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piiperi Reinstate Monica

 Discussion on question by Simon M: Se…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 21, 2024 20:55
science-based supplementary addition to my guitar practice routine and my current weightlifting program ... is this more like for pop/jazz or classical weightlifting?
 

 Discussion on question by Eliz Ho: I …

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 29, 2024 15:40
If you can't decide, pick the first one in alphabetical order. I don't really understand what the question is though.
 

 Discussion on question by Lecifer: Do…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Dec 10, 2023 02:47
Quite many users have deemed this question worth answering, but not worth upvoting!
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Dec 10, 2023 02:47
If you hire a choir to sing whatever you're singing, it kind of amplifies your singing. You'll have to pay and/or feed them, but no electrical power needed.
 

 Discussion on question by Asd Fgh: ho…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Dec 5, 2023 19:35
Any kind of explanation is theoretical. There is no such thing as non-theoretical explanation. All descriptions of musical practices are theory. What should be described as good or bad or whatever for some purpose, depends on the context and purpose. For what purpose and what audience are you targetting the music where you intend to use chords, and how can you tell if a chord is "compatible" with another? Or are you asking for opinions from others - what does person X consider "compatible" for purpose Y in context Z, for all (X, Y, Z)?
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Dec 5, 2023 19:35
Music theories are more or less formal or systematic attempts to describe musical practices. Is this question asking for an overview of all different kinds of description attempts of all kinds of harmonic aspects of all kinds of musical practices anywhere ever, or just some specific kinds of descriptions of some specific kinds of musical practices? Maybe it's limited to those practices where a concept of "chord" has been used. If the OP could give a few examples of "explanations" of "compatibility" and whose musical practices those explanations apply to. Please.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Are…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
May 8, 2023 07:42
This answer is complete baloney. :) If we measure productivity as something like "bug-free functionality implemented per time unit", then it's ridiculous to claim that the expressive power of a language doesn't affect productivity. The number of bugs a programmer creates is proportional to the number of lines of code, so if you want to minimize the number of bugs, you'll want to write in a language which minimizes the number of lines of code. Not to mention all other dimensions and aspects of programming languages.
 

 Discussion on answer by Stephen Kitt:…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Nov 19, 2022 10:32
In 1994 I wrote an MS-DOS command-line utility that I used for listening to music with a CD-ROM drive. The drive could be told to play the whole CD from beginning to end with one command (after reading a table-of-contents to find out the number of frames or sectors or something). After issuing the command the drive operated completely autonomously, and I could use the computer for something different.
 

 Discussion on question by Tim: Does a…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 14, 2022 16:32
I read that 4' 33" is for any combination of instruments. I suppose that must then include a hypothetical black-keys-only piano, and a one-button accordion which can only play a C major chord.
 

 Discussion on answer by Aaron: How is…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 12, 2022 18:50
@Tim Of course not. I'm saying that a "musician" who can only read is like a person who cannot speak, except if someone hands them written instructions, what to say. Such a person is not a competent speaker. Announcer or speech robot or something, I don't know what that should be called. Why does our music education system produce reading robots? IMO it's not at all OK.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 12, 2022 18:50
@Tim Well, if a musician cannot play "Whistle While You Work" without reading, then yes, I consider such a musician handicapped and semi-incompetent. Can the same person sing it without reading?
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 12, 2022 18:50
@MathieuKrisztian Sheet music is not a magical secret recipe - if you're a competent musician, if you hear it, you can play it, at least an approximation of it. For certain types of instruments - if there's a human player - written music is usually needed, but the material used for recording may be only for individual instruments, messy or hand-written, or just not polished for publishing. Or maybe they don't want to self-publish anyway. Making and publishing high-quality sheet music is not trivial, it needs skill and work. Composer and sheet music publisher are separate professions.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Aug 12, 2022 18:50
For much of pop music, the authors never wrote any sheet music at all, so every time anyone makes a transcription, it's going to be something different than what others have made. The author's name is still going to be the same for all of the different transcriptions.
 

 Discussion between piiperi Reinstate …

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 18:17
Anyway, I now think I have a better picture of what the problem and its solutions are. I'll update my answer later.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 18:15
The way I look at music, there is a clear order of things from simple to more complex. There's a clear bread-and-butter foundation, and other things can be layered on top of that. But people want to run forward and they encounter all sorts of theory concepts and words, without having the basis for relating those concepts. And without any coherent guidance, and taking the time to let each layer digest and settle down.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 18:09
Anyway, my main advice is to master the simple things first, in a hands-on, gut-feeling sort of way. Being able to identify a key center, and to be able to find chords to simple tunes from the set of 3+3 chords i.e. tonic, subdominant and dominant, in relative major and major, are essential tools to understanding harmony. When you have that foundation, it is possible to understanding things like dim chords, secondary dominants and chord substitutions, in terms of things you already know.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 18:01
I'm pretty sure that a lot of the time, Paco simply looked at the fretboard and moved something somewhere by one or two fret positions, to get a different chord.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 18:00
From what I hear in the Paco recordings, he's basically only adding ONE extra thing to the basic 3 + 3 chord pop structure. In the live version, he seemed to do a bit more small additions simultaneously. But the general pattern is - take a note in a chord and move it one step to some direction. For example, if there's Bm7, move the 7 to 6: Bm6. Then you can take an Amaj7 where the maj7 is already the same note that you moved, the 6 in the Bm6.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:53
When you know you can use A in F# minor, you can add a tiny little thing - make it an Amaj7. But before the Amaj7 you need to be familiar with plain A.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:52
Like in three-chord rock, where you have like G, C and D. In minor you have Em, Am and B7. When you put the minor and major sides together, you get 3 + 3 basic chords, which get you through a huge amount of pop music.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:50
After you can master these three-chords-of-minor and three-chords-of-major things, then the Paco de Lucia song suddenly becomes a matter of only a few small changes. For example, you knew you could use C in E minor, Paco makes it a C7, it's a flamenco thing. But any new thing you learn, builds on things you knew previously.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:45
Don't use google and computers, build the skills!
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:44
I really think you should first build a harmonic foundation, to be able to feel and sense the harmonic balance by playing simpler songs by ear. Something like this: youtube.com/watch?v=poe51yL_eRY You're allowed to only use the chords Em, Am, B7. There's e.g. a Em/G, C7 and E7/G# etc. in a few places, but don't care about those, we assume you only know Em, Am and B7. In the brief second part, you can also use D7 and G.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:37
Try it, say "let's play Reflejo de Luna by Paco de Lucia", and as an intro, play a cadence A - E7 - A. Then try the same, but F#m - C#7 - F#m for an intro.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:35
It doesn't matter where it actually ends. If you cut out the last 30 seconds, it's still in F# minor.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:35
I say it's in F# minor because that's what it feels like. Though F# minor and A major, being relative keys, can be practically thought of being the same bi-polar key. Try which one ends the song better, A major or F# minor. Ending the song in A major would be a ridiculous, pretentious happy ending IMO. The most important chord pair here would be C#7 - F#m, dominant - tonic.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:31
It's in F# minor. Using a capo at the 2nd fret. In the live video it was capo'ed at the 1st fret, in F minor. Using open E minor fingerings.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:27
For a tonic F#m6, it doesn't resolve anywhere, it's a home chord.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:27
I first found a 1977 live version (in Fm), and now listening to this other recording in F#m. Yes, it seems that it's pretty well within the scope of things that can be analyzed in terms of Roman numerals etc. The 6 in the F#m6 chord is a common thing to add, calling it "13" is misleading because that implies there should be at least a 7th and a 9th in there as well. The whole "m6" chord in itself is one of the many additions or exceptions in the stack-of-thirds thinking.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 17:20
Sorry, I was trying to do many things at the same time. Here's the message: I am of the opinion that music should primarily be learned the same way as languages are learned - not grammar and syntax first, but by repeating words and phrases and living in the culture where the language is used. Syntax and grammar can help certain adult learners, but in this case of Paco de Lucia's flamenco, I'm not sure that 1800s Western classical music is the "native language" to be used.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 16:37
The format of this site is largely unsuitable for learning music. Most people would need more like a personal trainer and coach, not theori and logical "correct" answers. Participating in "matches". Interactions and practice, not reading. The coach might need to read a little bit every now and then, but the students need coaching. If you can work as your own coach and trainer, then you should now be telling yourself to do ear training exercises.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 16:37
@ja Can you accompany by ear the song Happy Birthday, using the chords F, Bb and C? If yes, can you add a seventh to one of those chords somewhere so that it supports the song? If yes, can you make one of those chords a minor chord somewhere in the song, so that it supports the progression? How about a dim7 chord? It's about skills, not knowledge. A long journey of developing skills and senses. Using words like "dissonance" misses the point and is more of a distraction than help, IMO. Can you ride a bicycle? It's either can or cannot. Having done well in physics and math doesn't help.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 18, 2022 16:37
@ja If you disagree with the food analogy and insist that it's possible to make good food without being able to taste, fine. I was only trying to explain that there is absolutely no substitute for being able to listen and hear a difference in the notes you play. I changed the answer. I originally thought it wouldn't help to say you're wrong, because that would be a step to the wrong direction, talking about intellectual and logical things. The thing you seem to be missing is development of senses and skills, not logic and knowledge.
 

 Discussion between piiperi Reinstate …

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 10:36
Chord charts are instructions to accompanists, but they're sometimes also used for talking about some aspects of music. For the symbols to work for the talking i.e. reflecting people's actual ideas they want to communicate, in the the musical culture of the talkers, the relevant aspects of harmony must be represented as a stack of thirds. If you want to talk about e.g. voicings or quartal harmony, chord symbols aren't really even usable for the talking.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 10:25
@Dekkadeci Within some particular theoretical model of harmony, things like that can be reasoned, but that's by the definitions of that model. Whatever you define in a theory, then inside the modeled world of that theory, the defined things are how you define them. But the only kind of actual music we can have is a cultural, subjective, learned, biologically constrained, phuzzy human phenomenon.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 01:05
Actually, the final C eighth note in this i.sstatic.net/ZLKFh.png is a bit like cheating, because even by itself the note sounds like a syncopated or "pushed" C major chord from the next bar that never comes, unless the whole thing is repeated. This was one of my points with this - a melody affects the perception of rhythmic form and meter, which affects how sounds are perceived as falling on strong or weak pulses. Which affects the harmonic weights of the sounds.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 00:56
Since I found melodies for the backing chord progression placing the tonic to at least C major and D minor - though making the next round's F feel pretentious and fake for the latter, I assume it should be possible to find melodies for placing the tonic elsewhere too. And this was without utilizing B or Bb notes, which would provide more tonal leverage.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 00:48
To my surprise, the Dm feeling did not go away even when I transposed the pentatonic ostinato down a perfect fourth. But playing this melody i.sstatic.net/ZLKFh.png was like turning a switch, the song goes to C major.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 13, 2022 00:47
@Dekkadeci I'm not very convinced by the final F in that version, I'd want a Dm in bar 8 all the time, and when the F comes, it's a bit of a disappointment, because it feels like the composer decided to have a pretentious happy turn of events instead of the Dm that it really should be. That pentatonic melody just seems to place it in Dm.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 21:58
... but the melody of my example song 2 did the trick. i.sstatic.net/ZLKFh.png
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 21:52
Actually, I tried moving the pentatonic line to point to C, but my tonic didn't want to move to C or Am. I had to play a C - G7 - C cadence to reset my brain, and even then the feeling of a C tonic lasted only 4 bars, then it was in F again.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 21:32
@Dekkadeci I made a melody with a pentatonic line constantly pointing to F. How does this feel i.sstatic.net/rxv9m.png Pentatonic lines are effective for pointing to tonics.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 18:45
@Dekkadeci yes, the last F chord is surprising, to say the least. But to me the Am-F transition feels like it's in D minor, but instead of giving the Dm it's doing a final ending repeat of the last 4 bars. The F moves it abruptly to F instead of Dm in a jump-start smash-in-the-head way. But my point was just to construct different melodies to show how they change the perception of the backing chords. The C chord in the beginning is only playing an assisting role IMO.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 18:45
No problem, you have just demonstrated and confirmed what I'm saying - that key is a subjective feeling. When a C chord comes in the first example song, it is not a home chord for me, not at all. It ends on F, maybe it could end on a Dm if added after the final F.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 18:45
@Dekkadeci I and the Music21 library disagree with you. ;) How about if you change the last melody note from A to F, does it change it for you? I don't know how you played it, but when I play that on the guitar and sing it, it's in F, clear as daylight. I am my own ultimate authority about my feelings and key is a feeling. Like I said, making a claim about key is a subjective statement.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 18:45
@Dekkadeci It's not about the order as such - I gave two example songs in different keys, but both songs having the exact same chords in the exact same order. It's about what notes get what kind of rhythmic importance, in the whole of the song. In my examples the rhythmic importance is set by the melody, and the melody also slightly modifies the relative weights of chord tones and adds extra notes to the total chords. For example adding D and E to an F major. But the OP's question starts from a written backing chord progression as the only source of information.
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 12, 2022 18:45
@Tim It's not in E Phrygian, the Em chord does not sound like a resting place at all, it sounds like being away from home, it's longing to go home to mama A minor. Adding an Am at the end of the song resolves that longing, but playing a C major is a sarcastic ending which ridicules the whole story that was told before. But then again, specifying a key is a subjective statement, which is what I tried to say.
 

 Discussion on question by theonlygust…

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Jul 1, 2022 08:08
Evidence for the "most of the rest of the world" claim, plz. :)
 

 Discussion on question by sean: What …

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piiperi Reinstate Monica
Mar 2, 2022 01:21
IMO what lead to the closing of this question was the OP's making a common mistake of assuming a specific solution to the actual problem and asking about that as well in the same question. "How to come up with useful keyboard parts in a group" ... assumed solution is "I need to know great and interesting rhythm patterns for both hands, because that's what keyboard players do - they play interesting rhythm patterns using both hands."
piiperi Reinstate Monica
Mar 2, 2022 01:21
@sean Try asking about how to come up with useful keyboard parts in a pop band. Maybe that wording is allowed to live.