Hot answers tagged theory
21
To understand the answer to this question you need and understanding of these concepts:
Key center
Tonality
Chord progressions in functional harmony
A song is regarded as being in the key of C major if the pitch C is its key center, if the notes in the song chiefly fall in the C-major scale (as opposed to the C-minor scale, or one of the other ...
16
You need both ear training and music theory.
Ear Training
By "ear training", musicians mean the ability to identify musical intervals, chords, scales, etc. It means developing your relative pitch as opposed to perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is the ability to hear a tone and be able to identify what note it is ("is it a C# or a Bb?"). Relative pitch is the ...
15
A riff is thematic. It serves as the main musical idea for a (section of a) song. Often it's repeated and developed, sometimes with variations, sometimes in different keys, but always recognizable as the same main musical idea. Because a riff is a main theme for a song, it often becomes inextricably associated with that song---if you heard the riff out of ...
15
Could it be Power Chords you're after? If you add just a fifth and an octave, it gives you a beefier incarnation of the root note.
e ----------------------------
B ----------------------------
G --------2-----------3---2---
D 2---5---2---2---5---3---2---
A 2---5---0---2---5---1---0---
E 0---3-------0---3-----------
The third (missing here) is called the ...
15
Technically, there are no reasons, but practically, there are quite a few. Obviously, we've reached the point where we can construct instruments that are fully chromatic, so there is no need to change crooks and play only the overtone series.
The practical reasons are many, and mostly stem from the fact that if all instruments were pitched in C, any time ...
15
Yes, you'll need to buy books and read them, and work through the exercises.
I'm going to describe how it was taught to me in a music college in the United States. I'm sure different schools have different approaches.
Things basically fall into four categories:
Ear Training
Classical music theory
Form and Analysis
Jazz Theory
Ear training and ...
15
Max
has been around for 20 years.
Max gives you the parts to create unique sounds, stunning visuals, and engaging interactive media. These parts are called ‘objects’ – visual boxes that contain tiny programs to do something specific. Each object does something different. Some make noises, some make video effects, others just do simple calculations or ...
14
'Dorian mode on C' does not mean "the Dorian scale that you can find among the notes that are available in the major key of C"!
'Dorian mode on C' refers to the Dorian scale, or set of note intervals, that start on the note C, i.e. C is its root or tonic. This set of notes happens to be the same as the ones found in the Bb major key, thus two flats.
This is ...
14
Listen to as much music as possible in as many styles as possible and force yourself to listen to music that you aren't familiar with or even don't like. You can't progress from a point of no reference. Like when you learn to speak, you learn vocabulary from practice and by emulating others. Then, after you've built up a broad vocabulary, you can start to ...
14
Yes, you're right. As for why the harmonic series doesn't produce notes that work in all keys, the simple answer is that the math just doesn't add up.
Let's work out the math for just intonation: Suppose you choose X Hz for the fundamental frequency and go from there. Then the octave above the fundamental should have frequency 2 X Hz. Meanwhile, the ...
13
The root note is always the note that is the basis for the chord, regardless of its inversion. In root posiition the lowest note is the root (hence the name), but other notes are the lowest in other inversions of the chord.
For example, take a C Major chord. In every position, the root note is C. Whether it is voiced as C-E-G (root position), E-G-C ...
12
"Modal" and "tonal" both describe works that:
have one defined "home" pitch, or "tonal center," around which the melody and harmony are based;
have only one tonal center at a time, though that tonal center can change throughout a piece; and
use a seven-note diatonic scale as their pitch collections.
The difference between modal and tonal are in the ...
12
Why?
It sounds good.
Music would sound boring after a while if all you played were the notes in the scale.
I would be hard-pressed to find music that doesn't have notes outside of the scale--scales are just the basis for melodies, and the home base from which you can stray in creative ways.
In this particular context (and your chords would be better ...
12
When you play in D minor, the scale -- that is your "palette" of notes -- is: D, E, F, G, A, B♭, and C
You'll find it's not possible to play a D major chord using those notes. D major contains an F♯.
The simplest way to find the chord you want is to identify its root note, then play a triad starting on that note, using only the notes in the scale.
So
...
12
This image shows the note on the stave corresponding to each guitar string:
The lowest string is E, then A, D, G, B and E.
It might also be useful to refer to a map of the fretboard -- there's nothing there you couldn't work out from knowing the tuning of each string, and that each fret raises the pitch by a semitone:
Now, lets take first chord in ...
11
Yes, there are ways to measure it, though there are many different algorithms claiming to be more accurate than the others. This formula by Vassilakis is recent (2007).
These measure "roughness", which is similar to dissonance. (Dissonance is basically roughness, but weighted towards certain intervals due to cultural conditioning, which is obviously hard ...
11
The TL;DR answer:
Some instrument families (saxophones, clarinets, double reeds) have variants which change the instrument range by something other than an octave. To make it easy to switch to them, the parts for these instruments are transposed so the same written note has the same fingering, but produces a different actual pitch.
Even when the range of ...
10
Labels are only of limited usefulness. However, it can be observed metal is ultimately based on the blues and rock and roll. Metal songs are usually closer to the song structures, rhythms and meters of blues and rock--they're just played much louder and harder.
Progressive metal incorporates elements of progressive rock and classical music, especially ...
10
tl;dr The simple answer is "The major scale comes from the overtone series."
I don't know the history, which I suspect goes something like "the major scale is that way because people liked the sound of it." But I do know the mathematics, which may help to explain why people like the sound of it.
Let's start from first principles, many of which you ...
10
This is an extremely broad topic, so I'm going to try to distill it down to just a handful of points:
There are (basically) two ways of generating sounds electronically: sampling and synthesis. Confusingly, we tend to call all of this sound generation "synthesis", as you are generally working with a "synthesizer".
You will want to read Wikipedia - ...
10
Sure, chords can contain major and minor thirds at the same time! We see 'em all the time in jazz. I call it a major-minor chord (which however is quite different from a major-minor seventh chord). It's also called a mixed-third chord. In jazz chords you will also sometimes see it notated as a ♯9 instead of as a ♭3, though that implies a slightly different ...
10
There are at least some differences in how they're used.
Natural minor is a kind of default.
In the common practice era a dominant chord usually contains the leading note, which is a semitone below the tonic, because that note has a strong tendency to resolve to the tonic. So, from the harmony point of view, the 7th degree of the natural minor scale should ...
10
Here are two pictures that should explain everything.
To your question, "Also, wouldn't there typically be more notes in between the bass clef and treble clef? Why are they missing in this case?" I should explain that in typesetting sheet music, the amount of space between the treble and bass clef of the piano is variable, but the number of notes ...
9
Well, the I-IV thing is in a sense problem-complete of the question. It shows the relationship of the chords to the tonal center (the key). So we have to do some harmonic analysis just to do this translation.
I'll do House of the Rising Sun because that's the one I know. The Am is the root chord i (but the proof is really in the second and fourth lines of ...
9
You play it. For an F13, that would be a D above the octave. But it is more than that. A 9 assumes a dominant 7. An 11 assumes a 9. Thus, a 13 assumes the 11. For F, we're at F A C Eb G Bb D. An easy way to remember is that a 13 is a 7th chord with a minor triad started on the second scale degree.
That looks more like a scale than a chord, doesn't it?
In ...
9
Dissonance is a keenly debated subject within music theory. Because of the lack of a proper definition, and due to the general subjectivity of the general understanding of the term, it's really hard to define any chord as consonant/dissonant.
Dissonance has been explained many ways and as different phenomenons (e.g. the coincidence of partials), but none of ...
9
Here are some (partly overlapping) suggestions on how you can vary the sound of a iii-vi-ii-V-I progression:
Use different additional chord tones (sevenths, extensions, and alterations) for your chords such as flat and augmented 5ths, 6ths, (major and minor) 7ths, (sharp, flat, and regular) 9ths, (sharp and regular) 11ths, (flat or regular) 13ths, and also ...
9
Just to elaborate and clarify, there are a few different types of pizzicato:
There is the standard "pizz." which is done with the flesh of the finger on the bowing hand;
A pizz with fingernail, which gives a more crisp attack;
A "Bartok" or "snap" pizz where the performer pulls the string away from the fingerboard and releases to produce a harsh snapping ...
8
There is exactly one note that is a diminished 3rd above Db: Fb.
Db to Eb is not a diminished third, it is a major second. Those comments are wrong. This question explains the difference between two enharmonically equivalent notes.
8
I'm going to expand upon the answer already provided just to give some further clarification on the history and usage of each scale.
The Natural Minor scale is also known as the Aeolian Mode, one of the church modes from the plainchant period before the Renaissance. This particular scale can be created by starting on the 6th degree of any major scale, and ...
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