Hi all, I'm Mike going to talk about music theory today I've been doing music pretty much all my life and I've picked up a few things from playing a few different instruments that are useful in learning instruments as well as just appreciating music given the slightly technical nature of this crowd I'll go a little in to the technical side of music theory, but don't worry if you're not into that 12:41 < tenzochris> dwins: thanks for the ping I'd like to apologize in advance for the puns that are likely to sneak in throughout the slideshow What is Music? * music = sound * sound = longitudinal waves * vibrating air in your ear So if you've seen a really loud speaker at a party or whatever you know you can kind of see the speaker moving, pushing the air and making vibrations that you receive in your ears Everybody Hertz * frequency of vibrating air = pitch pitch is how high or low the sound is measured in Hz (vibrations / second) people can hear from 20Hz to 20000Hz (but loud noises and general wear and tear reduce this range The Octave octave = the interval between one musical pitch and another with half (or double) the frequency ex: 60Hz + 120Hz, 500Hz + 1000Hz Sounds like the "same note" here's a demo (sorry tenzochris) Although they aren't the same frequency, they sound like the same note Notes on notes 12:46 * tenzochris hums * A note is just some pitch * relationships between notes count, not specific notes * what would pythagoras do? The ancient greeks had vibrating strings and did some simple checks with different ratios * 2:1 = an octave * 3:2, 4:3, 5:4 ??? * what sounds good? more aural demos A certain ratio * simple ratios sound pleasing * can build a repeated system of 12 different notes by multiplying 3/2 repeatedly (or so) So, we divide the octave into twelve by the way, CD's advertising 44KHz and all that "high fidelity" are way beyond the 20KHz you can actually hear so it's all just marketing the 12th root of 2 How do we divide the octave into 12, and why bother? why = create a repeating system that we can reuse to create pleasing sounds how = multiply by 12th root of 2, so that every 12 multiplications result in a difference of one octave (2:1 ratio) Uh oh, Math questions? Why isn't it exact? Well, that multiplication by 3/2 we talked about earlier doesn't exactly match up ie, if you take that interval too far it eventually starts to sound 'off' Is this why playing a song written in one key in a different key can sound a little weird? not really, instruments are tuned to a particular key. they're always a little off, so there's always a key that sounds best it's a convention that was arranged a while back as a compromise between these different 'pleasing' ratios When to we get to Smells Like Teen Spirit? * Equal temperment scale = 12 notes (aka chromatic scale) but we can use different scales (mostly we don't though) divide into different numbers of notes Chromatic scale So, how do we name these 12 notes? A-L? 1 - 12? not really the distance between each key on a piano (whites and blacks) is equal, the white keys each get a letter (A-G) the chromatic scale corresponds to all 12 keys, the white keys alone form the 'diatonic' scale (aka do re mi ...) diatonic sounds a lot better than chromatic (for reason we won't (can't?) explore) so, the piano key is arranged to make it easy to play diatonic music in the key of C in contrast, the guitar is a chromatic instrument it's not as straightforward to play in a particular key, but it makes it easier to switch between different keys Great, but I wanna Rock * chords are build from notes in scales * normally triads (3 notes) * start, skip a note, middle, skip another note, end (based on the diatonic scale) A song based on the key of C will have the seven chords that can be constructed this way from the diatonic scale chords (has a table distinguishing the chords in the diatonic scale starting with C... check online later) It doesn't matter where you start so much as the relationships beteen the notes What's the key? so this is a lot of information, how do we handle it? * Don't memorize everything! * learn rules, derive as you go * practice practice practice * Once you learn the theory, all you need to do is figure out where to put your fingers note, a lot of what's on the internet about music (for example the Online Guitar Archive) is amazingly wrong Fear of Pop Most of all music in the popular world is in a specific and consists of chords in that key. (with tons of exceptions) this starts the section of the talk where mike is going to take some songs apart a little tough to transcribe :) by the way, when you're trying to transcribe music it often helps to listen to the bass right, but not always, and when it doesn't work that can really trip you up the reason that works is that the bass usually plays the 'root' of the note, which is what we use to name it (the lowest note in the chord) So you see lots of people with these huge headphones and you can kind of hear they've overdriven their bass... are there people that can't tell that the bass is so overdriven? I think there is a kind of a physical reaction, you can really feel the bass in a way that doesn't really apply to higher notes well, I meant more along the lines of actually having the sound distorted by trying to turn the bass up beyond what the speakers can handle yeah, some people are just like that So when people hear different chords, they feel different emotions... any idea why that is? I think it's a cultural thing, you hear lots of happy songs using major chords and sadder songs in minor ones so you end up having different associations in other cultures right, there's nothing particularly happy or sad about a particular frequency, there's no such thing as an 'emo note' yeah, same thing for different colors so my questions is how do you think compression is used or abused in pop music (amplitude compression) so to make it so that you can hear a certain piece of music without constantly adjusting the volume, sound engineers will often apply a compression filter which makes the loud parts softer and the soft parts louder and right now what sound engineers will do in a lot of popular music these days is compress as much as possible so that the music sounds as loud as possible because a lot of people think loud == good right, like commercials on tv yes!!!! and the radio! but in my music I think having a high dynamic range (from whispers all the way up to a scream) is something to be cultivated and not digitally removed so sometimes when I hear people playing the guitar I can hear them moving their fingers up and down, is that intentional? it's a bit to do with style, some players pick up their fingers more or less it also has to do with what the strings are made of