How classical theory applies to everyday music...

S

SEDstar

Active member
The more I study music (on my own, self taught, mind you...) the more it strikes me what doing and learning classical stuff really applies to simple everyday stuff...

cadence...

I first read about cadence, perhaps "day one" I became serious about studying music on my own on the internet, and dismissed it out of hand, as classical "musical calculus" that had no bearing on making a "regular" power chord song.

I was wrong, lol.

Later on, it was "something I was lacking" and looking for. I accidentally used it to "some" effect periodically, and some of those early songs were "better", but I didnt know "why". The "why" as I now look back, was that I had purely accidentally used a portion of cadence in the proper place.

Cadence looks complex, but like anything, a few pointers or rules of thumb borrowed from classical theory can take years out of the "by ear" learning curve. Now a couple/several years into this, my ears are "beginning" to hear I,IV, and V chords somewhat... I cannot tell you by ear what is the "root" by name, but I can detect sometimes the "lift" of the IV and V.

This all came home listening to "cat scratch fever" for the umpteenth time in my life. I noticed Mr. Whackmaster's powerchord classic, anthemic even, song... had subtle changes to its basic melody.

if he was going to do it again, it sounded like it had a "4...5" for the final 2 chords... and when he was done repeating it for the verse, it had somethign that sounded like a partial cadence or maybe an authentic cadence, with the root chord drawn out.

Counterpoint...

when I hear "really neat" iconic piano lines, I am becoming convinced I am hearing counterpoint being used. I am also hearing it in guitar lines, and between "accompaniment" lines that give and take and give and go between instruments. I am also convinced that in Pink floyd and other "obviously classically inspired" authors, I am hearing the overmelody and the undermelody (what I call them... they are really cantus firmus, and whatever, LMAO) used out of time, lead/lag... lag/lead... and together.

what one guy accomplishes by ear and playing constantly, and another learns/reads/studies and applies... is the same thing!!

there is no argument, both sides are right.

a number of "rules of thumb" applied from some mentor at the appropriate moments in a person's self-study approach can take much time off the learning curve.

one thing is for sure though, the "ear" seems to come along at a gradual pace, all of its own accord, I think.

I learn by doing, hands on, making classical trax for myself... and I augment it with reading/studying on the internet (there's a shitload out there, its not secrets locked away in some vault, LMAO)

I'm just saying, as I learn stuff from the classical point of view, it really strikes me that I am seeing it applied in different ways, in high end progressive stuff, sure... but in power chord anthems too.

Its universal. Mathematical rules govern this stuff, whether we learn it from the theory end, or by doing and people making suggestions.

there's no argument, both sides are right, continue making tracks!
 
exactly

See that is the problem with "music". People think its some magical force only, and that there are no laws governing its emotional potency. But there are.

But whats crazy is that there are tons of people who have studied alot, and their music is terrible. I define "terrible" as lack of emotional punch, lack of amusing patterns, lack of emotional tact in their compositions. Possibly even lack of individual charm can doom a writer. We all know there are many famous great writers without great voices, or with strange styles that only they can pull off, and yet, it works. Its bizarre though that "studying" music seems to go hand and hand with lack of individualism. Not always. But id say almost all the time. You know the old saying, "all the men who have money are too old to really have fun with it"... well i kinda think songwriting is the same way. "All the guys who studied the hell out of music are too complacent to write anything truly brilliant". And the opposite of that would be all the crazy young passion idiots who have a ton to say but dont have any skill to say it. If you look closely at the history of successful music, ignoring public image of the artist, you will find that when youth and individualism meets technical know-how, you have a great writer with a successful career.

Ive personally known many songwriters. The ones that tried so hard to make a success out of themselves, but had no personal charisma or unique grasp of musical irony FAILED miserably at music and are now just playing two licks on the old guitar on the weekends here and there. They never wrote shit despite all that effort. All that equipment. All those books on theory. It meant nothing. But on the other end of the spectrum there are the guys that vowed to never learn anything or copy anyone and every single thing they did they had to be shockingly unique. They never learned chords, thought the beatles were "crappy old has beens", and swore up and down that experimentation and was the only way to be a real artist. And they FAILED miserably too.

Everyone has a different perspective. Most times people have one that reflects a version of the truth they feel comfortable with. But the only people ive ever known who could consistently write a decent artistically competitive tune, were the ones who knew when and how to balance individuality and passion with actual technical "craft". And its rare. Thats why there are a billion bands on myspace and 5 of them are any good at writing, and the rest are only good at imitating artistic traits that the public associates with artistic success.

Im glad you have realized the truth about music. Dont believe what anyone says who doesnt understand that there is more to the art of form than just memorizing all the terminology.
 
Ps

PS Its about time someone posted something around here that wasnt complete and total BS. SEDstar you just raised the bar for this forum without even realizing it.
 
This is a good post SEDstar because it's always nice to see these false barriers between different types of music being torn down. I don't even see it as "classical theory" really --- music theory is music theory; it doesn't matter to what genre you're applying the tools. IMO, they're just analytical tools that help musicians communicate better with each other.

I hate how there's this big rift oftentimes between jazz and classical, for example---those two genres especially, because they're soooo closely related. If you take some of Bach's lines from his inventions, speed them up and swing them, you'll get bebop. Yet so many jazz musicians get so snobby, or vice versa.

Regardless of how much theory you know, developing your ear is the most important thing to me, because it's more important to know how to use a secondary dominant chord or a flat-five substitution than it is to know how to explain it.

As has been stated many times before, theory is an after-the-fact thing. No matter what chord progression someone strings together, you can analyze it and put names to it. The "rules" we often hear about with regards to classical music, such as avoiding parallel 5ths, or avoiding the tritone (early on) are really just conventions. Even though some people/teachers may label them as "rules," it's not law. No one's going to arrest you if you play parallel 5ths. And if no one ever played parallel 5ths, we wouldn't have gotten Hendrix's cool intro for "Castles Made of Sand."

It's like with the English language. We have these grammar rules we learn, like that every sentence must contain a subject and a verb, or that we're not to dangle prepositions, etc. But then you read a novel, and you'll see every one of those "rules" broken.

So, to me, there's nothing wrong with learning the terminology of everything. But the most important thing is to be able to hear it. If you hear someone play a major 3rd, for example, do you know how to recreate that on your instrument? If you hear a I-ii-iii-IV or I-bIII-bVI-I progression, can you replicate it? Once you train your ear well enough to do those things, you're much more well equipped to play on your instrument what you hear in your head.

There are examples of great songwriters that are very knowledgable in theory (such as Sting) and those that didn't know much theory at all (such as Kurt Cobain). But even though Kurt couldn't read or write a note of music, he regularly employed some fairly advanced concepts like modal mixture in his songs (mixing harmony from parallel major and minor modes) to great effect. Both "Lithium" and "In Bloom" are prime examples of this. And there are others, such as the Beatles, that perhaps knew bits and pieces of traditional theory, but were able to complete the bigger picture with their ears. They may have not known what a "ii-V of IV" was called (ex. Gm-C in the key of C), but they knew the sound well enough to use it in several of their songs (and in different keys).

So, sure ... study theory as much as you see fit. But train your ear most of all. You mentioned that you were beginning to hear the difference between I and IV chords, etc. And that's great. Work on that a lot. Sing! Try to play melodies and then sing them. Then try singing a melody and then playing it back. Singing is an awesome way to train your ear. Even if you don't have a great voice (I certainly wasn't blessed with one, but I do my best), singing is an excellent way to connect your ears to your brain. I know lots of people that know lots of theory but poorly trained ears. This means that their knowledge of theory isn't going to do much for them outside of the classroom, because music is an auditory art.

Now ... I'm sure Mr. Honesty will pipe in here and say that I shouldn't be giving advice because I'm a prime example of someone who knows theory and can't write a decent song to save his life. And that's fine ... he's entitled to his opinion.

Music is pretty much entirely subjective, and so he doesn't like my stuff. That's great. I don't like Metallica's stuff or Rush's stuff or Mr. Honesty's stu (oh .. that's right ... no one has heard Mr. Honesty's stuff yet), but that doesn't mean that many other people don't think it's good or great or genius or whatever.

Anyway .... whatever. Good luck with the quest. :)
 
Good post SEDstar

famous beagle's first paragraph pretty much summed up what first went through my mind when I skimmed over this thread before it had replies a few days ago... there is no such thing as 'classical theory' - it is music theory, and applies to aspects of pretty much all but the most experimental of compositions. Even very basic things such as time signatures and structures are classed as musical theory. I can't understand why some people discard it as only applying to classical music, unless they're just looking for excuses for not understanding it themselves :)...
 
All music theory stems from the study of two basics: time and the harmonic series.

It doesn't matter what type of music or the era.
 
...

quote:"and i think the study of form too"

uh huh... I've personally chosen the "sonata form" as my goal. I bite off a little more each time I go after it. Dont know how many more "bites" I have to take of the sandwich to have it, but, I dont just want a piece of it "I want the whole damn thing", LMAO
 
I'm learning the theory side of things after playing for 9 years with no theory. I'm hoping to one day be able to use the theory in my writing but still I can write more convincing things with just "feeling". I'm going to try singing more with my playing as I've heard that's one of the best things to be able to do.

theory is important to understanding music as
science is to important to understanding the universe.
 
Might be a bit off topic, but I wanted to throw this in...

Its surprising how much the idea of classical music scares people. For whatever reason, the average non-musician will rarely cite classical music as one of their favorites. In fact, most will say that they don't care for it at all. The waitress comes into the kitchen to pick up her food and askes me "what the hell are you listening to?", and gets the idea that I'm some kinda weirdo(okay, maybe other things I do don't help either, haha). But if you take away the string section in the Plain White T's number one song of the year, it's just not going to be the same. Joseph Shmoe probably wouldn't know what was missing, but he'd know something was wrong. Countless hip-hop songs these days abuse the power of a string section. And if you take away the filmscore in all of their favorite movies... Harry Potter with no classical music? HAHA!Sometimes I think that the right filmscore can completely cover up an actor's inabilities(not directly referring to Harry Potter here). But for me to be listening to the same music in an everyday setting... Well I must be a weirdo.
 
...

(steers off topic to follow SC-RRR-EEEE-ch!) lmao...

I'm 41, a product of teens in the 80'2, and 20's in the 90's. Heavy metal was the order of the day. I started out on ELO and Laura Branigan, and still liked it then (and now, lol) but, developed a taste for "quality metal" not the power chord glam crap. Vintage Queensryche, anyone? lol...

I had noticed I liked, actually liked, a couple pieces of classical music. To my ear, some of the "heavier" classical numbers seemed, well... almost, uhm, kinda like "heavy metal" but it classical format.

A lot of power, and it stood the hair on the nape of the neck up.

When Savatage (akam\, now known as Trans siberian orch, lol) did "Hall of the mountain king", they first did it classical, then, the next tune was the guitar version.

obviously beethovens 5th i liked too, and Toccata and Fugue in D minor.



also, the best guitar heroes of the day were "dropping in" classical stuff, electrical or acoustic. Not just the solos either, some really heavy albums would have a "beautiful" acoustic short track.

I now know they were "showing off" classical music training. Hell, Geoff Tate of Queensryche was groomed for operatic success at Juliard before he suddenly went heavy metal. Jeff "Mr ELO himself" Lynne has always had a penchant for a little classical in his pop and concept albums.

*shrugs*

the top notch musicians always seem to have classical training. If you dont hear classical in Vintage Pink Floyd, you arent listening very hard.



it pretty much always made sense to me. I just didnt realize that you can study it yourself without going to Juliard or whatever.... now I know you can. Which is pretty cool, I think.
 
Imagine if you went behind the scenes at David Copperfield's magic show and they showed you how everything worked.

That, to me, is what learning theory can do for you... it can take the mystery out of the nuts and bolts part of music. There will still be magic in the creative part of music, that won't change for the worse like some people think.

The best way I know of cracking the nut on music theory is to write out songs. It can be painful at first but I don't think there's anything that helped me learn as much as that. If you can write it down, you really know it. Sometimes when you play you can muff over certain parts and not hear all the stuff in the middle of a lick, and transcribing helps with that.
 
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