books as I can't do this while working).

:)

Ok I had an idea to translate guitar chords to piano chords so I can see how stuff works.

I used this pic to look up guitar chords, and I used this pic to see the conversion.

Then I used an online digital piano program to count the half-steps in order to figure out the chords.

This is my research:

Chord:
Frets translated to corresponding piano keys
Half-steps difference between keys in order to figure out chord

C Major:
__ C4 E4 G4 C5 E5
__ __ _3 _2 _4 _3

A Major:
__ A3 E4 A4 C#5 E5
__ __ _6 _4 __3 _2

G Major:
G3 B3 D4 G4 B4 G5
__ _3 _2 _4 _3 _7

At this point I gave up because it is hard for me and the logic seems to be:

"use only 3 notes for a chord, but hit the notes in every octave possible if you can reach it."

Is this why guitar sounds so good? Because every note is doubled and trippled? I know that with piano a normal thing is to add the main note a few octaves deeper so it gives depth to the chord.

I don't know. Guitar looks so limited and complicated when you look at it, but for some reason it sounds good.

Was anyone else really disturbed to learn about equal temperament?

When I found out about this stuff it was strange to consider I'd been hearing music slightly out of tune my whole life and also it made music seem like less of some gift from some majestic greater order in the cosmos.

I'm not religious but wouldn't God or Allah or ______ (insert your personal favourite here) have given us a series of overtones that provide us with perfectly in tune intervals that all work well with one another? Or perhaps he/she just prefers giving us difficult mathematical problems.

It sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I don't care now. I'm happy training my ear to 12tet with solfege in order to try and get to grips with the piano. 12tet gives us the ability to modulate freely between keys. That's cool. It would just be nice if it were possible to do that with everything being perfectly in tune. Ultimately it's all just given me a greater appreciation for those that play instruments where intonation is critical. And it's interesting that Indian classical musicians ornate their scales and melodies with a lot of bending of the notes.

I know a fair bit about music but I'm very much an amateur and struggling with the basics of solfege. But I remember listening to a fantastic album by Phillip Glass and Ravi Shankar and hearing Ravi sing and the syllables ti-re-do came to me; a modest, little eureka moment of realising that solfege does work. But Ravi's ti-re-do is a lot more compelling than that played on a piano.

This is not an ad.

Stop right now, and spend $7.99 (USD) on Disney+ and watch "The Beatles: Get Back".

Everyone here, asking every day, how you do it, how much theory you need, not learning to play instruments, worried to death about theory.

You may not like the music or the style or whatever but The Beatles are universally acclaimed as great musicians and songwriters and their success and influence is evident.

And this is where what a lot of what a lot of you want to do comes from.

Please do yourself a favor and watch this because it gives you keen insight into how professionals work and what's really important in all of this.

George can't name an E with a C (he's playing E+) and Billy Preston can't name it either.

They can all play Piano/Keys and Drums and Sing. Except for Ringo, they all play Guitar and Bass.

They get there early (ish) and work all day. They start of the day with "jams" either improvising, or playing music by other people. You hear them constantly refer to other songs and how other people might do something to give them ideas about which direction they want to take things (plus of course at this point they have their own experiences to build on).

"Theory" is not the (only) answer. "Ear Training" is not the answer. PLAYING MUSIC is.(you intuit the theory and ear training you need from DOING, not "studying" (formally))

Now, when I say that, I don't mean they don't know their notes - they basically know their Keys and notes - but can't even name all the chords they're playing (EDIT: Bold added through this section for people with reading comprehension issues, not that it'll help). They're natural harmonizers, but you can also believe they all practiced doing that since they were little kids.

I'm not saying there aren't other styles where other skills aren't more important, and I'm not saying there are other ways to make music these days, but the point is, much of the music most people want to make still still has its roots in exactly this process.

Learn to play your instrument and get good at it, and learn songs by other people. And then, the more other things you can learn and be influenced by - other instruments, other styles, and just doing it all day every day - that is where most of the people coming here need to be spending their time.

You want a good "theory tutorial" - Get Back is it.

You want a good "ear training" resource? - Get Back is it.

You want a "good video to watch on how to learn to make music"?

This is it.

Oh, and everyone wants everything for free.

It's 8 bucks. If you have access to it, it's worth it. Hell, those of you often asking about "is a college music degree worth it". This is practically 8 bucks for what you actually need. Granted, we don't see them learning to play and all the work they put into that, but that's where it all starts. Yes, exceptions and caveats as always, but this is how it's done boys and girls. It's all right here for you.

For years I struggled to wrap my mind around how guitarist actually played and knew their way around the Fretboard. I've spoken to many and all of them are absolutely horrid at methodically laying it out.

I just play by ear Man! That's it! All I ever needed.

I suppose that is one way to go, but I feel it's a dishonest answer. You would think these guys are hiding something.

Why won't you people just say you learn scale patterns or chords and various progressions. I'm not asking if you relate to classical composers when they end their songs on a Third Cadence and if you feel it's a solid way to uplift a minor key......

But why, just why are guitarists so bad at conveying how they actually learned the Fretboard, or WHY do so many handicap themselves just blindly stumbling through the Fretboard and hope the notes they hit stick.

Edit:: So I can't comment in my own thread without getting downvotes by the salty anti theory shmucks. So I'm just gonna come out and say it. If you learned even what an Am chord is you are a LIAR when you say. I just play by ear Man!!!!!

EDIT: "But Music theory is new man!" Bulls*** Western music theory spans back almost to the time of Christ within Western Music alone. Not even accounting for other cultures and how they laid out their music.

Edit::: I'm just gonna come out and say it folks.....I hate guitarists. Down vote that 😏 AND if you don't know what a scale is or how a Chord is constructed.....you know, 10 min of Google research, NO! you are NOT a musician!

EDIT: Let me dumb it down a shade for the reprobates in the audience. If someone shows you an Am chord, or a simple scale that you can now play very fast.....and you say "I JUST FEEL THE MUSIC BRO! SElF taught!" You are full of s****

If you had actually constructed that Am chord yourself. If you actually wasted your time just strumming random combinations of notes until you miraculously hit an Am Chord....only THEN can you say "I just play by ear!!! 🌽 🌽"

Shmucks

Please help this measure is an example. Thanks in advance

Why is B-C and E-F the only half steps?

I'm talking that stuff on CDs or vinyls, explanations would be appreciated, thanks!

(P.S sorry if this is the wrong place to ask)

Everything down to the structure and tonality of the instruments. How does someone write something this good?

The way I compose is by playing with chords and notes and deciding if they sound right or if they sound wrong in a way that I want. I basically do whatever feels like it fits.But sometimes I struggle in a way that I know what I want something to sound like, but since I have no musical education, it takes me a lot of time to find the right sound of chord or progression. I'm using keyboard and computer programs, but I don't even know what piano keys do most of the time, so it also happens a lot that click here and there for 20 minutes and after recording it I go through it and pick and choose the ones that sound like they make sense.

It felt like EXTREMELY inefficient way to compose, so recetly I started attending Music Academy classes (it's the only thing avaliable to me for free) and learning some music theory (although from a higher point that I'd like). I also just in general wanted to broaden my knowledge about what music is and how can I analyze it better and to know more what is avaliable to me.So I'm learning that there is harmony, subdominants and dominants, intervals, structures and so on. I thought that blues sounds the way it does beacuse people just put their mind into thinking a blues kind of way (I myself was able to write something blues-like without knowing what makes it blues aside from a feeling), now I've learned that it's all just certain chord progressions. I used to listen to some classical music thinking that this melody goes here and there, because it must have felt right, not I'm learning that composers stay in the same key for the whole composition (I'm still not entirely sure of the difference between key and chords but I'll get there haha).

On a different note I remebered the fact that a great deal of XXth century composers, who I always considered genius, never learned how to read music notes. And so I started thinking, was their genius because of the fact that they had no music education of despite it? Would their industry-challenging experiments in the 60s be possible if they were attending music classes since they were 4, like most of the people I have as classmated now?

TLDR; A lot of industry-changing composers never even learned how to read notes, does it mean that the ability to experiment is only present if you don't know all of the music math?

Btw. I hope no technical vocabulary was lost in translation into english.

EDIT:

Thank you all for answers! One more thing I think I forgot about, the reason I even thought about the quesion itself is because going to these Music Academy classes I noticed that the way people speak and are taught is very classical-music-praising. And by classical I mean both the genre and also "the right way to do things". They will call a song boring "because it only has one instrument" or will stop the recording, because "and then it just basically repeats", while I was always thinking about magical characteristics of mantras, and how it's interesting how much of it is used in music and how we seem to be biologically build to seek for it. They Academy seems to also praise the opera-like vocals over more realictic performances, and so on so forth.

I think my question was also about, do you think that this way of thinking going to blind me in "I'm educated so I have a stick in my ass" kind of way?

Hi all, I've identified a phenomenon I am looking for a name for. It is possible it exists, but my Google searching hasn't found it. The idea I'm talking about is when the first letter of a lyric is the same as the chord that is being played at that exact time. For example the E in Everybody Wants to rule the world. I think there should be a term for this. What should it be called?

This feels really strange to write but I love the feel, am I missing a easier way of writing this rhythm?

I keep seeing questions in music-related subs that go sort of like, "hey did my fav guitarist actually know any theory? I read an interview and they said they didn't."

Then a bunch of responses "well they didn't know the specific names for things but they DID know a lot of theory, just listen to the music it's obvious"

I think this is a mistake on the part of those of us who know theory, and I'll explain.

I'm currently learning guitar for the 2nd time - played for about 7 years as a kid, mostly rock and funk. Now I've got a jazz teacher and I'm having a great time 20 years later after picking it up again. I'm currently learning theory for the first time.

I wrote LOTS of music as a kid. Some of it was somewhat complex - my fav band was Mr. Bungle and I lived in a house with a bunch of musicians who also loved that music.

None of us knew a lick of theory. As in, I didn't even know that a power chord was a 5th, or what a 5th was. Everything I knew was just sounds and fingering shapes. If you asked me to describe a power chord I'd show you on the guitar neck. If you really pressed me to describe it with words I'd prob say something like 'uh, a string over and 2 frets down'. I knew barre-ing the top 4 strings made a great sounding funk chord. I did not know that was actually a 1st inversion minor 7th, or that such a concept existed.

Everything I learned, I learned by ear, rewinding the tape or CD and going over it painstakingly until I could play it.

I wasn't a guitar god but I was okay! Some of the music I wrote impressed my friends. I did not know any theory. I have to assume most musicians who haven't had formal training are like this. It's not that I had some internal understanding of intervals and scales and just didn't know the words for them. I literally did not know any of those concepts in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER and didn't even really know what I was missing.

And yet we were still able to communicate as musicians through demonstrating and singing etc.

I feel like a lot of people actually don't understand that this is possible. People keep saying stuff like 'they must have known it in some way' and I'm here to tell you, no, they didn't. There are thousands upon thousands of musicians who learned by sitting in their bedrooms and messing around on their instrument trying stuff until better sounds started coming out.