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Old 10-18-2020, 05:46 PM   #1
n997
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Default Is there, or could there be, music theory based on 12-pitch staff?

How would music theory (especially that of harmony) look like and function, if instead of staff in which 7 pitches form an octave, it was developed with staff (or piano roll) that directly shows 12 pitches - no need to label nor account for flats/sharps etc.?

Would intervals be named differently - perfect fourth being "6th", perfect fifth being "8th", octave being "12th" and so on?

Would chord symbols be based on counting intervals from 12 pitches - that is, a major triad being thought of as "1-5-8" instead of "1-3-5", and a minor triad "1-4-8" instead of "1-b3-5"?
Would the same go for scales?

How would we use roman numerals - all the way to XII, perhaps?
How would we markup functional harmony?

Could all that is good and useful in existing, "7-pitch-staff-based" formal music theory be translated into a version based on 12-pitch staff/pianoroll?
Does such translation effort already exist, perhaps?


EDIT: see an idea for this kind of system in post 23:
https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...6&postcount=23

EDIT 2020-10-25: as result of fruitful discussions here, my interest in this subject has been re-aimed specifically towards 12-pitch MIDI piano rolls - so I now leave this subject of 12-pitch staff to others. If you reply to my posts here, please forgive if I fail to respond, as my focus is now elsewhere.



Imagine this as an "alternate universe" scenario if you wish, in which physics of sound are the same as in ours, but dividing an octave into 12 tones via equal temperament was discovered much earlier, thousands of years ago - perhaps with help from your favorite sci-fi time travellers.

And fellows, if this turns into a heated debate, please let's avoid personal insults

Last edited by n997; 10-24-2020 at 09:27 PM. Reason: added information
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Old 10-18-2020, 05:52 PM   #2
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Interesting idea, this is essentially the midi piano roll which breaks an octave into 12 pitches.

I doubt this will get any momentum in the engraving world. The current system has been developed over hundreds of years and while there are many different variations and customs (Jazz charts, Nashville style chords, microtonality) it is the universal language of music which every trained musicians from Beijing to Moscow to London / Paris / New etc. understands.
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Old 10-18-2020, 06:58 PM   #3
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I'd hate to see the size of a full orchestral score lol
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Old 10-19-2020, 12:26 AM   #4
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first, it already exists, and was written about extensively in the 1920's-1930's. (but no one here seems to know that)

second, if you want your eyes to bleed, you might try this thread, https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=224158

third, the 12 tone system essentially throws away what is typically considered "chords" previously.
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Old 10-19-2020, 01:04 AM   #5
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Way to make friends!
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Old 10-19-2020, 01:35 AM   #6
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Way to make friends!
it's a reminder.
so, would you like to add something productive to the conversation or continue in this vein?

i lost my link list of 'dozenal' references but there are significant papers written on the potential for base-12 music for anyone who chooses to look around.
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Old 10-19-2020, 02:01 AM   #7
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Nah. I think you said it all.
All the best!
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Old 10-19-2020, 04:47 AM   #8
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Interesting idea, this is essentially the midi piano roll which breaks an octave into 12 pitches.
Direct DAW/MIDI compatibility would be pretty much the purpose of this kind of theory. There are nowadays a lot of people to whom MIDI piano roll is more familiar than staff - I'd guess that majority of "hobbyist" users of FL Studio, Ableton Live, etc. are in that category, probably hundreds of thousands of people around the world, if not even millions if we count unregistered copies used in developing countries.

There are even basic theory books aimed at that segment, namely the "for Computer Musicians" series by Michael Hewitt, in which all examples are in piano roll, as well as staff and tabs.

The older I get, the more I dare to think that it might actually be worthwhile to formulate a version of music theory based primarily on 12-pitch MIDI piano roll - a theory which bypasses most of the staff-related kludge, but still incorporates the beginner basics and most of the rest of useful knowledge from last 1000+ years.


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I'd hate to see the size of a full orchestral score lol
Indeed - the 7-pitch staff with symbol-based time markup is in a sense a good "compression format" that allows to represent more data in less physical space. But the problem is that it requires writers and readers to have "neural decoders/encoders", which is becoming somewhat illogical to ask due to availability (or at least possibility) of other solutions.

I think that ubiquity of tablet computers (and AR glasses, when that comes) will eventually do away with paper scores and their space problem - including page turning, which will be replaced with with automatic scrolling based on recognizing already played notes. Not sure to what extent that is already used in professional circles.


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first, it already exists, and was written about extensively in the 1920's-1930's. (but no one here seems to know that)
Do tell and/or link I've glanced at set theory, and some serialist systems occasionally, neither of which seems to quite do what I'm after here - a beginner-friendly theory for piano rolls etc. that discards the need to cognitively decode/encode enharmonics, among other things.

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second, if you want your eyes to bleed, you might try this thread, https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=224158
Indeed, I took part in latter stages of that discussion, and your initial post in it contains lot of things which I too have observed and agree with.


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third, the 12 tone system essentially throws away what is typically considered "chords" previously.
Regarding "7-pitch-staff-based" chord naming and markup, I'd be quite OK with replacing, for example, "C Major" with "C:1,5,8", "C sus4" with "C:1,6,8" and so on.
In the bigger picture, traditional concept of "chords" fails to capture a lot of things anyway - for example, it does not offer a name for something like "C-D#-F" with "C" in bass as its own entity, instead treating it as modification of something else, like "F7 omit3/C". Such interpretations can make sense in some contexts, but at other times it would be clearer to mark it up as a "C" chord of some sort, like "C:1,4,6".
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Old 10-19-2020, 07:49 AM   #9
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Duodecimal notation, eh.
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Old 10-19-2020, 08:40 AM   #10
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Regarding "7-pitch-staff-based" chord naming and markup, I'd be quite OK with replacing, for example, "C Major" with "C:1,5,8", "C sus4" with "C:1,6,8" and so on.
In the bigger picture, traditional concept of "chords" fails to capture a lot of things anyway - for example, it does not offer a name for something like "C-D#-F" with "C" in bass as its own entity, instead treating it as modification of something else, like "F7 omit3/C". Such interpretations can make sense in some contexts, but at other times it would be clearer to mark it up as a "C" chord of some sort, like "C:1,4,6".

Jazz pioneer Steve Coleman uses an interesting system for chord notation aimed at improvised sections. I believe his system was to allow chord structures outside of the standard Jazz Harmony since he found traditional chord notation a bit cumbersome. But he does use standard notation for melodic passages, and probably for specific chord voicings. His music is quite complex rhythmically as well.

https://m-base.com/scores/cell-notation/

Henry Threadgill has adopted a similar chord notation system for his ensembles. His music even even more complex.

https://jazztimes.com/features/profi...l-be-ever-out/

I've thought about ways to improve staff based notation a bit and my only problem is how rhythm is written. I find it cumbersome and I think that could fairly easily be improved upon. For melody and harmony notation within western 12 tone music, it's fine, in my opinion.

One other thought. Western music theory isn't based on notation itself, it's the other way around. The staff is simply the least awful way of developing notation over the course of several hundred years. I find it hard to imagine why we should change the entire system just because fruity loop users are too lazy to learn simple interval relationships.
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Old 10-19-2020, 10:10 AM   #11
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The notation system is a cipher, just like Nashville notation is a cipher.

Reading, and Musical theory, aren't always synonymous with one another.
I know a few guitar players that can sub tritones all night long, but they don't read at all.

Once you delve into reading scores and lead sheets, you begin to see an elegance and perfection to the entire system, and its structure becomes entirely logical.
Just seeing that the piece begins in, say, D Major, can convey a ton of information very quickly, with absolute minimum "bandwidth"

This elegance becomes entangled with its "quantum" like ability to be interpreted in -many- ways.

For example, what key is Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" in?
The opening chord of "Hard Days Night"?

endless debate on 7b9 chords vs. a dim7 built on vii
Am7 or C6 ?

This ambiguous ability is largely part of its charm, and perhaps also helped give it centuries of longevity.
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Old 10-19-2020, 10:29 AM   #12
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Aside from MIDI piano roll compatibility, it's not easy to see much advantage to such a system.

It would involve significantly larger staves that would be much harder to read. The existing notation system is elegant and efficient in comparison.

Chord notation is of course another thing entirely, and can be discussed either in the context of a 12-based notation system or independently. Here again I tend to be a little conservative.

At a young age, I bought into Leonard Bernstein's idea that tonal music is innate to how people hear, and that harmony is built on the overtone series, which is a phenomenon of physics. It's true that some cultures have expanded music beyond Western scales melodically (North Indian classical music), leaving behind harmony apart from octave-fifth drones. But that doesn't contradict the fundamental nature of tonality, and the basis of how we hear chords.

So while a lot of music stretches conventional harmony enormously (leaving aside 12 tone serial music), its harmony still can almost always be analyzed in terms of chord theory that's been around a long time. There's usually some ambiguity, as another poster mentioned, and notation gets convoluted, but it mostly just works. Adopting a 12-tone notation for chords is an interesting idea, but I don't see how it would make anything easier or clearer.
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Old 10-19-2020, 12:13 PM   #13
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there's a ton of topics here so, one thing at a time.

"7-note method"

garageband already has this. (Other DAWs do as well, Logic has a mode too)

what garageband does is allow the user to pick a scale (i.e. tonality) and then limits all input to those 7 notes. (especially garageband on iOS)

for example, garageband shows a guitar fretboard graphic or a piano keyboard graphic and only sounds notes inside that scale (could call it 'pitch set' would be better)

however: the biggest problem with this is that the music will sound very boring. music is interesting because of the chromatic notes (usually on non-stressed beats) and this goes back to all music over history (i.e. even bach).

so in summary: Yes you can create a user-interface (aka musical system) which does only 7 tones but the music will be kindergarten level (literally, like nursery rhyme melodies or chords).

Logic's mode (I'm not good with logic) is in the piano roll where you can set some piano-roll view or input-mode where all notes are quantized to the given diatonic scale. So i.e. if you play a C# after setting C major then it will round it down (quantize the pitch) to C or something.
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Old 10-19-2020, 12:38 PM   #14
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Regarding "7-pitch-staff-based" chord naming and markup, I'd be quite OK with replacing, for example, "C Major" with "C:1,5,8", "C sus4" with "C:1,6,8" and so on.
if you look into 'chord scale theory' (which is a way of working out extended chords in 1900+ era music) then to me, it seems that the better way is to name chords directly according to modes. for example the generic statement has always seemed funny to me "this is c ionian otherwise known as c major". well, major vs minor is a legacy description so throw it away. today modes are much more common and chord qualities<->modes are compatible concepts. just call it "c ionian" and then it means the harmony on that beat can contain any note in the ionian mode and the harmony will be 'compatible'. (altho this does not specify which intervals are actually played)

in your example you have "1,5,8" where the "8" actually doesnt make sense to have because it is the same as the 1.. in a 7-note-limited-system you will only have 1,3,5,7 as possibilities for any chord so there are not that many combinations.


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In the bigger picture, traditional concept of "chords" fails to capture a lot of things anyway - for example, it does not offer a name for something like "C-D#-F" with "C" in bass as its own entity, instead treating it as modification of something else, like "F7 omit3/C". Such interpretations can make sense in some contexts, but at other times it would be clearer to mark it up as a "C" chord of some sort, like "C:1,4,6".
the thing is, existing chord notation does in fact capture a lot of that, and for everything else, it has to be notated according to human perception (not just isolated notes). there is a whole lot of functional notation which exists that most people do not learn (or learn badly) or which is not taught. a single chord can't really be analyzed out of context. just like in literature you cant really analyze one word of a sentence without context, or one sentence out of a paragraph without context, the definitions or the meanings of words change depending on where they are placed.

"C-D#-F" with "C" in the bass -> you can write one chord over another chord for extended chords, if it is even a chord on that beat, but maybe that combination of notes would simply be indicated as passing notes (or any number of specific names which can be generalized as 'passing notes').

The simple thing is that if there is some strange chord like that, and by that I mean, that set of notes is on a strong beat and emphasized as a singular harmony, most often it will simply sound bad. and who wants to write music which sounds bad.. thats where the 'human perception' element comes into theory/notation and in general the conclusion is "this does not deserve notation because it isn't good" (and for anyone who wants to nitpick "well who decides what sounds good" just save it, that is a naive response)
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Old 10-19-2020, 01:01 PM   #15
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about the problem of sharps and flats:

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instead of staff in which 7 pitches form an octave, it was developed with staff (or piano roll) that directly shows 12 pitches - no need to label nor account for flats/sharps etc.?
if you study vocals (especially classical singing) then the importance of sharps and flats becomes much clearer, i.e. melodic minor scale. in the same scale, i.e. the same diatonic set, i.e. the same tonality, there are two different ways of singing the scale depending on whether the melody is rising, or whether the melody is falling. (look up the scale, but refer to one which has both ascending and descending halves; which is *not* the one always listed in jazz theory texts but the full scale) A scale is not always "simple". the important and practical reason for this is because the human voice naturally (anatomically) is smoother to sing flats when descending, and more accurate pitch can be had when singing sharps while rising. (the purpose of the leading tone i.e. #7 is directly related to the importance of vocal singing, remember, all this was invented in the dark ages essentially, i.e. without technology, and it was important to have everyone be able to sing together without going off pitch all the time)

similarly with enharmonics, the choice of how to spell a note in various contexts (i.e. call it D# or Eb) is very important, just like sometimes you want to type out words like eight and sometimes you want to type a number like 8. it depends on purpose..

that is just one angle of why sharps and flats are important and it is not easy to get rid of them.

however the implication is important: a DAW must have an easy keyboard shortcut for changing the enharmonic spelling of a note and not all DAWs or notation editors do this well. Guitar Pro for example has a specific keyboard shortcut for "switch enharmonic" which changes "D# to Eb" or vice versa (actually it rotates a single note through the variety of enharmonic spellings). LogicX seems to put everything as # on piano roll and staff which is friggin annoying, Logic is always choosing the 'wrong' spelling for the note according to my purpose, I hate it. I dont know what ProTools does but I can't imagine that Avid is very intelligent on picking enharmonic spellings for the user, they probably get it wrong too. I don't know if Reaper has an easy keyboard shortcut or a 'quantize to scale i.e. spell enharmonics correctly' feature, because I havent used Score Editor much yet, but I hope Reaper handles this properly.

Enharmonic spelling is a huge problem! It is like "Smart Autocorrect" in microsoft word which always changes a quote mark to 'smart quotes' which is a unicode symbol and destroys code, or a variety of other symbols which the software "supposedly helpfully" autocorrects for the user. (So then you have to go in and turn all those stupid preferences off, etc) Microsoft gets it wrong with almost every feature they implement.
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Old 10-19-2020, 01:18 PM   #16
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random thought to add: the 12 pitch octave grew out of an effort to represent 7 note scales starting on multiple roots - the target for the notation was not 12-note music but modal music.

the 12-tone equal tempered system is furthermore a compromise as regards tuning. None of the triads on the MIDI keyboard are remotely in tune. Again the system evolved as a convenience.

on the staff, major scales are easy to see - one note per line/space. Similarly intervals in a diatonic framework, are immediately visible - adjacent lines are thirds etc. You can immediately perceive when a pitch is outside the current scale as it will have an accidental.

So for diatonic music I would argue that staff is much more readable than the piano roll (or a notation that puts semitones on discrete lines/spaces).

And I would caution ppl from thinking about the 12-note equal system as a note collection to compose with rather than as a tool to approximate "actual" western folk musics with a superadded cool modulation capacity.

the 12-note equal-tempered collection has a single silvery sound which has no pure intervals save the octave. Once you've heard it you've heard it and it gets old fast. The standardisation of the keyboard in the 20th to semitones of 2^(1/12) has been a loss.
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Old 10-19-2020, 02:16 PM   #17
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the 12-note equal-tempered collection has a single silvery sound which has no pure intervals save the octave. Once you've heard it you've heard it and it gets old fast. The standardisation of the keyboard in the 20th to semitones of 2^(1/12) has been a loss.
that is a fascinating observation.

perhaps the gold standard of harmony comes back to acappela singing, which will not ever be perfectly on the piano-keys due to singers tuning with each other. hearing the overtones when hitting a chord in acappela (or even better, being one of the singers) is really an amazing sound. and it can't be represented in a 12-note system because of that tuning aspect. (Its not a problem of needing to notate microtones, either)

the proof is the astonishing popularity both in general audiences and in industry, of jacob collier's vocal self-harmonies, using tones in a way which is just as valid today as it was when bach was alive.

reference material like this is somewhat useful on this topic : https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews...ion-in-dorico/
Notating microtones in DORICO

just to show that music notation is not static, it is continually under revision, it is just that the change is very slow. Good software developers could accelerate the improvements though... (hint hint!)


and on the topic of accidentals since I brought up DORICO, make note of current variations even in how to notate something as simple as accidentals: (the second choice is insane, every note has an accidental, as if there is an anti-key signature)


Accidental duration rules determine how long accidentals apply, such as within a bar, at a different octave, or just for a single note.

Dorico allows you to use different accidental duration rules.

Common practice
In Dorico, this is the default accidental duration rule. In common practice, an accidental applies for the duration of a bar and only to the pitch at which it is written; each octave requires a separate accidental.

Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School accidental duration rule requires writing every note with an accidental, including naturals.

Modernist
The Modernist accidental duration rule states that only notes that have been altered from the key signature show accidentals; naturals are not shown.
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Old 10-19-2020, 04:24 PM   #18
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Thanks to all commenters so far!

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today modes are much more common and chord qualities<->modes are compatible concepts. just call it "c ionian" and then it means the harmony on that beat can contain any note in the ionian mode and the harmony will be 'compatible'. (altho this does not specify which intervals are actually played)
I've been doing this for years, making charts to facilitate modal mixture, and so on. Eventually I settled on "any collection of pitches can be on any of 12 degrees of 12-pitch scale" mentality, but in most cases I do still utilize the modal thinking.

That said, so far (before this thread, and probably after it too) I have utilized traditional-based, I to VII roman numerals for 12-pitch modal markup, regardless of how (un)orthodox that may be from textbook perspectives. In other words, some of my personal notes include markup such as "vii m7", or "bvii m7" and so on, at very least for descriptive purposes.


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in your example you have "1,5,8" where the "8" actually doesnt make sense to have because it is the same as the 1.. in a 7-note-limited-system you will only have 1,3,5,7 as possibilities for any chord so there are not that many combinations.
In my proposed 12-pitch system "8th" would be the same as "perfect 5th" in 7-pitch system, so my "C:1,5,8" would mean "C,E,G". Basically, start from C as "1" and count semitones - somewhat similar to what you seemed to propose in initial post of that older thread.



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a single chord can't really be analyzed out of context.
Indeed, and defining the context can be a big challenge in some pieces. However, there are pieces (and subgenres) where a single chord or mode can last for long periods of time, thus making the chord its own context, in a way. That happens in some works of Philip Glass, for example, as well as electronic genres such as house and trance. It can be hard to define such passages in terms of strict functional harmony, but just leaving it at marking up the notes and/or mode, and/or an ambiguous chord symbol often feels insufficient for finding out the "harmonic logic" in it.


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"C-D#-F" with "C" in the bass -> you can write one chord over another chord for extended chords, if it is even a chord on that beat, but maybe that combination of notes would simply be indicated as passing notes (or any number of specific names which can be generalized as 'passing notes').

The simple thing is that if there is some strange chord like that, and by that I mean, that set of notes is on a strong beat and emphasized as a singular harmony, most often it will simply sound bad. and who wants to write music which sounds bad.. thats where the 'human perception' element comes into theory/notation and in general the conclusion is "this does not deserve notation because it isn't good" (and for anyone who wants to nitpick "well who decides what sounds good" just save it, that is a naive response)
I think that everyone (be that on level of an individual, or entire culture) has the right to their own perception of what sounds good.

For example, my personal "neural audio processor" tends to treat sus4 as the "stablest" triad chord instead of major. In other words, for my individual perception, sus4 is the "neutral" triad, while major is "happier" and minor is "sadder". Not sure to what extent that is cultural/learned, but it is something I've noticed repeatedly. You can imagine the clash which my younger self had with Western music theory being grounded on what to me is the "overly happy" major scale and major chords

I also tend to like chords which include [voicings of] perfect fourths and fifths, for example m7 in root position (C-Eb-G-Bb, two fifths separated by minor 3rd) and m7 where bass plays the root, but treble has 5th as its lowest pitch (F in bass, C-Eb-F-Ab in treble, thus treble having two fourths separated by minor 3rd). As might be guessed, I also like pieces where long parts (or the whole of it) might effectively be just one chord, or changing from one chord color to another - like Fm7 to Fm9, etc.

And I do in fact like the sound of C-D#-F with C in bass, and C-D-Eb-F with C in bass (in those exact voicings), and could well write an electronic piece where those are in significant role.

I understand of course that my perceptions and preferences may not be similar to those of other people, which brings back to "this does not deserve notation because it isn't good" aspect. That is part of my relationship with music theory - like an abusive teacher, it seems to occasionally imply that my perception of music might be somehow wrong, and might require re-education.
At some of those times, I feel like Captain Picard screaming "there are four lights" after being brainwashed to perceive that there are five - and at others, I question whether I am, in fact, seeing giants instead of windmills, and should indeed be re-educated or admitted to an institution.

That said, I'm not a "saint of harmonic tolerance" either, and can express my likes and dislikes quite harshly if asked to. But having a significant element of widely accepted music theory being in some aspects "against my perception" - and on a bad day, feeling gaslighted by a music theory textbook - has been an interesting life experience

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Old 10-19-2020, 07:38 PM   #19
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I have utilized traditional-based, I to VII roman numerals for 12-pitch modal markup, .... such as "vii m7", or "bvii m7" and so on, at very least for descriptive purposes.
for your own use it doesnt matter what shorthand you use, though if it doesnt describe function according to the observed rules of roman numeral resolution, then there's no real reason to use roman numerals, which are just poor to write in. right?

Even if it is for your own shorthand, using roman numerals is wonky anyways, if you are not describing or using chord function. Might as well use nashville system with numbers and chord quality and be done with it, because nashville does not depict chord function. By 'observed rules' that means the empirical results that for example, "I, IV, V" is a good sounding progression, "ii V7 I" is a good sounding progression, "N6 most often sounds great to be followed by V", etc., there are hundreds of these very specific ones. These are not personal preferences really since they are based on both physics (of vibrating objects) and human perception. All you want is a notation that indicates: one symbol for scale degree, one symbol for chord quality, and subsequent symbols for inversions & extensions. that means symbols like 5∆ or 6- of 7o (that 5 is supposed to be followed by a triangle ∆ but i dunno if this forum supports unicode or what, sometimes it seems to barf)

The entire purpose of roman numerals and/or studying chord function is to recognize the regular sequence of chords, not single chords in isolation... like "ii V I".. and then be able to substitute something "ok i wanna spice it up and not play a V there so instead I can use the common pattern V/V-V-I and that will sound cooler".

So you might claim you do it "at very least for descriptive purposes" but in fact it is not describing anything so why even do it (i.e. why use roman numerals at all.. they're lame).

Quote:
Originally Posted by n997 View Post
I think that everyone (be that on level of an individual, or entire culture) has the right to their own perception of what sounds good. For example, my personal "neural audio processor" tends to treat ...
sure in theory but in reality it is not true. all humans are fundamentally human genetics and that means we all like the sound of I-V-I-V-I. it goes for all civilizations throughout history on every continent and I bet scientists will someday find neanderthal flutes which also have two holes, one for "I" and one for "V". it also follows physics, with the fundamental being 1 and the loudest harmonic being "V", universally for any vibrating instrument whether string or vocal chord. every single ancient village in the world apparently independently came up with pentatonic scale, because it is what people hear.

take someone with really "way out there" music, allen holdsworth (R.I.P.). even his music can be analyzed with normal modal scales etc.

unless you are fundamentally off-your-rocker-with-whacked-out-auditory-perception (highly unlikely) then with any harmonic practice you would feel tones 1-3-5-7 are the most rooted tones to use in music. Look up the natural harmonic series, the connection is based on universal rules of physics..


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Originally Posted by n997 View Post
And I do in fact like the sound of C-D#-F with C in bass, and C-D-Eb-F with C in bass (in those exact voicings), and could well write an electronic piece where those are in significant role.
you should post a chord progression of at least 8 bars which uses that in context, in staff notation so that beats are clearly visible and voicing is clearly visible. and as you might find out, the sound you're enjoying might be a very commonly used progression in a specific genre. because you are human and people have been writing music for 500 years now.

it is much more likely that, just like a kid might like specific colors but not know their names (other than to call a color one of the 3 primaries like Red Green Blue), the music colors that you like already have a name. that is the problem: an entire culture biased towards claiming illiteracy of music is okay because everyone has a unique preference, which is just not true (and in fact, is massively harmful to education). At least if people want to claim to have invented new colors, they should learn the names of all the crayons in a standard crayola crayon box first (at which point they'll find out their favorite color is actually already standardized with the name Bubblegum or whatever).

maybe what you will find out, is that your favorite chord is actually already called the german augmented 6th which nearly always resolves outwards (similar to a double sus but not really) and then you'll say, Wow, someone 200 years ago already wrote a hundred piano solos using that chord.

in the electronic music crowd, many of the harmonies written where listeners are like "whoa, that is soooo out there, it's a new form of music" seems literally to be "I - V - I" but written without knowledge on piano roll, and in such a weird texture of sounds that it is tricky to unravel that it really boils down to just something that simple: I-V-I.

What would be great (hint, hint) is if some software person came along to create a visual system for showing these musical details on-screen and then people could become more informed about music without having to suffer thru learning tons of crufty theory from abusive music instructors.
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Old 10-19-2020, 08:49 PM   #20
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Quote:
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In my proposed 12-pitch system "8th" would be the same as "perfect 5th" in 7-pitch system, so my "C:1,5,8" would mean "C,E,G". Basically, start from C as "1" and count semitones - somewhat similar to what you seemed to propose in initial post of that older thread.
by the way, the atonal systems use C=0 and count to 11, with 12=octave again.


(which is again fairly dumb, since it should be A=0 not C=0)


At some point it becomes nutty to not simply use MIDI numbers:

60=middle C = C4.

the work of renumbering all audible pitches has already been done and it is universal; it is the midi note number.

however, turn on the 'midi note list' and "read the score" ... not very friendly to read, is it.. whether or not someone could learn to sight read midi note numbers in a real score is debatable, well, probably it has been done by somebody, but easy? I wouldnt think so.

remember, some instruments are written in different clefs, and some players sight-read while transposing in their heads. Would a sax player be able to transpose a list of midi note numbers in real-time (up a 3rd? or whatever it is), I doubt the viability of it. which is why staff notation still remains as the system in use.
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Old 10-21-2020, 02:00 AM   #21
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Originally Posted by superblonde.org
for your own use it doesnt matter what shorthand you use, though if it doesnt describe function according to the observed rules of roman numeral resolution, then there's no real reason to use roman numerals, which are just poor to write in. right?
Besides functions, I use roman numerals due to them not being attached to any note-pitch. Therefore, once I find that for example i-VI-iv-v in natural minor (i-bVI-iv-v in pseudo-12-pitch markup) sounds good, I can apply it fairly easily in any key and context I want, just by remembering that roman numeral formula.

Regarding functions: if I can't identify one for a given degree, I simply treat its roman numeral as non-functional and descriptive. That still retains the "relativeness" benefit of it.

That said, if my personal perception implies that there is a function (as in, a chord on a degree tends to lead to another chord on another degree), then, even if I've never seen that particular function in a texbook - or a person on a forum says it does not exist - I tend to consider it functional. After all, music makers do not exist to serve and comply with any theory, it is the other way around - any theory exists to serve and comply with music makers, as they wish to apply it.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
By 'observed rules' that means the empirical results that for example, "I, IV, V" is a good sounding progression, "ii V7 I" is a good sounding progression, "N6 most often sounds great to be followed by V", etc., there are hundreds of these very specific ones. These are not personal preferences really since they are based on both physics (of vibrating objects) and human perception.
I tend to dislike hearing those progressions in most forms I've ever heard them. That surely is a personal preference.

For that matter, with very few exceptions, I wouldn't voluntarily listen to most of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and others of their eras. As part of studies, perhaps, yes, but for enjoyment, very rarely. I also personally dislike almost any basic realization of I-IV-V in major, as well as most of the time the V-i cadence in minor (to my preference, it should be v-i or bVII-i or v-IV or whatever else).

What can that be except personal preference, based on perception and emotional association? V-i for example sounds to me almost always too "sour", "unstable" and "sorrowful". I'd use it in a particular part of a film soundtrack, perhaps, but rarely if ever in any type of music that is intended to be listened on its own.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
[...]
All you want is a notation that indicates: one symbol for scale degree, one symbol for chord quality, and subsequent symbols for inversions & extensions.
Indeed, that is what I use the roman numeral system for: roman numeral tells the scale degree, a chord symbol tells the pitches on that degree, and additional symbol tells inversion.

For example, if I want to add [to some piece] a musical reference to Trainspotting, I need to remember that "Born Slippy .NUXX" chords went [in my current personal notation] "I /1 - vii m7 omit5 /1 - V /3", with numbers after slashes telling which interval of the chord is in bass.

And yes, that current roman numeral markup system of mine is as much a confusing compromise as what it is derived from. Hence the existence of this thread - I'd be happy to use or invent something more optimal.



Quote:
Originally Posted by n997
I think that everyone (be that on level of an individual, or entire culture) has the right to their own perception of what sounds good. For example, my personal "neural audio processor" tends to treat ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
sure in theory but in reality it is not true. all humans are fundamentally human genetics and that means we all like the sound of I-V-I-V-I.
As far as I know, laws of physics are (mostly) constant, including those related to sound, and consequently some properties of sensory biology of every living entity are similar. But there can be significant neurobiological differences between individual people, due to multitude of factors.

As for saying that people have no right to their own individual perception of music, I hope you understand that it's a rather silly claim, which leads to all kinds of slippery slopes if taken seriously. I believe we saw one example of that in a previous thread.

That said, if you really believe that all people have same sensory perception and neural processing, I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise here. If you want to explore that, chat up people involved in neurobiology, sensory neuroscience, and those taking care of people on autism spectrum. The latter group in particular might have some interesting stories to tell.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
[...] physics, with the fundamental being 1 and the loudest harmonic being "V", universally for any vibrating instrument whether string or vocal chord.
[...]
with any harmonic practice you would feel tones 1-3-5-7 are the most rooted tones to use in music. Look up the natural harmonic series, the connection is based on universal rules of physics..
I've been familiar with harmonic series for a long time, being a synthesist with preference for additive synthesizers - and, it must be said, I like many sounds which don't follow harmonic series.

In natural harmonic series, intervals of octave, perfect fifth and perfect fourth are between first four partials of harmonic series, depending on how they are looked at:




EDIT: IMAGE UPDATED ON 2020-11-22; reasons: typo in previous file, more information in new file
For reference, old file should be still available at: https://forum.cockos.com/attachment....1&d=1603274296


... which correlates with three simplest ratios being 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (perfect fifth) and 4:3 (perfect fourth).

The 1-3-5-m7 pattern is indeed found early in harmonic series, if counting continuously from 4th partial. But in same space other intervals can also be found, depending on where one starts counting. What significance that has to universality of musical hearing, I am not sure.

What I do know is that despite octaves, fifths, fourths and pentatonic scales being common to music of many cultures, the fact remains that cultural exposure to music does change somewhat the perception, or at very least the preferences of the listener.
This can be easily proven by playing, for example, varieties of traditional Asian music to Western listeners. It is common for many Westerners to perceive unpleasant dissonance in some Asian-style compositions - one recent example might be a backlash to some pieces in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Attached Images
File Type: png harmonic series and intervals.png (18.9 KB, 362 views)

Last edited by n997; 11-22-2020 at 02:18 AM. Reason: clarification
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Old 10-21-2020, 02:09 AM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
you should post a chord progression of at least 8 bars which uses that in context, in staff notation so that beats are clearly visible and voicing is clearly visible.
Apologies for not posting a C-D#-F example nor a staff of it. But, if you're interested, here are two simple pieces of music (not made by me) which have plenty of bars of basically just one pitch, and then just one chord built on that degree, with motion being mostly spectral rather than harmonic, perhaps with a few melodic flourishes in the latter of these:

Armin van Buuren - Sunburn (76 album version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfV7bizVSKE
Marzz - Velvet Star: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRg20ULmiQU



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
people have been writing music for 500 years now.
Writing music for over 1000 years, making music of some kind probably before the era of homo sapiens.


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
that is the problem: an entire culture biased towards claiming illiteracy of music is okay because everyone has a unique preference, which is just not true (and in fact, is massively harmful to education).
Part of the illiteracy problem are the illogical aspects of traditional formal theory, in part due to 7-pitch staff. For example, both piano and guitar are built as 12-pitch-scale instruments (there are 12 semitones on their "user interfaces"). Same goes of course for default piano rolls in DAWs.

So a person without formal musical theory knowledge would just count from C, for example, and find that there is an interesting consonance with the 8th or 7th step, depending on whether they begin with 1 or 0. And then, music theory says it's a "perfect fifth", while the instrument user interface clearly shows that it is not the fifth fret or key from the starting point. And so on.

The other aspect of it is that in many cases, formal theory does not serve people trying to learn it for making their favorite genres - at least not very well.

In last 50 years, the main musical influence on younger generations has been music of their own era. Mainstream charting genres like rock, disco, R&B, synthpop, heavy metal, eurodance, trance and so on are just the tip of the iceberg, underneath which are numerous underground genres. Along with that, both mainstream and underground genres have become increasingly global, taking influences from all kinds of musical traditions, as well as being shaped by various technical advancements.

In contrast, many (if not most) music theory books use as examples only Renaissance and Baroque Western music. For tonal genres based on that, it can admittedly be quickly shown that such theory is indeed useful. But the further one gets away from those genres, the less obvious the applicability of such theory to actual music becomes.

Think, for example, the (in)famous TB-303 lines of acid house, goa trance etc. - there were no information in formal theory books about that at the height of those genres' popularity, and even today in 2020 it's a rare mention.

Of course, anyone who already understood the concepts of pitches, note lengths, staccato, legato, portamento and the idea of spectral changes over a repeating ostinato pattern, would have had a relatively easy time understanding acid lines.
But for a total newbie wanting to make acid house in late 80's? "Buy a 303, remove the batteries for an hour so its memory gets messed up into random patterns, then press play and tweak the knobs" would be a much more useful advice than "learn Renaissance cadences", for example.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
At least if people want to claim to have invented new colors, they should learn the names of all the crayons in a standard crayola crayon box first (at which point they'll find out their favorite color is actually already standardized with the name Bubblegum or whatever).
True. On the other hand, it's OK to invent new words if a person so wishes, especially for individual's internal conceptualization. Verbal and linguistic creativity is part of being human. It is also OK to invent new languages, new composition methods, new sonic textures, new artforms, and so on. It is OK to recontextualize and rediscover. That is all part of being human.

I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on the subject of how much personal preference, perception, conceptualization, terminology etc. is a good thing.

I'm not quite sure what drives you here towards arguing so hard for everyone to speak the same language, and use it in a strict way, considering that a year ago you were considering inventing your own. Learning a language does not generally make a person wish that no other languages existed.

In observing this, I am somewhat reminded of the scene in the movie "Hero", where an emperor disliked that there were 20 ways write the word "sword", and said that his ideal would be to have only one single language in which there would be only one word for "sword". But consolidating the language, while beneficial for co-operation, would also reduce the diversity of expression that language is capable of.

Now, would inventing a version of 12-pitch-based music theory be expanding the expressive possibilites in music, or reducing them? Considering that as many have stated, the old 7-pitch-based system is unlikely to go away, it seems perplexing to argue against formulating existing knowledge into new variations of music theory.




Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
in the electronic music crowd, many of the harmonies written where listeners are like "whoa, that is soooo out there, it's a new form of music" seems literally to be "I - V - I" but written without knowledge on piano roll, and in such a weird texture of sounds that it is tricky to unravel that it really boils down to just something that simple: I-V-I.
Indeed, and sometimes there is no V even, just i, and it may even omit an interval or few. So that texture becomes the core of that music. I like such textural movement particularly in intros and outros of some tracks by Planisphere, but also when I encounter similar tone clusters/textures in modern film music and art music.

Here's an example of that, "Symphotek" by Planisphere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vel41ViM_ZQ&t=160
They made a number of tracks of that formula: textural intro, tonal/harmonic breakdown, and textural outro. While not an argument for 12-pitch-based theory as such, music like this underlines the value of both new ideas (textural movement) and old ideas (tonal harmonic movement).


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
What would be great (hint, hint) is if some software person came along to create a visual system for showing these musical details on-screen
Spectrum analysis and spectrographs at high frequency-domain resolution settings (FFT 16384 at least) help in that. Also, Melodyne DNA -type technology helps to understand textures as sums of partials.


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
remember, some instruments are written in different clefs, and some players sight-read while transposing in their heads. Would a sax player be able to transpose a list of midi note numbers in real-time (up a 3rd? or whatever it is), I doubt the viability of it. which is why staff notation still remains as the system in use.
Indeed - I have nothing against people using their preferred notation system and theory. I see the benefits of that as clearly as I see the benefits of there being a 12-pitch-based version of notation and music theory.


***

Regarding such derivative efforts in general, there exists an example of re-labeling Circle of Fifths with numbers and colors, and selling it as "Harmonic Mixing" system to DJs. This was done by just a single company, but resulted in the system - integrated into analysis software called "Mixed in Key" - becoming common in DJ usage.
The core of their business was based on the idea that majority of DJs would not know music theory and would thus benefit from their "Camelot Wheel". Judging from success of their business, they were right - and the other thing they did right was including the traditonal key names - C major, A minor etc. in their system. So they got both the theoretically unskilled DJs as well as theory-knowing musician-DJs to use their system.

While translating 7-pitch-based theory into 12-pitch-based version is a much more complex effort, "Mixed in Key" still presents an interesting example of inventing a "new language" alongside "old language" and then including both newspeakers and oldspeakers.
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Old 10-21-2020, 06:53 PM   #23
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To clarify: I'm looking for/proposing a system where knowledge from 7-pitch-based theory is kept, but situations where one asks "Why?" and is replied "only because of 7-pitch-staff" do not, ideally, happen.



BASIC PREMISE

A system I'm looking for does the following:
Code:
- requires only elementary understanding of mathematics
	- ideally, only basic numbers; no "t" and "e" as in set theory etc. 

- marks up intervals and chord degrees in 12 pitches per octave (duodecave?)

- includes markup for relative degree descriptions, like roman numerals

- has chord symbols/encodings that:
	1. can specify at least basic inversions
	2. are easy to decode without traditional music theory knowledge
	3. can be decoded by counting intervals on 12-pitch keyboard, frets, pianoroll etc.
	4. are visually simple and clear to humans
	5. are ASCII-compatible and machine-readable

- ideally, does not require much memorization nor cognitive decoding

- ideally, inherits as much as possible useful knowledge from 7-pitch-based system

- ideally, does not cause confusion between 7-pitch-based and 12-pitch-based symbols and terminology


INTERVALS: NUMBERING AND NAMING

Obviously, the first question is whether to use 0-11 or 1-12. In some aspects 0-11 is more logical; in others 1-12. I would suppose that 1-12 would be clearer for young children; but then again, even programming languages differ in whether arrays etc. start from 0 or 1.

In this post, I'll use 0-11.

The second question is what to call semitone and octave, since both terms are derived from 7-pitch-staff.
The semitone is simple to rename, at least with 0-11 numbering - I'll just call it a "step" and shorten it to "st". The concept of step involves moving from something to something, so 0 means no movement, usefulness of which will be evident later on.
Octave is a well-known word in may contexts and fields, and I'm uneasy with substituting it with "duodecave".
But in this post, I will do so.



NOTE NAMES

The third question would be what letters to use for note names. Here comes the first deviation from avoiding "Why? Because of 7-pitch staff" reason: I think that note names would have to reflect most common MIDI piano roll labelings in DAWs, which are C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B.

I'd say that in most cases practical usefulness is more important than idealism.
So for this post, I'll use "C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B" note naming.



CHORD SYMBOLS

For chord symbols, a big question is which style to choose:
Code:
A) interval-distance-style (somewhat like figured bass etc.)
	- counting intervals from specified pitch-note
	- each inversion has its own formula 
	- better for descriptive classification of heard phenomena
	- can mark exact voicings of complex chords as numbers, but at the cost of legibility
	- requires only counting, little to no memorization nor translation

B) pitch-collection-style (somewhat like current chord symbols)
	- counting intervals from root of the chord
	- each pitch collection has its own formula
	- inversions specified with a slash
	- better for reductive analysis and improvisation
	- can NOT mark exact voicings of complex chords, but is always fairly legible
	- requires some memorization and translation of inversions etc.
Of course, both interval-distance-style and pitch-collection-style could be included, by using different separator marks between interval numbers, but then the same chord (or what we currently classify as chord) would have to be specified via different pitch-notes. A first inversion of C major would then be both "C:0,4,7 /4" and "E:0-3-8".

As stated above, the interval-distance-style would be in some ways more descriptive and useful for understanding the aural nature of inversions, since the first inversion of a major triad contains a minor third (3 st) and a minor sixth (8 st). But I still find that somewhat confusing - perhaps due to being too used to "pitch-collection-style" format of current chord symbols.

In this post, I'll use "pitch-collection-style" markup.

The usage of slash to mark the inversion in "pitch-collection-style" symbols is somewhat uneasy, but I could not at this time find any alternative that'd be equally legible and sensible. The additional benefit is that slash is already used for similar purpose in current chord symbols.


Here's an example of "pitch-collection-style" labeling of basic triads:
Code:
C Major (Ionian) scale		
	
st	root position	1st inv		2nd inv
	
0	C:0,4,7		C:0,4,7 /4	C:0,4,7 /7			
1						
2	D:0,3,7		D:0,3,7 /3	D:0,3,7 /7		
3						
4	E:0,3,7		E:0,3,7 /3	E:0,3,7 /7					
5	F:0,4,7		F:0,4,7 /4	F:0,4,7 /7					
6						
7	G:0,4,7		G:0,4,7 /4	G:0,4,7 /7					
8						
9	A:0,3,7		A:0,3,7 /3	A:0,3,7 /7					
10						
11	B:0,3,6		B:0,3,6 /3	B:0,3,6 /6
Also, when an exact note-pitch must be specified, that can be added to note name, for example "C4:0,4,7"



SCALE DEGREES

For marking up scale degrees, and chords upon them with their inversions, I'm facing the choice of whether to use roman numerals or arabic numerals. Roman numerals would allow to use lowercase for minor and uppercase for major, which is very useful for much of tonal music.

My main case against using I-XII roman numerals is that they would confuse immensely people who are used to 7-pitch-based roman numeral system, including myself; and also, it would cause much confusion for users of proposed 12-pitch-based system when they consult traditional theory books. Effectively, it'd cause the inverse of the very problem I'm looking solutions for!

An alternative would be using arabic numerals also for chord degrees, and add either chord symbols (":1,4,7") or other chord quality desriptors, such as modes and/or best-known traditional chord names.
In any case, the purpose of this system needs to be kept in mind: it must be able to contain existing scales/modes in their entirety.

Some comparisons:
Code:
st  	7-pitch roman 		12-pitch, basic triads	12-pitch, modes

0	I			0: 0,4,7		0: ionian
1				1			1	
2	ii			2: 0,3,7		2: dorian
3				3 			3
4	iii			4: 0,3,7		4: phrygian
5	IV			5: 0,4,7		5: lydian
6				6			6
7	V			7: 0,4,7		7: mixolydian
8				8			8
9	vi			9: 0,3,7		9: aeolian
10				10			10
11	viio			11: 0,3,6		11: locrian
It might be suggested that since significant target audience for 12-pitch-based theory are electronic music makers and DJs, I might reuse "Mixed in Key" labeling system. The problem with that is that it only recognizes majors and minors, as far as I understand - so I'd rather use chord symbols and/or mode names, as they offer extended chord suggestions. Besides, the "Mixed in Key" system seems to be copyrighted and trademarked.


Also, it might be asked, what would I reply to the question "if this is a system of 12-pitch scales, why aren't there chords and modes for all of 12 degrees?"

And that would be a very good and valuable question. My initial answer would be "because original intention was to capture traditional knowledge within this expanded system". But a natural consequence of having 12 pitches per duodecave might well lead to popular emergence of 12-pitch scales. I can imagine that one of first such scales (where effectively any pitch collection on any degree is allowed) would be mixed major/minor (ionian/aeolian). Many music makers might only ever need that for most of their career.

Last edited by n997; 10-21-2020 at 07:04 PM.
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Old 10-21-2020, 07:41 PM   #24
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Arnold Schoenberg did this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-tone_technique
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Old 10-22-2020, 03:07 AM   #25
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there's a bunch of contradicting comments in the previous long replies.

"I'm not quite sure what drives you here towards arguing so hard for everyone to speak the same language, and use it in a strict way, considering that a year ago you were considering inventing your own. Learning a language does not generally make a person wish that no other languages existed."

This is incorrect interpretation of what I've written. I've been attempting to point out that making up words which are more complex and obscure meaning even further, because the new author doesn't know proper vocabulary, serves no purpose and in fact degrades the purpose. You can name your arbitrary chord "mcmlvii89" but does that help or harm notation? of course it harms notation because it is even more confusing, though someone could say "well it still uses roman numerals so it makes perfect sense". that person would be wrong.

"Indeed, that is what I use the roman numeral system for: roman numeral tells the scale degree, a chord symbol tells the pitches on that degree, and additional symbol tells inversion. "

It is just incorrect to use roman numerals which convey no additional meaning. Roman numerals are lame. To use them in a context which does not even have the benefit of the lame roman numeral system, is lame squared.

Both Nashville notation and Lead Sheet Notation already exist to do what you are doing with roman numerals: to show the chord based on the scale degree plus the chord quality and qualifiers. Nashville notation calls it 7-7. Lead Sheet Notation calls it Bm7 or whatever.

other major points:


1. newer (past 2 decades) music theory books do study new music ("of this generation"). The movement of music theory in general, is to be inclusive of 'pop' and does study songs like beatles, etc, alongside mozart. the new trend towards inclusivity (vs. focusing only on the old dead white guys) holds for all education (i.e. lit class, poli sci class, etc) and also music theory, just that music seems to move a ton slower. but you have to get one of the newer textbooks ($$$). and, the music is analyzed with the same methods used for mozart. the same functions can be used to describe almost all of the music.


2. the " 7-pitch-based theory " named here, i guess is hoping to mean, "tertian harmony as standardized pre-1900". you could simply call it, "tonal harmony" which is what everyone else calls it. Well, there's more than 7 chords in that system, and many more permutations than 7 too. There is the standard set (I, ii, iii, IV, ...). This set also specifies the secondaries, which will cover any other chord you can come up with (V/V, IV/V, ...). Then there are the 1800's additions: N, It, Fr, Gr, Sw. Do you know those?


3. in general, the 12-tone system is called, "atonal harmony", to counter the previous era's "tonal harmony", so you might want to use those terms. but there is some academic disagreement over the word atonal so there's some other names too, which try to be more correct.



4. Several points about the difficulty of music theory are not correct. Yes, many decades of music theory textbooks are pure junk, and misleading (including the horrible PISTON). "Part of the illiteracy problem are the illogical aspects of traditional formal theory." You desire a new system "easy to decode without traditional music theory knowledge". Hey, people complain about math being hard. A bunch of yahoo's got together an invented a new system of teaching it called "new math" and it took years for them to realize what everyone else saw immediately: that it was a massive failure. To learn music theory, find the good, recently-written modern theory book, and read it and do the exercises. Without all the nonsense misdirection and mistaken explanations from people who don't know theory or claim to know theory yet only know jazz-pop theory, learning it is not hard, except for one thing: music theory texts are still very, very heavily grand-staff piano focused, so if you don't know how to read grand staff, it will be slow going. It's not the theory itself which is hard. The way in which theory is taught is the hard part. (Especially when there are cranky old music teachers involved)



5. here is the truth about roman numerals: they were chosen for political & religious reasons. The proper notation would be the greek alphabet which is what all the sciences adopted (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, ......), both upper and lower case. But because the art/music world were trying to be "unique little snowflakes with unique new perceptions" they chose roman numerals, 1. in an attempt to rekindle perceived superiority of roman empire; 2. in an attempt to push superiority of western european race over the eastern (persian, moorish, gypsy, non-christian) world. now you have 2 big new reasons to hate roman numerals.


6. mistakes regarding music theory and figured bass. you may like to know, that figured bass is 'on the out' in modern textbooks. the newer generation of educators apparently says it should be labelled obsolete permanently. the newer textbooks already discard some combinations as invalid even though they are well defined in older textbooks. VII6 is one of these, I64 is one of these (I64 is now labelled as a pair: V64-V53), theres some others I forget.

7. "But a natural consequence of having 12 pitches per duodecave might well lead to popular emergence of 12-pitch scales." It has been done and [b]it will never be popular[/i] just like throwing an entire spice cabinet into soup and calling it a great recipe will never be popular. It will taste like nothing or everything at the same time with no form. Human perception looks for balance (this is anatomical, not cultural) and that balance is found by using the main notes (the fundamentals) with some occasional non-fundamental notes. You could even say the universe itself looks for balance, in the form of self-symmetry (chaos theory) so the need for balance goes beyond human perception and is a universal, physical law for all systems, including vibrating ones aka music.

8.

if you take those points above in combination, it's like someone trying to invent a new language without knowing grammar of any good language first. Read Schoenberg, find out why these avenues have been tried and failed. you've not taken into account the previous comments about melodic minor scale ascending vs. descending (i.e. why different accidentals of the same note are very important to use). it's important to get a handle on that before spending time proposing a new system which already invalidates the basic needed rules of music.




now onto the system...


"- ideally, only basic numbers; no "t" and "e" as in set theory etc. "

you've already run into trouble here, because the best system will have 1 character to represent the basic tones of the system. So if you have to use two characters ("10" and "11") then you are already running into difficulty.


"easy to decode without traditional music theory knowledge"

I think you'll have to really get to the bottom of what you mean by "traditional music theory knowledge". The suggestion is like saying you want to study physics but throw away everything Newton ever formalized. 500 years of decoding music have resulted in a lot of good theory. You do not want to throw that away just because Piston writes a confusing textbook or Leonard Bernstein can't explain music in a television special to save his life. Most of the "problem decoding" is a result of roman numerals, which are simply difficult to think in, or write in, or read; which is why no other system on the planet still uses roman numerals.


" are ASCII-compatible and machine-readable"

this is asking for the impossible. you will at least have to allow for unicode. because you need to choose symbols smartly. And ASCII does not have enough symbols.

Current software technology surpasses the limitations of ascii. Javascript for web music notation is ripe for expansion. So is Reaper. None have to be shackled to 1970's limitation of ASCII.


"does not require much memorization nor cognitive decoding"

this is highly ambiguous. because the most basic and frequently used systems of all, math and language, both require a fair amount of memorization (some could call it a significant amount, some would say it is only a small amount of memorization). addition tables, subtraction tables, multiplication tables. For music there will be a chunk of things to memorize and decode.

there are something like 85 highly common cadences in music. you could memorize them all, but no one does. most musicians memorize about 6. most general people memorize about 2.



" A first inversion of C major would then be both "C:0,4,7 /4" and "E:0-3-8". "

this is just crazy impractical. there is no room on a score to write all that out.

look at the difficulty there is for writing even basic chords now, due to space.

look at what a literal pain in the bass it is in my figure below to annotate staff music and this is a simple example not even complex. It would be impossible to use a notation like "C:0,4,7 /4"


I will give you the big hint again, a solution could well exist to base the system on the greek alphabet (which can provide uppercase & lowercase for the two most basic chord qualities) and use the greek modal names to directly relate to chord qualities.

also, you will have to extend your basic countable pitch out to 2 octaves at a minimum, because extended chords in music use up to the 15th scale degree (i.e. you must account for C13 chord).


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Old 10-22-2020, 06:23 AM   #26
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Of course there is... actually there are (because the original notation system described by the Just intonation by Pythagoras 2500 years back was also 12 note system).

Recently I updated my Plain Notation System, which is a 12 note based music notation system, and it is based around the concept of a Dominant chord... well... dominancy. Hence the tru major is the one we hear from each notes own charmonics. Thus the "classical" (church) approach is and was just a stylistic (genre) mode movement based on wrongly assumed I-IV-V-I structure.

My original post is here:
Plain Notation System
(old)


Bellow I have attached (click on images for full size resolution) the updated version + two keyboards I have designed - one is an improvement over the standard piano and the other one is a completely new uniform keyboard (Dreschke-Janko derivative):


















Here are the links to .pdf documents regarding the 12-note notation and the design of the keyboards:

The notation system as an excerpt in image format (same as the first pdf file above):








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Old 10-22-2020, 11:36 AM   #27
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regarding figured bass, this is an example of a standard harmonic exercise for figured bass, any new tone notation system should be able to provide a solution. mozart.

note the number of non diatonic tones.

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Old 10-22-2020, 02:46 PM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
It is just incorrect to use roman numerals which convey no additional meaning. Roman numerals are lame. To use them in a context which does not even have the benefit of the lame roman numeral system, is lame squared.
But as you can see, that example does in fact convey additional meaning - it uses roman numerals to include descriptive modal markup, which is well useful for my needs.

Your opinion of it being lame does not make it any less useful to me or anyone else who might use similar markup.


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
1. newer (past 2 decades) music theory books do study new music ("of this generation").
Well, I haven't found any music theory textbook that decribes how to create, for example, acid house, goa trance, liquid drum & bass, dubstep, progressive trance, hypnotic techno, and so on.

The fact remains that most of those (sub)genres are either ignored by textbooks or mentioned in passing as a subset of "electronic", with little to no help in how to make them. Some of those genres can in fact contain more-or-less tonal passages, but I've never seen them analyzed to the extent of the usual Renaissance and Baroque staples.

The only exception might be Michael Hewitt's "for Computer Musicians" book series, which do have examples from some electronic genres of 90s and 00s. But for all the good intentions of the author, he obviously has more knowledge about formal theory than the music his books try to help in making.

Not that it matters much for actual topic of this thread - just an observation.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
2. the " 7-pitch-based theory " named here, i guess is hoping to mean, "tertian harmony as standardized pre-1900". you could simply call it, "tonal harmony" which is what everyone else calls it. Well, there's more than 7 chords in that system, and many more permutations than 7 too. There is the standard set (I, ii, iii, IV, ...). This set also specifies the secondaries, which will cover any other chord you can come up with (V/V, IV/V, ...). Then there are the 1800's additions: N, It, Fr, Gr, Sw. Do you know those?
My very first post in this thread says:
Could all that is good and useful in existing, "7-pitch-staff-based" formal music theory be translated into a version based on 12-pitch staff/pianoroll?

I'm sure I have explained this already, but primary problem I'm trying to solve are the markup styles and symbols based on 7-pitch staff being confusing in relation to any instrument that has 12 pitches in its interface.

Again, my proposed system would allow to describe any of 12 pitches on any of 12 degrees, thus encompassing whatever is already discovered in tonal harmony, including any degree functions and any chords. It would be a "superset" that includes tonal harmony.

And of course, if published for others, that system would include things outside my personal preferences, including the equivalent of I-IV-V and so on.

Surely by now, with all examples and explanations, it is becoming clear what I mean



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
[...] learning it is not hard, except for one thing: music theory texts are still very, very heavily grand-staff piano focused, so if you don't know how to read grand staff, it will be slow going. It's not the theory itself which is hard. The way in which theory is taught is the hard part. (Especially when there are cranky old music teachers involved)
I agree - much confusion is caused by markup and terminology based on 7-pitch-per-octave staff in the era of 12-pitch-based instruments and composition tools. That is at the center of problem I'm trying to solve.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
you may like to know, that figured bass is 'on the out' in modern textbooks. the newer generation of educators apparently says it should be labelled obsolete permanently.
Yep, this has been obvious for a long time. The concept of marking interval distances however can still have its purposes.

And surely, if a person finds usefulness in figured bass notation, they are free to utilize it as they wish, regardless of anyone else's opinion of it.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
7. "But a natural consequence of having 12 pitches per duodecave might well lead to popular emergence of 12-pitch scales."

It has been done and it will never be popular just like throwing an entire spice cabinet into soup and calling it a great recipe will never be popular.
The ubiquity of borrowed chords and mode mixture in recent decades surely is obvious to you as well. Even theory books by Benward & Saker - quoted by yourself on this forum! - teach modal mixture, and in analyses found in Schoenberg's books there are bVIIs and bVIs.

A 12-pitch mixed major/minor scale might include most common borrowed chords between those scales, without the need to define it as "modal mixture" or "borrowing".



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
8. if you take those points above in combination, it's like someone trying to invent a new language without knowing grammar of any good language first.
I know, or at least have access to, enough of existing theory to attempt what I am attempting. I have a good number of formal theory books from 1900s to 2000s at hand (including Schoenberg, Piston, Benward & Saker, Hewitt etc.) to reference if needed.

Even if that wasn't the case, a person would be quite within their existential rights as a human being to take a look at 12-pitch piano roll and develop an original system of classifying and describing pitches in it, especially combined with analysis and transcription of existing music. It's another matter altogether whether or not such a system would be useful to others, of course.

I'd consider myself reasonably informed by previous knowledge, though not an expert in it. You can of course disagree.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
Read Schoenberg, find out why these avenues have been tried and failed.
I have read some Schoenberg and several others. None have stated that music theory should never be translated, expanded, repurposed or reinvented - and even if someone did state so, the very existence of notation style in current textbooks compared to, say, neumatic notation, is evidence of expanded and derivative systems developing with time.

It would be illogical to claim that such progression (or attempts at it) should be stopped.


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
it's important to get a handle on that before spending time proposing a new system which already invalidates the basic needed rules of music.
I agree. Again, I'm not arguing for invalidation, but expansion and inclusion via translation. The existence of alternative systems does not invalidate anything in other systems.

No matter what kind of theory I might come up with - and its level of popular acceptance (or non-acceptance) if I choose to publish it - it will not stop anyone from using 7-pitch-staff and following Renaissance and Baroque traditions, both in analysis and composition, to whatever extent they wish.

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Old 10-22-2020, 02:53 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
"- ideally, only basic numbers; no "t" and "e" as in set theory etc. "

you've already run into trouble here, because the best system will have 1 character to represent the basic tones of the system. So if you have to use two characters ("10" and "11") then you are already running into difficulty.
I do not see any difficulty nor trouble there. I find the all-numbers system clearer than having "t" and "e" there - it is a benefit rather than trouble.

Using plain numbers also makes the symbols directly compatible with processing via scripts etc.


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
"easy to decode without traditional music theory knowledge"

I think you'll have to really get to the bottom of what you mean by "traditional music theory knowledge".
The bottom of it is, as I wrote before:
I'm looking for/proposing a system where knowledge from 7-pitch-based theory is kept, but situations where one asks "Why?" and is replied "only because of 7-pitch-staff" do not, ideally, happen.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
" are ASCII-compatible and machine-readable"

this is asking for the impossible. you will at least have to allow for unicode. because you need to choose symbols smartly. And ASCII does not have enough symbols.

Current software technology surpasses the limitations of ascii. Javascript for web music notation is ripe for expansion. So is Reaper. None have to be shackled to 1970's limitation of ASCII.
It is clearly not impossible. Limiting it to ASCII would maintain good compatibility with DAWs for writing the symbols like "0:1,4,7" as names of items/clips/patterns etc., and as Text Events.

For example, I routinely use item names and text events for labeling degrees, chords etc. when transcribing and analyzing material in REAPER.
When named in widely compatible and easily parseable character set, scripting can be used to get those item names, their MIDI notes and text events from the project data, and utilize it for export, translation, modification or whatever.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
"does not require much memorization nor cognitive decoding"

this is highly ambiguous. because the most basic and frequently used systems of all, math and language, both require a fair amount of memorization (some could call it a significant amount, some would say it is only a small amount of memorization). addition tables, subtraction tables, multiplication tables. For music there will be a chunk of things to memorize and decode.
I agree, but would nevertheless like to minimize the requirement of memorization and cognitive encoding/decoding, beyond what people already know.

As far as I know, ASCII is the most supported character set in computing devices around the world, and arabic are the most used numerals.
So to be able to use my proposed system, people would only need to be familiar with basic Latin-based (ASCII) alphabet for note names, and arabic numerals for everything else. They would not need to memorize a multitude of new symbols, but could decipher symbols like "C:0,4,7" simply by counting step intervals.

In other words: no need to memorize or look up which intervals m7, 7sus4, Maj7, 9, Maj9, m9, 11, etc. contain, and by what logic are those symbols formed and deciphered.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
" A first inversion of C major would then be both "C:0,4,7 /4" and "E:0-3-8". "

this is just crazy impractical. there is no room on a score to write all that out.

look at the difficulty there is for writing even basic chords now, due to space.

look at what a literal pain in the bass it is in my figure below to annotate staff music and this is a simple example not even complex. It would be impossible to use a notation like "C:0,4,7 /4"
Good observation there. Indeed, those symbols would be impractical on a fixed-width, paper-based staff. That also explains why figured bass and cell notation (as linked before in this thread) place intervals on vertical axis. However, for scrollable and zoomable arrangement view with MIDI items, and MIDI piano roll with text events, "C:0,4,7 /4" is quite practical.

It is becoming increasingly evident that the system I propose is applicable primarily for DAWs and pianorolls. Perhaps I should start a new thread focused on just that, named "Harmony markup system for 12-pitch pianoroll in DAWs".


Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
also, you will have to extend your basic countable pitch out to 2 octaves at a minimum, because extended chords in music use up to the 15th scale degree (i.e. you must account for C13 chord).
Extended chords can be described in my proposed markup.

In pitch-collection-style labeling, a C13 would be "C:0,2,4,5,7,9,10".
However, the user would have to decide much of the voicing for themselves - thus, as I wrote before, requiring some memorization and translation. So I'd have to include a chapter on voicings (obviously). I'm still working on how to do this optimally, so that it includes the traditional "thirds-based" voicing concept as well as any other possible voicings in a simple and logical way.

In interval-distance-style labeling, "thirds-based" root position voicing of C13 would be "C:0-4-7-9-14-17-21". As stated before, this has its drawbacks, but for decriptive labeling it is simple and exact, marking the semitone steps.

It could be argued that length of such symbols is a problem, and indeed it can be. For example, marking every 16th of a passage with such horizontal labels is impossible on a paper staff, as previously noted. However, using zoomable and scrollable media on a computing device takes care of that, with enough zoom-in. But of course, in some cases, such labels might be best represented as text events in vertical direction, in down-top order, if such thing was supported in software.
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Old 10-22-2020, 02:54 PM   #30
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Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
any new tone notation system should be able to provide a solution.
Not a solution, but a description of the realized music.
Figured bass is for a person to decode/realize, as it allows some interpretation - as you are aware, of course.

You being the textbook expert, feel free to realize that exercise exactly how you wish, and link me a MIDI file of it, so that I get exactly what you intend. I can then desribe that in my proposed 12-pitch system, in text events of a MIDI file. I will add both pitch-collection symbols and interval-distance symbols.

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Old 10-22-2020, 02:57 PM   #31
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Of course there is... actually there are (because the original notation system described by the Just intonation by Pythagoras 2500 years back was also 12 note system).
Thanks for chiming in - I was wondering when you would comment in this thread I will take an extended look at your recent links.

Most likely, my own proposed system will now be refocused primarily for DAWs and MIDI piano rolls (and continued in another thread), but it is good to be informed on various alternatives, as they may lead to ideas for improvements.
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Old 10-22-2020, 04:01 PM   #32
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Originally Posted by n997 View Post
Thanks for chiming in - I was wondering when you would comment in this thread I will take an extended look at your recent links.

Most likely, my own proposed system will now be refocused primarily for DAWs and MIDI piano rolls (and continued in another thread), but it is good to be informed on various alternatives, as they may lead to ideas for improvements.
Every system that uses 12 unique note symbols for the 12 notes in 12-TET can be visualised as a midi-roll.

The problem (with midi-roll): it takes a huge space.
Here is a comparison of "clusterfucked" (dummy² chord) for comparison of the three systems. With wide chords... it is even worse for the midi-roll and standard notation system to handle it. (the dimmed score is a 1:1 size as if it would appear on a A4 sheet size page, the other scores are roughly 1:1 in size to it)
For my system it takes practically the same vertical space.




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Old 10-23-2020, 03:04 AM   #33
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Well, I haven't found any music theory textbook that decribes how to create, for example, acid house, goa trance, liquid drum & bass, dubstep, progressive trance, hypnotic techno, and so on.
thats because a theory textbook describes music which is novel (has some unique aspect, i.e. provides example of a new musical rule) and these genres are not novel. (and also cant quote many examples from new music due to copyright)

i mention this because it is a frequent improper excuse used for dismissing 500 years of music analysis. the false excuse of, "well this textbook doesnt explain how to write appalachian hexatonic punk so the theory is useless, or jazz either" when in fact appalachian hexatonic punk uses the same musical harmony and rhythm as well-described music of the 1650's or whatever with the addition of rhythms from 1920's. acid house is not using any new chords which have not already been played for 100+ years and not any new rhythms which are not described by a jazz rhythm book.

the big valid complaint is regarding the accessibility of theory (ease of understanding the material) and it will require quite a bit of distillation to clarify a system which individually names each individual chromatic note.

" Limiting it to ASCII would maintain good compatibility with DAWs for writing the symbols like "0:1,4,7" as names of items/clips/patterns etc., and as Text Events."

this seems to be a tangent:

'lets make an easily comprehended decimal system, no t or e as in base-12'
'lets use C:0,4,7 to name chords or 0:1,4,7'
'it should only use ascii'

well, that is literally the MIDI note table. your chord is literally "60, 64, 67" as a MIDI string and simpler than "C:0,4,7" or "0:1,4,7".
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Old 10-23-2020, 04:34 AM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by n997
"A first inversion of C major would then be both "C:0,4,7 /4" and "E:0-3-8"."
This is just crazy impractical. there is no room on a score to write all that out.

Look at the difficulty there is for writing even basic chords now, due to space.

It would be impossible to use a notation like "C:0,4,7 /4"

That to both of you is inconvenient way of writing chords and their inversions.
Inversion is technically notes jumping back and forth over the root note. You should preserve that behaviour in the notation as well, as it will resemble the actual structure of the chord on the instrument (piano, guitar, harp, etc.).
Thus a Cmaj chord should simply be written as:

C4·7

meaning: play C + the note 4 steps above it + the note 7 steps above it (together).

Single : (colon) symbol should be used if a note is in the next octave (renova) higher or lower:

C4·7:C

meaning: play C + the note 4 steps above it + the note 7 steps above it + "octave" repeat of the root (together).

Seemingly, a Cmaj9 "ninth" chord (such a wrong name!) can be written as follows:

C4·7:2

C4·7:C:2 (with an "octave" repeat of the root, you can not have it in the old Cmaj9 way of writing chords)

Then by applying the simple formula of inversions: Ix + x = 12 and the jumping over the root note, we can get the following correctly written inversions of Cmaj:

8C7
8·5C
5C4

Short, meaningful (non ambiguous) extremely precise and fast.

So called slashed chords such as Amaj7/G could be written as they appear:
2A4·7·11

Already explained in the Plain Notation System why this is the best way of writing chords.
Can be applied to a Leed Sheet notation improving the old ambiguous way of writing chords with bass and their inversions, including crazy wide chords!



Of course, I would not use the old way of naming the notes (both church based Do, Re, Mi... or C, D, E... respectively) if we are going to use a 12-note based system.

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Old 10-23-2020, 07:59 AM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
[regarding acid house, goa trance, liquid drum & bass, dubstep, progressive trance, hypnotic techno, and so on.]

thats because a theory textbook describes music which is novel (has some unique aspect, i.e. provides example of a new musical rule) and these genres are not novel. (and also cant quote many examples from new music due to copyright)
Those genres are sufficiently novel, I would say.

Compare goa trance from artists like Astral Projection, or Simon Posford / Hallucinogen, to Bach and Beehtoven, for example. I'm sure you will find clear similarities in many underlying things, but also a lot of differences, which I'd argue make goa trance novel enough.

Same goes for those other genres. Harmonic aspects of liquid drum & bass for example can be well considered in context of jazz theory, but liquid DnB is different enough to classify as having its own identity and novelty.

We agree on the fact that being well versed in established theories can go a long way in giving a person cognitive tools to understand almost any new genre. And obviously I very much agree that musical knowledge accumulated from previous centuries is important to maintain and make available for anyone who wishes to be aware of it, and/or utilize it for their personal creations, as they choose.

In my perspective, however, it can be unreasonable to ask newbie music makers to:
1) learn notation, markup and terminology not directly applicable to their preferred instruments
2) learn compositional guidelines not directly applicable to the genres they want to make


Or, stated in a positive way:
1) for each sufficiently unique instrument interface, there should ideally be available notation, markup and terminology that is directly applicable to it
2) for each sufficiently novel genre, there should ideally be available guidelines for composition and sound design that are directly applicable to it


Of course, the fact that invention of a genre tends to come before its analysis is a bit of a problem. Innovation tends to spread first via immediate communication between music makers of a genre - that has happened in all genres from medieval folk music to jazz to dubstep.
In many cases, there indeed cannot be "genre theory books" until conventions of that genre are well established - and until that time, "genre theories" tend to form via informal channels of communication, such as venue backstages, genre forums and nowadays Youtube genre tutorials.


For example, Milton Babbitt experimented with textural and rhythmic concepts which dubstep can be said to include. People with formal musical education that included a course on modernism are likely to know about this and recognize it.

But in 2010s, for a teenager without musical education who wanted to do "basslines like Skrillex", the most useful advice was to:
0) listen to Skrillex' music with analytical perspective
1) get a DAW and Native Instruments Massive (or some similar wavetable synth)
2) sequence a long low bass note and automate the wavetable position control
3) experiment with splitting duration of bass note into eighths, sixteenths and 32ths, also as triplets (as provided by different grid settings of the DAW)

..and, of course, if they wanted to make also the melodic breakdowns like Skrillex, "learn the basics of tonal harmony". Which would lead them to encounter and deal with all the things that are different between 7-pitch staff vs. 12-pitch piano roll in their DAWs.


***


Regarding analysis and copyrights, that can indeed be an issue in some cases, and some artists can be reluctant to share their "source codes", be that in tabs, staff, MIDI or DAW project files. But as far as I know, transcription of audio, and analysis of resulting notes for purposes of education falls under fair use (or equivalent law) in at least Western countries. That said, I am not a lawyer, so do correct if you know better.



Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org
well, that is literally the MIDI note table. your chord is literally "60, 64, 67" as a MIDI string and simpler than "C:0,4,7" or "0:1,4,7".
The use case for "C:0,4,7" is specifying interval steps relative to note label on a 12-pitch piano roll, of course, for easy counting from that starting note. MIDI note numbers do not facilitate that, as you have previously stated.

Consider a person with no concepts of musical theory (other than remebering names of some music pieces they like) launching a DAW and and wondering about how to make some good-sounding harmonies into piano roll, like in their favorite tracks.
I have guided such people by telling progressions as collections of note names, as labeled in their piano roll, for example "C,D#,G - G#,C,D# - D#,G,A# - A#,D,F". Telling note names and that "you can move any note octave down or octave up, and it will remain same chord", as well as "you can move ALL notes together up or down by any steps you like, and it will remain effectively the same progression, just transposed to different pitch" goes a long way.

So they can make some decent (or even quite good) music with that knowledge alone, as long as they don't move the notes by semitones and create unintentional dissonances etc. But, of course, that doesn't help much in the long run - it's more of a "give the person an apple" than "explain how to plant and nurture apple trees" situation.

So next I tell them about concepts of intervals, scales, chords and so on, and guide them towards basic theory books. Soon after that, with high likelihood, I hear complaints beginning with "Why do they call it 5th, despite it being 7th or 8th on the piano roll".

Then, exactly as you said, I tell that actual theory is not that difficult, but they have to deal with vocabulary and step-counting based on 7-pitch staff, because that's a tradition, and that even if a theory book does not directly guide them in making, say, psytrance, the basics of tonal harmony underlie at least some of what they want to make - or at least, knowing tonal harmony and modes helps in conceptualizing their musical thought in general, including scales of psytrance.

Oftentimes, the reply to that will nevertheless be something to the effect of "keep your books old sport, I'll just funk around as I please and do stuff by ear and semirandom exploration".

In some cases, that can indeed result in quite good music, with interesting and relatively novel ideas. That is part of why I cannot deny possible benefits of "uninformed, explorative and re-inventive" approach. But, of course, I've also seen cases where being informed by established theory would almost certainly have resulted in better music.

However, when such people dismiss textbooks as unhelpful, I think they do have a valid basis for that opinion, at least on their personal level. Ideally, there would be a book directly (or at least better) applicable for their instruments and purposes.

So, chord markups like "C4:0,4,7", and progression markups like "0:0,3,7 - 8:0,4,7 - 3:0,4,7 - 10:0,4,7" are designed to
1) allow to simply count intervals on 12-pitch piano roll
2) [for that progression markup] serve the purpose of providing reductive relative formulas, somewhat like the purpose of roman numerals

It must be emphasized that direct numerical-to-visual correlation of that 12-pitch markup to 12-pitch piano rolls is the key to its usefulness.
With explanations about voicings, 7-to-12 mappings of traditional scales and modes etc., that can go a long way in getting people started and perhaps encourage them to explore music theories further.



Imagine, for example, adding to all staff illustrations in Benward & Saker books also piano roll illustrations, and my proposed style of symbols (perhaps in down-top vertical orientation, when needed) to label chords and degrees. I would think that such versions of those books would be a great help to many novice DAW users in electronic genres, and perhaps other genres too. Add to that using examples of recent genre hits (ideally with agreement from artists of course), and such books might become quite useful to the segment of people who might otherwise have avoided theory textbooks.

Michael Hewitt's books are in fact a reasonably good attempt at that, and have become something of a standard in electronic scene. But Hewitt still used entirely 7-pitch-based terminology and labeling, which remains confusing to people to whom 12-pitch interface is the basis of compositional conceptualization. So I believe there is room for improvement in that field.



***


And, of course, I am also seriously considering using the markup/labeling system I've proposed here for my personal analysis and composition workflows in DAWs. Funny as it may seem in context of our discussion here, my current personal methods are so tied to markups and terminologies based on 7-pitch staff that switching to 12-pitch style in actual "getting things done" sense would require nontrivial (re)learning effort. But I will probably attempt it at some point, nevertheless.

As a sidenote, nature of my person includes some persistent self-doubt - which, per my life experience, has proven to usually be better than risking overconfidence. In matters like this, I am far less daring than adXok, for example. But, having observed the problem of "7-pitch concepts vs. 12-pitch interfaces" continuing for decades now, I believe it's better to dare to attempt to do something about it (and perhaps fail in some way) than never dare at all.

Last edited by n997; 10-23-2020 at 08:12 AM. Reason: clarifications and typo corrections...
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Old 10-23-2020, 08:28 AM   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok View Post
Inversion is technically notes jumping back and forth over the root note. You should preserve that behaviour in the notation as well, as it will resemble the actual structure of the chord on the instrument (piano, guitar, harp, etc.).
Thus a Cmaj chord should simply be written as:

C4·7

meaning: play C + the note 4 steps above it + the note 7 steps above it (together).

Single : (colon) symbol should be used if a note is in the next octave (renova) higher or lower:

C4·7:C

meaning: play C + the note 4 steps above it + the note 7 steps above it + "octave" repeat of the root (together).

Seemingly, a Cmaj9 "ninth" chord (such a wrong name!) can be written as follows:

C4·7:2

C4·7:C:2 (with an "octave" repeat of the root, you can not have it in the old Cmaj9 way of writing chords)

Then by applying the simple formula of inversions: Ix + x = 12 and the jumping over the root note, we can get the following correctly written inversions of Cmaj:

8C7
8·5C
5C4

Short, meaningful (non ambiguous) extremely precise and fast.

So called slashed chords such as Amaj7/G could be written as they appear:
2A4·7·11
Very good suggestions there - I will consider their applicability to my proposed system as well.


Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok View Post
Of course, I would not use the old way of naming the notes (both church based Do, Re, Mi... or C, D, E... respectively) if we are going to use a 12-note based system.
Regarding this - I see that you dare to renew a lot of things, and I find it bold and admirable. But are you not afraid that people will dismiss your system because they cannot conceptually connect it to their existing tools, and/or would have to do a lot of mental translation between different systems?

At least for me that is a big source of worrying, which is why for my proposed 12-pitch system for pianorolls I still consider keeping C,C#,D#,E... note names - unlike REAPER, most DAWs have those labels hard-coded, and it seems useless to ask other DAW makers to make those labels user-customizable.
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Old 10-23-2020, 09:29 AM   #37
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n997,
it should not matter. "Accidentals" are some utter bullsh¡t anyway introduced and inherited by a score system designed by church clerk and clerks are notorious for doing a bad job at anything.

Also, Latin alphabet is only one of hundreds of alphabets on the world.
It so happened that the Church was using Latin language.

One day some other clerk woke up and said "To hell with those Ut/Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti... syllables."
Stood up in front of the calvier (back then they did not ave the black keys) and said: "From left to right I name thee... A, B, C, D, E, F, G."

Quote:
..:: Black keys matter ::..
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Old 10-23-2020, 01:00 PM   #38
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Originally Posted by n997 View Post
To clarify: I'm looking for/proposing a system where knowledge from 7-pitch-based theory is kept, but situations where one asks "Why?" and is replied "only because of 7-pitch-staff" do not, ideally, happen.

i guess i do not comprehend your premise at all. at first I thought it was a notation for playing and analyzing, but it does not seem readable in real time, which rules out using it as notation for playing, and for analyzing, it seems too cumbersome too.

I dont know why you keep using this phrase "7-pitch-based theory" when the entire music world already has a well defined word for that: tonal theory (or previously was called diatonic theory), which is more precise and people know what it means. that's why basically all textbooks use not-so-creative variations of their titles like... drum roll.. "tonal theory".

it may be that you know, or you don't yet know, I dont know which, that essentially you are re-typing or re-discovering the 'modern' theory which was extensively described by music theorists in the 1920's-40's. which is completely fine. so again I suggest, why not read up on what they did, and what their system still is not great at, to improve the weak areas and move forward from their starting point. find the chapters in any music theory textbook written since the 1980's on set theory, pitch classes, atonal theory.




it is all there. and in fact much of the early 1930's "revamped theory" i believe has been rejected as needless and useless and unnecessarily complex for typical use by both music artists and music theorists due to dead ends in the proposed systems, and all have agreed to move forward in better directions (which I believe resulted in a 'new' revamping in the 40's-50's which more productive and still ongoing). that means, learn from their mistakes! it is like: do you really want to go back to theorize and program in COBOL when everyone universally agrees that it is a computer language which should die and be replaced as soon as possible; no way.




"Compare goa trance from artists like Astral Projection, or Simon Posford / Hallucinogen, to Bach and Beehtoven, for example. I'm sure you will find clear similarities in many underlying things, but also a lot of differences, which I'd argue make goa trance novel enough. Same goes for those other genres. Harmonic aspects of liquid drum & bass for example can be well considered in context of jazz theory, but liquid DnB is different enough to classify as having its own identity and novelty."


i significantly doubt the novelty, but unfortunately I cant say easily, because my ear skills and transcription skills are not good at all (ear skill is genetic at its core), so to 'listen and quickly compare harmonies' is quite time consuming.

if transcriptions existed, then it would be easier, but it is very hard to get full score transcriptions from anywhere for music of the past generation, let alone transcriptions which are even correct.

however i have listened to tons of goa trance, own a stack of rare issue cd's, and i doubt there is anything harmonically more complex than augmented chords being used, and i'm very highly certain there are no 'new' modulations being used which would create novel harmonic theories. all of this was already covered by 1800's-era music and music theory. anything rare in goa trace, etc, which not already done in the 1800's, was certainly already 'popularized' (and studied by theorists) by glass in the 1950's-60's. which again is already described completely in textbook theory.


"You being the textbook expert, "

i am not a textbook expert, i'm not a music theory expert or even particularly good at it, especially not the modern/serialist approaches (which dont sound like good music to me anyways, hence my disinterest in studying it), but it seems I have read more and worked through more of music theory than 99% of musicians writing on internet forums, to my dismay. i do not like most textbooks at all, especially the notation, much of it should be rebooted, but not without knowing the various pitfalls already created by the prior flawed system.


there is one big concept i've been pondering for some time, and that is whether or not it is possible to create a 'periodic table' for harmony. the periodic table in chemistry is amazingly well detailed and defined, for describing nearly all the essentials of atomic structure. it is a huge poster which is on the classroom wall of every high school and college in the world, both it's rows and columns describe groupings of elements, reduction of elements, weights, propensities, etc. it would seem to me that there could be a periodic table for harmonic structure, which shows compatibility, transitions, etc between pitch collections, and serves as a continual reference for how harmony expands and contracts. (there is already tonnetz but that's for beat-to-beat chord transitions and i mean more on the movement of voices within a chord... or something).





""Accidentals" are some utter bullsh¡t anyway introduced and inherited by a score system designed by church clerk and clerks are notorious for doing a bad job at anything."

that represents such a misunderstanding of how music works (in both theory and in practice) that i'm going to have to just smh and facepalm.
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Old 10-23-2020, 01:30 PM   #39
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Quote:
Originally Posted by n997 View Post

In my perspective, however, it can be unreasonable to ask newbie music makers to:
1) learn notation, markup and terminology not directly applicable to their preferred instruments
2) learn compositional guidelines not directly applicable to the genres they want to make


Or, stated in a positive way:
1) for each sufficiently unique instrument interface, there should ideally be available notation, markup and terminology that is directly applicable to it
2) for each sufficiently novel genre, there should ideally be available guidelines for composition and sound design that are directly applicable to it


...


But in 2010s, for a teenager without musical education who wanted to do "basslines like Skrillex", the most useful advice was to:
0) listen to Skrillex' music with analytical perspective
1) get a DAW and Native Instruments Massive (or some similar wavetable synth)
2) sequence a long low bass note and automate the wavetable position control
3) experiment with splitting duration of bass note into eighths, sixteenths and 32ths, also as triplets (as provided by different grid settings of the DAW)

this angle is really the root of the problem, because fundamentally you're trying to cover two areas;

1- a theory method, which would be used by research i.e. a scientist
2- an industry markup, which would be used by technician i.e. a copycat assembler

these are two different skillsets and mentalities, there are those few people who are both, but in general, most people are either one or the other (not both), i.e. one is a composer _or_ one is player, and the players are players because, typically, they can't 'handle the brainiac theory', just like an electronics technician is a technician because they can't 'handle the complex math to go into R&D'. i ran across some journal papers this week which literally spell this out, i.e. "students get scared when they see the numbers used in atonal music" (to which I had to re-read this 3 or 4 times; yes, music students run away "scared" simply because they see numbers 0,4,7 being used in a music class, and say, "omg i cant handle math, i give up"). now i am not trying to be insulting here, but what is the real problem, is it the theory, or is it the music students themselves? (or is it simply, that most people are not suited to working on 'the brainiac stuff', and by that i am not trying to be elitist or exclusive, yet those are the facts)


so you have to address this in the system: what's it _really_ going to be used for?

(there are very few texts which can cover both bases simultaneously, so pick _one_)

if your purpose is to allow someone to copycat the music which is previously invented (i.e. "kid wants to make skrillex, lets teach him that") then that is a technician-level mindset: here is a square and here is a round, put the square in the square hole and the round in the round hole. nothing wrong with that, but that is what it is. it is copycat assembly.


music theory does not aim to do that at all. 'institutional textbook' music theory attempts to lay out the 'fundamental rules' of music based on physics of vibrating bodies + human perception of that vibration. that is like a scientist viewpoint. teach the fundamental rules (using a few well chosen examples), not specific niche genres. these theories attempt to create new composers with novel ideas. (too bad the textbooks almost always give up on this, and resort to trying not to scare away the few music students reading the book, by dumbing everything down, and spending 10 chapters teaching boring triads, etc, which also leads players to believe "meh i know all music theory cuz I can play from a lead sheet".)


so, a music theory textbook will never have goa trance vs skrillex, and will never encourage or be purposed to get a "new music kid to copycat skrillex in one week". that's what most of berklee is for, they are a 'trade school for players' (i.e. technicians).
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Old 10-23-2020, 02:52 PM   #40
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superblonde.org
ok, please explain to me why accidentals in music works (in both theory and in practice).

What do you think people played before the Church got involved into chants and notating the notes? Practice?

There were music notations from the time of Pythagoras. Yes, they do not have papers and printing press but the CHurch had the authority to impose its "correct" view on the matter of Music and Art.

Other arts and later transformed practices as applied science managed to oppose the "church" view on many related subjects condemned as "unholy", yet Music nomenclature/notation/"theory" could not escape from the dogma.

Thankfully the world is big enough to not give a sh¡t about some church clerks who had no idea what they were doing.

Both the Music notation and the piano keyboard design suffered from this dogma up until the mid 19th century (possibly a bit earlier, considering information traveled quite slow around the world).

If there are 12 pitches/notes, there should be no excuse or special case to give names/letter to only 7 of those and call the other accidentals just because most western modes use some 7-note specific configurations (modes).
It leads to a clumsy one sided picture of the whole structure.

It is time...
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