Question About Music In General

[~AllRemovables~]

I dont know if I will be able to get a scientific answer for this but mainly just oppinions. But I was thinking, isnt it strange how a mathematical pattern ie. scale patterns and stuff, can produce good sounding music and evok emotions. What is it about some notes, which are fundamentally just stuff vibrating with a different frequency which sound much better than others?

I guess my real question is, is it possible that evrything we think sounds good, simply sounds good because it is the note combinations that we are used to or is there something special about some note combinations? If we had been listening to dodgy sounding note combos for a long time would they just sound normal in the end??

I know this topic isnt entirely useful for guitar playing (or is it?) and im just being a musical geek i know :rolleyes: but id be interested to hear your views.

So your oppinions please........

[smfulla]

ahh, thats a question I've asked alot. I have no idea. I'd say tho that the way the sound waves interact with each other when playing chords or a scale run, Y'know when notes are likely to hit your ear in fairly quick succession, would sound bad if it was say a chord with the 1 - 2 - #4 - b7 of any scale. (Btw does anyone know the name of that chord? lol)

I just tried that chord... it sounds alright, lol!
But I think that you develop your own opinion on what sounds good or bad, even if you were never to listen to any music but just playing an instrument

[55'gibby]

that is a difficult question to answer.... a lot of what is musically appealing to the ear is do to in large part "what we expect to hear next". If you think in terms of conversation, it is human nature to try to guess what the person speaking is going to say, so we can develop our response (think of a person who changes topics every sentance or two, and how you react). music follow this same logic, if a peice of music goes into areas that we don't expect people have a tendancy to stop listening and allow their attentions go else where. This makes the music very difficult to slip in and out of attentive or active listening. if you examine some of the freeform jazz of the 50's and 60's (john coltrane, charley parker, miles davis, sun ra...), they took it as there mandate to not follow standard musical forms, scales, arrangements. this music is hard to listen to, and in return had very limited commercial success, yet this was some very techincally inovative and musically demanding stuff. yet, people like to be fooled (think magicians). Bach was famous for writing passages that would trick you into believing that you are following a standard pattern yet in reality he would do things that were "wrong" according to music theory, yet made you feel they were correct. by developing a musical atmosphere and musical story, he allow certain elements of his music to pull the listener along, and try to entrance them in those elements and divert there attention from simply following the notes and melody. If we now look at modern popular music. It works on a set musical formula (yes, I'm talking metal, rock, country, blues, almost everthing on radio, mtv or any other commercial outlet), and only a VERY VERY VERY small deveation from this form will be tolerated by either the audience or the folks promoting/selling the music. this formula has been honed to the lowest common demoninator in hopes of finding the widest possible listenership. this has degenerated to the point that almost all modern music will not just give to the right note but the proper instrument and how that instrument will sound, because this is what we expect to hear. this degeneration is very evident in the overall arrangements and vocal/lyrics of modern music. they all work on the same musical form which is cast in stone and the "artist" is not allowed to deveate from it (think about it,... intro,verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus outro). so, yes it is true that some scales or patterns do evoke certain emotions, because it is what we are used to hearing, but there is far more to investigation and innovation that could applied to what we listen to, and what we write. to simply use a minor scale when we want to sound sad, or throw in 9th chords when we want to sound jazzy is the easy way out. there are dozens of elements that can be applied, intertwined, built up to, or hinted at, that would offer so much more interest to what you do... and if done correctly will not lose the audiance.


I don't think I answered the question... or did I

[The Fury]

Hey Gibby, that was very interesting and very well put :) especially the bit about music being like a conversation.

Allremovables, on a very basic level some notes that sound good are mathamatically related like a root and a perfect 5th for example. The perfect 5ths' frequency is directly proportional to the root note, same for a perfect 4th and major 3rd and many more. When you play these notes together they sound "right".

[55'gibby]

thanks Fury... I had to cut it short before I found out if there is character limit on posts.

I do really believe in the conversational element in music. one of the examples I make is this:

to say "I went to get a hamburger and it took a long time" is techically correct but not interesting

to say " I was at McDonald and the burger took so long I had a chance to count the all pimples of the face of the person behind the counter" says the same thing but tells a better story.

this is how I approach writing music, I am interested in the entire story. I truely enjoy listening to music that tells a story in a interesting manner. just think about the emotion of sad. there is the I'm out of icecream sad, all the way to dark, evil, suicidal depression. if the music you write is the dark depression sad and you're talking about being out of ice cream, the end result could end up to be very humorous... not your intention.

this is one of my favorite topics (if you couldn't tell).

[eische]

well, first nice one gck

then, there is some tradition for music, that you live up to like, or better expect to happen as normal. If you switch the system then you may feel slightly bewildered.
Things like this happen, when you listen to music from a differnet culture. For example, we are used to octave-scales an an eight-note-system, but in china, they only use five-note-systems and the whole »mathematic« music-world of their composing is based on that, so chinese music sounds a bit odd to us. Still chinese music uses the same notes as we do, so you can find a way into it. But if you take traditional inuit-music or the chants of the mongols (spelling?) it's even more difficult to understand, how it works, because this music is based on harmonics only, without the roots, we normally listen to.
So I think it's like the melody of speach: you live up to the melody of your mothertongue and you built your talking on these patterns, in which the language should flow. If you learn a foreign language you may have a better way of constructing, but it's hard to feel the melodic flow of the language and therefor harder to speak with ease....

[55'gibby]

I guess I should make some musical reference? huh?

if you play a song in a minor your saying I'm sad. but if you play in a staccto (sp?) style and using 1/8 or 1/16 notes in a major, then, cressendo (sp?) over one bar do a key change to a minor in that bar and end by letting the resolving chord of the minor ring for a bar, you could be saying "I just got some bad news". or you could play in a minor and by slowly increasing the tempo and changing to a major you could be saying "I was sad but now I'm pissed". both of these are more interesting than saying "I'm sad".

eische, you are very right about different places in the world do thing differently, and it is a unique individual who can learn these different thing, it is the exraordinary person who can find a way to incorperate them. people and thier music differs as does the candence and emphasis of their speech and music, and it's leaving the comfort zone that makes music exciting.



I KNOW I'M OFF TOPIC!!!!

[smfulla]

y'know what I found funny about reading this....
when ever I went to read another post, I skipped it and went straight to gibby's

Very interesting gibby.

btw I'm not trying to say that the others comments werent interesting, it's just I found myself skipping them =]

[chrisbs]

It is interesting, I think a large part is what we get atuned to hearing.
Eastern music (ie, China, etc is based on a whole other system of steps, scales etc and it sounds fine to people there


http://www.fretland.com

[eische]

Originally posted by 55'gibby
I guess I should make some musical reference? huh?

if you play a song in a minor your saying I'm sad. but if you play in a staccto (sp?) style and using 1/8 or 1/16 notes in a major, then, cressendo (sp?) over one bar do a key change to a minor in that bar and end by letting the resolving chord of the minor ring for a bar, you could be saying "I just got some bad news". or you could play in a minor and by slowly increasing the tempo and changing to a major you could be saying "I was sad but now I'm pissed". both of these are more interesting than saying "I'm sad".


....but that is something you have to learn - the difference between minor and major, I mean - and I sort of didn't learn.........most poeple combine minor to sad and major to bright/ heroic....
Well minor always is strength to me and very pleasant and delighting, but major makes me shiver and run with frightening depressions, like someone were about to tear me to pieces with sharp nails.......so interpreting music like this is nothing natural, I can asure you. The whole thing like programm-music, where forms like these have become difined symbols - in the late 18., early 19. century -, is a piece of learning the symbols (early!).

[55'gibby]

let me say that with any chord progression there are usually several modes that work correctly with it. by using different pieces of the different modes and scales you can create a musical atmosphere, by changing which pieces of the mode, or changing the chord voicings you can alter the message your trying to convey. if you use a E A Bm7 progression you could play a blues scale or a phrygian mode over it. each is based off the minor scale, one you could get a "Mississippi" feel the other could give you a "latin" feel. neither of these are sad by nature, it is what your going to say with that passage of music that is the driving factor. it is the inter-play between tempo, cadence, chord voicing, which scales, where you change, what the change is, are you doing it with the lead or rhythm, beginning and end point of the passage, the < or > (I don't remember what they are called) above the line, that create a mood and by creating a mood you can effectively tell your story in an interesting manner.

let me give you an example:
imagine yourself telling a story to a friend, listen to the inflection in your voice and the tempo of what your saying, something dramatic happens in the story, think of how your inflection and tempo as well as the feeling you express changes. now think how you would do the same thing musically. this is how I compose (yes, I am talking composition here) music. I think about the story I am going to tell, and how I want to tell it (do I want to be dramatic or humours for example). what is the feel in the beginning, what changes (all good stories have a conflict of some kind), how does the music reflect the change, how does the story end.

no, this isn't the type of thing you can pick up a book and learn, 75% of this has to come from within you. your telling a story with your music, try to keep my interest. all this can be done in any style, keeping within the standard musical form, and not breaking (bending yes, but not breaking) the rules of theory. this is the time tested and most flexable method of putting real emotion into your music. this is what keeps peoples interest. this is how you can set yourself apart from the crowd.

I hope that everyone here will take the time to compose music from this point of view at least once.


wow... now I've really wandered off the topic!!!

[eische]

I didn't mean learning musical form from a book, but you need someone to tell you, what is generally connected with them.

See if I want to compose something powerful, I would choose a certain key and mode and to my ears it may sound just like what I had in mind to express, but a listener - used to the conventional system - will come to a completely different interpretation.
Of course you can't just pick up a book, but you need a teacher, like take the music printed out, take the standard interpretations and then listen to the music: first on your own, list down the interpretation, then read the normed one - see the differences and mark them in the notes, then listen again while reading along the music - it will be a huge difference, at least for me.
I know that, because that was, what we did in music-classes in school: doing interpretations of music - and mine were mostly, »beyond the topic« or »very interesting aspects« (which, we know all, is the same), but never a »yess that's what the music meant to say«.......