"Music theory" tends to be incredibly narrowminded and Eurocentric. Harmonic theory? Outside of Europe and European-derived forms, harmony is very rare. There are melodic traditions that do not use harmony, yet are just as traditional and sophisticated (Arabic, Hindustani, and Carnatic music all come to mind), and there are purely rhythmic traditions (various African, Arabic, central Asian, etc). And in the modern world, there is ambient, music built out of tone rather than rhythm/harmony/melody.
Having studied and played several different traditions to varying degrees, one thing I've learned is that music is equally sophisticated everywhere. There's this idea that classical and jazz are more sophisticated than "folk" forms. It's BS.
Outside of Europe and European-derived forms, harmony is very rare.
It's not rare, but it has different forms than western music. Maybe the most common form is pedal, which can be heard in this Tuvan form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rmo3fKeveo
Almost any time there are musical instruments accompanying singing, you'll get some form of harmony, like with this Japanese shamisen music: https://youtu.be/_k0wyAIkPhM?t=916
Pedal tones aren't really the same as Western harmony. You can't transition from one key to another. The pedal is more like a consistent pitch reference. Likewise, countermelodies aren't necessarily harmony, although harmony is technically countermelody.
Perhaps I'm being a tad too pedantic in this followup, but can you elaborate further? It's difficult for me to square how every style of music is equally sophisticated. I'm taking sophisticated to roughly mean 'complex'.
I'm not promoting classical music as superior to folk, but can we not reasonably say that a Bach fugue is more complex than Simon and Garfunkel? Using two Eurocentric examples to control for bias.
What's important to one style of music, and "sophisticated" or "complex" may be irrelevant in another. It's hard to compare.
Take a Bach Fugue, where the notes and harmonies are very important, and 'complex' with lots of rules, patterns, intertwining melodies. The specific instruments used doesn't always matter, most pieces could interchangeably be played on piano or harpsichord or organ and sound as beautiful.
Then let's look at something like Scary Monsters by Skrillex, where the entire drop is pretty much just a G with a small melody coming in every 4 measures. There's not much melodic complexity going on there. But the sound production, synthesis and processing is insane. After that song came out everyone was trying to figure out how to make a talking bass that sounded like that. And even years later, barely anyone has figured it out, I've only heard really famous synthesists like Rob Swire get a close sound.
Is a Skrillex drop as complex as a Bach Fugue? If you're just comparing the arrangement, or the melodies, not at all. But the Skrillex song isn't about the melody as much as the texture and dynamics. Bach didn't specify precisely what harmonics should exist in the instruments playing his music. Skrillex probably could not write a Fugue to the standards of Bach's best. But I bet if you sat Bach down in front of a laptop with an FM synthesizer, he couldn't create a "sick drop" either.
It gets entirely too subjective at this point. A lot of people will disagree with me that the production and synthesis techniques should be considered part of music theory or composition. But I think they're concepts that you couldn't replicate certain music without. In my opinion the palindromic structure of a Boards of Canada album is on par with something like Bach's Crab Canon. They just get there in totally different ways.
You seem to be implying that audio production is a component of music theory. This is something I had never considered. Normally I would not be thinking of audio production when I talk about music theory, but I certainly am not dogmatic about that. Things like timbre and dynamics are (I believe) usually considered part of music theory, so I suppose one could include all aspects of audio production as well.
In modern music, "audio production" is arguably more important than any other aspect. If we judged your average top 10 hit by the same standards (melody, harmonization) that we did a Bach piece, no modern music would be considered "good" (le wrong generation, I get it). But these songs are popular and drive a multimillion dollar industry, so they must be doing something right. I would point straight to production quality and technique. Why is Dr. Dre so popular? He's a decent rapper but he doesn't really have much content volume. He's who he is because he's one of the best producers in hip-hop. He made a career, a legacy, and an industry out of just being really good at production.
As an aside, I would argue that writing hooks is actually much more important than audio production. Music snobs like to talk about how simple the melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions are in pop music, but writing incredible hooks is hardly a solved problem and is something I am extremely impressed by.
So absolutely true. It's refreshing to hear someone discuss this in the same terms I do, as almost everyone I talk to about how production has become the music and how Ableton or ProTools is the instrument looks at me like I'm nuts.
Simon and Garfunkel absolutely depends on performance; it doesn't have the same musical content as a Bach fugue.
A somewhat poor, though adequate, performance of a Bach fugue with an instrument that doesn't have great tone will still convey a great deal of Bach's meaning.
A performance by average vocalists of a Simon and Garfunkle tune, backed by some average lounge band will just be a laughable farce.
It can't be saved by the musical content, because that is there in insufficient quantity.
Pop music is all in the nuance and tone that doesn't get notated in sheet music.
The result is that performing a convincing cover of some pop music requires a very high musical standard. Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time.
I think you've got something there. Bach solved a very difficult musical problem of his time brilliantly... how to transmit rich musical meaning using only a pen and some paper. Simon and Garfunkel had the luxury of using an LP instead and so transmitted in a totally different way. There's just no way you could write down what “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is supposed to sound like on paper beyond the barest (rather uninteresting) form. Medium, message etc.
That said, music practice after Bach did acquire more tricks in the notation to indicate performance. There are more constraints on how to play Chopin or Beethoven, say.
> "Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time."
Sure, you can get pleasure from that, but at the highest level classical music is very much about interpretation. People may think that classical music is about following the notes exactly, but it's not quite true, the way the player interprets a piece is what brings a piece to life (or not), and these subtle touches are not directly transcribed in the sheet music.
And like pop music, those interpretations come and go. We don't even have access to interpretations that were made prior to the age of recorded music! The Bach or Brahms score is the artistic gem which carries the timeless, enduring value. The interpretation is just a kind of ephemeral, stylistic whipping cream ladled on top. Today you like how Bob plays Paganini; tomorrow Bob is forgotten and Mike is the hot shit in Paganini interpretations.
No no, the performance is very important. A piece that sounds dull and uninteresting from one performer can sound full of life from another performer. Of course it helps if you have better source material, but that can only carry someone so far.
As for forgotten interpreters, before the days of recording I'd agree with you, but now we have recordings of greats from the past that's no longer the case. For example, in the case of classical guitar, people still admire the playing of players that are no longer with us, such as Segovia, and will still play their recordings. Whilst it's good to support new players too, a great performance is a great performance, it doesn't matter how long ago it was performed if it's still possible to listen to it.
> Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach
Then why do people pack concert halls to listen to Joshua Bell instead of listening to their kid cousin playing the violin?
> The result is that performing a convincing cover of some pop music requires a very high musical standard.
The same is absolutely true of classical music. Just because you can recognize what a Bach piece is by hearing the notes doesn't mean it's a good or convincing performance.
If you like electronic music and are interested in exploring the raga form, would recommend checking Charanjit Singh's 1982 album "Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A)
He was at a raga concert, and admitted to feeling totally lost. As the piece progressed, about 30 minutes into the performance, everybody in the audience sighed a breath of satisfaction, and nodded and smiled to each other when the cycles had reached conclusion.
At that moment he realised that there was so much more to music than he realised, and that the audience was much more capable of concentration, too.
Complexity takes different dimensions. Take American folk music, for example, something I know well. The songs and melodies are very simple. The performance is incredibly sophisticated. Addressing both individuality and tradition simultaneously, expressing the emotional content of the lyrics effectively... doing folk music is really, really hard.
If all you're doing is counting notes, Bach is more complex. If you bring expressiveness into it, the Carter family trounces Bach. And if you want to hear Bach ruined, just plug the notation directly into a midi sequencer with no human involved in the performance.
Music is both intellectual and emotional. Measuring only the intellectual aspect is a disservice to music. The emotional and cultural roles of music matter. This is often lost in "music theory".
I remember a long time ago, watching Peter Gabriel perform at a charity concert for human rights. A quarter million people in the audience, and he got them to do a sing-along of the chorus to "Biko", a song about the death of South African activist Steve Biko, who was beaten/tortured to death in police custody. Peter Gabriel was sitting on the edge of the stage, swinging his legs, providing minimal guidance. A quarter million people raised their voices together. How is that less sophisticated than a Bach fugue?
You raised the example of Simon and Garfunkel. "The Sound of Silence" will last in human society as long as Bach does. It will still be heard centuries from now. That's sophistication.
I'd argue that in baroque music, much of the notation is a scaffold upon which to build the performance.
Often it's forgotten that articulation, ornamentation, and improvisation are all supposed to be assumed in baroque performance practice. And that in many cases (nowadays), all three of the above are tossed aside (thankfully, less so nowadays -- with performers skilled in performance practice).
Remember: Bach was much better known as a performer/improviser rather than as a composer in his own days.
Combining the complexity of Bach's compositions with the complexity of his (or someone else's) actual performance just adds additional layers of the type of sophistication that you're speaking about.
Seems like you are reading into this much greater implications than is intended.
Classical music is in general much more complex and sophisticated than pop music. This is undeniably true by any rational yardstick. Whether its better or not is completely a different question.
I loves me some Thielmann Susato as much as the St John Passion. Both occurred before the US Constitution and deserve to live on in our cultural memory. I couldn't agree with you more.
Simplicity is sophistication as well. It's a more difficult form of sophistication than complexity, really. It's easier to add elements than take them away.
(of a person, ideas, tastes, manners, etc.) altered by education, experience, etc., so as to be worldly-wise; not naive: a sophisticated young socialite;
the sophisticated eye of an experienced journalist.
2.
pleasing or satisfactory to the tastes of sophisticates, or people who are educated, cultured, and worldly-wise:
sophisticated music.
3.
deceptive; misleading.
4.
complex or intricate, as a system, process, piece of machinery, or the like:
a sophisticated electronic control system.
5.
of, for, or reflecting educated taste, knowledgeable use, etc.:
Many Americans are drinking more sophisticated wines now.
By any of these 5 distinct definitions classical music is more sophisticated than pop music. I understand that you do not like the connotations, but you have to use a word to mean what it actually means...
Number 4 is the only one of those that could provide a basis for objectively claiming complex music is more sophisticated than simple music. The others are subjective.
I think you're missing that there are multiple "sophistications". There is not just one music education, I don't think. There could be a classical music education and context, and an entirely different pop music education and context. And some pieces of pop music could be very sophisticated by the standards of the people who are educated in that context.
All music does, really. I have a friend who pays attention and constantly picks up little tricks of guitar playing from me. When she figures one out, she always says "Guitarists cheat!"
I think more to the point, if you have to think about what you're playing while you're playing it, you're hosed. It's like the old question of how does a centipede walk. If the centipede thinks about walking, it falls. So music, even very complex music, tends to be built from small, easy to grok bits of technique, small enough that a player can simply memorize them, the way we memorize how to walk, or how to conjugate verbs.
absolutely not, in the abstract. you are probably using harmonic and motivic ideas a metric of complexity. but whos to say you couldn't use timbral and dynamic qualities as the primary yardstick? in that case simon and garfunkel would "reasonably" be more complex.
That's a good point. Musical styles are inherently rule-driven. There are certain givens that are very strictly limited. For example, every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes.
European classical music is rhythmically crude and primitive.
I spent a couple of years studying the frame drumming of the central Asian steppes with a good teacher. The concept of "time signature", a basic European idea, goes right out the window. If you're doing something best described as "17/16 with the occasional 13/8 counter-rhythm", you start to understand how crude European rhythm is. Yet it's actually easy to play! That's because it's not a "bar", it's a seqeuence of phrases that may be two, three, or four subdivisions long. Memorize the sequence and it's pretty straightforward.
Likewise, equal temperament severely limits European melodies. Arabic and Indian music are far more melodically complex.
But if you measure every other culture by the values of your own, they all look worse.
> every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes.
I can't disagree with the overall idea that traditional European classical music is pretty simple rhythmically, but the statement above is just flatly false.
For instance, I have here a copy of the first book of the Wohltemperierte Klavier, Bach's big collection of preludes and fugues. Prelude no 3 is in 3/8. Prelude no 4 is in 6/4. Prelude no 8 is in 3/2. Prelude no 9 is in 12/8. Prelude no 11 too. Prelude no 13 is in 12/16.
It's still all 2s and 3s in various combinations (though there's a little bit of 5/8 in Handel) and, again, I'm not disputing that this stuff is rhythmically much simpler than your central-Asian frame drumming. But it's also not all 3/4 and 4/4, nor is it just a steady stream of quavers.
Coming from the perspective of knowing central Asian, Arabic, and some African rhythms, arguing that 3/8 is tremendously different than 3/4 is a little silly to me. Virtually all classical music is just square feel, polka feel, waltz feel, or triplet feel. And it's not just the time signature, it's the simplicity of it. Arabic music is mostly 4/4, but is far more rhythmically intricate. Blues is mostly 12/8, but the feel is far different.
It's kind of like arguing a Buick is better than a Chevy to someone driving a Tesla.
I didn't argue that it's "tremendously different". I agreed that typical Western art music generally has pretty simple rhythms, and that other musical cultures often have much more complex ones. I said explicitly that time signatures in Bach are all 2s and 3s.
But what you actually said was, in so many words, "every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time". And that simply isn't true.
"Sophisticated" has no objective meaning, but not all music is equally complex. I mostly listen to techno. This genre has high timbral complexity, average rhythmic complexity, and almost no melodic or harmonic complexity. Compared to, eg. Beethoven's 9th, it's obviously artistically inferior. Despite this I find it more enjoyable to listen to.
But if we see this in a more broad perspective, there is electronic music (not necessarily techno) that is as complex as Beethoven 9th. Specially if more avant-guarde electronic music is included, not just EDM.
From time to time I listen to an Indian radio station. The melodies are often strange; yet the pitches are so accurate and nuanced, and a sour note is scarcely to be heard.
in my slow and repeated discovery of essentially the same thing, i felt like i could understand a little more about the subtlety of racism and cultural ignorance more broadly. in its simplest form, ignorant people seem to judge other musics by the goals criteria of their own, which are just about never the same. its ironic because someone who is making this mistake hears the music as kind of missing the point, but really _they_ are missing the point.
you can bet that if alot of people have been playing some kind of music for many generations, with lots of enthusiasm, then it has as much depth and sophistication as any other music with equivalent tradition. the problem might just be you dont know what to listen for.
Having studied and played several different traditions to varying degrees, one thing I've learned is that music is equally sophisticated everywhere. There's this idea that classical and jazz are more sophisticated than "folk" forms. It's BS.