New Adam Neely

[bfields]

Gosh. For me, I think it abounds. If I look closely, I see it everywhere: why certain tonalities resolve or clash, the harmonic structure of everything, even rhythmic subdivisions. I don't necessarily think of math while I'm playing music. But if I take a closer look, I'm astonished by the beauty of it. Similar to the way I feel about Algebra.

Fair enough, that's all true.

It's weird, though. Thinking about harmony--as discussed ad nauseum in other threads, what we usually hear isn't pure pythagorean intervals, because of the compromises required by equal temperament, and the physics of vibrating strings, etc. And yet, it can still be beautiful and interesting, even when those compromises are audible. And there's more to harmony (and to music in general) than simple integer ratios.

I guess the way I'd put it is: yes, there's some overlap. But the parts of music that you can "explain" with math are just a small part of the world of music. And the parts of math that are useful for talking about music are just a small pretty well-trodden part of the world of mathematics. I can't recall seeing anyone produce really interesting results either by saying "here's some deep and interesting math, let me turn it into music somehow" or "here's some great music, let me see if I can get deep mathematics out of it". But I've likely overlooked things, of course, and wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying!

 

[FrenchBassQC]

Decided not to post it because I can see it leading to a big fight.

What a great video this was and you were right to not post the link to it because of the reason you mentioned.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

What a great video this was and you were right to not post the link to it because of the reason you mentioned.

Since TB has recently reconfigured, stuff cannot be deleted after a pretty short interval of time. Since I could not get rid of my OP, I felt I might as well share the link.

 

[Steve Dallman]

Music is entertaiment, and we use the tools available (or those made available) to produce it. Music itself is a tool (as used in film, etc) to evoke or provoke response.

As an entertainer, I am less interested in the origin or source of the tools as what I can get out of them. When working on my house, the thought of the origins of the hammer and other tools never crosses my mind as the goal of my work does not depend on knowing those origins.

Study of the history of music is facinating on many levels. Study of music history opens one up to experiencing new (to the student) forms of music.

But enjoyment and fulfillment of and through music does not depend on these academic studies or knowledge.

 

[backin82]

If you read between the lines (and the clickbait title) the criticism is not so much against the nuts and bolts of the Western theory system itself, but rather the curriculum, pedagogy, and rhetoric of it.

You're defending "Western music theory" as though it were nothing more than a codified set of intervals and names to organize them relative to one another and in time. I.e. The building blocks like "quarter notes", "major scale", "lydian mode" etc. which might be called the "parts of speech" rather than the formal "grammar" or "vocabulary" of the language of music. Neely is not criticizing those elements of the system, and you are correct to cite his own video as a source as to why that would be a futile undertaking.

What he IS criticizing are the ways American academia (and by extension, the culture which they purport to be the caretakers of) have adopted a prescriptive rather than descriptive means by which to canonize and evangelize the Western musical "grammar," and the corpus which is used to demonstrate and enforce it. His argument is that this approach cannot help but be exclusionary of certain voices (which desire and deserve to be recognized) because it is so deeply intertwined with the prevailing ideologies of the time, place, and people which spawned it - because that exclusion is exactly the task it was designed for.

So, a few questions...
1. How would you implement the curriculum in such a way that it doesn't immediately become appropriating or tokenism? Reduction to absurd, but would you have to have culturally appropriate people teaching each different system or style?
2. Western music theory is complicated enough to be crammed into a 4-year music school. How could we possibly teach more than that or adopt many other systems or styles in that time without watering all of it down to the most basic ideas? Would we have to create a separate music program for every musical genre in existence?
3. How is this any different than the English language? If we believe that the system itself is too exclusive, then why stop at music? Wouldn't we then have to start teaching every language in school as well?

I understand the frustration with "Western only" programs. It's too prescriptive and too narrow if people accept it as the only musical system. I just wonder what could be done within reason to make it more progressive.

 

[bass12]

It works extremely well for describing music based on the Western Classical idiom. It doesn't work so well for much world music. True, its notation has been extended to cope with some of these "foreign" concepts, like "microtones," but not its theoretical foundations. It, for example, can not describe classical Ottoman music, Persian, Chinese, nor Indian musics, all of which have their own working rulesets. Frankly, it even struggles with jazz.

As buddy points out, if music schools exposed their students more to these other formal traditions then the world might become a fraction more tolerant. Imagine, for a moment, being able to sit down down and jam with a couple of guys, one on kanun, the other on oud, and actually understanding what they were doing as if it were the blue, or modal jazz in D-. A lot of work, yet if we start 'em young enough...

I think a bit of personal responsibilty is in order when it comes to delving into non-western music. To expect any curriculum to cover everything, even if only in part, is completely unrealistic (and it’s not as if there aren’t many areas of western music - let alone non-western musics - that go un-explored in the vast majority of music programs in western universities as it is). Maybe the number of credits required to obtain a degree in music should be extended, thereby allowing more time to study non-western music theory. I’m sure that would go down well with the majority of students.

 

[bass12]

So, a few questions...
1. How would you implement the curriculum in such a way that it doesn't immediately become appropriating or tokenism? Reduction to absurd, but would you have to have culturally appropriate people teaching each different system or style?
2. Western music theory is complicated enough to be crammed into a 4-year music school. How could we possibly teach more than that or adopt many other systems or styles in that time without watering all of it down to the most basic ideas? Would we have to create a separate music program for every musical genre in existence?
3. How is this any different than the English language? If we believe that the system itself is too exclusive, then why stop at music? Wouldn't we then have to start teaching every language in school as well?

I understand the frustration with "Western only" programs. It's too prescriptive and too narrow if people accept it as the only musical system. I just wonder what could be done within reason to make it more progressive.

The short answer, I believe, is that this is an unending and “un-winnable” game.

 

[bfields]

So, a few questions...
1. How would you implement the curriculum in such a way that it doesn't immediately become appropriating or tokenism? Reduction to absurd, but would you have to have culturally appropriate people teaching each different system or style?
2. Western music theory is complicated enough to be crammed into a 4-year music school. How could we possibly teach more than that or adopt many other systems or styles in that time without watering all of it down to the most basic ideas? Would we have to create a separate music program for every musical genre in existence?
3. How is this any different than the English language? If we believe that the system itself is too exclusive, then why stop at music? Wouldn't we then have to start teaching every language in school as well?

So, I'd like to see a broader curriculum, but I agree, it's difficult, it's not something you can "fix" overnight, and covering "everything" isn't a reasonable goal.

Some things I *do* think it would be reasonable to work towards:
- refocusing a bit: the typical theory 101 student isn't going to do graduate school in music theory. If you're covering figured bass but not flat 3's and 5's, maybe your priorities are a little off?
- admitting to what you're doing: I love 18th century European music. I'm OK with you teaching that if that's what you know. Just admit it, and don't claim you're covering all the music that matters.

I think the analogy to English would be: all anyone takes is a class called "Language". All we teach is Shakespeare. If anyone asks about 21st century literature, we say "oh, you'll get that in graduate school". If anyone asks about other languages, we say "that stuff's not important, and, anyway, once you've learned how to analyze the towering genius that is Shakespeare using English grammar, you can go figure out that lesser foreign stuff on your own if you want". Yeah, I exaggerate, but music theory felt a little like that to me.

 

[La Faro]

I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but I didn’t hear Adam suggest what we should replace western classical theory with. He had a picture of Duke Ellington. Duke was well versed in classical composition and that is clearly audible in his music. Count Basie, less so. But Even For him, what musical theory would you use instead? There is no blues theory system. The major scale is not the only scale on which to base a theory system, but so what? You pick a “base” sound, and other things are described relative to that.

After a little emotional kickback I get from any click baity title, I liked the video. I'm also glad that I don't see 18 century blah blah as 'Music Theory' and so can't just exchange the terms, but just as some of the building blocks, and that music theory extends all the way until whatever theory we have right now. I haven't been through music education, so didn't realise it was stuck on such a period. Having grown up in a house surrounded by Jazz records with Sibelius, Debussy and Bartok (who I name my warhammer Dwarf General King after) records were mixed among them. Early Jazz appears based on some traditional classical theory, and Modern Jazz borrowed from Modern classical.

I liked the comparison with Indian Music, to explain the gaps there are between the theories, but without fully knowing 18th century blah blah, and it's limits, I also didn't know how Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin or Eva Jasseye music couldn't be describe by it, and where 18 Century blah fell short. Especially as later he says that Barry Harris's work could be used to describe 18 C. Blah.

I remember a Bobby McFerrin demo of the pentatonic scale, and how everywhere get's it. I've always taken that to mean globally. If so harmonically scales have more in common than they don't as a language foundation. and doesn't the 18 C.Blah cover that. I don't really know, because the video did more to show another (Indian) system, than to show the real shortfalls of this theory period for me.


I feel a little wiser, but none the wiser at the same time.

 

[BrotherMister]

I don’t think he’s wrong at all. It’s one of the very few videos of his I enjoyed. But I also feel he’s presenting a slightly narrow view of the subject as well.

I’m honestly glad I noticed very early on how conservative the classical world is, and my time in education I have gotten into a lot of fights to try and make some minuscule impact to change that. Having said that, jazz education is also rapidly falling into its own conservative view points that started fairly early on in the musics development and are now only becoming institutionalised as well. Even at the most bad level, of the many jazz theory texts that exist how many examples are cited from female musicians in that world? You’ll almost never find anything pre bebop in those books either. One very famous text actually cites many sources from the developments of 60’s to teach its now very popular system of approaching jazz that didn’t exist until the very very late 50’s.

The Indian music tradition is also massively conservative and extremely strict in its views as well. One does study to become a tabla player while simultaneously learning the works of Bach, Ellington or Chinese Opera etc. Chinese musical traditions are all deeply conservative as well so you can’t say it’s only the European classical tradition that is guilty. The reason it’s still used so much is that an overwhelming amount of developments in music evolved out of that. We don’t speak Latin anymore but the influence and terminology literally dictates our lives in the west since so much of the legal world is still dominated by that terminology.

The video is absolutely correct that each of these fields needs a more diverse representation because more composers exist outside of the narrow field of examples we are always given. In the age of information we are preserving information that will never go away, we will never forget Beethoven or Mozart or any of those people but there is a wealth of composers of that time that are largely overlooked or forgotten already. The same thing we see happening in other music, and history as well. However to paint one aspect of it as racist while ignoring the racist and conservative short comings of the other avenues is also dangerous.

Personally I hate the whole YouTube scene where people just hit a statement and that’s it. Granted Adam tends to provide sources for his statements but then says deeply ignorant comments such as ‘I bet you didn’t know/think about x until now’ or ‘no one has ever done that before’ - get over yourself.

So for me he absolutely isn’t wrong, but I also don’t think his argument is without scrutiny.

What to take away from that? I don’t really know

 

[noeinstein]

Decided not to post it because I can see it leading to a big fight.

Thanks for piquing my interest.

 

[jnuts1]

He doesn't conflate the two except, deliberately, in the title. One of his main points is precisely that 'music theory' and 'the analysis of 18th century composers' are often confused.

I also disagree that real music theory is just the mathematical part, but that's another discussion. I'd say music theory encompasses both aspects, and a lot more stuff that is necessary to describe music from other times and places than 18th century Europe.

he clearly says theory repeatedly when describing teaching and subject matter.