Forum
  Classifieds
  News
  Localband
  Shows
  Show Pics
  Polls

  OT Threads
  Other News
  Movies
  VideoGames
  Videos
  TV
  Sports
  Gear
  /r/
  Food

  New Thread
  New Poll

E-mail

New site? Maybe some day.

Username:

SPAM Filter: re-type this

(values are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E, or F)

Message:

UBB enabled. HTML disabled Spam Filtering enabledIcons: (click image to insert) Show All - pop

b i u add: url image video(?)

:	post by ShadowSD at 2009-11-25 13:27:35

DestroyYouAlot said

[orig][quote]

ShadowSD said	[orig][quote]
For instance, if you're not dealing with sheet music, flats are a pointless redundancy and a waste of time. So are modes - COMPLETE REDUNDANCY. There's a surprising amount of bullshit one can filter out when it comes to music theory. If it has no practical application, it's useless.

I can't get behind this at all.

I know, I know, blasphemy - but I can explain it.

Flats - We are totally fucked in sheet music with an antiquated system based on piano-family instruments tuned to the key of C major. Instead of having the twelve chromatic tones that our ears fully differentiate, all of a sudden, classical theory ends up designed to represent five of the tones with alternate names. This is not efficient, this is not practical; in fact, it's hideously impractical, as it's one extra translation for the mind at every iteration, and it adds up. Now, sheet music is not going to change - but if you're not sightreading (and most of us aren't on a regular basis), go with naturals and sharps when it comes to your instrument, and you'll be amazing at your ability to process at several times the speed in the long term. The cost? Nothing. A# IS Bb - there's no difference. Ever. As far as our ear is concerned, the twelve tones could just as well be A-L. Don't let an antiquated system that anchors our method of notation weigh down your thought process as well. Basically, there's A - G, every letter has a sharp except B and E, and that's it.

Modes - This is even more controversial to say, as a lot of guitarists are inexplicably wedded to modal thinking, but modes are a fucking scam. There is one key/scale template - that's it. View it as the minor key or the major key or one of seven modes, depending on where you start - it's all one friggin scale; furthermore when we apply a scale on guitar in a song or play in a given key (same thing, really), the order can be mixed, so therefore drawing arbitrary lines around going from A to A and B to B and so on is seriously retarded, let alone the idea of always going from beginning to end when a scale would never be consistently applied in practice in such a uniform and homogenous manner.

What's really going on is much more simple. When you do a solo, it matters what you're doing when the chord change hits versus when the chord is ringing out. When the chord is ringing out, the rules are more open; anything in key is fair game. When the chord change hits, however, the rules are more stringent; the note you hit has to work with the underlying chord as well. For instance, If the note in the solo ends up being the fourth or the sixth or the chord, thereby changing its identity, then there can be a ugly clash unless the identity shift was intended. If I'm in the key of Am and you play a G (VII) chord, the B in my solo at the moment of the chord change can be followed by ANYTHING in the key of Am as the chord rings out, and all that matters is that I played a note that worked with the VII chord at the moment of that change; if some jackass in a classroom wants to talk about how what I really did right was playing Locrian over the VII chord, they can waste time spouting off names in Latin chasing themselves in a fucking circle. Don't waste yours. Modes have no actual meaning, and not a single practical application that even justifies their existence.

[default homepage]

[print][

5:30:44pm May 20,2024
load time 0.00676 secs/10 queries]

[search]

[refresh page]