this video is sponsored by CuriosityStream!
hey, welcome to 12tone! my job is to talk about music theory on the internet, which
means I've read a lot of comments about people's thoughts and opinions on the field, and for
the most part that's a good thing: being able to be a part of so many people's musical journeys
is genuinely one of the best parts of the job.
but this is the internet, which means that in addition to all the nice, curious, and
interesting messages, there's also a lot of comments that are simultaneously very rude
and very wrong.
I don't want to spend too much time dwelling on the rudeness 'cause it makes me sad, but
in terms of wrongness, I've noticed a couple trends, a couple common errors that these
commenters just can't stop making, so to set the record straight, I think we need to talk
a bit about what music theory is not.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
so, first of all, music theory is not a puzzle.
it may require similar kinds of logic at times, but there's an important distinction: puzzles
have solutions.
like, if I give you a sudoku grid and ask you to solve it, the implication is that there's
only one correct way of filling it out.
if there's not, if there's any unresolvable ambiguity, then it's not a valid puzzle. and
that works fine for sudoku because that interpretation is shared by both the setter and the solver,
but I pretty regularly see analysis presented as a sort of musical sudoku where, when we're
presented with a song, the assumption is that the composer has incorporated sufficient harmonic,
melodic, and rhythmic clues in order to guide us to the single uniquely correct explanation
for all the things we're hearing, and that's just not true.
sure, some musicians do think about their work that way, but for most artists, even
if they know all about music theory, they're ultimate goal is still just to play what sounds
good, and many of those good-sounding things tap into more than one aspect of our shared
musical culture.
probably the best-known example of this is Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama, which
is built on the progression D major, C major, G major.
in the key of G, these are V, IV, and I, the three most important chords in the key, and
the way they're arranged brings to mind the last four bars of the 12-bar blues pattern.
plus, this is the key that guitarist Ed King played his solo in, and that solo totally
works, so clearly the song is in G, right?
not so fast.
the progression starts on D major, and the melody keeps resolving to D, so maybe that's
the root?
maybe we're actually in D mixolydian, which is a scale that uses all the notes from G
major but centers them around D instead.
that's what the song's producer, Al Cooper, thought, anyway.
so which of them was right?
do we care more about the harmony or the melody, the solo or the verses? which set of clues
do we follow? which one of these two notes is the actual root?
well, honestly, neither.
or both.
or either one.
they're all valid analyses, depending on how you hear the song.
there's no one right answer, because the question is based on a flawed premise.
so why does this happen?
well, I think a lot of it comes down to how we teach theory.
in most classrooms, if a teacher hands you a piece of music and asks you to analyze it,
what they're actually asking you to do is a) label the chords, b) maybe add some roman
numerals based on the key, and c)... that's it.
you're done analyzing now, and the grade you get will depend largely on how closely your
labels match the ones your teacher was looking for. and this isn't to say that theory classes
are useless or anything: there's good reasons for this approach, especially in introductory
courses, but it's important to remember that every piece of music your teacher gives you
has been hand-picked or custom-written to serve as an example in a music theory class.
having one unique answer is valuable in that context because it helps make sure you actually
understand the concept they're trying to teach, but it's just not how music behaves in the
wild.
songs can work in more than one way at a time: most of them do, so just because my analysis
doesn't look like yours doesn't mean either of us is wrong.
it just means we think about music a little differently, and that's a good thing: the
music world would be a really boring place if we all approached it the exact same way.
on a similar note, music theory is not a scoring system.
it's not a way of determining which songs, albums, artists, genres, or time periods are
doing music best.
we don't have the tools for that, but that sure doesn't stop people from trying.
these days I usually see this directed at pop, country, modern rock, and most of all
hip-hop, with accusations of theoretical simplicity being thrown around as a proxy for low quality.
the idea goes that songs that use just a few chords, or stick to a simple melodic structure,
or follow a predictable song form are lesser works because they don't require as much theoretical
knowledge and, thus, skill, in order to construct.
there's a lot of problems with this approach, not least of which is the idea that an artist's
technical skill should be the primary measure of musical quality in the first place, but
to me, the heart of the issue is that this approach completely misunderstands how theory
works.
music theory doesn't predict, it reflects.
the models we build are all based on music that already exists, which means that music
theory is consistently and inevitably stuck in the past.
admittedly, we're probably stuck a lot further back than we need to be, but still, developing
the language to describe new forms of complexity takes time, and artists don't usually wait
for us to catch up.
pop music, for instance, is often derided as overly simple, in large part because it's
based on relatively short, easy to explain chord progressions, but have you ever seen
how a pop song gets made?
a typical track might have dozens or even hundreds of different layers stacked on top
of each other, all coming together to produce the exact sound and groove the producer intended.
it's a stunningly impressive feat of arrangement.
compare that to, say, a jazz trio, which, as the name implies, has only three instruments.
measured in orchestral depth, that's embarrassingly simple, but, of course, it's an absurd way
to measure how good they actually are, because it completely misunderstands what they're
doing.
the reason harmonic complexity feels like a more legitimate, objective criterion isn't
because it takes more knowledge, practice, or skill, it's just that we've been studying
it for a whole lot longer.
so why does this happen?
well, again, I think part of it is the way we teach theory.
we tend to start off with the music of the Common Practice period, and that period was
all about rules.
there were lots of things you were supposed to do and even more things you were supposed
to avoid.
whether or not composers of the time actually followed these rules nearly as rigorously
as we expect music students to is, of course, irrelevant: the point is that many people's
introduction to music theory is as a set of commandments, and it's easy to forgot that,
as natural as they may seem, they only really apply to one kind of music.
but I don't think we deserve all the blame on this one, because I see it all the time
from people who've never set foot in a music theory classroom.
no, I think this is mostly just a natural result of how humans are.
music is incredibly meaningful to most people: your taste is a huge part of your identity,
so it's easy to convince yourself that your favorite music isn't just the result of a
largely random set of cultural circumstances, it actually reflects some sort of real, objective
quality.
the music you like is the best music, otherwise you'd like something else instead.
but other people don't always see it that way, so if you want to prove how good your
favorite song is, you're gonna need a better argument than "I like it", and that's where
music theory comes in.
all you have to do is find an expert who says the song is good but in a way that sounds
smart and authoritative.
maybe they're talking fast, using fancy academic terms, and maybe they're, I don't know, drawing
some cartoon elephants while they're doing it, and boom, suddenly music theory proves
what you already knew: you have the best taste in music, and the songs you like are objectively
good.
but that's not how it actually works: music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.
it can't tell you what's good, all it can tell you is what's happening.
both of these mistakes, though, seem to stem from a single misconception, so I think it's
about time to rip off the final band-aid: music theory is not a science.
that may sound obvious, but you'd be amazed how many people treat it like one.
they may not acknowledge or even recognize that's what they're doing, but I've seen so
many arguments based on the premise that music is a real, definable object, and that the
goal of music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, and other fields that study music is to figure
out what that object is based on observations and data, and that's just… *sigh* ok, look.
this approach works great when you're dealing with something like, say, gravity.
gravity is a real physical phenomenon: it's been working the same way, following the same
rules, since long before there were people to observe it, and it'll keep working that
way long after we're gone.
now, we don't know all those rules yet: we have a pretty good guess, but if you ever
want to annoy a physicist just ask them to explain quantum gravity.
still, though, we have every reason to believe that the gravitational attraction between
massive objects follows a clear, consistent set of principles, so it makes sense to do
experiments in order to figure out what those principles are.
but music isn't a physical phenomenon: sound waves are, but the meanings we ascribe to
them are cultural.
music exists only because humans made it exist, and the shape it takes keeps changing because
people keep changing it.
as cultures and technologies advance, their music adapts with the current moment, constantly
redefining itself to fit what its people need it to be.
music is amorphous and weird, unbound by any laws beyond the ones we choose to apply to
it.
in a very real sense, music isn't anything, at least not until we decide it is, so studying
it is less like probing the hidden secrets of the universe and more like looking into
a giant, collective mirror.
we can learn a lot by studying music, but what we learn isn't actually about the music,
it's about ourselves.
so why does this happen?
why do people treat music like a science when it's so clearly not?
well, old-timey theorists certainly contributed to this attitude, but I'm gonna let us off
the hook on this one because I think it's actually reflective of a much larger and much
more dangerous cultural trend.
in America at least, the last few decades have seen a massive, ongoing, systematic devaluation
of arts and humanities education because they're harder to test, harder to monetize, and quite
frankly harder to make bombs out of.
sorry, physicists.
point is, there's been a huge push to prioritize science and math, and to be clear, I have
nothing wrong with science and math. we need science and math, but we need the humanities
too.
when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if we only teach science,
it's hardly surprising that students learn to approach every problem scientifically,
even when those tools don't really apply. and this obviously has much broader implications
than just bad music theory takes: when we don't teach the humanities, we build a society
incapable of understanding itself, and I think we're seeing the consequences of that play
out in the real world.
but I am but a humble music theorist, so instead of going off on a long diatribe about the
problems of modern life, I'll just leave you with this: teach the humanities.
it's really that simple.
speaking of which, some friends and I have actually been working on a project to help
support humanities education online.
it's called Nebula, and it's a streaming service built by some of youtube's top educational
creators.
I'm really excited about it 'cause it easily could've gone the same way most online education
services do and focused entirely on science content, but instead, from the very beginning,
we involved music creators like me and Polyphonic, film and literature folks like Patrick Willems,
Lindsay Ellis, and Just Write, history channels like Feature History and The Great War, cultural
critiques from Mia Mulder and Hbomberguy, philosophy content from PhilosophyTube, legal
content from LegalEagle… you get the picture.
including a broad range of smart, thoughtful creators representing lots of different kinds
of knowledge was a goal from day 1, and I'm really proud of how well we've accomplished
it.
that's why I think it's so cool that our first big, collaborative Original series wasn't
about chemistry, or mathematical formulas, or anything, it was about TV show intro sequences.
it's called Working Titles, and it features some of online video's best media analyzers,
including Patrick Willems, Trace Dominguez, and CinemaWins breaking down what makes their
favorite intros so great.
heck, I even made one for my favorite show, The Prisoner.
we're all really excited about it, and we've even managed to partner with CuriosityStream,
another platform that really understands the value of including arts and humanities content,
in order to offer you an amazing deal: if you sign up for CuriosityStream using the
link in the description, not only do you get a free month trial with full access to all
their awesome documentaries, you also get a Nebula subscription for free for as long
as you remain a CuriosityStream member, and with annual plans starting under 20 bucks
a year, that's a lot of educational value.
anyway, thanks for watching, thanks to our Patreon patrons for making these videos possible,
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