Comment by squeaky-clean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by squeaky-clean | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the tone of this book, it gets too hung up on the literal word "theory" in music theory, and also badly explains a lot of concepts in music theory while insulting them.

For example, the circle of fifths doesn't explain at all why the circle is cool or useful for chord transitions. It's not a coincidence at all. By rotating around the circle, your key changes by only one note at a time.

It's also just waaaay to objective about subjective things. Other cultures use of limited or different musical scales or temperaments is because they are missing out on real harmony? A major triad sounds best because a factor of 3 and 5 are the "most interesting" intervals?

Section 4.3 is where I'm just quitting.

> "Play C and F# on a piano; it sounds awful" [...] " because someone has even written a piece of music based entirely in the most un-harmonic of intervals, the Augmented Fourth, and gotten away with it." [...] "There are people who can abuse themselves to the point of re-calibrating their expectations to all kinds of strange inputs, including thinking that getting beaten with whips is fun or that McDonald's tastes good. That doesn't mean that those inputs are natural or good or beautiful or true. "

So I don't really like dissonant music, I've only tricked myself into thinking it's good? The Ben Franklin quote after it just sounds like someone comparing pop music to anything else. Just because it's Ben Franklin doesn't make it definitive.

It starts by insulting the assumptions that the diatonic scale and triads are a given in conventional music theory. But then goes on to make even greater assumptions as to why some harmonies sound "better" than others. Please prove it, or it's just as meaningless as the work you're insulting.

Yeah, his discussion of the tritone was where any remaining sympathy or interest in his argument evaporated for me. His discussion of it is completely simplistic and not grounded in any way in the complex historical context of that interval.

Listen to the opening of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvnRC7tSX50). Tritones everywhere: flute plays a melody that outlines a tritone (C# to G). In come the oboes and horns playing a tritone which is part of the A# 7th chord the harp outlines. Then a Bb dominant seventh, with horns and strings playing another tritone. Tritones abound until the music finally settles into the tonic nine bars later, and yet who would argue with the idea that this is one of the most beautiful openings in music?

It's ironic that he likens works based on the tritone to McDonalds (!?). When I hear someone savage a work of music they've never heard, and describe the sound of an augmented fourth as "awful" and call any piece based around the tritone as "[not] natural or good or beautiful or true" I would suggest that person's musical taste is limited and simplistic, sort of the musical equivalent of the McDonald's hamburger.

Beautiful piece, thanks for sharing. I probably would not have noticed how filled with tritones it is without it being pointed out.

If you wouldn't mind me sharing an example which isn't nearly as beautiful :P . "43% Burnt" by The Dillinger Escape Plan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv8b6RPbnAc). It starts with an incredibly dissonant and jarring intro. Semitone intervals on distorted guitars to an almost unpredictable rhythm (there's a pattern, but it's not apparent in the intro). And the song doesn't really get any gentler from there. The last bridge before the outro is an aggressive halftone-wholetone diminished riff on the guitars and non-stop 16th note blast on the drums. Stop... And then... It comes back to that disgusting intro which loops until the track fades out. But now, it feels familiar, like home. And with each loop it sounds better. What started off sounding awful becomes comfortable in a different context.

I don't know The Dillinger Escape Plan too well, but I like that!

It's funny, but I've noticed that as my musical tastes have broadened over the years, the line between what sounds "beautiful" and "ugly" has become considerably more blurry. I can still recognize particular harmonies as consonant or dissonant, but that mapping in my brain where consonant -> beautiful and dissonant -> ugly has started to really break down.

One of the first times I noticed this was happening was probably 15 years ago, listening to Salomé by Richard Strauss. The last scene has this incredible dissonance, a polychord that's an A7 with an F# stacked on top: two chords that absolutely do not belong together in any diatonic piece of music.[1] When I first heard that I thought it sounded awful. Now it has a kind of strange beauty to my ears and is one of those musical moments that always sends a shiver up my spine.

[1] Give a listen here if you like: https://youtu.be/Op1VoQXXARs?t=431 I started the clip at 7:15, the chord comes in around 8:53 but that whole section is shot through which these ugly/beautiful sonorities.

That chord! I remember it from when I went down a long Wikipedia/internet rabbit hole reading about polychords. It's absolutely amazing how composers will use the chords to represent emotions or the personality of their characters.

I think the line between beautiful and ugly has gotten blurrier for me too. Artistically, I don't actually think they're opposites anymore. One needs the other to be fully realized, otherwise it just sounds too plastic.

I first got into really dissonant music around high school, I think mostly just in an attempt to be "edgy" and different. There's a lot of music that just tries too hard to sound heavy (I can't listen to like 99% of grindcore anymore. It just sounds like trying to piss of my parents). But I started finding things that used dissonance artistically and not just for shock, and I love it. Now the music that hits hardest and sounds "heaviest" to me aren't the songs that just shove abrasive sounds in your face as quickly and loudly as possible. But the ones with lots of contrast and empty space, and slowly building tension before slamming into something. You know what they say, if everything is loud, then nothing is loud.

I'm listening to Strauss now because of your examples. I think I might have to go on a classical binge for the next week or so just because of this conversation!

This may be the area in which my wife and I have the greatest conflict. She's entirely convinced that for music to be beautiful, it must be pretty. Hence, Brahms and the like always emanates from her speakers.

In my opinion, King Crimson's Red [1] is among the most beautiful music ever made. It's a terrible beauty in this case, but that shouldn't stop us from listening and feeling awe. Sure we have our own moods, and want different feelings to go with them. But we can't have an all-saccharine diet.

(And nice pick with Dillinger Escape Plan. I assume you're familiar with Devin Townsend too?)

[1] Live recording of the title track: https://youtu.be/KpJaJt3NWsM?list=RDGFQbQGCnOR0

Reply on news.ycombinator.com