# The Theory of Bach, Funk, Dizzy Jazz & Meaning of Life



## Guest

Please consider these statements concerning theory:


 The Theory of Funk is easy. You find a funky bass groove, and you be funky.
 The Theory of the Meaning of Life is easy, it's 42.
 The Theory of Dizzy Jazz is easy, you riff, but the theory of Dizzy's jazz, it's not so easy.
 The Theory of Bach is easy, you like it, but the theory of Bach's music, it's not so easy.

So this is the start of trying to get my post count up, to get basic privileges, in case I need that. I hit on various topic which are titled in bold.

*The Theory of Why "Music and Repertoire/Music Theory" is Sparse*

In any technical endeavor, there tends to always be a big mismatch when it comes to people seeking culture and support. For a particular person, usually the person knows too little to be of value to those who know more, or knows too much to want to spend time talking in-depth with those who know a lot less.

And those who know a lot probably get their fill of the technical subject because they're a professional or a serious amateur, who use the subject at hand on a frequent basis. And those who don't know much, but want to learn, will only understand the most superficial of talk, until at such time as they pursue some rigorous, disciplined course of study, which they probably won't, so it's useless for the advanced to be trying to teach novices, which they don't want to do anyway, because, again, they get their fill of technicals as a professional or a serious amateur.

But, there being billions of people on the Earth, and the web being the web, there are possibilities when people do the work of creating a forum such as Talk Classical, and create groups such as _Music Theory_.

*The Progession of Bach, Funk, Plastic Recorders, Italian Nomenclature, and Dizzy*

Bach has been on my radar for a long time. The idea for a long time has been to find some way to learn from his music.

As to funk, in Dallas, in a fitness gym, a Dallas radio station was playing old funk. Stuff I'd never heard. Not that I've heard much stuff. That was a long time ago.

Some months ago, I started collecting 1970's era Soul Train videos, but only of a certain kind, the funk kind, because though the Soul Train crowd could always dance, the Soul Train music was not always funky, especially when disco started to hit.

Seeking to substantially upgrade my theoretical understanding of funk music, I read the Wikipedia page. Chord progressions, they're not necessary.

Somewhere in there, wanting relief from DAWs and computers, and wanting sort of a substitute for an electronic music gadget, and wanting it to be cheap, I bought some recorders: soprano, alto, and tenor. And though plastic recorder are cheap, if you buy 4 of them, and other stuff, it can be less than cheap.

Then, looking on YouTube for shred-quality music on the recorder, I found those who shred, classical music style, that being the style, because Vivaldi is classical, at least it sounded that way, the recorder having heavy historical ties into classical music.

Having confidence that a recorder has shred possibilities, I pursued a good book, and on YouTube I found the Italian, Aldo Bova, who has some good books. It was in his books that I was exposed to Italian nomenclature: crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, that kind of thing. "Interesting," I said. "There appear to be things about music I never learned. This makes sense, given that my family moved to a school that had no band, when I was 13."

Having seen shred-quality recorder music, I plugged away, and periodically would surf YouTube also looking for Jazz on the recorder, which led to jazz on the clarinet, which led to the Cuban clarinet player mentioning Dizzy.

Dizzy has compression because the trumpet has compression. The recorder has no compression. Dreaming about shredding no longer satisfied me. I began to dream about shredding with compression. And given that I was never going to shred on the recorder anyway, I pitched all the recorders in the trash and went back to pursuing what I was doing on the DAW, but with Dizzy's shredding in mind.

Well, there are connections that I make between Bach's use of multiple melodic lines, funk with it's bass line that gets riffed on, and Dizzy's style of jazz where there's riffing over the supporting rhythm section.

*Harmony and Counterpoint*

Trying to go through some music theory books has been on my todo list for a long time.

I collected a lot of books, and then deleted them all except [_Music Theory for Computer Musicians_ and _Harmony for Computer Musicians_, by Hewitt.

I still haven't worked through those, but from the first post of the list of theory books, on the main Talk Classical group, I got Kennan's _Counterpoint, 4th_. Having looked at that briefly, possibly it's friendly enough that I can understand it without having to work through a harmony book. But possibly not, and it will take time and work.

My initial delving into trying to make music, years ago, revolved around banging on the piano with 7 fingers. It's too bad that it took me so long to see that I don't need all the clutter, that intervals are enough.

*The Big List of Scale Variations*

Having acquired a jazz theory book, in doing my usual brief look, for the purpose of coming up with a pipedream course of study, I saw something about the 7th, 7th major, 7th minor, something like that. I do remember precisely that it had a 7 in it.

All that terminology stuff, like "augmented".

Anyway, there's the major scale and minor scale. My scheme below, other than for the modes, shows what relative notes have been added or subtracted. The number in the braces is the number of notes in the scale. I'm working on sequencing these to all the the keys, along with some other stuff that I want to put up on a site like GitHub.

I have some sequencer syntax I'm working on that's meant to be entered with Markdown.

My purpose for Talk Classical is for the purpose of motivation. But talking music technicals by text is a hassle, like trying to talk math by text, rather talking than face to face.

(The Talk Classical site constantly logs me out after short intervals. I have to keep logging back in.)

_23 major scale derivations_



* {7} major Ionian
* {7} Dorian [3b 7b]
* {7} Phrygian [2b 3b 6b 7b]
* {7} Lydian [4#]
* {7} Myxolydian [7b]
* {7} Aeolian [3b 6b 7b]
* {7} Locrian [2b 3b 5b 6b 7b]
* {5} major [-2 -6]
* {5} major [-2 -7]
* {6} major [-5]
* {6} major [-6]
* {6} major [-7]
* {7} major [6b -6]
* {7} major [7b -7]
* {6} major [5b -6 -7]
* {7} major [5b -6]
* {7} major [5b -7]
* {8} major [3b]
* {7} major [3b 5b -6 -7]
* {8} major [3b 5b -6]
* {8} major [3b 5b -7]
* {9} major [2b 5b -6 7b]
* {10} major [2b 5b 7b]

_27 minor scale derivations_



* {7} minor
* {7} minor harmonic
* {5} pentatonic
* {6} blues
* {6} minor [-7b]
* {7} minor [-6b 6]
* {6} minor [-6b -7b 7]
* {8} minor [5b]
* {8} minor [5b -6b 7]
* {6} minor [5b -6b -7b]
* {7} minor [5b -6b]
* {7} minor [5b -7b]
* {8} minor [5b -6b 6]
* {8} minor [5b -7b 7]
* {7} minor [-2 5b -6b 7]
* {8} minor [-2 3 5b -6b 7]
* {8} minor [3]
* {8} minor [3 -7b 7]
* {9} minor [3 5b]
* {7} minor [3 5b -6b -7b]
* {8} minor [3 5b -6b]
* {8} minor [3 5b -7b]
* {9} minor [3 5b -7b 7]
* {9} minor [3 5b -6b 7]
* {10} minor [3 5b -6b 6 7]
* {9} minor [2b 5b -6b 7]
* {10} minor [2b 5b 7]


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## Luchesi

Welcome to the forum. Thanks for the long post. I'm trying to conceive of where you are on the journey. I mean, I've taught music for a long time and most everyone is somewhere on the same journey, especially if they're fascinated by the concept of music theory.
Can someone start with just a fascination with music theory?


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Welcome to the forum. Thanks for the long post ... Can someone start with just a fascination with music theory?


Welcome for the welcome.

I'll give my answer to your question first. No, except for some unlikely hypothetical person. Without a person being told there's something called "music theory", it would never enter into a person's mind that there's a thing called music theory, and that it's something to be fascinated with, except in some primitive way, similar to those guys back in time getting the foggy notion that there's a problem with not having a number that represents zero.

It's like if I use the phrase "there are different ways you can build the natural numbers". Anyone who hasn't been exposed to certain fields of math will have a blank mind and ask, "What do you mean, build the natural numbers."

And if someone (a musician) makes the claim they started with music theory before playing music, they're most likely be a hypster, but if they aren't, they can't fairly make the claim that, in this advanced period of time, they haven't been subconsciously or indirectly exposed to the ideas of music theory.

Rereading my post, jokes not marked with emoticons are lacking in obviousness. "Seeking to substantially upgrade my ... theoretical understanding of funk..." by reading the Wikipedia page, that's supposed to be an obvious joke. I'm not sure it is.



Luchesi said:


> I mean, I've taught music for a long time...


And in a more perfect world, I would drop by unannounced at your office, and you wouldn't be the usual academic type, one who, always very polite, is waiting for me to stop talking and leave.



Luchesi said:


> ..and most everyone is somewhere on the same journey...


I'm thinking my journey represents a typical journey, and your journey is the kind of journey I would like to have taken. These two journeys, at best there's a tanget, but for the most part people do what I call "the rock method", and these days a "method" that's even less theoretical, "the rap method", where they have no knowledge of really simple things, like how to build a scale.



Luchesi said:


> ..especially if they're fascinated by the concept of music theory..


Well, okay, "especially", where possibly this should be changed to "exclusively".



Luchesi said:


> I'm trying to conceive of where you are on the journey.


I have a basic knowledge of music theory. My mother, a pianist, when I got interested in trying to make music, taught me how to build the major and minor scales, and she told me 5 good chords to use for chord progressions, 1st major, 2nd minor, 6th minor, 4th major, and 5th major.

This guitarist Jake, a shredder, taught me about modes.

At some point, I decided I wanted to get methodical, and compose with my mind, because every attempt to record music would devolve into getting depressed about the 15 seconds of music I was trying to make perfect.

At another point, I decided I wanted to eliminate the use of physical instruments and make music only with a computer, where at most I have a MIDI keyboard to help me hear some chords and scales, and where one of the instruments is a guitar, which complicates things.

The problem is that neither the old, the staff layout in a DAW, or the newer layout, a MIDI sequencer layed out as a piano roll, provide a productive way to get methodical, and enter in notes by hand. It doesn't work when you want the composition to sound realistic, like a human.

Finally, I'm coming up ways to maybe solve some of the "input and realism" problems. In solving the problem with the tools, I can finally use these tools to work through some theory.

It's like learning a programming language. You start working through a book, and because the tools are the same for learning programming as doing programming, you can go off on tangents where you actually switch from being a learner to a doer.

Thanks for the reply.


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## Tikoo Tuba

To share (in words) theories of music is easier than answering the question ' What is music ' .


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## Guest

Thanks for the interest.

I'm thinking that "What is music?" is a less flame-worthy subject than "What is art?", but, nonetheless, still a flame-worthy subject. For myself, overall I think I don't have any strong opinions about about "What is music?", but if others care, I many times go with the flow.

After this paragraph, I'll say some stuff, but then I'll try to punch a hole in what you say, because of the first part of your sentence. Or maybe not, because what I'm trying to sort out, which I thought I had already sorted out, is whether there's a dependency between describing "What is music?" and stating the theory of music to describe "What is music?". I think the key words here are qualitative versus quantitative. "What is music?" is a qualitative question, where music theory is a quantitative subject. As a matter of discipline, for the purpose of learning, when trying to get something from people who are better than me, I try to stay quantitative, because qualitative usually leads to me burning bridges.

Having thought much about how to answer the question "What is art?", because many others have thought and talked about "What is art?", my ideas about "What is art?" are very general, because I try to be a generalist. My opinion about other people's opinions about "What is art?" is that most people are debating "What is skilled art?", not "What is art?".

Unlike "What is art?", I don't remember coming up with any opinions about "What is music?", because of other people debating the subject. Coincidentally, it was here on Talk Classical, within this last week, on my first day of surfing TC threads to get a feel for things, to think about whether TC is something I want try and use to get some culture, in the group of threads I looked at, there was a person who made some claims about what is music (or what is a song).

I would have to search a lot to find it, but it possibly was in this flame-worthy thread:

talkclassical.com/58464-mozart-my-enemy.html

I put that link in this post to learn how to use the URL tag, or maybe to just put in a flame-worthy thread. That thread convinced me I should stay away from here, but then I came up with the idea of not staying away from here, but staying away from the qualitative groups, since I tend to be argumentative.

Anyway, being a pretty normal person, I gravitated to thread titles that were meant to get a reaction out of me, and in one of those thread someone made a list of claims about what music is. I think that's what the claims were about.

One claim made is that there's music which isn't sound. Someone then asked for an example of music which isn't sound, but I didn't see that the person replied.

I would think that music which isn't sound is the music we hear in our head.

*Venn Diagrams, Punching Holes, Or Not*

What I have in mind about "What is music?" (WIM) and music theory in words (MTIW) is Venn diagrams.


 If WIM and MTIW are disjoint, or only partially intersect, then it's an open question of which is harder to describe.
 If WIM is a subset of MTIW, then describing MTIW is at least as hard as describing WIM.
 If WIM is a proper subset of MTIW, then describing MTIW is harder than describing WIM.
 Take MTIW as a subset of WIM, and make similar statements about WIM being harder to describe than MTIW.

So one question is this:


 If you describe "What is music?", does everything you've said apply to describing music theory? If it does, yet you have to use more words to fully describe music theory, then describing music is harder than describing "What is music?"

The prefix I'm thinking of is "meta". It seems like one might possibly be a meta description of the other, but I don't know. Meta stuff gets hard.

It could also be I'm using a tactic. This certified public accountant told me that what companies do when they get audited by the IRS is they overwhelm the IRS with information.


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## Luchesi

GezzMontC said:


> Thanks for the interest.
> 
> I'm thinking that "What is music?" is a
> 
> ....with information.


It would be unfortunate for the rest of us if you read some post by a nasty poster and you left the forum. There are very few of them! In fact I've never actually met one in here. The moderators Think that they can forecast what a bad poster will do next so they ban them. So we lose a very active poster. The moderators are trying to keep good posters like you interested and posting.

It would be unfortunate if you left because you've already given me something to think about in the philosophy of thinking about music. I will post a reply to you as soon as I have time. There's never enough hours in the day! But you'll fit right in here and you'll become of favorite poster for many of us., because you say new things.

I will say, music (and all art) can be reduced down to artistically constrained ambiguity. That's what the science of aesthetics is all about. That's why even though I have a career in science I remain very interested in the arts, because it has a logical integrity just like science does.


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## Tikoo Tuba

GezzMontC said:


> Thanks for the interest.
> 
> If you describe "What is music?", does everything you've said apply to describing music theory? If it does, yet you have to use more words to fully describe music theory, then describing music is harder than describing "What is music?"


The sure way to describe what is music is to present music as an example . I believe the point being made lately is that Analysis As Theory is insufficiently expressive and so the poet complains . Make words as music . We are writers .

My electrical engineer at the studio says do not ask what is electricity .


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