#31
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The following story should serve to illustrate the usefullness of knowledge of music theory to liberate musicians from the tyrany of books... Around 9 or 10 years old I got my mum to buy me a book of Christmas piano music and presented it to my piano teacher saying I wanted to learn to play Silent Night, she looked at the transcription and said no you can't play that it's too difficult for you , then she took a pencil and crossed out all the difficult stuff and re-arranged the piece into something someone with childs hands and a couple of years of piano lessons could manage. At the time I never wondered how she did that but after those lessons with the jazz pro I realised that if you can see the intervals in music you can find your own way of using them to create arrangements which are playable by you at your level of technical ability. People who actively try to supress knowledge of music theory do so by insinuating that somehow you can't both listen to music and at the same time be aware of the underlying structure of how the intervals are organised, this is not true, this is false news perpetuated by those who really should know better. When playing melodies music theory is of limited use, I used to have a girlfriend who could sing any tune she heard first time and she never knew any music theory or needed it, but the further one moves away from that copy the melody exactly situation the more usefull music theory becomes. Guitar is not a melody only instrument, to make it sound good other harmonies have to be incorporated and the reality of the frettboard is that there are far more unplayable ways of doing that than there are arrangements playable by you at your stage of development. A knowledge of music theory enables players in identifying the intervals required and finding alternative locations where they might be played. Most people seem to buy books of arrangements written by proffesionals who have played for years and practice 4 hours a day a few do a commendable job of making those transcriptions sound like music but many struggle and never produce much that flows easily. Understandable as anyone who has had formal music lessons for some years knows how many pitfalls there are when trying to follow notation acurately. I have many books of arrangements I can't play, but I can go through the transcriptions identify the intervals used maybe change the harmony and re-arrange in a way that makes it playable by me. |
#32
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#33
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I disagree. The dominant chord in a piece contains a lot more meaning than simply knowing its name. Of course, it is a very common "waystation" on the way "home." It leads to home. If you start stacking dominants -- the dominant of a dominant -- you get very strong anticipated "motion" toward home. When I play 12-bar blues, I like to use (what I think is called) the gospel progression -- instead of resolving with IV-V-I, I use VI-II-V-I. Note that each chord is the dominant of the next. I think this resolution doesn't just bring the progression home, it slams it home.
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#34
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#35
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I think you may find that in most of the commonly accepted pedagogy, a Major key has one dominant chord (V) and one subdominant (IV). Nothing else is a "dominant" of this or that. But don't take my word for it. :-)
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#36
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The typical 12 bar blues progression would "resolve" V - IV - I. I suspect he just made a typo error. |
#37
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E7, A7, D7, G7, C This is not: Em, Am, Dm, G7, C But the latter of course IS diatonic. |
#38
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The best music is often outside the norm.
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#39
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The word "dominant" tells you nothing about how it sounds or how it works in the music. Its just a label. It's not even "dominant" in the more literal sense that the reciting tone was in medieval modes, which is the where the word comes from. Quote:
Music theory will tell you that that is the "function" of the dominant chord, for sure. That's the chord's job, its purpose. But theory is not telling you how it performs that function, or how we perceive that it is performing that function. Quote:
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The "mechanism" is the chromatic voice-leading: 7th to 3rd and vice versa (assuming you use 7th chords). We can at least point to that as some kind of logical process from chord to chord. But why does chromatic voice-leading work? Why do we like that sound? My point here is that music theory is not designed to go that deep. I don't have a problem with that - I don't expect music theory to give me those kinds of answers, because I know that's not what it's for. But a lot of people do think that's what it's for. A lot of people think that music theory explains music; and it doesn't. It describes music, in a whole lot of detail, but description is not explanation. I do understand that that sense of "coming home" that western functional tonality produces - the sense that chord progressions have a "narrative" function - is important. Western music has a similar role to novels and fairy tales in that sense. Western society (at least in certain periods or classes) seems to value arts that represent some kind of narrative in that way. But not all music is narrative. A whole lot of music (in the west and around the world) is more about mood, it's more "static". IOW, there are other kinds of meaning in music beyond (or beneath) those superficial narrative devices represented by cadences and functionality. What I'm saying is that music communicates all of those meanings to us by its sounds alone. We understand the music perfectly and entirely by just listening to it. Knowing the theory of it does not increase our understanding at all. It can make us feel like we understand something more, but it's an illusion.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 01-22-2022 at 06:32 PM. |
#40
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None other than that erudite music theorist Bruce Springsteen gives us the true meaning of the dominant chord, at least the long drawn out one on the "ah's" in his live version of Twist and Shout: He calls it the "SERIOUS" chord!
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#41
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They sure are. I haven't used the "standard" progression in years! I guess I was thinking it goes V-IV-I... and then it hits V again if you're going around again.
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2018 Guild F-512 Sunburst -- 2007 Guild F412 Ice Tea burst 2002 Guild JF30-12 Whiskeyburst -- 2011 Guild F-50R Sunburst 2011 Guild GAD D125-12 NT -- 1972 Epiphone FT-160 12-string 2012 Epiphone Dot CH -- 2010 Epiphone Les Paul Standard trans amber 2013 Yamaha Motif XS7 Cougar's Soundcloud page |
#42
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Ah, thanks!
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2018 Guild F-512 Sunburst -- 2007 Guild F412 Ice Tea burst 2002 Guild JF30-12 Whiskeyburst -- 2011 Guild F-50R Sunburst 2011 Guild GAD D125-12 NT -- 1972 Epiphone FT-160 12-string 2012 Epiphone Dot CH -- 2010 Epiphone Les Paul Standard trans amber 2013 Yamaha Motif XS7 Cougar's Soundcloud page |
#43
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Both good points.
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2018 Guild F-512 Sunburst -- 2007 Guild F412 Ice Tea burst 2002 Guild JF30-12 Whiskeyburst -- 2011 Guild F-50R Sunburst 2011 Guild GAD D125-12 NT -- 1972 Epiphone FT-160 12-string 2012 Epiphone Dot CH -- 2010 Epiphone Les Paul Standard trans amber 2013 Yamaha Motif XS7 Cougar's Soundcloud page |
#44
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I'd challenge that heartily. Larry Lalonde of Primus, or anyone else that ever played in Primus, broke rules like nobody I've ever heard, before or since. I rather suspect that if they ever caught a member NOT breaking a rule they mocked him without mercy. Oddly enough Larry tutored under Joe Satriani, who surprisingly claims that Larry's actually a very accomplished blues player.
Last edited by Bushleague; 01-23-2022 at 05:32 AM. |
#45
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Once all the theory is hashed out remember “If it sounds good, it IS good.”.
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Made to one with pride and love To be that we hold so dear A voice from heavens above |