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Old 09-05-2019, 02:37 AM   #367
martifingers
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Join Date: May 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
1. Players feel a need to mock this subject of improving the currently horrible music theory, likely due to ego problems.
"Currently Horrible music theory"? I think this needs to be unpacked a little.

1. Music theory (I think Adam Neely pointed this out) is a method to describe and analyse what musicians do. Thus (to my mind) eg classically trained musical theorists can bring great insight to music that was produced by musicians with no training or ability to notate their music. It is not per se a prescription for musical creation. Even if the way music is taught and culturally transmitted can privilege certain approaches at any given moment.

2.Various forms of notation were evolved by composers and arrangers to communicate the main aspects of the music sufficiently well to enable people to play it. (I mean in the "western"tradition - other cultures managed perfectly well with aural traditons.) Eventually as we know staff notation proved the most resilient. It's not "perfect" in the sense that certain elements are only approximately indicated (eg directions describing nuances of feeling, dynamics, timbre etc.) and may even leave out notes! For instance the late great Derek Bell wrote that it was silly to think that because manuscripts of O'Carolan's music lacked harmony that one shouldn't play them - indeed it would have been expected. In other words you kinda needed to know the genre to make proper use of the notation.

3. One issue in this time seems to have come from the way that from about the 1950s onwards many (most?) people got their musical education so to speak from recorded music starting with the various folk booms and then rock and roll and the blues revival. (Rather than from published sheet music as was the norm up to the 1930s or so?) At first this was not a great problem as the music was fairly constrained in its structures and scales etc. And the jazz players were mostly managing quite well with traditional notation.

3. Then irritatingly ( &#128521 in the late 60s and 70s music got more complicated (damn you Frank Zappa and Mike Oldfield! https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ow36K1RBKS0) and "knowing the genre" became a moot point. One way to go was back to basics (punk?) - another was to spend hours jamming like Pink Floyd apparently did to evolve the music. (Or be Steve Vai?)

So to answer this:
"My contention would be, that if the music system were great and players all knew it easily, that when someone in the audience requests Mustang Sally (which they always do in a dive bar blues/R&B jam), then the band would be able to invent a new song with the same musical elements as Mustang Sally but as a new, fresh song to play."
For me the key thing here is about what is meant by "music system". I expect that most bands do know (whether or not they could notate it) the structure etc. of the piece. A better "theoretical" understanding would not help (or only very marginally) and in fact when professional musicians are say, improvising I am pretty sure they are not thinking of what "theoretically" they should be doing. What is required is musical creativity and while "theory" can give you some ideas to start with ("hey let's do it in Lydian mode!") there is I suspect no short cut to that.
Oh and at the risk of sounding even more preachy perhaps it is unhelpful to ascribe motives to people you have not met - I am sure challenging the argument will be just as effective in the long run.
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