That would explain why whenever he refers to "falling in love with you" even though the "you" is also driving around town with the girl he loves (his more recent ex). He now feels angry at them both and tries to rationalize it by telling himself he just wasn't rich enough, when in fact it was just because they were both lesbian.

Edit: There's a slight chance I completely misunderstood what this subreddit is for

Edit 2: ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Edit 3: /u/slapfish1 and /u/TROGlobite made some good counterarguments, though /u/napkins777 came up with a good alternative theory that also works.

Edit 4: Damn, this is now the top post of all time in this sub and I still can't understand anything in it

The notes being played here acc to me are (from left to right): E F F F# G A

CodaQuest is a choose your own adventure through the triumphs and tragedies of the music business. A cosmic black comedy that takes you from high school nobody to intergalactic rock star, while teaching you the basics of reading music and understanding theory. MYST meets guitar hero in a psychedelic journey that combines elements of incremental, room escape, and RPG games. Will you go on to tour arenas and top the charts? Or just, you know, like die or something. Only your talent can save you from certain mediocrity, muahaha.

Im SO excited about this game, but before i really begin fundraising for it's development, I thought I'd bring it to the sub that was the backbone of my theory understanding. Not only are you guys incredibly knowledgable, you're the most supportive and quite simply, most kind subreddit ive seen on this website. Thank you for helping me figure out everything from secondary dominants to whether that damn note is a 2 or a 9.

Please enjoy this brief preview and stay tuned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VslJnCV6o

I use minor scaled and it's pretty hard to arrange notes.

Here's the MP3 if you want to hear. (Comes with an FLP if anyone wants to patch it up)

https://www.mediafire.com/file/megsw5eoousq257/Anyone_fix.rar/file

I really want to make a song that fits the theme

"The king is going to battle"

but instead i get

"The king is smoking pot while his villagers die"

for anyone who agrees with this criminal individual:

understanding more about music helps you create more complex and technically advanced pieces. if it werent for the study of music theory, every song would sound the same, because we’d have no revolutionary ideas… you gotta understand the rules to break them and etc

also, music theory applies to all the musical styles in the picture. mastering your artistic skill will never take away its originality, just give you more tools to convey what you want to.

theory doesnt “make” artists gravitate towards writing what sounds conventionally good, it helps people understand the relationship between the different sounds and create art with INTENTIONALITY (the whole point btw).

It's like a Maj7 chord except you raise the 7th a half step, so for example CEGB becomes CEGB#. It sounds so amazingly consonant and stable despite the weird interval. You have to try it out!

Anyways I don't think I could have made this discovery without the pioneering work of u/Whistle-Punk found here.

Congratulations, now you can't unhear it and you'll never enjoy this song again.

Google lens didn’t help. Searching for ‘huge flat in key signature’ also gave me nothing 🤣 Thanks in advance!

im thinking we change all the note names so that the key of A major can go in alphabetical order, starting on the A. Great idea, no?

Someone posted this in a non-musical discord that I participate in, and I'm really unsure if this is actually useful. It looks very pretty, but it's so dense that I'm not really sure what the purpose of this visualization is.

Like using modes as linkages to me makes me think whatever it's visualizing is fairly arcane, since I don't think it's a very high-demand to change modes in songwriting, but I'm a klezmer / irish fiddle violinist, so I'm not deep into eldritch jazz and heavier theory.

I'm genuinely curious what this would be useful for in a practical sense. Is it bullshit and just trying to look pretty? What would you use it for?

enjoy

Hi everyone,

I just remade this post to include the image, and deleted the old post.

I made a (completely free) website where you can explore chords, scales and intervals. It's optimized for Desktop, and may not work well on mobile. It works simply by hovering a note with the mouse to play a chord.

It started as a personal project to study the Circle of Thirds, which doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Circle of Fifths. I find the Circle of Thirds fascinating in how it helps to visualize triadic harmony and the relationships between chords.

This tool uses a heptatonic (7-note) scale where each letter name is fixed, and the accidentals update according to the mode or scale. Changing the root of the scale rotates the seven notes so that each degree always stays in the same position. You can pick between two modes: major and minor. The major mode uses the major scale, while the minor mode combines the natural and harmonic minor scales: the 7th degree sharpens dynamically when you hover over the 5th degree to create a dominant chord. This makes it possible to play common minor progressions, such as i–VII–VI–V. You can also expand the menu to explore other scales.

The scale is very important here, because when we play a chord, it will use the available pitches from that scale. For instance, if we pick the "triad" shape, it may play a major or minor chord depending on which degree we pick, or a diminished triad on the 7th degree of the major scale, an augmented triad on the 3rd degree of the harmonic minor.. Similarly, picking the "7th" chord shape may result in a major 7th, a dominant 7th, a diminished 7th, etc.

To be able to play several types of chords without having to select a new chord type each time, I created a button "Add to circle", where the current selected chord type will be added to the circle as a small button that sticks to the selected degree. We can move these around, and over a different note to change its root. I also made it possible to add special buttons for certain chromatic chords, such as secondary dominants, or parallel triads.

The active notes will display all intervals between them as lines with a label (P5 for perfect 5th, d4 for diminished fourth, M3 for major third, m2 for minor second etc.). This can be toggled on and off for each interval type on the right panel.

In addition to the basic "hover a note to play", I added several input modes. You can click on the piano keys below the circle, you can plug-in a MIDI keyboard, or even use the computer keys. Using these inputs will trigger the experimental chord detection feature, which tries to figure out the likeliest pitch from a piano key. Each key has three possible enharmonic spellings, (except G#/Ab which has 2 and without going beyond double accidentals). The "C" keys for instance could be B#, C or Dbb depending on context. Trying to play a chord far removed from the selected key - such as an E major chord while in the key of C minor, may cause the identification to fail. The detection feature is experimental, so keep that in mind when a chord name is displayed. Most common cases are handled, and I will continue improving it.

This website is far from perfect: this is the first draft. It started as a personal project, then I decided to try and make it into an educational tool. I hope to find ways to make it more beginner-friendly and improve the user experience. Feel free to point out any mistakes I might have made.

Remember to try it on desktop rather than mobile. Any feedback is appreciated.

Link: CircleOfThirds.com

Hope you enjoy it!

Alex

I always get distracted trying to listen to exactly what all the parts are doing lol

I mean, jesus christ. You can be a world class mathematician without knowing the answer to 999x1565 instantly, and people constantly asking about perfect pitch and ways to develop it if possible is making people think you NEED perfect pitch.

edit: ok this blew up, wanna say i am not hostile against people discussing perfect pitch, but i think its not for THIS sub, and the discussions go nowhere 99% of the time.

This is a subreddit about music theory. If you want to argue the usefulness of knowing theory and how/if to use it when writing music, go to r/composer. This space is for people wanting to learn why and how. Not if and should.

I'm so frustrated when I see someone asking a genuine question about theory and someone says "just do what you want, there are no rules". Like no shit, no one is going to arrest you if you don't resolve your leading tone. But It's unhelpful and pointless giving empty advice when someone is looking for a genuine answer. Music theory exists for a reason and there are guidelines that are helpful to know when learning. You may decide not to employ those guidelines if you write music and that's fine, but telling others to do the same is a dick move when they are simply trying to deepen their understanding.

If you don't know the answer or you personally don't think it's important to know, simply don't comment. It doesn't help OP at all and just makes you look like a dink. Rant over.

Edit: just for clarification here, I'm not talking about questions on this sub that are specifically asking for subjective opinions like "why does this sound good??". I'm talking about questions from obvious beginners that will not benefit from hearing "don't worry about that and do what you want" when they're asking for help on understanding a concept. Sometimes it's not about what sounds good, it's about the theory itself.

Edit 2: The plus side of this giant conversation is at least I know who to block so that the comments on posts in this subreddit appear way more helpful.. and I won't be a cranky lil bebe who has to post things like this :) little victories!

I'm a retired music professional. I spend a lot of my time haunting the music and production subs answering questions, giving out advice, that sort of thing. Everywhere I go, I see beginners asking ultra basic questions. No surprises there. But what is surprising is how often they're greeted with condescension, insults, or replies that would be funny to experienced members but meaningless to the OP.

Do people so easily forget how difficult and confusing music was when they first started?

But this sub is different. It warms my heart to see people go to such great lengths to try and explain things in ways that are easy to comprehend for people new to it. Even the occasional snarky comment is still good natured here. I don't know why the atmosphere in this sub is so much better than others, but I love it.

So congrats to the fine people who post here. You're doing the good work of guiding the new folks in their journey.

Up until today, I never thought about why ii-V-I and I-vi-ii-V were so common in jazz, but I was sitting on the toilet today thinking about it, and I realised both progressions are descending in fifths!

I don’t know why I’m posting this here, I’m just lonely and as per usual very drunk, and I felt I needed to say this to someone.

This got a chuckle out of me. I’m not sure why they used a definition of a scale here (and a bad definition at that, half steps and whole notes??)

In case anybody needs a laugh - OP

is what i say to myself everytime i put off trying to write a song

someone wrote this in my sketchbook - i recognize the sharp note, but what’s the rest?

http://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/kca868/december_13th_2020_rmusictheory_diving_into_the/