#181

Western music theory is really harmonic and melodic theory for the Ionian scale. All it’s thinking emerges from uses of the Ionian scale (leading tones, diminished 5th on the 3rd and 7th). To get some idea of that compare how the Aeolian (minor) scale is used in western classical (harmonic and melodic minor scales to bring in leading tones and a V7 chord). Amusingly it also often ignores that quite a bit of the canon wasn’t written in equal temprament (making some of the analysis a little odd).

It has very little of use to say about rhythm, and when it’s used to analyse non Ionian music (e.g. modal music in either classical, folk, or pop), it tends to get in the way because the assumptions of Ionian music don’t apply to other scales/systems. One of my least favorite things is reading a music analysis of a modal piece which insists on somehow showing how it still uses Dominant 5ths - or relates harmonic ideas somehow to Ionian structures.

And a final criticism that I think is very legitimate, is that much of the music theory that is taught in the academy is incredibly dated. Nobody writes music that way anymore. Figured bass? I mean WTF. Counterpoint following C18th rules? Are we serious? If you think a 4th is a dissonance, buddy I have news for you. We have a whole new tuning system now and it’s fine.

If anyone wants resources on harmony that are outside the Ionian tradition I would recommend the following:

I am always interested in good resources on rhythm if anyone wants to reciprocate :slight_smile: Though I will throw out that euclidean rhythm isn’t really euclidean. Instead it’s a way in which polyrhythmic music from Africa was quantized to 4/4 12/8 grids in various places. And once you realize that, amazing possibilities open up…

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#182

Really? I can’t think of a common jazz harmonic technique that didn’t appear in legit composition or film scores first.

#183

Not sure how we’re defining common Jazz harmonic techniques to be honest. If we’re talking II V I - and circle of 5ths then sure I guess. But that’s rather like defining classical music as all about I -> V, with the occasional use of secondary dominants. But even if you were to take something quite vanilla like tritone subsitutions, which obviously have their roots in C19th harmonic practice, Jazz took them way further than anything I’m familiar with in the classical repertoire.

And obviously once you move beyond Ionic music and start looking at modal Jazz, or later whatever the hell Coltrane was doing, I don’t think it would be terribly accurate to describe that as simply evolving the ideas of Debussy, or whatever.

None of these should be terribly surprising if one isn’t some kind of classical music snob. Jazz music has a very different relationship to harmony than C19th/C20th art music because it’s structured differently. Jazz (when it became harmonically adventurous) was focused on harmonic lines, improvization and complex rhythm. vamping was important. Also Jazz harmony has evolved through trial and error, rehearsal and playing - classical harmony (once you get past the era of Bach) evolved more through written texts.

The only reason that traditional theorists don’t see this is because they start from the premise that classical music is the high point of culture, and so are unable really to get beyond the limitations of their theoretical stance.

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#184

50s modal jazz derived from a piece by Morton Gould. Coltrane changes came from Slonimsky, and Have You Met Miss Jones. Listen to William Walton’s film scores for Olivier’s Shakespeare films for examples of quartal and quintal modal harmony two decades before McCoy Tyner.

#185

You’ve said this before, and it’s the first time I’ve heard it in my life. Also, attributing quartals and quintals to William Walton and not Debussy is, as the kids say, “sus.” Can you refer to any documentation that jazz musicians copped this stuff from film scores?

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#186

I didn’t say Walton was the first to do it; I’m just offering an example that predates 60s Coltrane as referenced above. I’m arguing against the notion that jazz harmony is sui generis.

Why are you asking me to “document” the transmission vectors? Wrt Morton Gould, a number of jazz players recorded or quoted his Pavanne, before Coltrane plagiarized the melody. But can’t we just stipulate that many jazz musicians watch movies and study classical music, and are influenced by the experience? I don’t understand why this is controversial.

#187

Any Coltrane fan will find this familiar:

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#188

sure, so long as we can also say that those same soundtrack composers were quite clearly influenced by jazz.

So far Shapero had modeled himself on Krenek, jazz, Piston, Stravinsky, Boulanger, Harris, Copland, Scarlatti, C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, and Brahms. For the next three pieces, Shapero takes on Beethoven.

#189

I agree, jazz harmony is not sui generis. But it’s not “just” film music, either.

I’m asking you to cite documentation of the vectors (I’m not asking you to document it yourself) because this is quite an unusual claim, to argue over and over again that nothing happened in jazz that didn’t already happen in film music. I’m just curious where you read that.

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#190

@ntrier
I didn’t read it; I observed it by watching a lot of old movies. I grew up before videotape, and spent many, many nights at repertory theaters. But you’re attributing a stronger argument to me than I actually want to make. The challenge I set is to identify a jazz harmony that lacks any predecessor on the legit side.

A respondent above mentioned 60s Coltrane harmony. But the influences for Coltrane changes are well-known: He took Shapero, Slonimsky, Have You Met Miss Jones, mashed them up into his own thing, and learned to blow on it. It was a towering creative accomplishment, but it didn’t come out of nowhere.

@speakerdamage

sure, so long as we can also say that those same soundtrack composers were quite clearly influenced by jazz.

Sure, sometimes. But harmonic innovations in jazz lag behind the donors. It takes a while for a new sound to sink in and become part of the vernacular, and to learn to blow on it.

In general I want to caution against giving these stylistic categories more valence than they deserve. It’s a cognitive error akin to reifying racial categories.

#191

Ok, so you would have a stronger argument re: film music if you could cite an interview where Miles Davis says “Yeah, I watched Spartacus and transcribed the music and it influenced my next album.”

Also, you might want to stop using the word “legit,” because it sounds like you’re implying jazz is “illegitimate.”

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#192

Oh come on man. That’s slang from my generation of jazz musicians. That’s how we talk. Kindly show some respect for generational differences.

#193

I don’t think that’s necessary. The burden of proof is on the folks who argue that jazz harmony is its own separate thing, floating free of influences from other music in the culture.

#194

cool strawman.

no one is arguing against the fact that someone like Coltrane—who is, in so many words, dismissed above by @cian as doing something harmonically ‘unknown’ because he was a ‘free jazz player’, which is just analytically untrue and a gross misrepresentation (listen to e.g. Interstellar Space and then listen to a performance of “Impressions” from '62; the robust transpositional logic is maintained)—wasn’t synthesizing an array of sources external to so-called ‘jazz’ (a racist term, if we want to get into that, too). the salient point is that these harmonic structures were composed in order to be extrapolated upon through improvisation, which is not at all the case with Shapero or whomever working within the neoclassical tradition. moreover, Coltrane’s use of chromatic mediant transposition is functionally orthogonal to that of Debussy, Slonimsky, Shapero, et al … primarily, it served as a means to increase the chromatic saturation possible within otherwise directional triadic, as well as static modal, homophonic textures. the grating pomposity with which you speak about this music reeks of desperately wanting acknowledgement for your status as ‘in the know’ and being ‘an insider’ because you spent ‘many nights at repertory theaters’, rendering your position glibly authoritative. sorry to get ad hominem, but no one cares. you’re defeating your own ostensibly anti-reductionist position that ‘jazz harmony’, whatever that is, isn’t sui generis or ex nihilo or whatever, by offering another reductionism: it’s from film music, some neoclassical composers, and a Rodgers and Hart showtune. it’s also not the best look to always be the first one to say ‘hey, look! these white people did this first!’, especially if the definition of “this” appears quite myopic and contingent upon one’s attendance to repertory theaters and tepid jam sessions however many years ago.

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#195

A lot in this thread goes over my head. I know very little about music theory of any tradition and can’t evaluate some of the more advanced musical theoretical discussions here, so I would like to bring it back a little bit to the original question and video.

Being 100% self-taught when it comes to music, I recently decided I wanted to learn a bit more about music theory to fill in some gaps, so I enrolled in a part time distance course at the biggest university in my country. The course was called “An introduction to general music theory” and was aimed at people with no prior musical knowledge. But there was nothing “general” about it! It was just straight into 12 tone equal temperament, western modes, scales and rhythms. No discussion about what music and music theory is, what signifies the western tradition(s) compared to others etc. It was clearly implying “this is the correct, default way to music”.

Classical western music theory is undeniably the default. Claiming that a lot has been written about other traditions and that one is free to study whichever tradition they want – “just choose the right school!” – I think misses the point. The claim is not that other traditions don’t exists. It’s that one tradition dominates others, which on a broader scale creates a narrow minded understanding and appreciation about music. Europe and the US have a long history of colonisation and imperialism, both territorial and cultural, and naturally western music theory have played along in this. We must acknowledge this connection, and ask what this domination does to other musical traditions, and what it says about the cultures of which these traditions are a part. Who gains from this domination? Who loses? I think these basic questions are important, because they reveal the underlying power structures. Then becomes visible the relationship to racism, classism, orientalism etc.

It’s also not only a question about academic musical research and theory, which much of this thread focuses on. When a young person starts learning an instrument, I think in most places across the planet, we all know what their teachers will teach them – classical western music theory! One should not have to study music up to university level to first hear about other traditions and schools of thought. There’s nothing wrong with teaching classical western music theory, but imagine a world where other traditions are acknowledged and compared with each other already from a young age… how much richer wouldn’t it be?

Finally, I would like to compare this topic to the discussion about whiteness and structural racism (I’m white). Whiteness is also the “default” in our culture. Black culture is not just culture, it’s “black culture”. In media or in public, a white person is almost never asked about their experience of being white, while a person of the global majority often have to talk about and relate to their experience of being non-white. A white person is asked about other things, things related to their individual personality, interests and experience, while a PGM have to represent the whole group – a group which the term so beautifully describes makes up a majority of the world’s population. There’s clearly an imbalance here. Our western culture’s idea of “default” narrows our perspective in a terrible way. I think this goes for what is “default” music theory as well, and talking about it in those terms is really helpful in softening the borders of our minds, making our intelligence more flexible.

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#196

It’s maybe worth noting that (apart from the more risk-averse film scores) western classical music isn’t at all dominant in terms of what people genreally listen to, play, socialise around etc in the west. The African diaspora clearly wins that one. The academic pejorative term ‘popular music’ is just a way to try to ignore this fact.

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#197

That’s true. The question I wanted to raise is, what is missed when that music is by default analyzed with tools developed to understand western classical music?

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#198

So there is a lot of threads mentioned in this topic, but I think that “culture” can be weaponized and actually this is one of the thing that USA currently does.
From my eastern european perspective USA music, movies, books etc. are extremely prevalent and are shown as default and “better” and anything that doesn’t try to be exactly as USA counterpart is often treated as worse/of lower quality etc.
This probably comes from the fact that after the fall of communism there was a really strong influx of “Western” culture and USA was being sold as this idealized land when everyone is free and just by their hard work they can achieve anything. Even like few days ago I was traveling on highway and I stopped at bar called “Route 66” located in the middle of wheat fields. The american dream is still strong here. Even our crazy far right party (which unfortunately now has seats in parliment) is called “Confederacy” and their premise is that basically anyone should have a right to carry a gun and there should be free market without any regulations (which again came from skewed and idealized view of USA sold in its pop culture products).
So yes, I think that we should strive even in musical theory to be as inclusive as possible because setting one culture as “default” can have very far outreaching results even outside of music. And I am not surprised that people in USA are angry because having their own music now be celebrated and sold (often without profits returning back to people) after few centuries of enslavement and even the fact that they come up with something tries to be taken away from them (like look someone made something which looked somehow similar, if you squint your eyes, some years before) is enraging. Nothing is created in vaccum but combining things in a new creative way requires a lot of effort so please don’t try to look over that fact.

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#199

Yes… If you can conclude that Jazz comes from listening to soundtrack music then it seems quite a lot can be missed. But equally I think you miss a lot if you only analyse western classical music with traditional tools of western classical music theory. Classical music isn’t ‘special’ in that respect either.

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#200

And about what “came first” etc. this might just be my own preconception but I have a feeling like people often dismiss ideas with “but look this is not so far from this other idea”. I don’t know about other education systems but when I was in school often breakthroughs were described as this things created in vaccum often by single person. Electricity, phone, DNA, evolution - everything disovered by those lonely great minds. While in reality the other thing is true and our progress is continous - not discrete and every discovery is made based on previous findings (even if not popular at that time). Again not wanting to discredit anyone just I wish we would embrace collaboration more instead of doing everything solely by ourselves.
And this also shows up in music where people very hard try no to even give a hint of copying something instead of embracing all of the music, books etc. as a pool from which we can take and remix/create.

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