The theory says this shouldn't work, but it does because feelings and stuff

making music in key doesn't make it 'correct' according to music theory. the music theory would state that it's not in key

This is a little misleading. "What makes music sound good" is pretty much down to education, cultural background and upbringing. A Schubert string quartet doesn't sound good to a group of native Africans because they're used to music that doesn't used the tempered system or harmonic function logic for example. It would sound confusing to them. The whole thousand years of research has been done for Western classical music after the tempered system was created so it's obviously lacking in older music and other musics of the world. However music from ~1750-1900 is obviously well documented and there is in a fact an abundance of "guides" how to make tonal music sound good to someone who is used to and grew up with tonal music.
So overall I agree with you.

Autistic people should try to understand music.

Knowing the keys and root notes relative to chord changes in music is an important part of theory.

Say I wanted to learn how to play the blues. Without theory how could you teach me how to really capture that sound?

no. but what does that have to do with sounding good?

That’s true. I was speaking based on classic western music theory.

I think what I really am trying to say is, is that music theory isn’t like maths, however there is maths applied to frequencies but in general it’s just a conceptual and discriptive tool used to teach people music

Well, would blues sound good if you weren’t aware of it’s most basic roots in chord progressions, what notes give it the signature blues sound?
The blues has its own scale of musical notes that are played in specific ways to capture the sound.
Western music is made up of 12 notes. You need to know how to arrange and play them to achieve the sound you want.

Here is a really basic but good framework for what makes a blues sound. Using this, you can play along to most blues progression backing tracks and make it work much better than just randomly hitting pentatonic notes.

And without theory even this very basic understanding could not be communicated effectively

Attached: A99461C3-7C51-4397-AEFD-FF679EC3C1A7.jpg (3264x2448, 1.93M)

>Well, would blues sound good
no, it should be phrased 'does it sound bluesy'. 'good' is a subjective term

Well how would you teach a bluesy sound, what makes the blues bluesy.

by using music theory.
music theory doesn't describe what makes music good, it describes music

OP immediately and thoroughly BTFO

He has a point though he's just not expressing it well and is confused in general - people who try to use theoretical analysis to explain why things are good or to justify why the things they like are good are idiots.

That’s not really what I am asking but yes I agree. Theory isn’t restrictive but if you were tasked with teaching a beginner to play, you would teach them the basics using the applicable theory, and as they get more experienced it’s up to them how far they want to push it. But theory is a massively valuable tool In learning music, I know personally I wasn’t have been hooked by covering and playing other people’s music, but by using theory to see what and how they actually did and using that to create and improvise by myself in a style that I liked

the point of theory isn't to tell you what's right or wrong but to systematize and understand the workings of music other (and insanely talented) people have invented over so many generations so you can use it yourself, instead of spending your life fumbling with the basics all over again
idk, like studying math by reading a book instead of trying to figure it out from scratch all over again

>if you were tasked with teaching a beginner to play, you would teach them the basics using the applicable theory
no, you would apply music theory to teach what sounds good to you

Without theory would you be able to explain how to inprovise over this song?

Could you explain what key it’s in? What groups of intervals are repeated in this song in different scales? What scales you would use over each group of intervals?

Song link: youtu.be/8H_5GcUxMHM

So I ask my music teacher to teach me the blues. Instead of a well laid out frame work, the basis of blues sound, he would describe advanced ideas regarding use of chromatic notes in a blues context when really all he needs to do is lay a foundation of I-Vl-V intervals, b3 & b5 notes, bends, blues scale tritones, etc?

I don’t disagree with you that theory isn’t wholly non subjective but there is a reason repetition works in music and it’s because of this we have groundwork for defining genres in their most basic form.
No one is going to teach hypothetical “nothing really matters except what you think” music theory to beginners. There are very practical and observable reasons why a genre is a genre so much so that theory can explain it and capture its essence

Oh, look. It's a faggot who doesn't know any theory criticizes theory thread.

provide me an example of 'music theory says this shouldn't work, but it does'

What are you talking about? Did you read what I said or are we getting confused about what we are discussing here?
Music theory doesn’t say anything about what you can’t do. There are reasons behind why you can make anything work as long as you can give the piece context in relation to the overall sound.

But that isn’t what we were discussing, and I can’t tell if you flipped sides of the argument.

the minor pentatonic scale

oh, well, to answer your question, yes

Theory gives you a way of achieving certain sounds, or doing certain things in your music, that were deemed desirable in that time the theories were conceived, hundreds of years ago. If you do things according to those rules, you will reliably create a sound that people who wore powdered wigs would have told you is "nice". And a lot of the time, the kinds of music people thought was "nice" then still aligns with the music people think is "nice" now, so you can keep using those rules today to make a generally "nice" sound, which speaks to the robustness of those theories. There are two problems with this though:
1. Certain tricks in the common practice era rulebook have become so overused by composers of certain eras, that using those tricks will inevitably evoke a sound or mood that might seem outdated, or inappropriate for modern times, unless you want your music to explicitly resemble Classical, or Romantic, or Baroque music (although of course, sometimes recontextualizing old sounds will yield surprising results).
2. If you're on this website, then you probably don't like other people all that much, in which case you don't necessarily care very much for making "nice" sounding music for them.

It's interesting the way things developed after the common practice era, because a lot of Modern music revolves around trying to write alternative theory rulebooks, that allows you to achieve sounds or do things that may not be very "nice". So you can avoid the second point, but if you use too much twelve-tone theory, for example, or too much jazz theory, or just generally stick too closely to any one of the existing ideologies or rulebooks, you're going to end up with stuff that evokes a certain past time period, perhaps a little too strongly, which may or may not be appropriate for the music you want to make. In order to keep things fresh, it's best to take a few notes from everything but not stick too closely to any one set of theories, enough to keep you moving.

Not him but minor pentatonic scale fits well against the standard dominant 12 bar blues, the tension of the b3 against the dominants major 3rd is a major part of blues. The shared b7 of minor pent and dominant root chord works well to bridge the tension to a resolution.

The same is true for major and dominant scale/chord relations. Which is why you see a dominant 7 chord just before the scale changes from major to minor (or the other way around) a lot in more developed jazz 251 progressions that can encompass multiple scales

I think theory isn’t so much tied to a time period, there are new genres created much later than classical music period that are well understood theory wise but it may be more of a cultural understanding of music and why things evoke a certain feeling.

People identify genres of music without knowing how it’s constructed because your brain recognises the patterns. And personally I think theory is a great tool to recognise why things work.
And because of that I think it’s important if you want to capture a sound that you know it from the ground floor but I definitely agree there is always a need for personal influence and mixing of ideas to make it sound unique

>Using this, you can play along to most blues progression backing tracks and make it work much better than just randomly hitting pentatonic notes.
Scott Henderson would kill you for this

Well Scott Henderson is a very experienced musician. If most beginners could conceptualise music like him then there would be no point in learning the basics. Unfortunately everyone has to start somewhere so it makes sense to teach them the core basics of what makes up a sound they are looking to learn.

minor pentatonic doesn't really 'work'. If you use it on the first bar of the blues like most rockers do, you can kiss that bluesy sound good bye. If you still think it works, go and try it at a blues jam and tell me how it 'worked'

Personally, I feel the reason why people like you hate in theory, assuming you are serious, is that it comes from the assumption that music theory is like other things taught in school, there are true and false rules in science and maths.
When you hear people explain that music theory isn’t like that you just to if being a bunch of hippie crap.
The difference is that. In science if something is true or disproven it is treated as such, but when it comes to music nothing can be disproven if it works and you have thousands of years and genres that have their own sounds and basic formats, if music just existed as one thing then you could call things wrong, however If someone creates a new genre that gains worldwide traction, you cannot say it isn’t true even if it doesn’t fit the framework of existing music

Well first bar of blues is generally in major. Which is why the “bb box” took off with is 2 and 6 notes in a easy context for beginners to learn assuming they only know minor pent.
But then you have minor 12 bar blues which is not uncommon at all and is very blusey

The blues is a bad example because it has always been taught orally. There are elements of the oral tradition that the academic approach cannot grasp. I don't mean to totally ditch your framework, but I feel the need to back it up with some serious and good ol' listen to the records and play along with them, cuz if you go there, you'll see that a lot of the time, they don't play the exact structure or the exact changes that someone who has only read the written theory would expect....

I don’t wholly disagree. I agree that it is a “newer” non classical genre that emerged without any written formats, so there is a lot of variation. But it is still very explainable with theory.
I do think that many people either love or hate theory too much to the point that it’s all or nothing.
I fully believe theory is just as important as techinical skills to a beginner and that is where I am coming from based on OPs post in this thread. I’m not talking or explaining to people my ideas On theory is they already have a solid grasp of it. But I don’t want beginners to see people explain it away are irrelevant or wrong just because the person saying that could not understand it.

It isn’t a rule or a truth or law. It’s standardised communication and a teaching method. And it can teach anyone to learn to being playing their favourite music.
there will always be things left uncovered by teachers but that’s the way it is when you have a system where nothing can be wrong

yeah we've all been there... I don't know why minor scales seem to have a harder 'pull' creatively. Anecdotally, I've seen many amateur compositions with an excess of minor chords. I myself in my teens played a lot with minor sounds, even though the major scale was the first one that was taught to me.
Anyway, it certainly does work on minor blues yet, how do you like the sound of playing a maj7 arpeggio from the third that resolves to the tonic on the first bar?

Yes, absolutely. I think we can agree with someone who posted above that said that music theory is not like scientific theory. Being music primarily subjective, whatever works in practice becomes part of the theory, not the other way around. Some reharmonization works are examples of the opposite not being true, I think.

It’s about tension. The minor 3rd creates that and it sounds extra nice to resolve at the end of a phrase which is why I would think minor is overplayed.
In regards to arpeggios, I keep away from major 7s, I’ll bend from a b7 to the root. But major 7 doesn’t fit in dominant or minor chords if you are taking about the first bar being the overall key. However the root 7 works on the fifth chord as it is the 3rd so if adds a good tension and resolves nicely on the turnaround. Throw in a Tritone or 5-b7 doublestop with a bend and you are golden

>But major 7 doesn’t fit in dominant or minor chords if you are taking about the first bar being the overall key.
I meant it more or less like this:
A minor blues
1st bar (Am): Cmaj7 arpeggio resolving from B to A (or a natural extension of A minor if you want).
2nd bar (Am): maybe vibrato making that A rreaaally long or any other thing around the tonic.
3rd bar (Dm): New phrase that keeps pushing on that Cmajor scale adding F and D.

I think that playing it with a perspective of playing Cmajor over A minor instead of A minor pentatonic gives a bit more in-depth to the possibilities. I have to add that I'm not really a hardcore bluesman, my main thing is jazz, but anyway idk... lmao

this is for (you)

I tend to look at it less in the regard of scales but more intervals that work in the key. So I wouldn’t stick to C major that’s just confusing the issue of the song is in A, play the first bar in A. The reason that a first bar is commonly major is because the backing chords are dominant so they have a major 3rd. But why not just think of it as A minor with a major third that you can bend to from a minor third and highlight because if you compare A major 7 to A minor 7 chord the only difference is the 3. And in the major blues scale a b3 is a blues note so it really does work, and the 2 and 6 chords you get in a major scale are used in passing, not something you highlight as it’s too dissonant, they can just add some flavour.

Once you get to chords 4 and 5 the minor sound works well, obviously the 4th note I’m the 4th chord. But in minor blues scale, b5 is a blue note and is a really nice passing note so you can do 4-b5-5 runs.

The 5th is the final tension and release. The blues is based on creating a lot of tensions can release, notes that create tension are the 3s in relation to the overal structure of the dominant backing chords. And In the 5th chord the 3rd is the 7th of the 1st chord so you have the note creating tension overall like a 3rd but at the same time pushing toward a resolution as a 7.
So you get to the turnaround and it’s a major resolution of all this tension you have been building

The blues is all about creating this feeling of tension then release. The tonic note, is the release. You find a lot of good players avoiding hitting the tonic note until an end of a phrase, as a way to resolve the tension create through other notes.
The turnaround from 5th to 1st chord is a major release of the tension built during the 12 bars

>because if you compare A major 7 to A minor 7 chord the only difference is the 3

I meant dominant 7 to minor 7.

You can’t get away with whatever the chord let’s you get away with. In blues it’s mainly a dominant 12 bar blues. All dominant chords you would want to avoid a keys major 7 chord

>Once you get to chords 4 and 5 the minor sound works well, obviously the 4th note I’m the 4th chord. But in minor blues scale, b5 is a blue note and is a really nice passing note so you can do 4-b5-5 runs.

I should clarify, I’m the 4th chord. The 4th chord of the scale is obviously the same note so it works to highlight it as a new tonic for that chord but also the b7 In the dominant 4th chord is the 1st chords minor third which accounts for the switch to a minor scale.

And the 4th and 5th chords work together in that you have the first chords b3, 4, b5 and 5 all blending well together as they are important intervals in the blues sclae and important intervals in the 4 and 5th chords relative to the first chords.

See For the relation of the 4th and 5ths intervals to the root chord.
Every chord is made of of the same 1 3 5 b7 but you need to how each relate back to the root to see what you should target rather than swap to a whole new scale and hope for the best.
And of course since this is based on intervals unrelated from the actual key it’ll work on any 12 bar blues dominant 1 4 5 progression, which is most of them

imagine being this deep into music theory but not progressing socially or morally to the point of not calling people faggots who you are in essence teaching

epic lol have my upvote, stranger! ;)

>how each relate back to the root
Yeah, I know. Precisely because of that is why I think Cmajor over Aminor is a sensible choice.
In the first 2 bars of the minor blues, if you play the Cmaj7 arpeggio you have 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th, you can take your prhase to the ninth (B) and then hit the tonic for release.
Then, when the harmony changes to Dminor: if you play the C major scale all the way from C to G you get 7th, tonic (in a weak beat) , 9th, 3rd and 11th, which you can release to the 5th or the tonic as you choose. What I find interesting is the colors that come up when thinking of Cmajor instead of Aminor. Of course, phrasing is the key here. For example, playing the 11th on the 3rd beat would sound terrible, but as a diatonic passing note it goes from a harsh dissonance to an interesting color

>When did you realize that musical analysis is just a bunch of people trying to explain why their taste is better through bullshit?
there's a lot of bullshit but the core material is honest. And even if you don't want to adhere to the "correct" aesthetic principles like independence of voices it is useful to know them. If you read a lot of music it is also very natural to ask why it works and how it was put together.

this