# Superb video on the "modulation cube" by 12tone



## nobilmente




----------



## millionrainbows

I agree that this is a good video, but such "geometric" neo-Riemannian ideas are not welcomed here. See thread "Decoding Beethoven."


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> I agree that this is a good video, but such "geometric" neo-Riemannian ideas are not welcomed here. See thread "Decoding Beethoven."


There was no rejection of or animus toward neo-Riemannian theory in the thread you cite. In fact, you were advised in that thread that you should probably read some. 



nobilmente said:


>


The harmonic vocabulary and the neo-Riemannian theory used to express it in the video are useful and important for an enormous amount of music of the late 19thc and 20thc.


----------



## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> There was no rejection of or animus toward neo-Riemannian theory in the thread you cite. In fact, you were advised in that thread that you should probably read some. The harmonic vocabulary and the neo-Riemannian theory used to express it in the video are useful and important for an enormous amount of music of the late 19thc and 20thc.


That's a 180º turn from the earlier thread:




> It's actually not primarily (sic) an analysis. It's an elaborate blurb for some harmony decoder device. The guy doing the pitch keeps calling Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 2 #1 a "song."





> And his theoretical vocabulary seems geared toward teenage guitarists - at least they're the only people I know who'd describe a dominant chord with a 4-3 suspension as a "sus(s) chord." If one is interested in the theory of classical music, I would recommend finding other sources.







> Only a modern rationalist could imagine that all this silly diagramming adds anything to the understanding of a Beethoven sonata. Such doodles are a waste of time to a real musician...





> this thread proposes to "explain" Beethoven's compositional procedures by means of a visual system, and to teach us how to compose music with it as well. It's horsepuckey.







> You resent being corrected, which, unfortunately is bound to happen when you have trouble distinguishing contrapuntal from harmonic events. And if you didn't enjoy dust you'd be reading modern sources on "geometric" methods, parsimonious voice-leading, and various conceptions of the Tonnetz, like the work of the neo-Riemannians, rather than dredging around in the early stages of the field.



Schoenberg's chart from "Structural Functions of Harmony" (which you rejected), while not neo-Riemannian, is nonetheless important in this context, and I have read "A Geometry of Music" by Dmitri Tymoczko.

Pitches in the Tonnetz are connected by lines if they are separated by minor third, major third, or perfect fifth. Interpreted as a torus the Tonnetz has 12 nodes (pitches) and 24 triangles (triads).​​
 
Your "recent disclaimer" which opens this reply is too little, too late.
The net result of you & Woodduck's rejection of a "geometric charts" and such is essentially a blanket rejection of all neo-riemann theory, which you are now trying to back-track on. This is a strategy of weasels.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> The net result of you & Woodduck's rejection of a "geometric charts" and such is *essentially a blanket rejection of all neo-riemann theory, which you are now trying to back-track on. **This is a strategy of weasels.*


The problem the Woodduck "weasel" found with the "Decoding Beethoven" thread is not necessarily present in this one. The video in that thread was subtitled "How To Write Music Using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro." My reaction to that was:

_"What is supposed to be the contribution of this "tonal mapping tool" to our musical understanding? What, in fact, is the tool? Is it just those little diagrams? Are those what's being called "Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro"? Why do we need them? Are they supposed to tell us something that listening to music and studying scores can't tell us about the way music is constructed? Do they tell us more about how music unfolds in time - how one thing follows another - than a verbal statement or demonstration at the keyboard? Does their spatial configuration tell us anything about the audible structure of music? Is looking at them actually supposed to help us write music"? Or are they, as they feel to me, just a sort of visual technobabble, a cute but pointless doodling in the margins of the mind? When I was learning about music I'm sure I would have found them an irrelevancy and a distraction." _

In other words, I found that that whole intellectual exercise told me nothing about the Beethoven sonata under discussion that I couldn't already understand without the "tool," and thus I found it at best an irrelevancy and at worst a distraction. But even worse, it would certainly not have taught me "how to write" that sonata (or, as far as I can see, anything else). Apparently Beethoven didn't need it either; just imagine his response to being offered such a "tool" as an aid to pursuing his occupation! As I said:

_"This thread proposes to "explain" Beethoven's compositional procedures by means of a visual system, and to teach us how to compose music with it as well. It's horsepuckey."_ I fail to see how this constitutes a "blanket rejection of all neo-riemann theory."

As for the EdwardBast "weasel," he'll speak for himself, if he finds it worth his while to comment further.

(BTW, I note that you've been very busy of late digging up earlier comments of mine and stitching them together to present melodramatically in various threads, in order, I guess, to show how deep is the pile of calumny heaped upon your poor head. It seems a useless way to spend one's time - do you actually keep files on people? - but, whatever floats your neo-riemannian boat...)


----------



## millionrainbows

> (BTW, I note that you've been very busy of late digging up earlier comments of mine and stitching them together to present melodramatically in various threads...


Yes, it's called "presenting an argument."

So, make up your mind, Woodduck. You can't be "for" graphic theory aids one minute, and "against" them whenever I mention them.


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> That's a 180º turn from the earlier thread:


The quotes you cited have nothing to do with neo-Riemannian theory. I never said anything against neo-Riemannian theory there or anywhere else on this forum. So your claim is false. If you disagree, cite any statement I made to that effect.



millionrainbows said:


> Schoenberg's chart from "Structural Functions of Harmony" (which you rejected), while not neo-Riemannian, is nonetheless important in this context, and I have read "A Geometry of Music" by Dmitri Tymoczko.


I did not "reject" Schoenberg's chart. You implied that by critiquing the "secret Beethoven decoder ring" I proved myself to be a purveyor of dusty academic ideas. Then you cited this hundred year old chart by Schoenberg as an example of something new and exciting. That's when I advised you that someone concerned about dusty ideas ought to read something newer on the subject than Schoenberg, like the work of neo-Riemannians. I was not criticizing Schoenberg or Riemann, I was critiquing your choice of sources.



millionrainbows said:


> Your "recent disclaimer" which opens this reply is too little, too late.
> The net result of you & Woodduck's rejection of a "geometric charts" and such is essentially a blanket rejection of all neo-riemann theory, which you are now trying to back-track on. This is a strategy of weasels.


I never rejected geometric charts. I just pointed out that yours was dusty and dated. Your thinking on this matter is confused and sloppy. Your claims about what I have said about neo-Riemannian theory are all false.


----------



## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> Perhaps if one can't read and has no sense of direction. The quotes you cited have nothing to do with neo-Riemannian theory. I never said anything against neo-Riemannian theory there or anywhere else on this forum. So your claim is false. If you disagree, cite any statement I made to that effect.


You need to watch your negative posts, then, or you will be misconstrued as being against all geometric/graphic methods. Your negative comments were peppered in among Woodduck's comments during your "pile on," so you should also be careful whose position you are associated with. All in all, your comments are so generally negative that it's hard to see if you are making a point, or simply invalidating and complaining.



> I did not "reject" Schoenberg's chart. You implied that by critiquing the "secret Beethoven decoder ring" I proved myself to be a purveyor of dusty academic ideas. Then you cited this hundred year old chart by Schoenberg as an example of something new and exciting. That's when I advised you that someone concerned about dusty ideas ought to read something newer on the subject than Schoenberg, like the work of neo-Riemannians. I was not criticizing Schoenberg or Riemann, I was critiquing your choice of sources.


Oh, I posted the Schoenberg chart _because_ of it's age; I thought you'd relate to it. If you are indeed a "progressive" thinker, and not "dusty," then you need to make this clearer by positively affirming something. The constant negative posturing of you & others makes it appear that you are against any "new" or graphic methods. My advice is to "live and let live" instead of barging into innocently posted threads such as "Decoding Beethoven" with nothing but invalidations like this one, which "welcomes" the thread-starter's innocent post:



> It's actually not primarily an analysis. It's an elaborate blurb for some harmony decoder device. The guy doing the pitch keeps calling Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 2 #1 a "song."





> And his theoretical vocabulary seems geared toward teenage guitarists - at least they're the only people I know who'd describe a dominant chord with a 4-3 suspension as a "sus(s) chord." If one is interested in the theory of classical music, I would recommend finding other sources.



Yuck-o! What a mean-spirited post!



> I never rejected geometric charts. I just pointed out that yours was dusty and dated. Y*our thinking on this matter is confused and sloppy.* Your claims about what I have said about neo-Riemannian theory are all false.


It's _your_ responsibility to communicate clearly, and that is best done objectively, not while in the midst of personal insults like the above.

Your thinking on this matter is too clouded with pure, mean-spirited negativity, an elitist posture, and the desire to attack. You should be "the bigger man" in such matters where you disagree.


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> You need to watch your negative posts, then, or you will be misconstrued as being against all geometric/graphic methods. Your negative comments were peppered in among Woodduck's comments during your "pile on," so you should also be careful whose position you are associated with. All in all, your comments are so generally negative that it's hard to see if you are making a point, or simply invalidating and complaining.


I was perfectly careful in my posting about what I was critiquing. Your failure to read or think carefully about it isn't my problem. That you can't seem to separate my positions from those of other contributors also isn't my problem. You keep claiming I have something against "geometric/graphic methods," whatever that is supposed to mean. When asked to show where I demonstrated this you have nothing to say.



millionrainbows said:


> *Oh, I posted the Schoenberg chart because of it's age;* I thought you'd relate to it. If you are indeed a "progressive" thinker, and not "dusty," then you need to make this clearer by positively affirming something. The constant negative posturing of you & others makes it appear that you are against any "new" or graphic methods. My advice is to "live and let live" instead of barging into innocently posted threads such as "Decoding Beethoven" with nothing but invalidations like this one, which "welcomes" the thread-starter's innocent post:


No you didn't. You specifically offered it as new thinking and criticized me for having ideas that were dusty by contrast. I pointed out that you were in fact a century behind the current thinking on the issue at hand. Now you are trying to pretend the opposite.



millionrainbows said:


> It's _your_ responsibility to communicate clearly, and that is best done objectively, not while in the midst of personal insults like the above.


You didn't quote a single personal insult on my part. You saying I insulted someone doesn't make it so.



millionrainbows said:


> Your thinking on this matter is too clouded with pure, mean-spirited negativity, an elitist posture, and the desire to attack. You should be "the bigger man" in such matters where you disagree.


So, you have failed to back up your claim that I rejected neo-Riemannian theory and then changed course. You wrote a falsehood and instead of correcting your error and apologizing you are attempting to blame me for it.

You made another false claim: that I personally insulted the Beethoven decoder guy. You haven't backed that up either.

Meanwhile, you have accused me of "mean-spirited negativity, an elitist posture, and the desire to attack." My response has been to ask you to support any of these claims you are making. As yet you haven't done so.

Meanwhile, what is funniest about this situation is that I have actually published analyses using the very neo-Riemannian methods (which is what I guess you mean by geometrical/graphic methods) you are saying I rejected! Here is an excerpt from an analysis of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata I published in _The Journal of Musicological Research_ (1998). It demonstrates exactly the same cycles of chords the man doing the Cube Dance video is talking about in the OP! - two decades earlier and two decades before you ever heard of neo-Riemannian theory:









Do you still want to claim I am against these methods?


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> So, make up your mind, Woodduck. You can't be "for" graphic theory aids one minute, and "against" them whenever I mention them.


My mind is and was made up. I'm against "graphic theory aids" when they're pretentiously offered as lessons on "how to write music," especially when they're being applied to Beethoven sonatas which were written without the need for them.

That's what I said in my last post and in the other thread - namely, that my objection was to a _pointless application_ of the analytic method - but since you're pretending not to see that, the above is my summation.

Now if you would like to offer a demonstration of how one actually does write music using your "graphic theory aids," I'm sure I'd find it interesting.


----------



## nobilmente

Didn't realize this fun vid would (re)activate such divergent views. Anyway, I must admit the original title of the thread isn't quite right as these are chord transitions rather than real modulations. For instance, you can't get to either the dominant or subdominant via the six-chord cycle which is clearly a bit of a stopper in CP terms. Additionally, via the cycle we get from C major to both E major or Ab major in just two steps, and these traditionally (and to my ears) are relatively remote from the starting point.

I do recommend 12tone's YT channel, many fascinating and interesting insights there.


----------



## EdwardBast

nobilmente said:


> Didn't realize this fun vid would (re)activate such divergent views. Anyway, I must admit the original title of the thread isn't quite right as these are chord transitions rather than real modulations. For instance, you can't get to either the dominant or subdominant via the six-chord cycle which is clearly a bit of a stopper in CP terms. Additionally, via the cycle we get from C major to both E major or Ab major in just two steps, and these traditionally (and to my ears) are relatively remote from the starting point.


This harmonic grammar/vocabulary isn't really CP, although the neo-Riemannians find examples in Wagner. And Rimsky-Korsakoff used those kind of cycles routinely. It's more common later. Those using it weren't looking for a new way to get to IV or V-that was covered.  They were looking for instant magic doors to distant terrain or tonally ambiguous progressions with urgency.

One thing I find especially interesting about these hexatonic triad collections is that they each contain three pairs of chords that work as mutual quasi-dominants. For example, E major and C minor. Each can have dominant or tonic function with respect to the other. Below E major first resolves as a quasi-dominant to C minor, then C minor resolves as a quasi-dominant to E major:









The spellings are enharmonic. If one is thinking in CP logic, the first chord would really be spelled (from top down) B-Fb-Ab. When the C minor chord is a quasi-dominant, its spelling would be D#-F##-C.


----------



## EdwardBast

Hey nobilmente!

Lest you think the thread you started has gotten completely sidetracked, here is a link to a another discussion in this forum about the use of hexatonic systems, like those in the Cube Dance video, as they function in a passage by Prokofiev, another by Rimsky-Korsakoff, and probably some others too. Strangely enough, and contrary to what MR has been arguing, not a single person had anything bad to say about neo-Riemannian theory:

What is going on here? Prokofiev Analysis


----------



## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> Hey nobilmente!
> 
> Lest you think the thread you started has gotten completely sidetracked, here is a link to a another discussion in this forum about the use of hexatonic systems, like those in the Cube Dance video, as they function in a passage by Prokofiev, another by Rimsky-Korsakoff, and probably some others too. Strangely enough, and contrary to what MR has been arguing, not a single person had anything bad to say about neo-Riemannian theory:
> 
> What is going on here? Prokofiev Analysis


Also, in my defense, I thought I did a good job of providing input for that thread. If the hexatonic scale is neo-Rieinmannian, I didn't see it that way. It's just a scale, and a way of symmetrically dividing the octave.
As far as that thread providing a "defense" for you, I guess it just caught you on a "good day," with only one kerfluffle over my use of the phrase "in the absence of a tonic," which I thought was _excessively_ nit-picking, even mean-spirited.


----------



## nobilmente

*Just some background*

Just for the record, my original post was triggered by a couple of things. Firstly, I think 12tone creates absolutely superb YT content and deserves exposure. Secondly, and more personally, that vid particularly brought out the concept of _symmetry_ in the tonal space. I work in a STEM field, and the concept of symmetry is profoundly important within the fields of mathematics, physics, and so on. For example, not so long ago we had the Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything based on the possible analogies between fundamental particles/forces and the E8 Lie group. Similarly, in computer programming, the principles of Category Theory are now rapidly overtaking previous approaches, i.e. imperative to functional coding styles.

Now, whether such tonal symmetries are actually relevant in specific musical contexts in an interesting question. Most of the works we love are goal-directed, in the sense that there is a beginning, middle, and an end. As humans, we love a story, and that pattern is well expressed in the great works of the CP period. An interesting later case is Nielsen vs Sibelius, the former said to espouse "progressive" tonality, the latter not.

Anyway, I'd never even heard of ur-Riemannianism, let alone neo-Riemannianism, so for anyone in the same position, I found:


----------



## Woodduck

^^^ If you're new to these concepts - this video seems to assume that you are - I would recommend adjusting your YouTube play speed setting to .75.


----------



## mikeh375

Sometimes, a composer will just 'go' from Amajor to Gminor because it sounds good, with no reason to explain it beyond the composer's ear and sensibilities. 
The fun starts for me at least when applying Reimannian and other principles to more complex structures as a means of exploring harmony without gravity. The rules can always be stretched beyond their remit and as an example, see the attachment above. Using principles like this in a more personal way is a great search tool when hunting for ideas. This will be nothing new to some of you (Edward, Wooduck and MR) and might not even be considered music, rather a bare bones foundation (although that depends on your ears!) but I thought it might be illuminating for others to see how technique can be applied - it is almost easy to generate material, much harder to make something of it. One never knows where an arbitrary step might lead to.
For example, why have 2 notes in common, why not just one perhaps, or more? Use the principle of 'R' to step up (or down) any note in a complex chord by intervals other than a second. Apply enharmonic practice and see where the voice leads to, perhaps its destination has another function in the new harmony and not just a form of parallel writing. 
The transformations one can conceive of are virtually unlimited except by the imagination, but should always be subjected to the ears approval and then the somewhat tougher application of musical imagination and invention.

EDIT, I had some time free this am and decided to do the simplest of string arranging to bring out the music in the example above. If you want to hear it, go here and download. (it's a small file and the links good for a week).

https://we.tl/t-CWeznhNN5s


----------



## nobilmente

mikeh375 said:


> View attachment 118783
> 
> EDIT, I had some time free this am and decided to do the simplest of string arranging to bring out the music in the example above. If you want to hear it, go here and download. (it's a small file and the links good for a week).
> https://we.tl/t-CWeznhNN5s


Interesting! However, I have a sense that a string ensemble does, shall we say, soften the edges of the harmony? Which is not a problem, strings are wonderful. A bit more gnarly on a piano though?


----------



## mikeh375

nobilmente said:


> Interesting! However, I have a sense that a string ensemble does, shall we say, soften the edges of the harmony? Which is not a problem, strings are wonderful. A bit more gnarly on a piano though?


True enough Nobilmente. The dissonance was softened further by taking the top voice up an octave. Of course "gnarly" scoring would work equally well on strings and elsewhere. One could easily imagine aggressively bowed ff double stops in tight spacing, secco, or perhaps brass sfp's etc. The possibilities are endless from creation up to presentation.


----------



## Taggart

A number of off-topic posts have been removed, pending moderator discussion.

May we remind members that if they wish to have a personal argument, they should do so via private message.

If somebody says something which is either personally offensive or repeats something which you know to be wrong, then simply ignore them and walk away from the thread. In the case of personal insults please report them but do *not *then respond to them in the thread.

The moderators are considering this matter.


----------

