jayshreddz

i'm serious.
i guess there could be some merit to knowing theory if you're teaching or trying to learn music that someone else created, but i don't see how anything beyond knowing how to play the instrument you're playing is important to creating original music.

mr dave

It's important if you ever want to work in a professional environment or with anyone who's had that experience. Otherwise you come across as a hard headed idealistic pretentious hipster brat (I've got years of experience and little to show for exactly that reason).

Basically learning theory is an easy way to prove to other musicians that you're flexible and adaptable to styles and techniques besides the favourites from your personal comfort zone.

You don't need to learn much but I have to say, it's incredibly frustrating to try playing with someone who 'knows' how to play but never bothered learning 'any' theory. When someone asks you how to play a song and you call out 'it's G, C and D' and they give you a wide eyed look like you started speaking alien until you show them the actual chord shapes they recognize but refuse to learn the names of. That's your attitude. How awesome is it?

The worse thing was that guitar player who refused to learn alphabetical names of the basic major chords could blaze through Eruption on his acoustic. People lost their sh1t and kept praising him like he was some sort of wunderkin. But ask him to play a E minor chord? Forget it.

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Rubato

I can agree with you that approaching a new composition with theory rather than your ear will yield nothing more than a collection of musical facts that will most likely sound rather artificial, but the purpose of theory isn't to create music by following where things should/could go, it's about developing your sense of form so your ear is better equipped when you need to rely on it. Relying on an untrained ear to compose will produce very simple works and seeking to enrich will always prove difficult.

You could of course put ignorance on a pedestal and go about it your own way relying only on your own judgment and undeveloped sense of form, learning from pitfalls along the way but even if you were naturally gifted enough to reach the same level as those that took formal training you would have gotten there a hell of a lot faster had you of taken up music theory, So if you did have the interest in music why would you ignore an integral part of it and choose a more taxing, risky route that offers fewer rewards?

Kripnal

Its nice idea i can share some of my knowledge about rock music, it was all started with "The Beatles"
they have taken gutiar music from streets to the heavy concerts .

venjacques

RezZ-
Thanks for the feedback man. I'll keep exploring into it. I really wanna be able to play some decent jazz someday.

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ThePhanastasio -
Okay you have the time signature - two numbers stacked on top of each other.

Top number tells you - how many beats per measure. (This can be any integer 1 - 10000, usually 12 is as high number, 2 is a low number).

Bottom number tells you - which note gets one beat. (This can be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.... (just multiply by two). Anything higher than 16 is kind of ridiculous though for most pieces, and 1 isn't too common. Most are in the range of 2, 4, or 8).

With the top number telling you how many beats per measure, the only question is "what note gets one beat?" And that's easy enough. You have to realize that the relationship between note durations is always the same-

One whole note ALWAYS equals 2 half notes.
One half note ALWAYS equals 2 quarter notes.
Etc.

But a quarter note is not always 1 beat.

If you have a 1 on the bottom of the time signature, a whole note is 1 beat. So a 4/1 measure would be 4 whole note per measure (and any combinations of other notes that add up to this total number). 4/1 is not very common. But in having a 1 on the bottom, a whole note is 1 beat, a half note is half a beat, a quarter note is a fourth of a beat, and so on.

If you have a 2 on the bottom, the half note is 1 beat. Therefor, the whole note is 2 beats, the quarter note is half a beat, and the eighth note is a fourth of a beat.

If you have a 4 on the bottom, the quarter note is 1, the half note is 2, the whole note is 4, and the eighth note is half.

If you have an 8 on the bottom, the eighth note is 1, the sixteenth note is half a beat, the quarter note is 2, the half note is 4, and the whole note is 8.

Finally, if you have a 16 on the bottom, the 16th note is 1, the 8th note is 2, the quarter note is 4, the half note is 8, and the whole note is a whopping 16.

This means that each time your metronome clicks (or your toe taps the ground), the beat that equals 1 has passed (generally).

The way I figure out what note equals 1 is that you just put 1 over x (1/x), where x is your bottom number.

So if you have 4/4, you take 1/4, which is a fourth, or quarter, so the quarter note = 1 beat.

If you have 2 on the bottom, 1/2 is a half, so the half note = 1.

More examples to drive the point home:

8/8 = 8 eighth notes per measure.
5/4 = 5 quarter notes per measure.
2/2 = 2 half notes per measure.
682/128 = 682 128th notes per measure (This is a ridiculous time signature only to illustrate. If you see this in serious music, you have full license to punch the composer in the face.)

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::Strong beats::

Generally you have strong and weak beats. These beats are played with a little more power to give the rhythm a feel of being in a certain time signature. Normally, strong beats are places for chord changes, important notes, etc. But first we need to talk about 'simple' and 'compound' meters (time signatures).

Simple are either 2, 3, or 4 (we're talking about the top number of time signatures only).

I'll bold the strong beats.

2 : 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 (1 is stronger than 2).
3 : 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 (1 is stronger than 2 and 3).
4 : 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 (1 and 3 are BOTH stronger than 2 and 4).

Now onto compound: 6 9 12. Basically you multiply everything by groups of 3:

1 2 3 4 5 6 (1 and 4 are the strongest) 1-2-3 4-5-6. Notice how it's similar to just the simple 2, only with a triplet figure present.

Same with 9 and 12.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1-2-3 4-5-6 7-8-9


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1-2-3 4-5-6 7-8-9 10-11-12

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Mixed meters:

Still talking about your top number here, these are the ones that don't divide into groups of 3, and aren't the simple ones. Typical numbers include 5, 7, 8, 10, and probably even 11.

5 is uneven. It's usually a group of 3, and a group of 2. Which one happens first is up to the composer. I've seen some compositions in one version, some in the other, and a few that actually switch back and forth every measure.

So either one of these is correct:

1-2 3-4-5
1-2-3 4-5

Same with 7 - a group of 3, and 2 groups of 2:

1-2 3-4 5-6-7
1-2 3-4-5 6-7
1-2-3 4-5 6-7

10 is usually 2 groups of 3, and 2 groups of 2. This cannot be arranged (usually) like 1-2-3 4-5 6-7-8 9-10 nor 1-2 3-4-5 6-7 8-9-10 because then you run the risk of it just sounding like it's in 5, and why not just use that instead, right?

I'd say the most common 10 setup is 1-2-3 4-5-6 7-8 9-10.

As for 11, it's kind of out there (and I'm not sure I've even seen it). But I'm sure it's been used somewhere by someone. It's not a very common one though, of course. I'm sure you can use groups of 2's and 3's to make it sound interesting at your discretion.

8's a little special. Simple ones would just be 2 groups of 4: 1-2-3-4 5-6-7-8.

But a more interesting one is: 1-2-3 4-5-6 7-8. Coldplay uses this in Clocks as their background rhythm pattern. It's a very very common setup in pop music of today.

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Two final things you should know about time signatures:

4/4 is the most common time signature. It's nicknamed "common time" and written with a C.

2/2 is another common one, and is called "cut time" (or "alla breve" in... England? I don't know anyone that says "alla breve", but it's in a theory book that I teach out of). This is written with a Cents sign (a C with a vertical line through it).

I hope this answered your question. Feel free to ask any follow up questions, ThePhanastasio.

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jayshreddz-
And if you're a true English speaker, you just speak it with your fellow man because you don't need to read or write something that isn't verbally spoken.

Oh wait. You're on a forum, reading and typing.

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Guybrush

edit :

The main riff definetly sounds like 123-123-123-12, like it would've been a straight up 3/4th (or something) had it not been for cutting out the last "3" there. I guess that's what you mean by groups of 2s and 3s!

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venjacques

Very nice find, tore! I'm still going to bet that 11's uncommon. But this is lovely to see. And yes, I'm hearing 3-3-3-2 here too. But that's def in 11, starting at about 0:45. The drumming at the start is probably too, but it's certainly harder to hear given the rhythm.

I'd venture to say this is 11/8. But that's just a personal preference. It's certainly 11.

For more obscure time signatures, this might be an interesting read: List of musical works in unusual time signatures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Guybrush

It's a bit of a funny coincidence Me and my friends are doing an album club on our mailinglist and Sailing the Seas of Cheese was last week's album and I noticed it had that that song in eleven time. I can't remember any other songs in 11 .. at least not right off the bat!

Although I do listen to a lot of prog so songs in 15/8 and 10/8 and so on come to mind!

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MoonlitSunshine

I'm not a music specialist, I've studied very little theory myself and most of my theory knowledge comes from personal observations and friends who have studied music at university level, but...


It depends on what you mean by "standard". There are some style of music that you can pin down so far as a sort of ABABACBB(modulated) - namely most entires into the Eurovision Song Contest in the last 40 years - but I'm not sure if that "Pop music" format has a name unto itself. The lack of a name doesn't make it any less common or predictable, though. Then you have things like the Sonata form, which isn't well represented in letter format, because of the way the development and exposition sections build on the initial forms, but aren't repetition.

Virtually every form of music has its own set of templates. It's what makes that music sound like... that music, as much as the instrumentation. Music is driven by patterns, and we notice the exceptions that break the patterns. Ergo, there are a lot of templates :P

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venjacques

MoonlitSunshine is off to a good start. Mr. Dave is good too.

Form is what you want it to be. I've written and played a lot of those little

||:A:||fine
||:B:||DC al fine

pieces. They're cute, simple, and easy.

Basically a lot of music, especially popular things today, are in sections. The letters are clear ways to mark them. But here are a lot of forms:

Strophic form is just the same section over and over, maybe slightly altered. Thus you get AAAAA... or AA'A"A'''... . The A' is said "A-prime", A" is "A-double prime" etc.

The opposite of Strophic is Chain form or Free form. These are the other extreme and hit ABCDEF.... Medlies practice this, but usually a medly will end with A after the whole chain finishes.

Before we go further, it's important to realize that there's no right or wrong. There are common practices, but that doesn't stop you from making one that goes ABACDECDEFGCBCEH. If this works for you, you might have just made a new form. Form allows for pieces to be predictable, which is good for both listener (people get mentally satisfied when they hear something they think is coming), and also the performers, because they all have to move together. If a performing group knows the piece's form, they just have to think of a few sections, and their piece is ready to go. Great for improv players too.

Let's continue to other popular forms:

Binary form is simply AB. These can have repeat signs and make them AABB. Same thing really. These can be rounded binary, in which you have ||:A:|| ||:B A':|| The B section isn't terribly different from A, however, and the final A is usually only part of the original A section.

Ternary form is a closely related one. This is usually ABA or AABA or probably even AABBA. Basically, you state your main theme (A), go away from it (B), and then come back to it (A). AABA was popular for Arias of the 18th century (called Da Capo Arias, since they go back to the beginning and play the first section again). This form made divas shine. Apparently Arias were the most popular songs from operas. They were best songs as far as the public was concerned. This form also worked its way into a 32 bar song. This was used throughout the 1900's. The first 16 measures were A A, the next 8 (B) was called the Middle 8, and then you have A again for the end. Very popular form. The B section in ternary is quite different from the A material (where rounded binary was not), and then the final A section is a full return of the A section (where rounded binary was only half).

Then we have Rondo form, which, as the other have stated, is A_A_A_A_A_A where the blanks can be other sections. The important thing is that we start A with and come back to A as every other section. A couple popular Rondo forms are ABACABA and ABACABADA. A variation on this idea is Arch form, which comes out as ABCBA. I think the name speaks for itself. A larger one, then, would be ABCDCBA.

Theme and Variation is where you play a piece of music, usually not too long, and then you play it again with some kind of varied result. The Major key goes to minor, the melody is infused with triplets, the bass and treble lines switch, or whatever you want. This can be repeated into many variations on the original melody.

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The granddaddy of musical form though is probably Sonata Form. This came about in the classical period, and set the standard. A lot of people groan about this, so I'll try to simplify how it works.

A sonata, in general, is a 3 or 4 movement work. If it has 4 sections, they'll be like this, based on tempo:
Movement I - Allegro (fast).
Movement II - Adagio/Lento/Andante (something on the slower side)
Movement III - Minuet and Trio (Usually. This is a 3/4 piece in rounded binary or "Minuet form".)
Movement IV - Presto/Vivace/Allegro (something on the fast side)

If you had a three movement sonata, the third movement above would be omitted.

For those of you unaware, when you play many movements in a set, traditionally you'd play the first one in its entirety (it's a piece in itself). Then you would stop playing. Then you'd play the second one, finish, stop playing. Then the third, and finally the fourth in the same manner. Only when you're done with the full sonata would the audience applause.

The second and fourth movements' forms are usually very simple - rounded binary, ternary, or rondo are great choices. The bulk of the form analysis for sonatas is found in the first movement, and is called Sonata Allegro Form.

There are three parts to a sonata allegro form - Exposition, Development, and Recapitulation.

Here is what happens in the Exposition part:
The sonata can start with an intro. (Optional)
After that, it plays Theme One in the tonic key (you have to start somewhere).
Then it can play an interlude going to a related key (usually the dominant [V] or relative key).
Then it plays Theme Two, in the related key.
Then it plays a coda to end the section.

Development
All hell breaks loose in this part. You have the material from Theme One and Theme Two, and they all mix and modulate, sequence, imitate, repeat, whatever you want. It's basically a roller coaster ride of the material from the two themes.

Recapitulation
This section ends the sonata allegro form. This happens much the same way as the Exposition.
Theme One comes back in the tonic key.
BUT now you have Theme Two in the TONIC key as well.

You can imagine like you (Theme 1) and your friend (Theme 2) are having an argument. You're on opposing sides (I and V, respectively). This is the exposition.

Then you have your discussion, talking about his mother's parents (foreign keys), how you felt when you didn't get to share ice cream last Friday (sequences), etc. That's the development.

Finally you reach a conclusion and agree (Theme 1 and 2 are both in the same key). And you won the argument, of course, since you both ended in the tonic where you started. So the moral of the story is that your friend is stupid for disagreeing in the first place.

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I know this is a lot to take in, but hopefully it's in digestible chunks.

Up last is a favorite of mine - Fugue (fugal) form. This is difficult because it has to do with counterpoint, but the sections are still apparent.

All fugues will start with the main Subject - a melodic statement. This can be likened to a Motive, but in fugal analysis, it's called the Subject.

After the subject dies, two things happen -

1. A second voice comes in, usually at an interval of the 5th, and plays the subject again in the new key of the 5th. This is called the Answer.

2. The first voice turns into other melodic material, supporting the answer. This is called the counter subject. The counter subject now will partner the subject (answers) whenever they come in. They're best friends, but the subject/answer is the main character of the story, where the counter subject is more of a supporting role.

When the second voice ends, the third voice comes in with the subject on the tonic key. It's a subject because it's on the tonic key, rather than an answer, which is on the 5th (dominant). Voice two becomes the new counter subject. Voice one, having done the subject and counter subject roles already, is free do do whatever it wants and supports the other two voices, but it's just musical fluff. There's no importance of what it turns into.

If there are more voices, they keep ping-ponging with subject and answers, and then turning into counter subjects to support the new-coming voices. This whole section from the start up to this point is called, like Sonata Allegro Form, the Exposition. This ends when your last voice finishes its initial subject/answer (it doesn't have to become a counter subject).

Throughout the rest of the fugue, you have two parts that will alternate - subject material, and episodic material.

After the Exposition, you have an episode. The episode will modulate to new keys, transition in any way it wants, and move the music to different places. The episode is in lack of a full subject (in any key).

A subject section has at least one full subject. This can be in any key, and any voice.

The episodes and subject sections just keep ping-ponging back and forth until the end of the fugue, where you usually have a coda to end in the tonic key.

A useful term in fugal works is stretto. This is caused by many subjects entering (but not finishing). Instead of hearing a full subject by one of the voices, many voices interrupt one another before the subjects can finish. It's a really cool effect that builds tension, and usually happens near the end of the fugue.

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That's all.

Well, time for breakfast.

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