DISCLAIMER: This is just my opinion as an intermediate pianist, please don’t take any of this too seriously and please feel free to prove me wrong
- Intervals! (FYI this will probably not make sense without prior music theory knowledge)
- if you take a major 6th interval chord whatever and make the top note double flat, then it’s a DIMINISHED 6TH?? but there’s a difference between diminished 6th and P5? like what no this is all wrong what is going on!
- if you take any interval and make the top a sharp and the bottom a flat it ceases to exist. Hooray.
- let’s talk about augmented intervals. Dear lord. I can’t. If you take a Perfect 5th, and then put a sharp on top, it becomes an augmented 5th. Okay, all good so far. If you put a double sharp on the top note, guess what? it ceases to exist. Again. Double hooray.
- my ears are telling me that a diminished 6th and a P5 are the same thing, but no no no no we don’t use our ears in MUSIC THEORY they’re very different
- AGH INTERVALS I HATE THEM THEY MAKE NO SENSE
- Contemporary music! (No prior knowledge needed)
- first things first, we must address the divide between “contemporary music” (think modern music, like Taylor swift, Beatles, etc, basically anything from 1945 onwards) and what I like to call “classical contemporary”.
- Classical contemporary is the one I dislike
- most pieces I’ve played were dreadfully unmusical and atonal, and classical contemporary does not feature lyrics
- Most pieces that I’ve played are bad and not good and unorganized
- I’m pretty sure most of the composers are the definition of taking themselves too seriously
- if the renaissance was baroque, and impressionism is romantic, and neoclassical or whatever is classical, THEN CONTEMPORARY IS ABSTRACT ART
- dear god they made abstract art into a music form. Very controversial and worth too much money/praise for the amount of effort put in
exhibit A: 4’33” by John cage. 4 and a half minutes of silence and he gets paid to perform this. UNFAIR. IT DOESN’T EVEN SOUND LIKE ANYTHING
exhibit B: One for Violin Solo— play a giver solo then smash the violin you played it on the ground. 1. Why. 2. Waste of violin. 3. That would hurt my soul - I’m pretty sure I could make a “contemporary piece” by merely banging my head against the wall——oh wait, yoko ono ALREADY PERFORMED THAT IN WALL PIECE FOR ORCHESTRA
anyways my rant is over
Diminished 6th and perfect 5th indeed sound the same (they have the same number of semitones between notes) but I think the difference is in how they are used within a piece.
I actually don't know what counts as a contemporary classical piece. What's an example?
I've heard of Ludovico Einaudi being called a modern classical music, so e. g. Una Mattina
If you were to approach contemporary music with the same mindset as tonal repertoire you would find much of it frustrating. If you instead see it as a laboratory for ideas where the sound itself is only part of the result then you might be able to appreciate it differently even if you still dislike it. Musicians who understand both the practical tonal approach and the more conceptual contemporary world have more creative tools at their disposal regardless of which style they choose to perform...
did yoko ono ruin music
no; accelerating the split of the Lennon-McCartney duo, along with dissolving the Beatles, was probably a net gain for music.
I'm considering the resulting solo careers of each musician as positive results, and ignoring the "contributions" of Yoko herself; so I guess the way I set up this calculation, it's almost impossible to reach any other conclusion, unless you have some high confidence that the Beatles staying together would have produced more good music, rather than just more of their acceptable boy-band pop-rock.
I think you should keep in mind a few things:
Basically, I think it's good to view all academic music theory with a grain of salt, the same way you'd read any academic theory as only being an oversimplification of whatever natural phenomenon is being described. Don't let someone else's coping with complexity ruin your subjective enjoyment of your own activity.
I'm illiterate when it comes to music, but this was interesting to read. ⚡
Interesting rant.
Well, you anticpated that I couldn't make much sense of music theory. Oddly though, it all made logical sense in terms of already knowing basics of how chords are formed on a fretboard. In terms of scales and musical notation, not sure I know much beyond that you are talking much about resonance. What do you use in music theroy if not your ear?
I don't really get your critique of contemporary, but I wasn't sure if that is a juxtaposition to be considered in light of classical music. Contemporary is post 1940's? Electrified?
Did Beethoven say (paraphrasing and translating) 'all music is frequency over time'?
In my mind, classical needs defining: