MUSICCC THEORY!!!!! GRRRR

[theholygideons]

So i was wondering, how many years does it take for someone to be able to instantly recognize the name of chords in a piece, say by chopin or liszt?
My music theory is abominable and it takes more minutes to just figure out the key signature.   

[prestoconfuocco]

Do you mean by reading or by listening? Because the answer to the two is different...
In my experience you have to study both music theory and harmony, while at the same time listening to a lot of music and reading the sheet while listening.
Everybody learns at different speeds, but if you're in the right mind you can do it very quickly. It's much easier once you learn the basics.

[dima_76557]

So i was wondering, how many years does it take for someone to be able to instantly recognize the name of chords in a piece, say by chopin or liszt?

When chords (broken/blocked) are part of your technique, recognition happens instantly. As soon as you come across a new type of chord, immediately make it part of your technical vocabulary in all its inversions and in all keys. That is the best way to develop your memory for them.

[theholygideons]

but all this, non-harmonic tones, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, 1337ths, augmented shizz, tristan chords, napolean stuff, suspensions, tone clusters. So much stuff to learn, to learn..... to learn............................................to learn.............................................................................................. ..

[dima_76557]

but all this, non-harmonic tones, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, 1337ths, augmented shizz, tristan chords, napolean stuff, suspensions, tone clusters. So much stuff to learn

You asked a question. I gave you the fastest way: not hope that it will come through the years, but take action immediately.

Another problem, of course, is to recognize those standard chords when the composers embellish their passages with neighboring notes. Since you asked for Chopin and Liszt only: technically, the number of chords you should really know very well for quick processing is rather limited to 4 or 5 basic types of 7th chords, which you should know in all keys (your eyes and your hands should know and recognize them). This greatly helps your memory and deeper understanding of what is going on in the music.
P.S.: Theory learned separately from practice is basically useless, because theory should be the answer to a question you have. If not, then it becomes a goal in itself, and VERY boring and complicated indeed.

[theholygideons]

yes, thanks for your reply. I should get cracking asap. Maybe in a few years i might reach a decent level. Right now i'm trying to learn music theory by applying the different elements i've learnt into improvisation, yet there are so many permutations and in all 24 keys. Oh god.. this may keep me occupied for the rest of my life. 

[prestoconfuocco]

but all this, non-harmonic tones, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, 1337ths, augmented shizz, tristan chords, napolean stuff, suspensions, tone clusters. So much stuff to learn, to learn..... to learn............................................to learn.............................................................................................. ..

I studied music in highschool, which included theory, harmony, and history. after three years of learning those three and practicing piano I could recognize all of those instantly. I think that most people can do it in less three years if they set their mind to it. (And without even practicing so hard...)
Good luck!

[minona]

Well, it depends on your interest. How fast you learn depends a lot on how readily you apply yourself.

Nobody is forcing you to learn this stuff if you don't want... are they? If so, tell them you're not interested and go and do a different course or a normal job or something.

Otherwise, think of it like learning a strange ancient branch of mathematics with the added bonus that it can help you understand music and be creative!

People do puzzles for fun and yet there are many more useful things to do that involve the same mental effort. I'd say harmony and counterpoint are like puzzles (in the beginning) but they have a point: you can use them in your music or to understand music. Once you've digested the system it becomes a part of the way you think.

[minona]

That said, much of modern music theory is deviant. The difficulty with chords is due to the fact that they actually derive from counterpoint and yet modern theorists are looking at them from the wrong end.

That is, counterpoint formed harmony until about the mid-late C19th, when Berlioz and others (much to the horror of master contrapuntalist Cherubini, and criticised by Chopin and others of the older school) started thinking in 'block chords'.

This practice persists to this day and is unfortunately accepted despite the original theories of Rameau being debunked! There isn't even that much real musical value in thinking of chords in different inversions as being equivalent, though it seems so logical at first.

Some of the most advanced music (e.g. of the Bach school, or Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven) was written without the aid of these theories.

Good Luck!

[keypeg]

Minona, what a coincidence in the timing of your post.  I'm going through music history, just got up to Rameau at which point someone told me of CPE Bach's objection to the same.  Since I read German, I scanned through his book and got the gist of how CPE organized chords which was according to "harmonic triads", then "sixth chords" (EAC), then diminished and augmented triads... i.e. according to distance from the bass note as in figured bass.  After digesting that I popped over to PS and ran into your post about the same thing.

In another thread you recently wrote:

I've never learned anything really worthwhile from the Rameau school of harmony though, (i.e. block chords). I think that is a very unnatural method of composing.

Thinking about this. I'm not aware of having studied a "Rameau school" but I have finished (so far) the first level of RCM "harmony theory" which I think follows the standard in most places.  After that my teacher took me on a tangent along way different angles.  I have a feeling that the "harmony theory" that I studied might be this "Rameau school", or based on it. (?)

I'm thinking about it now.  First we learned about the I, IV, and V chords.  Then inversions are brought in.  Then the "secondary chords", and these sort of get "slid in" as if you're thinking: I IV V.... I [vi ii] V (at some point you think that ii and IV are related.  There is a chapter for each chord. The vi chord and everything it can do.  the ii chord and everything that it can do.  But huge warnings about how "special" 2nd inversion is - treat it with caution.

One thing that bothered me is that melodic line seemed secondary, almost as not real.  The first things we write have to be via skips.  We manage to get a scale through "passing tones" - in-between things that don't belong to the chord (which is the primary thing).  The other thing, as I first got into this, was when I started reading advanced musicians say that the composers don't write according to these rules: or that the rules don't reflect what composers actually did.  Or.... if they first studied music this way, they later bypassed these things (how).

My thought so far has simply been that there are many angles from which we can see music, and chords is one way.

But then again, in letter name chords we have sus chords: I can't find them in the formal theory - as a suspension, yes.  But not as a chord.

What I thought I understood is that when basso continuo disappeared, the need for the figured bass way of thinking also went away.  And then, music always consists of three things: harmony, melody, and time (vertical, horizontal, occurring over time which gives it rhythm).

[dima_76557]

But then again, in letter name chords we have sus chords: I can't find them in the formal theory - as a suspension, yes.  But not as a chord.

I think that's because they're merely "dissonant syncopes", and everybody knows where they come from and where they are going to. No point in "freezing" the moment into a separate name. I've seen those terms only in Jazz and in pop music.

[ted]

I was fortunate enough once to spend the best part of a day with a retired professional jazz pianist of some standing. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of complicated keyboard harmonies, and could implement any combination or sequence of them in improvisation, seemingly without thinking. The different ways of regarding them too, for example via modes, he had assimilated until they were second nature in hundreds of positions.

I was awed by this ability, and couldn't imagine my ever having the persistence to cultivate a fraction of it, but then I realised that the products of it all, the actual sounds of his improvisation, although accomplished, were rather dull. This because harmony in itself, even supreme mastery of it, does not constitute more than a subset, possibly a rather small one, of the creative musical process. A piano piece is much more than a string of note combinations and chord blocks with peculiar labels. Rhythm, phrasing, melody, texture, and in the case of improvising pianists, haptic and aural impulse, are far more important.

By all means, learn everything that is going about chords, classical and jazz, all 352 types of them if you want to, but such knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient to impart life to the products of your imagination.  

[keypeg]

I think that's because they're merely "dissonant syncopes", and everybody knows where they come from and where they are going to. No point in "freezing" the moment into a separate name. I've seen those terms only in Jazz and in pop music.

That was my point.  In harmony theory as we are taught it,  such chords are "dissonant syncopes" - they are the "non-chord notes".  Everything is based on chords that are formed on triads which get their definition in root position, and are still those triads when in inversion.  A C major chord is still a C major chord regardless of what note is on the bottom, and CFG is not a chord.  These are our points of reference, and it is how we see music being constructed.  If I tie this in with what Minona is saying, that is the "Rameau" view.  And in fact it is only ONE way of viewing it.

Yesterday before stumbling on this thread I learned that Rameau's ideas were considered controversial - those things which we take for granted, and there was an article saying that CPE Bach was against them.  I went to the source.  I didn't find CPE arguing against them, but merely presenting how he viewed and taught music theory.  It was applied straight to music.  He classified chords much differently, tied in with the music of his time.

CPE's chords were classified as the major and minor triads, then "Sechstenaccord" (6,3,8 from bass - such as ACE), then the dim. and aug. triads, and final 64 chords, and I think after that you actually had the two "sus" chords.  He wrote about this in terms of how they functioned in the music, i.e. going from point a to point b.  If you followed how he saw things, then Am, Am/C and Am/E were three different kinds of chords, whereas in "our" view they are the same chord.

It's clear that we can look at them both ways.  CPE was playing along a ground bass, and if his students saw G in the bass and a 4 above it, then they could quickly scoot 4 notes up - then that 4 becomes a 3 and they move that "4th note up" down by one note - the whole thing being 6/4 6/3 written in the figuring.  Of course you can picture this same thing as C/G to G/B but for this kind of music it was handier to just think "how far up from the bass note".

The interesting thing for me is that we are taught harmony theory along four-part harmony and learn to write "Bach-like" music, yet it seems that Bach himself did not think along these lines when he composed.  Those elements were there of course, which is why Rameau found them and we use them.  But it's intriguing that it was not the main mindset.

[keypeg]

Btw, I don't propose for anyone to study theory this way, but would like to expand my vision of how it all works, after having seen this.

[minona]

Yes, the Roman Numeral, 'vertical is all' system derives from Rameau, or at least the interpretation of his treatise by Marpurg, though I don't think numerals were used until later.

Figured bass is really in line with counterpoint, which might seem strange until you realise that as keyboardists with 10 fingers across two hands have to think vertically to some extent... it's simply unavoidable and very practical.

I suppose there is an argument for use of the 'functional harmony' analysis of music that was actually composed via 'block chords', but then there is a counter-argument that says perhaps the composers could bypass this and composed intuitively or with knowledge of counterpoint to smooth out the 'brickwork'. Well, I'm oversimplifying, but I definitely think a rethink on harmony is long overdue. Especially the use of the system to analyse music of composers who didn't even use the method!

J.S. and C.P.E Bach rejected Rameau's method. Mozart also scoffed at a treatise by Vogler which was based on Rameau's method.

I actually used figured Roman numerals for a while, supposedly a compromise, but I found the numerals just pointless. I mean, who says DFA in C major has to be identified with the D to make it chord ii? Why not the A or F? Even that seeminly logical and obvious question becomes unanswerable when you think about it. 

I would write more but my eyes are hurting.

[keypeg]

A first question which comes from here:

Yes, the Roman Numeral, 'vertical is all' system derives from Rameau, or at least the interpretation of his treatise by Marpurg, though I don't think numerals were used until later.

   
Sorting this out:  Are the things you are objecting to or have collided with - are these Rameau himself, or what has been done with Rameau?  This is an actual question, not rhetorical, since I'm just getting into this world.  Does anyone (did anyone) ever "teach Rameau", or were there teaching systems that were devised from Rameau's thoughts.  This is probably important.

My own journey: I dealt with music for 40 years via the "movable do solfege" that I had gotten one year as a child in primary school; it was that, and what I had sensed in music from playing and listening using it - mostly nameless and instinctive.  When I finally took formal lessons (violin) I ran into things.  It started when I checked my singing against the piano and my "Ti" was "too high" and my "Mi Fa" were different.  Of course there is a reason for that.  My sense of how music works had been strongly formed by all the Clementi I'd played when young (i.e. what I had at hand in passed on music).  The sung "Ti Fa" had fused with the V7 chord (which I didn't know about) making me hug those two notes closer than a semitone to "Do" and "Mi" respectively and I was sensing the cadence.  I was told that in the melodic note names I was hearing the harmonic progression.  You may be able to make sense of this.  I can.

The "simpler" music we encounter - unless it's pop - goes along these same constructs, and the music for teaching an instrument generally does too.  So we're in that box where everything fits together.  I didn't really know notes - My reading was part anticipation of "where the music should go", part seeing broad patterns like a straight line of notes is a scale.  To the point that I didn't know I was not really reading music.  That was discovered by chance in a lesson.

I studied theory rudiments starting with note names; 2 months later I aced the 2nd level exam with a grade of 100% and passed the advanced level 3 months later with a high grade.  Everything in RCM rudiments fits hand in glove with my old solfege and Clementi world, plus I was actually hearing it from sight singing for decades.  When first learning a construct of scales, you religiously mark in all the Tonic and Dominant chords.  (My So Do).  I had the advantage that I also thought melodically.  (The thing you see as missing).

Next I went on to harmony theory proper, but asked in the store for a book that was "not written for passing exams, and had depth".  I was handed a 1947 Horwood, where you see the figured bass that was absent in the standard books (the revised version now includes it).  Again it fit hand-in-glove with my m.d. Solfege /Clementi world.  At some point elements were missing and I bought two more books - Sarnecki, and another that had many examples from actual music and insisted that students play and listen as well.

As I was doing this first harmony theory (no longer taking lessons), I met my present piano / music teacher.  I wasn't studying with him yet.  He warned that these systems could put me into a box.  We worked on much of this together, also looking what was in there.  The exercises often would not allow you to make decent music because they were poorly written, and you were straightjacketed by using only what they presented.  And then, for the "examples taken out of music" (20 - 30 per chapter), if you knew the music from which the examples were taken (as he did), often a small segment was taken out of context and twisted to fit the theory.  It WAS good to see the general principles and this HAS helped me.  But with the precaution that "this is part of the picture, much (some) of the time."

We broke off and looked at Chopin, first off, and used letter name chords where "it is what it is" without category.  We went at what was actually heard and going on in the notes.  It was largely unstructured - things pointed out as they were encountered.  An experiment with no rigid system.  You do notice raw patterns: music does contain cadences, and where a pattern repeats itself in another key and varies, these patterns are good to know about and use.

I'll note that this was still largely via chords, but it was also via horizontal movement; again on the surface via the movement of the chords.  But you're also looking at other things: what is happening with the bass line - is it going chromatically, leaping in 4ths and 5ths; is the main melody line slithering in semitones - how are the middle notes sliding or jumping or colliding?

In regards to Roman Numerals:  There are places, as in a rough outline, where you have your Tonic and Dominant, and your "chord notes".  It is handy to see the I's and V's where they occur, and to see new V7-I's where it modulates in true modulation or a temporary tonality.  But trying to squeeze every single beat into a Roman Numeral puts you in a box and keeps you from what is there in the music.  It becomes hugely complex.

Other things in music - you see them happening, you understand them - don't fit with chords for understanding them.

From this side of it, my overall thought is that music has numerous angles, and no one system should be used uniquely to try to understand what is going on.  That is as far as I got.

[keypeg]

This one puzzled me:

Figured bass is really in line with counterpoint, which might seem strange .....

I was puzzled when you wrote that it would seem strange for figured bass to be in line with counterpoint.

I have not studied counterpoint as such, except for one species 1 exercise (Fux) and some reading.  I am quite familiar with figured bass, though.  From that limited experience, I would think that figured bass goes hand in hand with counterpoint, and is not strange at all.  In counterpoint, as I understand it, you have complete melodies in various voices, often coming in and ending at different times.  That is the horizontal.  They also have to sound good together, and if there are dissonances, then they have to be intentional and work with the music.  In early times they sang at a distance that sounded pleasing, first in parallel - that distance being in octaves, fifths, and eventually thirds.  I used to do that when young when I had no formal training and wanted to harmonize with someone.  Slip down two notes and sing in parallel, and you're harmonizing.

In figured bass you're seeing how many notes up you are from the bass.  It's the same kind of idea.  That is why I'm not understanding about it seeming strange.

[keypeg]

Coming at it from the historical side, from my present studies.

As I understand, as we come toward the "Baroque" era, they are still working all the 12 modes (8 + 4).  They're fascinated by the old Greek things, and are looking for things involving consonance --- later dissonance too for the sake of producing emotion which can be unpleasant as well.   Some things just lead naturally to a chord that is a fifth above, moving to the central tone.  They got thirds from England - there is your major/minor chord.  And then in horizontal movement, "cadencing" via a half step - this would make you want to raise the note just below if your music is "minor" sounding.  The result would be the raised 3rd of V (before there was a V) in minor keys.  They're finding things that work, and use them.

Then they point out music that is "fully tonal".  It is described as music that is designed to deliberately lead to the tonal center.  I think Corelli is mentioned first.  Lully's music modulates from one key to another key.  Vivaldi, later, goes from key to key.  Music is divided into sections, and one of the features is that it returns to the home key. They're doing things to make it work.

I think that Rameau comes along, sees what the composers have done to make this work, and writes down the patterns he sees.  He goes from scientific things - the physics of sound, the division of strings, secondary tones contained in a main tone and such.

I think that the things that Rameau observes are there in the music he's observing.  I.e. I believe that you do have chords that are built on the 1st, 4th and 5th degree of a major or minor scale (especially 1 and 5), that the tritone existing in a "Dominant 7" does like behaving the way he describes and that it is frequently used to resolve to a Tonic as he says.  -- I can also hear, when I play the notes C E G together in any order, with any of those notes on the bottom, the sameness of them.  Knowing this, I can also play with it to make music, by interchanging what I place where.

So if CPE Bach sees CEA as a "six" which behaves certain ways, and Rameau sees it as Am/C, part of the family of Am, Am/C, Am/E and may call it vi6 if in the key of C major .... is one right, and the other wrong?

Or, even if Bach and others might have been thinking along different lines when they wrote their music, might these other patterns also be in there?

What I'm thinking - and this may be where you are - is that we might have gotten someplace, where there is a narrow, strict model, "functional harmony" etc., that wants to explain all music along that model.  Even in my above paragraph of "even if" - there may be times when the model just doesn't fit, period.

Would you be saying:
- use the model where it fits (where music was constructed that way)
- use it where it can fit
- don't use it where it doesn't fit
- don't impose it on all music
- no narrow straightjacket that gives us only one way of seeing music, and tries to squeeze all (most) music into it

[keypeg]

A final general observation.   In this music history journey I've seen a couple of patterns.

- acting musicians who have to create music and work with music will experiment to see what they can do, or to solve problems.  They start building patterns they can use, individually and collectively
- after the fact, others will come along and devise theories of what these musicians have done.  They'll get part of the picture.
- people who love theory and abstract thought, mathematics, science etc. will also be speculating about how music works.  They create hypothetical models, and then try to get music to be shaped according to those models, because logically "it ought to work".
- people who make music (back to practical) will try to create music via those hypothetical models. This seems to be the time when musicians get boxed in
- musicians will also be blocked from what they could do with music, in this second scenario.

This seems to have gone on across all the ages.

[j_menz]

but all this, non-harmonic tones, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, 1337ths, augmented shizz, tristan chords, napolean stuff, suspensions, tone clusters. So much stuff to learn, to learn..... to learn............................................to learn.............................................................................................. ..

What do you need to know it for? If there's a purpose, that should provide the framework for your learning. If it's just to parrot it, then why bother?

To sightread music, you need to recognise the chord combos in a practical sense - ie, what they mean in terms of what to play. What they're called is not part of that process.

Personally, I couldn't tell an augmented unison from a minor second if you held a gun to my head.

[dima_76557]

Personally, I couldn't tell an augmented unison from a minor second if you held a gun to my head.

You would if you started singing practice in demi-semi tone scales like my girlfriend whenever she takes a bath. She also does broken tormented and extinguished chords.

[j_menz]

You would if you started singing practice

I'd certainly get the gun pointed at my head.

[keypeg]

Personally, I couldn't tell an augmented unison from a minor second if you held a gun to my head.

I'm sure that if you saw a C and a C# happening at the same time (written form) you would not be surprised at how it sounds or that it exists.  At some point if you do have an ear for such things, you might be surprised that your C D# sounds just like a minor third, yet hold on, your notation looks like it's a second so what is going on?  In that case theory patches a few holes and it's just fun.  But when theory becomes a bunch of rules and names to memorize, I agree.