# Desire for Tech Forums Other than Music Theory



## Guest

*WHY THIS POST IS ON TOPIC IN MUSIC THEORY*

*Or maybe not*

Of course, this post might not be on topic in Music Theory.

*Reasons for putting it here*


 I put this post here because my use for Talk Classical is to read about and comment on technical subjects. The different forums are all about emphasis. Tangents are okay and inevitable, but for myself, as to music sites, being consumed by what is subjective is not useful. (Classical music is technical to begin with, so some general talk about classical music can be considered technical. The "technical" I'm talking about is "technical" which only has a 10% or less chance of creating arguments.) 
 I put it here because, after looking through TC forums and sub-forum titles, Music Theory is the only forum I see that is both technical and geared towards making music, rather than geared to talking that's a result of listening to music. 
 I see _Recorded Music and Publications/Hi-Fi_, but Hi-Fi is a term that's primarily used by audiophiles, and _Recorded Music and Publications_ obviously emphasizes recorded music, not the production of music and technical tasks related to production and composition of music. 
 There's _Member's Area/Site Feedback & Technical Support_, but the content in this post might be of interest to others who are interested in technical subject matter. 

*What I do in this post*

What I do in this post is try to make a case for the creation of a forum with a name such as "Technical", with possible sub-forums with names such as "Audio Engineering", "DAWs and Software", "MIDI", "History". There are other sub-forum names I could think of, but probably the fewer the better.

*Convoluted (Convolution?)*

Here at the top of this post, convoluted has begin to set in. It's after the next list that I actually get to what I wanted to write about.


 Convoluted 1: There shouldn't be more forums and sub-forums than necessary, because there tends to be a lot of overlap between subjects. So it could be there only needs to be one forum, "Technical", where "Technical" is for anything that's technical, but shouldn't be in Music Theory. 

Okay, I see there's only Convoluted 1. When things get convoluted, it's easy to forget convoluted points that were supposed to be made. That's not a bad thing. Points require verbiage. Verbiage accumulates. An accumulation of convoluted verbiage, that's not a good thing. To say that something is not a bad thing is not to say that it's a good thing. To say something is not a good thing is nearly always to say that it's a bad thing. Logic, with it's double negation combined with the law of excluded middle, does not strictly map to the use of English. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. When it does, yet the conclusion is undesirable, disregard logic and say that it doesn't, or at least that's what "they", disregarding logic, say, which is giving "them" too much credit. Forgetting points, let us get back to the point.

There's no short summary of what I say below. I say a bunch of things, but it revolves around the example post titles that I provide. In what forum would these titles fit and be on topic, where it's understood that the starting point is intended to be technical?

Currently, the only technical forum I see, related to producing music, is _Music Theory_. There's _Instrument and Technique/Today's Composers_, but technical talk many times isn't related to the goal of composing music or being a composer.

Before the hypothetical post titles, several sets of bullet points hit on ideas to try and set some context.

*ENTERTAINMENT VERSUS A SECOND JOB*


 In my opinion, the vast majority of activity on the web ends up being entertainment, even if the activity involves serious things, such as news reporting on tragedies. We read. We see. We talk maybe, but rarely do we do anything different, after reading, seeing, and talking. 
 Another way to describe the last point is that _people aren't looking for a second job_. Doing takes up time and requires work. So people come to sites like Talk Classical and they talk in such a way that it's primarily entertainment. This is neither good nor bad. It's all what you want, and if you have one job, why should you take on burdens that turn talking into a second job? 
 This is where I end up being different than many. I do want a second job, because I've never gotten paid to do what I want to do. This is not bad, given that I live in a prosperous country. 
 Among other things, I want to work through books. Working through books is work. To work, it helps to be motivated. Engaging with homo sapiens seems useful, and possibility even necessary, when it comes to finding motivation. 

*DEFINITIONS: FLUFF TALK, WORK TALK*


 Why the terms "fluff talk" and "work talk"? So I can use them below to talk about the potential content of my possible post titles. To be less provocative, I'll say here that this post satisfies the requirement of "fluff talk". 
 I define "fluff talk" not in terms of whether it encompasses important ideas, but in terms of how much effort and time "fluff talk" takes. 
 "Fluff talk" is relative to "work talk". An example of "work talk" would be writing up posts and comments as I work through Kennan's Counterpoint, 4th. If I started today, an overly optimistic schedule would be to finish a large part of Counterpoint in 3 months. More likely, it would take at least a year, where in reality, it probably never will happen. The "work talk" would be inseparable from the time consuming work of working through the book, and writing for posts would add considerably to the work of studying the book. 
 An example of "fluff talk" is a single sentence wherein a person changes the subject matter from a technical subject to a broad, highly subjective subject such as "What is music?". The single sentence statement would take maybe 30 seconds to write, and maybe 0.1 seconds of time to click the mouse button to submit the reply. 
 As a first try, I'll define "fluff talk" as a post or reply which takes from 30 seconds to 8 hours. 
 So, this post here, it's fluff talk. It's not necessary in any way. In essence, it's entertainment. I created this post without working 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year, etc. 
 But back to the importance of the content of "fluff talk". One-liners can be big ideas. I've been looking at a list of frequencies for MIDI notes for a long time, but I now know the formula, because "What is music?" led me to searching around and finding the formula for the chromatic scale. 
 The formula is _(2^(1/12))^n * f_, where _n_ goes from 0 to 12 (for an octave). So if _f = C4 = 261.6Hz_, then you can get C4 to C5 with the formula. 
 The formula is very useful, so one big idea led to another. My current experiment is to explore using 5 frequencies between notes of the chromatic scale, using _(2^(1/36))^n * f_ and _(2^(1/48))^n * f_. These frequencies fit the curve of the chromatic scale curve, and maybe they'll be useful, and maybe they won't. 
 Big ideas are useful, but my big idea list keeps growing longer, and more big ideas don't help me check off on learning about big ideas at the top of the list. 

*PURPOSE OF POSSIBLE POST TITLES*


 Below, I present 16 or so possible post titles. As part of each post title, the question is to what degree the post content would be technical, technical as in to what degree the content would be "fact or formula based". 
 "Fact or formula based" is content where there's less chance that someone will want to start arguing about the validity of what's been said, except when what has been said is technically wrong, as in not right relative to common definitions and uncontested historical facts. For example, the formula for building a major scale is technical and well defined. Another example is quotes by famous composers which aren't contested as being accurate. 
 Important in the above is "less chance". The goal is not "to guarantee the absence of arguments" but to decrease the chance of an initial post devolving into a multi-page argument. 

*STAYING TECHNICAL TO AVOID ARGUING AS ENTERTAINMENT*


 Why stay technical? 
 The downside to technical, that it tends to be dry, a little or a lot boring, and requires substantial brain work, is also its upside, when it comes to keeping talk from devolving into arguments. Except for the occasional God's Gift to Intelligence and Music Theory, most people interested in a technical subject aren't interested in endless arguing for the sake of arguing. 
 First, a substantial number of people get filtered out because they aren't interested in a subject, or don't know enough about a subject to have anything to say about it. And then those who do enter in, who know a little or lot, won't usually be interested in talking nonsense. Of course, if God's Gift to Music Theory shows up, and if those in the know have a low tolerance for nonsense, a thread can devolve. Such is life. It can happen. 

*TC STYLE 'ON TOPIC' AND FORUMS AS LOOSE STARTING POINTS*


 These days, when it comes to my own conduct on a forum, I don't first and foremost care to look at rules and terms of service, but I try to figure out what seems to be the dominant etiquette for a site or forum. 
 The idea of "on topic" here on Talk Classical, I think it can be described as "not strictly enforced", where "not strictly enforced" is an understatement. 
 I'm not complaining, because any complaint of mine would be in the context of how web forums have come to be dominated by various forms of voting, forms which are supposed to result in some "crowd-sourced perfect moderation", but which end up being another form of crowd tyranny. 
 But "on topic", and its loose enforcement, and the lack of forums that are labeled as technical comes into play here. 
 A post title in a forum seems to just be a starting point. People take things off in a different direction, and this seems many times to be acceptable as a practice, except when someone has pushed the boundaries way too far and too many times. 
 So if post titles in forums are just starting points, then I think it would help to have at least one top-level "Technical" forum, or a technical sub-forum under Music Theory. 

*POSTING FOR THE PURPOSE OF MOTIVATION*


 Making music is not so hard. Making music methodically is hard, because I have no method other than to start with a scale and some chords and then mess around, and then hear some things here and there. 
 Or maybe I don't need any more method at all. And though making music is not hard, working out music is hard because it's tedious work. 
 Posting can be a form of motivation for me. Rubbing shoulders with people who know more than I do motivates me. Arguing with people who don't seem to know much doesn't motivate me. 
 Staying technical seems the way to go as far as motivation. But music theory talk tends to be work talk more than fluff talk. To have to work to talk, that many times is the opposite of fun and motivating. 

*POSSIBLE POST TITLES: FLUFF AND WORK*


 All of the non-book post titles below are fluff talk. They're not essential to me making progress and getting anything of significance accomplished. Why would I want to spend time writing up the posts? For motivation, I guess. 
 The post titles about a book would be the start of a thread where I periodically would make comments about the book, or post content of a more serious nature. None of the talk about books would be fluff talk. Methodically working through books is part of the second job I'm looking for. 
 Some posts titles most likely fall out of the scope of technical, and some are in the scope of Music Theory. But, many are technical with no clear technical place to go. 

*TECH: CURRENT POST SUPPORT PROBLEM*

*The Post Support Problem Relative to Git and GitHub*


 This post would go into more details about different ways to support what I say here. To do more than post text here, I need to make myself happy with how I put supporting media up. 
 Nothing much ends up being simple. There are problems in how Talk Classical deals with media. Number one is that you have to be logged in to access the media that people have uploaded: MP3, PDF, images. I guess that's to limit scraping by bots. 
 Well, this is okay because, for myself, I want to deal with the problem of media right: where it's at, how dependable the host, how it can be accessed. 
 If you've used code repositories like GitHub, you know that it's easy to get content up onto a host like GitHub, but they don't make their money hosting music content. 

*TECH: MISC*

*Mics, Headphones, Sound Engineering, DAWs, other Technicals*


 Here, I could write about my recent experiences with a $75 pair of low-cost Behringer microphones. 
 Or about my recent Samson SR850 open-backed headphones. Headphones could go in the Hi-Fi forum, but I don't think from a Hi-Fi perspective. 
 Under sound engineering is the realm of analyzing frequencies with spectrum analyzers. In studying frequencies between the notes of the chromatic scales, I will most likely want to use a spectrum analyzer to try and get a better understanding of things. 
 DAWs can end up being a subject where people say the most stupid of things, and assume the most stupid of things about other people because they use a certain DAW, but they can be something technical to talk about. 

*The Piano or Lack Thereof: Affects on Bach & Chopin*


 Personally, I don't like the harpsichord, but I do understand that the piano, as a mature instrument, wasn't available to Bach. 
 In surfing some YouTube links, I came upon some of Chopin's pieces where it's mostly speed-shredding. 
 This post would speculate about how Bach didn't incorporate speed-shred because the instruments available to him weren't as good for that as the piano. 

*The Piano as a Less Expressive Instrument*


 This is related to spending a lot of time over in the guitar world, where your can touch the strings. 
 But in recently watching some speed-shredding, on the piano by Evgeny Kissin, I see that there's some dynamics for the piano that I wasn't considering. Still, the absence of vibrato decreases the expressiveness of the piano, especially when the full range of the piano can't be used to its advantage. 

*TECH: MIDI RELATED*

*Staff Notation: Lacking in Exactness for Modern Times*


 I tried many times to make music with staff notation in a DAW. It ended up being nothing but pure frustration. 
 In this post, among other things, I would comment on my ideas about how staff notation is about performance, not exactness, whereas when you work in a DAW, you're dealing with exactness. 

*Non-linear Easing-style Riffs at Beat/48*


 In the world of video graphics, there's what's called easing equations. These equations are applied to motion. 
 Simple motion would be linear motion, where something moves at the same rate of speed. 
 Easing equations apply non-linear equations, such as _f(x) = x^2_ to motion. The visual effect is more interesting. 
 Doing no-brainer sequencing, exclusively, makes for uninteresting music. 
 Okay, so we can move the note start points around to try and get better sounding music, but doing this haphazardly and without method will bring us no pleasure. 
 Take for example 6 notes per beat, 4/4 time, at 110BPM and 120BPM. We start with the notes quantized as 16th note triplets and call this linear. We start creating other sequences by moving the notes around and plot them graphically against linear. We compare all these sequences, visually and aurally, and try to figure out what sequences sound better. In the end we come up with a non-haphazard, methodical way to sequence fast riffs, or we consider that everything we did was a waste of time. 

*THEORY RELATED*

*Classical Music Theory as a Bigger Playground*


 There are rock guitarists. A lot understand and talk theory, but you don't hear anything about counterpoint and fugue. 
 There's jazz. I guess the playground is fairly large, larger if you consider classical as the foundation, but the sound of jazz doesn't generally excite me, and I want to learn the ideas of mechanics more than improvisation. 
 Finally, there's counterpoint and fugue. The words "counterpoint" and "fugue", the words, they sound so intellectual. Wanting to be an intellectual, if I can play in the counterpoint and fugue intellectual playground, I will have arrived, definitely, dude. 

*General Groove, Classical Groove, Why Does BWV 1041-1049 Have Groove?*


 I like groove based music. 
 A lot of classical has no groove, but I decided that a lot of Bach has what can be called groove. 

*BOOKS*

*The Science of Sound, 3rd, by Rossing, Moore, Wheeler*


 I need to study this to better understand why the chromatic scale makes for pleasing music. 

*Counterpoint, 4th, by Kennan*


 This or another counterpoint books is the most important book I need to work through. 
 I discovered this book here on Talk Classical, in the big list of books. 

*Harmony, Its Theory and Practice, by Prout*


 If Kennan's books is too advanced, I would take a step back to this. 
 It's in the public domain, and I like its bullet-point-style presentation. 

*Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, by Slonimsky*


 I discovered this book here on Talk Classical. Thanks for the poster. I would have trouble finding where I saw this. 
 I would sequence the riffs and put them up. 

*Music in the Galant Style, by Gjerdingen*


 I discovered this book on Talk Classical, recently. Thanks Bwv 1080. 
 talkclassical.com/68239-partimento.html 
 Formulaic, that's what I'm looking to learn. 
 It's pipe dreaming. I'll probably never get to this one. 

*The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol.1 1695-1717, by Jones*


 The question is whether this is technical or not. I think it's a book that you could approach different ways. 
 I only looked at it briefly, but it appears to present Bach's work methodically and comprehensively by the way it groups things. 
 What I would want out of this is to get an overview in my mind of Bach's works by their numbers. Memorizing Bach's pieces by groupings and numbers is technical. 
 What I would do is, as I worked through the book, sequence a measure or two of each piece to try and help me remember his works as groups. 
 I don't see ever getting to this. 

*The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol.2 1717-1750, by Jones*


 If I never get to the one above, I'd think I'll never get to this. 

*The New Bach Reader, A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, by Wolff, Mendel, and David*


 This is historical, but it's technical in that it's mainly about past documents. 
 Biographies and such tend to speculate about what isn't known about Bach. 

Desire for Tech Forums Other than Music Theory


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## Tikoo Tuba

_Of course, this post might not be on topic in Music Theory._

Of theory and music your post seems on topic . You want for nothing . You educate us freely of your interests .
Bach to the future .


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## Guest

Tikoo Tuba said:


> _Of course, this post might not be on topic in Music Theory._
> 
> Of theory and music your post seems on topic . You want for nothing . You educate us freely of your interests .
> Bach to the future .


You were so wrong, saying I want for nothing. I wanted "Bach to the future", and now I have it. Having it, I now want for nothing, except to be hip, cool, and groovy.
_
Bach and the Austrian,
the Austrian will be Bach.
Bach to the future?
Back to Bach in the future.

Two famous Deutschlanders?
Just one, but not the other.
But close enough for puns,
now play some Bach for fun.

The Austrian will be Bach,
it's a hedge against the future,
If the Austrian's fame wanes,
back to Bach he goes.

Back as Bach, Bach's got his back.
CPE or JC, he's one or the other.
Counterpoint lessons, fugues galore,
the Austrian, bewildered, back as Bach. _


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## Guest

No, I now also have want to be considered a world renown master of counterpoint pun, the original. Version 2:
_
Bach and the Austrian,
the Austrian will be Bach.
Bach to the future?
Back to Bach in the future.

The Austrian will be Bach,
it's a hedge against the future,
If the Austrian's fame wanes,
back to Bach he goes.

Back as Bach, Bach's got his back,
JC or CPE, he's one or the other.
Counterpoint lessons, fugues galore,
the Austrian, bewildered, back as Bach.

The Deutschlander Bach
and his Austrian neighbor,
and Austrian accents,
oh so good for counterpoint pun.
_


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## Tikoo Tuba

Fugue the Goddess of Broken Hearts


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## Guest

Finally. That 4th stanza was problamatic. Version 3, 4th part:
_
The Deutschlander Bach.
The Austrian big guy.
He'll be Bach. We'll all be Bach.
Bach for more counterpoint pun.
_
The last two lines, this is something I could spam other threads with. "Hey, did you hear? _He'll be Bach. We'll all be Bach. Bach for more counterpoint pun._ If you head over to my thread, you can read the whole thing. All of it."


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## Rogerx




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## Guest

Rogerx said:


>


Thanks for the emoticons. Some things are just good, as in tying into something universally good, like "We'll all be Bach". It's true. My goal is to be a student of Bach. At the point I become worthy, please call me Bach Junior, Bach Junior Junior, Micro Bach, Nano Bach, Little Bitty Bach, Tiny Bach, Microscopic Bach, Atom Relative to Some Huge Complex Machine Bach, or some such worthy title.

I guess the ??? means I might should explain the cultural references. Even me, I didn't immediately get Tikoo Tuba's "Bach to the future", and when I did get "Bach" as "back", I was confusing it with "I'll be back". And given that I don't participate these days in TV and movie culture, I got lucky that _Back to the Future_ and _The Terminator_ came before I mostly checked out of movies.

Anyway, here are the references, for a blast to the past:


 Arnold the Austrian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger 
 Arnold's famous line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_be_back 
 The movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator 
 That 80's movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future


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## Luchesi

GezzMontC said:


> Thanks for the emoticons. Some things are just good, as in tying into something universally good, like "We'll all be Bach". It's true. My goal is to be a student of Bach. At the point I become worthy, please call me Bach Junior, Bach Junior Junior, Micro Bach, Nano Bach, Little Bitty Bach, Tiny Bach, Microscopic Bach, Atom Relative to Some Huge Complex Machine Bach, or some such worthy title.
> 
> I guess the ??? means I might should explain the cultural references. Even me, I didn't immediately get Tikoo Tuba's "Bach to the future", and when I did get "Bach" as "back", I was confusing it with "I'll be back". And given that I don't participate these days in TV and movie culture, I got lucky that _Back to the Future_ and _The Terminator_ came before I mostly checked out of movies.
> 
> Anyway, here are the references, for a blast to the past:
> 
> 
> Arnold the Austrian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger
> Arnold's famous line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_be_back
> The movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
> That 80's movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future


What do you admire about Bach's works?

How do the technicals together often become such as spiritual observation in his case? Handel too, but not Telemann.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> What do you admire about Bach's works?
> 
> How do the technicals together often become such as spiritual observation in his case? Handel too, but not Telemann.


Your question "What do you admire about Bach's works?" sort of lines up with a 600+ word post I had in mind. It was to be titled "Why I Like Bach". But because you use the word "admire", and this thread we're in is about "technical", the contrast between "admire" and "technical" takes my mind off in a little different direction.

"Admire" implies that I'm interested in Bach because I "like" his music, or maybe also because I admire him as a person.

Tell me whether you want my answer here in this thread, or you want me to start a different thread. It's not a one paragraph answer, although it could be as short as 300 words. With my current thoughts, I can probably spin the technical side enough to put it in Music Theory.

*Unfinished Business*

So I didn't reply to you the last time because I was unhappy that Tikoo Tuba changed the subject in such a dramatic way. And then you wanted to also go in the direction of the philosophy of music.

I guess I resolved all that.

*The Philosophy of Music as Technical*

A lot of times, what something is is based on how it's approached. So from one perspective, the philosophy of music is going to be nothing more than a bunch of talk about what people like or don't like. But a person could write up some things in such a way that it's not meant to be "I like this and don't like that".

So the category "Philosophy of Music" completely ties into everything I said above in asking that there be another forum or forums that's marked as "Technical".

*I'm in the Middle as Far as Compulsive*

I can get more compulstive than the norm, such as in studying set theory, but I'm not as compulsive as the most compulsive, such as these people (a proper URL will send this response to moderation): FOM, Foundation of Mathematics, cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom.

As to the philosophy of music, I'm mostly just an observer of other people's ideas. I'm practical when it comes to Music. I have a ton of opinions about the application of music, making music.

*Form Equals Technical, There's Content, There's the Lifestyle of the Artist*

Now I'm to your sentence "How do the technicals together often become such as spiritual observation in his case? Handel too, but not Telemann."

I've not investigated Telemann at all, and wouldn't recognize anything of his as his.

Handel's _Messiah_ is the mother of all recognizable, and explicit, classical Christian music. But I know nothing of Handel himself.

As to Bach being a Christian and seeming to be an overall stand up guy, that's in there, but reality and how the world works physically is completely independent of any human being.

The technical side of music is just a tool. What words you add to it, and how people see you live your life, because you've gotten their attention, that's the spiritual side of it. There possibly are corner cases, like metalheads screaming like a demon. You can't understand what they're saying, but you understand that maybe this is about the devil.

There's Bach as a technician and Bach as a Christian. I'm glad that when I promote Bach as a technician I don't feel guilty about promoting someone I don't feel good about. The last time I talked about collecting Soul Train videos. Soul Train as a whole is trash, and I promoted it without pointing that out.

You should do your philosophy of music post, if you have time. I'll read it as an observer.


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## Roger Knox

"An accumulation of convoluted verbiage, that's not a good thing."

GezzMontC, You said it, man. Your posts are Exhibit A.


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## Rogerx

GezzMontC said:


> Thanks for the emoticons. Some things are just good, as in tying into something universally good, like "We'll all be Bach". It's true. My goal is to be a student of Bach. At the point I become worthy, please call me Bach Junior, Bach Junior Junior, Micro Bach, Nano Bach, Little Bitty Bach, Tiny Bach, Microscopic Bach, Atom Relative to Some Huge Complex Machine Bach, or some such worthy title.
> 
> I guess the ??? means I might should explain the cultural references. Even me, I didn't immediately get Tikoo Tuba's "Bach to the future", and when I did get "Bach" as "back", I was confusing it with "I'll be back". And given that I don't participate these days in TV and movie culture, I got lucky that _Back to the Future_ and _The Terminator_ came before I mostly checked out of movies.
> 
> Anyway, here are the references, for a blast to the past:
> 
> 
> Arnold the Austrian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger
> Arnold's famous line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_be_back
> The movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
> That 80's movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future


I knew it, thanks.


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## Guest

Roger Knox said:


> "An accumulation of convoluted verbiage, that's not a good thing."
> 
> GezzMontC, You said it, man. Your posts are Exhibit A.


I did say it first though.

In trying to solve one problem, we can create another.

One-liners and 3 symbol emoticons are succinct, but we have to guess at what the other person is saying. Lengthy writing, even in the most disciplined form, is something we have to work through, where we're probably not interested in doing that, and the nature of communication is that some things still won't be clear.

There is as a pattern I recognized a long time ago, but the pattern mainly applies when a person is on hostile territory. These days, I make a point in staying away when the differences are great.

If we have very different views of life, let us go our separate ways, to the extent possible, and allow each other to be free.

It's really nice when sites allow for account deletion. I don't end up with an inactive account that's lurking out on the web. Unfortunately, this site is not one of those sites.

*Back to the fun, no puns intended*

I'd like to point out that "Roger Knox" and "Rogerx" are very similar. Suppose one replied to me with smiley emoticons. That's positive feedback, isn't it? Then suppose the other replied to me with not exactly bad feedback, but with what might be something similar to "I really don't like your writing style, and you going on and on and on in these posts greatly annoys me."

Now, if I confused "Roger Knox" with "Rogerx", wouldn't I end up being confused about what it is people like and don't like for me to do?


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## Guest

_
Beautiful art, it's so convoluted.
Please, I present for you Exhibit A.
Do you understand it? Yes? Not good!
Back to the drawing board I go.

Obscure nonsense, vacuous use of words.
Add nice form, though bluster might do.
Make them think it's more than it is.
Let them think you're not who you are.
_


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## Luchesi

GezzMontC said:


> I did say it first though.
> 
> In trying to solve one problem, we can create another.
> 
> One-liners and 3 symbol emoticons are succinct, but we have to guess at what the other person is saying. Lengthy writing, even in the most disciplined form, is something we have to work through, where we're probably not interested in doing that, and the nature of communication is that some things still won't be clear.
> 
> There is as a pattern I recognized a long time ago, but the pattern mainly applies when a person is on hostile territory. These days, I make a point in staying away when the differences are great.
> 
> If we have very different views of life, let us go our separate ways, to the extent possible, and allow each other to be free.
> 
> It's really nice when sites allow for account deletion. I don't end up with an inactive account that's lurking out on the web. Unfortunately, this site is not one of those sites.
> 
> *Back to the fun, no puns intended*
> 
> I'd like to point out that "Roger Knox" and "Rogerx" are very similar. Suppose one replied to me with smiley emoticons. That's positive feedback, isn't it? Then suppose the other replied to me with not exactly bad feedback, but with what might be something similar to "I really don't like your writing style, and you going on and on and on in these posts greatly annoys me."
> 
> Now, if I confused "Roger Knox" with "Rogerx", wouldn't I end up being confused about what it is people like and don't like for me to do?


Yes, you can waste a lot of time trying to get approval from all the many egos and life paths in here. And then you won't succeed anyway..

Posting is good therapy for me, but I have no illusions that I can post what others want to read. Perhaps I could if they told me what they wanted (if they knew what they wanted), but that's not going to happen.

And so, if there are not too many gripes about my posts, I calculate that many more posters are OK with them!

You're doing fine. But can you keep it up? It's a huge challenge.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Yes, you can waste a lot of time trying to get approval...
> 
> And so, if there are not too many gripes about my posts, I calculate that many more posters are OK with them!


You're like my mother. If it was just you, there would be no problem. If you work in science, then you're going to be an outlier. And rather than approval, at this point being ignored is fine with me, if I'm not spamming a thread I didn't start.

There is the norm for any group of people, and I believe in taking that into consideration. I don't want to insult others, though I might be guilty of that at times, and I don't want to be repeatedly insulted because I want to use this site different than how the vast majority of people use it.

There are two huge pet peeves that came into play, but I don't want to emphasize those yet. Central to what I say are these points:


 I did _not_ insert a blog length comment into another thread. Any form of spamming threads is a gross violation of etiquette, and people have a right to complain about any form of spam. But again, I didn't spam anything. 
 I started a thread with a blog length post. Though I can see that this is outside the norm, this was in no way a violation of decent etiquette. As to being convoluted, that's the nature of hitting lots of points, whether in the initial post, or replying to a reply. 

I guess I have to tie into one of my pet peeves. This thing called _tl;dr_ has been around years now amongst programmers, but I haven't been hanging with musicians, so at the expense of being obnoxious, it means "too long; didn't read".

The web being the web, this is ridiculous to me, since people can click away at any time, and I claim that a "tl;dr" was what happened here. And if I keep starting threads with a blog length post, and make lengthy replies to replies in threads I started, the same insults will keep coming my way.

As to Roger Knox, I actually don't care to insult the guy at all. Just guessing, it appears he has a high level of education, possibly at the Ph.D level.

If it was some spammer complaining, that's something to ignore. But Roger Knox is not some obnoxious spammer.

It's a bit of a mystery why a highly educated guy has such a low tolerance for lengthy writing. And no (with me trying to be objective) "convoluted" was not the problem.

To make the argument that it wasn't "convoluted", but "length", would take more verbiage, possibly convoluted verbiage.

And I'm not looking for any apology, not that others would think there's even an issue here. I many times am not a warm and fuzzy person who is well behaved.


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## Guest

Here is a list of thanks, before a final, hopefully, permanent transition to going dormant:


 Thanks to Luchesi for the warm fuzzy welcome. 
 Thanks to Tikoo Tuba for "Bach to the future". I got another piece for my dronings out of that. 
 Thanks to Tikoo Tuba for "What is art?". It greatly annoyed me, but then it led to me investigating and getting set up in REAPER to explore the quarter tones, all the frequencies midpoint between the halfsteps. (Scales with quarter tones in them. Surely there will be something good and useful in that.) 
 Thanks to the general site with it's sticky to the book list. It tipped me off on Kennan. 
 Thanks to BWV 1080 for the tip on the partimento book. The competition there will be with jazz theory. In pipedream mode, maybe I can get to it, or jazz theory, in 5 years. 
 Thanks to the poster for _Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns_, by Slonimsky. Plenty of riffs tend to form in my mind, but maybe my ideas will get stale, and I'll need some help. More pipedreaming. 

Now the no thanks list:


 No thanks for "Exihibt A", but it did get me another piece for my dronings. 
 The problem with the piece is that the second half ties into the negativity of this world, and negativity wears on me. But that's the world we live in. 

*Significant Content about Chromatic + Quarter Tones*

This chromatic scale with 12 quarter tones, for that, along with more than 50 scales from the chromatic scale, I'll be creating a big page. The page will become a web page, with hundreds of MP3 files that allow a person to listen to a few bars of a scale. I'll start by putting it up on GitHub.

As to the quarter tones, I think I need to create sets of "interval scales" to try and find out whether quarter tones match up with normal scale notes, as far as being dissonant or non-dissonant.

For example, for the key of C major, I create a sequence to play a interval-scale of eighth notes consisting of the quarter tone above C with the 7 notes of the C scale. For each quarter tones above the 7 notes of the C major scale, I do this. This results in, uh, a lot, it's a combinatorics problem. You have heard of combinatorics, haven't you?

This is how I could earn my worth around places like this. I do the grunt work of creating data, and in your spare time, if you feel like it, you surf through a little of what I've put up. Of course, to notify you, I would need to write up something to explain it enough to get your interest. And there are tons of details here, like the problem of linking to a site I control, where you want to know what my motives are, whether I'm playing some trick.

But there ain't no serious culture here to support music posers like me, to give me some minimal support in my pursuit.

There are lots who have serious knowledge here, much more knowledge than I have. That alone is not support.

But I got the books. The book authors are my teachers. Book authors, they're always there for you, if you can dig deep enough to study what they got to say.


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## mikeh375

GezzMontC said:


> Here is a list of thanks, before a final, hopefully, permanent transition to going dormant:
> 
> But I got the books. The book authors are my teachers. Book authors, they're always there for you, if you can dig deep enough to *study what they got to say.*


Make sure you practice too.


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## millionrainbows

GezzMontC said:


> ...What I do in this post is try to make a case for the creation of a forum with a name such as "Technical", with possible sub-forums with names such as "Audio Engineering", "DAWs and Software", "MIDI", "History". There are other sub-forum names I could think of, but probably the fewer the better.


I think these might make better thread topics, rather than forums or sub-forums.



> This is where I end up being different than many. I do want a second job, because I've never gotten paid to do what I want to do. This is not bad, given that I live in a prosperous country...Among other things, I want to work through books. Working through books is work. To work, it helps to be motivated. Engaging with homo sapiens seems useful, and possibility even necessary, when it comes to finding motivation.


Good luck with that. I think it might be better to do your homework first, before you take it "public," because the public arena here usually always tends to be convoluted, aggressive, and distracting; definitely not a good environment for learning much.



> An example of "work talk" would be writing up posts and comments as I work through Kennan's Counterpoint, 4th. If I started today, an overly optimistic schedule would be to finish a large part of Counterpoint in 3 months. More likely, it would take at least a year, where in reality, it probably never will happen. The "work talk" would be inseparable from the time consuming work of working through the book, and writing for posts would add considerably to the work of studying the book....An example of "fluff talk" is a single sentence wherein a person changes the subject matter from a technical subject to a broad, highly subjective subject such as "What is music?". The single sentence statement would take maybe 30 seconds to write, and maybe 0.1 seconds of time to click the mouse button to submit the reply.


Good luck with trying to control tech/fluff talk as you call it There's always going to be plenty of distractions of "fluff" if you try to keep it technical. There might also be an appearance of a much less benign "fluff" which is more aggressive, and most of the time is aimed at personally tearing apart whatever conceptual scaffolding it is you are trying to build.



> "Fact or formula based" is content where there's less chance that someone will want to start arguing about the validity of what's been said, except when what has been said is technically wrong, as in not right relative to common definitions and uncontested historical facts. For example, the formula for building a major scale is technical and well defined. Another example is quotes by famous composers which aren't contested as being accurate....Important in the above is "less chance". The goal is not "to guarantee the absence of arguments" but to decrease the chance of an initial post devolving into a multi-page argument.


You'll find that this flimsy idea will fall apart immediately. "The formula for building a major scale" will be hotly contested, and whatever you propose will be picked-apart immediately by scavengers. What you don't seem to realize is that there are a lot of bored, retired academics out there, ready to pounce on anything you might say, unless it is posited as an "innocent, humble newbie question."



> *STAYING TECHNICAL TO AVOID ARGUING AS ENTERTAINMENT*
> 
> 
> Why stay technical?
> The downside to technical, that it tends to be dry, a little or a lot boring, and requires substantial brain work, is also its upside, when it comes to keeping talk from devolving into arguments. Except for the occasional God's Gift to Intelligence and Music Theory, most people interested in a technical subject aren't interested in endless arguing for the sake of arguing.
> First, a substantial number of people get filtered out because they aren't interested in a subject, or don't know enough about a subject to have anything to say about it. And then those who do enter in, who know a little or lot, won't usually be interested in talking nonsense. Of course, if God's Gift to Music Theory shows up, and if those in the know have a low tolerance for nonsense, a thread can devolve. Such is life. It can happen.


Oh, it will happen, believe me. Your attempts at ways to "control" things are endearing, but doomed for quick destruction. They would just as soon slit your throat as look at you.



> So if post titles in forums are just starting points, then I think it would help to have at least one top-level "Technical" forum, or a technical sub-forum under Music Theory.


If this is your idea of trying to keep things "on topic," we fundamentally disagree, and it won't work anyway.



> Staying technical seems the way to go as far as motivation. But music theory talk tends to be work talk more than fluff talk. To have to work to talk, that many times is the opposite of fun and motivating.


It's too bad it can't be both, but a lot of people you'll encounter have a whole different idea of what is "fun," and this involves you lying bleeding and half-beaten to death in whatever "conceptual dark alley" you happen to be walking down late at night.


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, it will happen, believe me. Your attempts at ways to "control" things are endearing, but doomed for quick destruction. They would just as soon slit your throat as look at you.


Ha, ha, ha, I'm laughing without laughing as I do, which means I'm smiling a little.

It's my lucky check-out day. I get to engage with you at least once.

You're a person who could only be appreciated locally. We get together, you talk trash, I talk trash, we both talk trash at the same time.

I get tired of your trash talking, and I say, "Dude, enough of this trash talking. Do you shred? Talk is cheap. Shred or shut up."

CASE 1: You shred. I say, "Dude, you shred!!!! Talk all the trash you want."

CASE 2: You shred decent. I say, "Dude, that is good, but I don't know, at the level you posture, it's a bit lacking."

CASE 3: You don't shred. I say, "Dude, c'mon. Like, I could diss on you, but we've been dissin on each for an hour already, so there's no purpose in that."

Adios. The thread is yours if you want it.


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## Tikoo Tuba

GezzMontC said:


> Adios. The thread is yours if you want it.


It's your thread . Write on . I like your theory of tech poetic energy .


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## blakeklondike

I think this is a great idea-- as someone who is studying composition and mocking up scores in a DAW, I would love the opportunity to discuss with other composers. There is plenty of info out there on recording in general, but not geared toward the challenges of composing concert music.


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