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,
and extra special thanks to this video's Featured
Patrons, Jill Sundgaard and Duck. if you want
to help out, and get some sweet perks like
sneak peeks of upcoming episodes, there's
a link to our Patreon on screen now.
you can also join our mailing list to find
out about new episodes, like, share, comment,
subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.
