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Non-Classical Music

6K views 68 replies 19 participants last post by  starry 
#1 ·
In general, why is there little interest in the study and development of music from a theoretical perspective in non-Classical genres.

I'm talking about exploring the relationships of notes on a page, not experimenting on a guitar while high.
 
#4 ·
I suppose quite a lot of popular music is more simple and direct rather 'academic', and some of it is also quite instinctual in that sense also. Of course music like all art doesn't necessarily keep to the boundaries that listeners want to make for it, so there has been crossover with more 'academic' (for want of a better word) styles, such as within some jazz or progressive music.
 
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#7 ·
The main intellectual realm of "pop" music regards technology.

This gets to a thing that divides classical and to a degree even jazz listeners - what place does technology have in the creation of music?

In classical, we pretty much all agree that technology should give us more "accurate" recordings, but that's where the agreement stops. You amplify a vocalist, and you've got a minor scandal. And as for Stockhausen, taped sound, all that.... We don't need to go there yet again in this thread - there have been hundreds for that.

In jazz, there are still a few people left who do not agree with the use of electronic instruments, who reject fusion as a betrayal of "real jazz." They're basically dying off, but you can still find them.

But the pop music traditions embrace new technology with fervor, and that is where most of the intellectual work gets done. Ian McDonald is a good example (though anyone from the Beatles to Harold Faltermeyer to whoever produced Gangnam Style music could be used): his career hasn't been about novel harmonies or polyrhythms or modalities, but about finding new ways to make sounds with keyboards, from the mellotron to synthesizers and other synthesizers and so on. Where you and I hear Foreigner as just some really predictable pop music, he hears experimentation with keyboard technology.

Now the question is, who's right? Is the classical music fan right to ignore and even decry anything electric (except of course faithful recordings)? Or is the producer of pop music right to ignore most of music theory and focus on making cool new sounds?

I need to learn more about electronica, ambient, all that kind of stuff. I suspect the answer is in there somewhere. But you've got to give people like Herbie Hancock or Jeff Beck or Jan Hammer credit too, for working on both of them at once throughout their entire career. Oh, and Stockhausen and Nono and Reich and so on. People like Kronos Quartet and Bang on a Can and the Now Ensemble and heck, just about everyone under 40.
 
#8 ·
Maybe the view on classical music is skewed by the centuries it has been around for and the more slow developing technological changes that were evident then. But modern classical can certainly use more electronic aspects to the music, and developments in recording technology have influenced composition I am sure.
 
#9 ·
Maybe the view on classical music is skewed by the centuries it has been around for and the more slow developing technological changes that were evident then. But modern classical can certainly use more electronic aspects to the music, and developments in recording technology have influenced composition I am sure.
That's true. After all there was a time when a piano was a new technology, and it spent decades improving. All the instruments have a history like that. So the history of classical music is also in part the history of musical technology.

(Except that for some reason it got frozen around 1930. That's an overstatement, of course, since there were always the likes of Xenakis trying new stuff out, and they were often ahead of pop music as well. But they were and remain outsiders.)
 
#10 ·
Specifically in the folk idiom, the transmission method is concerned more with the spirit of the music and passing on a tradition than with the analysis of the music.

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
-- Sir Thomas Beecham
 
#57 · (Edited)
I've learned, over what now seems in retrospect to be a silly amount of decades before I figured it out, that there is generally no stopping people's characteristic behaviors... and that is, sadly, too-*******-believable :)

From a pal of mine: A concert pianist, out with a few of the musicians from 'the band' post concert, talking about himself and 'his music' and other of his performances, all in a lengthy running monologue, pauses, looks around to the people with him and then says,

"Well! Enough about me.

So, what did you think of my performance tonight?"
 
#36 ·
I have a suspicion the next argument will be that jazz is not "spiritual", because it is American music, and it is common knowledge that Americans have no soul :D
 
#39 ·
I can't talk about the big picture, but I think with the new generation of players, there will be interest.
An example - my teacher is a baroque violin virtuoso who in between quite prestigious gigs (eg tonight he's playing Monteverdi vespers at the Royal Albert Hall) teaches school pupils as well as me. One of his pupils, a teenage boy, doesn't like classical music all that much so he is adapting motown music to teach him techniques & theories. At a recent Baroque concert my teacher played 'Don' worry about the Chaconne' in a baroque style. And btw, he rates jazz as well & certainly wouldn't agree with all the abuse above. A lot of his baroque playing involves improvisation & that is apparently what was done in the baroque era too; jazz is carrying on the tradition.

I think in twenty years' time, there will be people who will treat non-classical music like jazz with respect & who will be able to analyse the theory of it.

So there! :)
 
#42 ·
I prefer Giant Steps from Coltrane. I also feel, great musicians as Coltrane and Miles Davis are, that there's quite a few other jazz albums at least as much worth hearing about that have received nothing like the hype of A Love Supreme or Kind of Blue.
 
#47 ·
When I think about it, I'm surprised to learn that there is little interest in studying music theory via non-classical genres. I'd have thought there were university courses devoted to that. Are you sure, Couchie?

If you're right, maybe it's because there are fewer people with the requisite qualifications nowadays & therefore they gravitate into classical music. Maybe they fear that if they analyse the theory of non-classical music seriously, people will accuse them of 'dumbing down'?

But as I said above, I can't believe the situation will be permanent, if it is indeed as you say.

Does anyone actually have any information on the state of academic musicology?
 
#51 ·
If you're right, maybe it's because there are fewer people with the requisite qualifications nowadays & therefore they gravitate into classical music. Maybe they fear that if they analyse the theory of non-classical music seriously, people will accuse them of 'dumbing down'?

But as I said above, I can't believe the situation will be permanent, if it is indeed as you say.

Does anyone actually have any information on the state of academic musicology?
Jazz and non-classical theory have become prominent in the last few decades, and careers have been made with musicologists who have never studied classical music in-depth. Jazz theorists tend to be knowledgeable about their subject, but I have little to no respect for so-called rock and pop "theorists", whose perspective is usually as sociologically as it is musically oriented, if not more.
 
#60 ·
In general, why is there little interest in the study and development of music from a theoretical perspective in non-Classical genres...I'm talking about exploring the relationships of notes on a page, not experimenting on a guitar while high.
Well, let me put down this joint for a second, turn off my amplifier, and I'll tell you why. :lol:

The "study and development of music from a theoretical perspective" would be a criteria of a music which is actively dealing with these issues, as a way of "developing" musical language or dealing with the "nuts and bolts" of musical craft in a context which emphasizes "pure musical idea" and expansion of musical syntax.

I think Jazz, as a "non-classical" form, can be exempted from the OP's "innocent, non-malicious, non-elitist" query.

Pop music has different priorities than classical. It uses existing musical tools, and does not seek to expand or "evolve" the harmonic or theoretical base of musical syntax. So what?

Pop music has other criteria, such as texture, timbre, recording techniques, production, refecting social concerns and attitudes, projection of personality, good rhythmic dance grooves, and in general creating "art" which transends the boundaries of "notes on a page." Pop has a finger on the pulse of "what's happening" in the form.

As to the criticisms of rock: remember Frank Zappa, Gentle Giant, and King Crimson, for starters.
 
#62 · (Edited)
Some points of interest.

ABRSM has a specifically Jazz oriented performance exam syllabus. If you do "Classical" music you have to do Grade 5 theory to attempt the higher grades (6 and up). Interestingly, if you have done Practical Musicianship or a Solo Jazz subject at grade 5 you don't need to do the theory. The principle is that if you improvise, then you will have the sort of developed sense of tonality that the theory exams aim to cultivate.

Secondly, there probably is stuff out there but it comes on the wilder fringes; an example is the study of isorhythm which started with 14th and 15th century composers like Dufay or Guillaume de Machaut and then spread into Oriental Music or to quote the Encyclopedia Britannica: "As an analytical concept, isorhythm has proved valuable in connection with musical practices quite unrelated to those of the European Middle Ages—for example, peyote cult songs of certain North American Indian groups."

Thirdly, The Scottish equivalent of the ABRSM - RCS - runs folk exams but the theory element is missing and the scales are the standard Classical ones. So maybe you don't need special theory to cope with the bagpipes( - only ear defenders :) ).
 
#63 ·
Back in high school, I took a music course in which we had to analyze (the musical and non-social/non-cultural aspects) and compare pieces from different musical cultures (with Western Classical Music being one single musical culture). If we chose Western Classical Music, we were encouraged to not compare it to Jazz or Popular music and to compare it to an entirely different musical culture.

I found it to be an interesting assignment from which I learned a lot. However, the main problem I had with it was that it felt almost as if we were forcing a Western system of analysis onto World Music, especially when I used words like "B minor" or "tonic chord" on a piece of music written by someone from a different time and culture who most likely did not think of music with the same set of theories. We also had to provide examples and excerpts, which is best done through scores and sheet music, and a lot of the World Music looked painfully awkward when we forced it down onto a 5-lined staff. Also, the fact that we were discouraged from talking about the social and cultural aspects of the music through the assignment made it difficult to maintain the spark of interest we had for World Music at the beginning of course.

So, I began to wonder whether we should focus on the purely musical aspects of World Music at all, and if we should, how should we approach it?
 
#64 ·
Much world music is transmitted orally, so writing it down can be irrelevant or an approximation, but it's been done. I would suggest a knowledge of tuning, which is not easy to acquire. A knowledge of cents/hertz, temperaments, interval ratios, music physics & acoustics. For example, the Thai scale divides the octave into seven equal parts. Can you convert this into "plus or minus cents figures" for comparison to our tempered notes? What's the difference between hertz and cents? What is octave equivalency?

I think the question is, how seriously does one wish to pursue the study of World music? I recently saw a book on the history of musicology.
 
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