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Post by fatfingerjohn on Mar 15, 2021 17:18:08 GMT
For anyone like me who avoids theory like the plague, here is a shining example of why. I defy you to last more than 43 seconds into it without wanting to despair for ever! If anyone does get beyond 43 seconds and actually finds that there is something useful in there for guys like me; or that its got a funny ending which I need to watch, please let me know. (The fact that 138 people have 'liked' it just makes me feel even more inadequate .... )
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Post by PistolPete on Mar 15, 2021 17:40:58 GMT
I got to 1:51 before I had to go and sit down in a darkened room.
To be fair (based on the first minute fifty, obviously), this is less music theory for understanding our current way of making music and more of a thought experiment "what if that system was built entirely differently", so it's little-wonder it's a bit head scratchy.
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Post by Gregg Hermetech on Mar 15, 2021 19:02:29 GMT
I didn't like that vid as it doesn't really apply practically for me. I love music theory recently though, been studying it intensively the last few years, and now working my way through the Justin theory course. I did music GCSE back in the late 80s and hated it then, again because I couldn't see, or wasn't shown, the practical applications. What I've been studying the last few years all has practical relevance to my guitar playing, and has helped me improve as a guitarist in innumerable ways. Theory for theory's sake is fine as an academic exercise, but I'm only interested in it, if it helps me become a better guitarist/song writer/arranger. My latest thing is learning all the notes in all the keys. Ear training, intervals, notes on the fretboard, keys, scales, modes, triads and chord theory in general, can't get enough of the stuff! As an antidote to the video posted, here are two great theory channels with loads of practical examples: www.youtube.com/c/SignalsMusicStudio/featuredwww.youtube.com/user/havic5
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Post by jangarrack on Mar 15, 2021 19:34:18 GMT
I got as far as 2:00 but to be honest it was only to beat PistolPete's record duration of 1:51 and I really wished I hadn't because I just keep pacing about now feeling anxious.
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Post by martinrowe on Mar 15, 2021 19:47:24 GMT
I don't understand why people think talking very quickly is impressive.
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Post by vikingblues on Mar 15, 2021 20:07:30 GMT
I sort of made it to nearly 5 minutes, but my then my attention was wandering far away, and my musical senses bruised. At which point I realised the examples being played sounded like very badly programmed MIDI music from 1980s computer games. At around 3 minutes there's an attempt at getting this microtonal theory to produce a 12-bar blues, successfully managing to destroy every one of the pleasures of the blues sound in one fell swoop. I thought it a shame that Bohlen-Pierce Temperament microtonal theory had the Bohlen-Pierce name abbreviated to "BP" - "BS" would have been far more appropriate! Mark
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Post by vikingblues on Mar 15, 2021 20:08:12 GMT
I don't understand why people think talking very quickly is impressive. On the plus side it made the video a lot shorter!
Mark
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Post by Matt Milton on Mar 15, 2021 21:14:57 GMT
I managed 5 seconds before the guy's annoying, adversarial presentation style became beyond irritating.
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Post by andyhowell on Mar 16, 2021 8:41:06 GMT
At around 3 minutes there's an attempt at getting this microtonal theory to produce a 12-bar blues, successfully managing to destroy every one of the pleasures of the blues sound in one fell swoop. Back in the day Country blues artists played knackerd guitars with high actions, they had nevt seen a snark tuner or had an in-tune piano to tune to. I don't know about micro pitching but this was an important component of the sound. It's a bit like time signatures. Try putting a metronome against the old recordings.
I would go further. The blues was not about technique (there was a massive diversity in style and competence). Blues music — and the other music these folks played — was about emotion, happiness and joy, sadness and tears.
Modern day fingerstyle leans a lot on theory and other disciplines from classical guitar. But for most of us here this is a total waste of time.
For those of us plonking away on the sofa, and maybe coming up with the odd choon, I would say that the one tset of things worth having a look at are modes, simply because they provude a good starting point for coming up with soemthing different.
Much of this stuff is total bollocks. I know I will have annoyed a load of people here — but for us mere mortals — PLAYING THE GITR SHOULD BE FUN ...
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Post by vikingblues on Mar 16, 2021 10:24:49 GMT
At around 3 minutes there's an attempt at getting this microtonal theory to produce a 12-bar blues, successfully managing to destroy every one of the pleasures of the blues sound in one fell swoop. Back in the day Country blues artists played knackerd guitars with high actions, they had nevt seen a snark tuner or had an in-tune piano to tune to. I don't know about micro pitching but this was an important component of the sound. It's a bit like time signatures. Try putting a metronome against the old recordings.
I would go further. The blues was not about technique (there was a massive diversity in style and competence). Blues music — and the other music these folks played — was about emotion, happiness and joy, sadness and tears.
Modern day fingerstyle leans a lot on theory and other disciplines from classical guitar. But for most of us here this is a total waste of time.
For those of us plonking away on the sofa, and maybe coming up with the odd choon, I would say that the one tset of things worth having a look at are modes, simply because they provude a good starting point for coming up with soemthing different.
Much of this stuff is total bollocks. I know I will have annoyed a load of people here — but for us mere mortals — PLAYING THE GITR SHOULD BE FUN ...
What you've said there certainly doesn't annoy me for one!
What you said about blues music not being about technique is so true - emotion and feeling over-ride strict tempo and rules and regulations. Not playing (and singing) strictly in time and on the beat is far from essential. Ironic how the label 12-bar blues is so often applied, when the real blues players and singers might have 12 bars, but just as likely 13, 14, 11, adding a half bar or whatever, and what they play will be different from day to day depending on mood.
The best blues teacher I've encountered would frequently advise that what he was showing us was just a guideline, and for it to be blues we had to play what we felt, what we wanted and what we liked whether it obeyed any theory rules or not. As he learnt blues directly from the likes of Son House, Brownie McGhee, Bukka White, Mance Lipscomb, Furry Lewis, and Lightin' Hopkins, I'll go with his ideas rather than some academic style teaching.
I still have resentment that my attempts at learning classical guitar were most serious at a time when the vogue in the classical guitar world was that everything had to be played exactly as it was on the printed page. No deviation allowed from precise timing of notes and indications of relative volume / intensity. Turning what should have been the joy of music making involving the right hemisphere of the brain into a sterile soulless mind-numbing and depressive technical exercise where the brains left hemisphere rules. It is sad that a lot of that style of diktat has extended to finger-style guitar teaching.
Agreed 100% too about the joy of modes - they were a revelation after the many years I was locked in the pentatonic straitjacket. It did take me a long time to find a teacher that cracked the mystery of playing modes for me though. I got nowhere with the usual teaching methods where all evolves from the C major scale and the teaching is a whole jumbled mess of whole and half step sequences to be remembered, and modes starting on different degrees of the scale, and other associated crap that seemed to mean nothing about the actual music. It was with some joy that I found from a good teacher, whose desire is his students play their own music in their own style, that each mode is only a pentatonic scale plus two notes - so I knew 5/7 of every church mode already. He also honed in on the feel / sound / emotion of the different modes - in stark contrast to all previous lessons I'd seen. There was then a happy firing of musical awareness. Probably didn't help me that those years of trying to understand modes were pre internet and on-line lessons.
Mark
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Post by PistolPete on Mar 16, 2021 10:35:53 GMT
At around 3 minutes there's an attempt at getting this microtonal theory to produce a 12-bar blues, successfully managing to destroy every one of the pleasures of the blues sound in one fell swoop. Back in the day Country blues artists played knackerd guitars with high actions, they had nevt seen a snark tuner or had an in-tune piano to tune to. I don't know about micro pitching but this was an important component of the sound. It's a bit like time signatures. Try putting a metronome against the old recordings.
I would go further. The blues was not about technique (there was a massive diversity in style and competence). Blues music — and the other music these folks played — was about emotion, happiness and joy, sadness and tears.
Modern day fingerstyle leans a lot on theory and other disciplines from classical guitar. But for most of us here this is a total waste of time.
For those of us plonking away on the sofa, and maybe coming up with the odd choon, I would say that the one tset of things worth having a look at are modes, simply because they provude a good starting point for coming up with soemthing different.
Much of this stuff is total bollocks. I know I will have annoyed a load of people here — but for us mere mortals — PLAYING THE GITR SHOULD BE FUN ...
I did go back to the video and get as far as the 'blues' track - I don't think it helps that it's obviously all generated digitally. I think something that's overlooked a lot is that music theory is meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the stuff Western music theory is really designed to describe is 17th & 18th century formal European music. With a bit of rule bending it sort of works for blues and folk, but loses some of the subtleties of timing and microtonality, and there's plenty of traditional music from outside of Europe where it doesn't really fit at all. Even some really familiar music is ambiguous when you try and write it down using Western music theory. Is Folsom Prison Blues in 4/4 or 2/2? Stormy Monday in 4/4 or 12/8? Is a Jimmy Reed shuffle major or minor? The answer to all these questions is "yes".
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Mar 16, 2021 10:38:22 GMT
... I think something that's overlooked a lot is that music theory is meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the stuff Western music theory is really designed to describe is 17th & 18th century formal European music. ....... (bold type added) Hooray for some common sense! Keith PS If you haven't read them yet, Howard Goodall's books "Big Bangs" (no, it's not about a rock musician's life on the road) and "The story of music" are well worth seeking out for some thoughts on how (Western) music developed. They are far from dry theoretical/historical tomes, but are (as decent books are often described)real page turners. (a silly expression - that's how books work, but you know what I mean!)
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Post by PistolPete on Mar 16, 2021 11:31:05 GMT
Hooray for some common sense! Common sense? I fear you may have me confused with somebody else!
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Post by Gregg Hermetech on Mar 16, 2021 11:40:22 GMT
Seems to be a lot of anti-theory feeling here, haha. Not surprising based on the video posted. It's just another way of looking at the wonderful world of music. Of course it won't apply to everything. I disagree that it's boring or will turn you into some kind of unemotional robot. Loads of great Jazz players knew their theory like the back of their hand, and Russell's 'Lydian Chromatic Concept' was extensively used by Davis and Coltrane etc. Did that make them crap players? For me, it doesn't have to be either/or, I'm more of a both/and type of person. Take theory or leave it, but the idea that it will somehow make you a worse player, or discouraging people to study it, is risible, IMVHO.
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Post by scorpiodog on Mar 16, 2021 12:15:10 GMT
We all appreciate our passions from differing perspectives. It's the same no matter what your hobby, or professsion, or calling, or whatever.
As someone who has, in his time, become interested in cycling, photography, woodworking, military history and all manner of other subjects of niche interest, it always fascinates me how different practitioners and aficionados derive satisfaction. Some are interested in the detailed workings and theory behind the subject, some want to delve into how it all started and developed, and some just want the satisfaction and, perhaps, adrenaline rush of dong the thing.
For me, music theory is mildly interesting. technique a little more so, owning guitars of varying types is exciting, building repertoire is satisfying, but performing is where it all lives and dies. And the beauty is that you need a litle bit of all these. This shared passion of ours would take more than one person's lifetime to become boring. Thank the heavens for that!
I haven't watched any of the video. Your combined reactions have persuaded me not to!
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