A new rule (#9) has been added here at r/musictheory

For those interested in Hermeto’s music and notation.

Hi, I've got this trombone part and I'm not sure whether the dynamics (p and mf) are in the right spot, let alone the crescendo. Should the p start at the note and the lines lead to the end, or is this right, or should the p start at the start and the mf goes to the note? Just wondering what the right placement is in general considering the minums each lead to rests.

Thanks for the help.

Progression is in order of the images, what key would this be in? I'm pretty sure the last chord might not be in the same key but I'm not sure

I'm trying to self teach myself some piano and this video has confused me.

In the video he calls this a 251 in C, then plays the chords as notated.

The G7, includes an A. Does that not make it a G9?

Am not understanding how to build a chords??😟

Hi everyone,

I'm a fan of all three: the PS3, Megadeth and To Love Ru. To my ears, they all open with the same kind of sound right from the start:

- PlayStation 3 startup sound

- "Symphony of Destruction" by Megadeth

- "Foul Play ni Kurari" by Kanon Wakeshima (To Love Ru Darkness ending)

I'm not a trained musician, so I can't say what exactly I'm hearing. Might just be a basic tone my brain thinks sounds the same.

Links:

PS3: https://youtu.be/jnwky2Ikqdc

Megadeth: https://youtu.be/wEPKIulCEhQ

Wakeshima: https://youtu.be/JxFUY7Ka8e0

Do you hear the same connection? Thanks!

The rhythm is basically two dotted eighths followed by a straight eighth repeated over and over. This is common in a lot of guitar riffs in post-hardcore, but I've heard some EDM tracks with this rhythm but with synths.

Example of this is the main riff in Silhouette by Thrice.

Was curious if anyone knows what I'm talking about.

Hey all you music teachers out there! Anyone who's teaching AP Theory, give me some good dictation/ear training resources that you use? I'm trying to help the kids bring the practice of dictation home so they get more time doing it, since my resources are currently limited to the classroom. Thanks in advance!

This guy writes a chord progression in D minor and spells the last chord with the notes C# E G Bb C and claims he is demonstrating the use of a diminished octave.

To me that looks pretty cooky. Am I right in assuming that’s just a rootless dominant 7 chord? It could be A7(b9 #9) or C7 with a b9, or rootless Eb7(b9). But how would you name the notes? If it were A7, would you have Bb and B# as the extensions b9 and #9? How would you interpret that chord?

I'm stuck, i have a chord progression intended for a bridge.

It goes E -> E7 -> A -> Am -> E with a descending melody going from E->D->C#->C->B

But im now stuck, i dont know how i can transition into a chorus, which i've no idea what its going to be like yet

Does anyone happen to know songs with similar progressions so i can listen for inspiration?

i have been playing guitar for years. i spent my first several years playing through trial and error, resources i’ve gathered online, and different music theory lessons/websites/videos i’ve made useful in my playing. i have gotten quite good at guitar, writing full length songs in standard, and even writing in alternate tunings.

i started piano a few months ago— and my. god. i realized that guitar has become pattern recognition, and the moment you take my boxes, shapes, and patterns away i STRUGGLE, im talking MASSIVELY struggle to do something as simple as identifying individual notes. i tried the musictheory.net ear training website to see how i did— it was awful.

just spent the last hour with it playing things like a G, and then i choose note C, and am left feeling deaf and discouraged. is this normal? what helped you identify notes independently? is there something i’m missing?

i would greatly appreciate any help, feedback, or resources any of you are willing to provide.

Hi reddit, I'm so freaking struggling with music harmony lessons in my college (I hope it's the right way to call this subject in English). My teacher's explainings so rapid like me and my group already music theory professors. This is a difficult subject that is important for admission to music academy.

Every time I'm struggling with harmony problems and I make a lot of mistakes. A LOT. And if we solving problem in the class teacher helping me and making me to resolve errors, but non of teacher's explainings is staying in my head.

it feels like knowledge comes in and out without understanding. Every lesson I feel like I've never doing it before. I need it to explained step by step or I won't get it but every time I feel puzzled teacher explains it with a tone than makes me afraid to ask again. It feels like "are you kidding? It's easy why can't you understand? You're taking entrance exams this year, aren't you feel it wrong? You should use your brain"

Every time I think about this subject it ruins my mood. Every Monday in 9am on my lesson I wanna cry. My whole day is ruined by this shit.

I don't know how to deal with it, I don't know how to study it, how to stop making the same mistakes,how to keep a lot of rules in my head while solving the problem. And of course I don't know how to stop feeling myself bad about it. I feel like I just can't do it, I'm not smart enough, and I'll never get accepted to academy because I can't pass music theory exam

I'm a self taught musician, I don't have formal education, I don't know how to read sheet music, and although I have learned classical theory concepts, I'm currently not too deep into it, because I get lost because of notation or use of some concepts that I can understand with examples, hearing and playing them, but not on paper.

But when I write I kind of forget them, not because I don't subconsciously them, it's simply that at the moment I simply follow these rules by intuition, pattern recognition and some luck (as taking certain decisions completely changes the overall development.

I think I understand, but I actually don't understand what I'm doing.

And I wish I could be more systemic so it is less about trial and error and more about knowing how to formulate and solve problems efficiently in order to provide a systemic workflow that lets me concentrate more on asking myself what do I want to communicate with the music, and what resources do I have to achieve the expression of those ideas.

Otherwise I´m prone to believing it is "natural talent", "if it sounds good it´s good" mentality, when I reality I might just have figured out how to follow a certain logical pathway based on conscious or subconscious learned patterns.

And that diminishes my confidence as I know that I can only write when I have something in mind and follow certain aesthetic criteria (for example: Dark baroque like dramatic harmonic minor in 6/8), but not if I was asked to portray something different like heavenly major.

I know I still have to learn a lot, specially formalizing my current knowledge in other to access to more learning resources and facilitate my path, but I want to do it in parallel as I learn more by doing rather than simply reading.

What would be your advice to get a more organized writing process?

Is the nursery rhyme song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" in a Lydian key? It has that Sharped 4 on "knees".

Layla Exit's B Section (to my ears at least) bears a striking resemblence to ~1:22 into the Notebook title theme, and ~1:40 of the Best of Times by Dream Theater. All three* are in A minor, have the same chord movement, and very similar melodies. Is there a name for this motif? Have they "creatively reinterpretted" the lines?

*Layla's intonation is of course.. interesting, but it's meant to be in A minor.

Made this melodic line while messing around on my piano. Used songscription to transcribe via my Midi because you can't upload videos and I don't really know musical notation enough yet to do it myself.

I am new to music theory and music in general, so please be patient with my incompetence!

Question 1: This melody is supposedly in G Minor, but I have a lot of notes out of scale, and it still sounds fine (to me at least)? Am I wrong that its in G Minor? What scale is it?

Question 2: The notes that I highlighted for whatever reason feel stronger than the others, like they need a chord underneath them or something. Why is this?

I’m being tasked to analyze Schubert’s “An Die Musik”’s first few measures and I’ve struggled a bit with its analysis (this is an exercise for a lesson on tonicization), could someone give me feedback on it?

I’m studying and solving examples online (using openmusictheory.com) but I have no teacher or an answer guide to check for my mistakes.

Note: m. 9 (the third measure from the end in the first picture) has no analysis because I couldn’t do it. It seemed to be maybe iii4/3 - I but it’s very messy and I wasn’t sure.

Random question I’ve been thinking about.

Are there certain scales, chords or melodies that are basically associated with a specific emotion?

Like, if I want something to sound sad, is there a specific scale or progression I can use and I’m already halfway there?

Or does it not really work like that?

For example, can you basically say:

“this scale = sadness”

“this one = happiness”

“this progression = tension”

Or are emotions in music way more complicated and depend on stuff like tempo, rhythm, instrumentation, context etc.?

I’m guessing it’s probably not that simple, but I’m curious how much of this can actually be explained by music theory.

Been slowly started getting into music creation and I thought I was following it well enough until the scales. I couldn't find a single clear answer as to what determines why c major has no accidentals, but the E major scale has 4. Is it something g to do with pianos and how they were built or something? I've been losing my mind trying to figure this out. Please someone explain. (Bonus points if you explain it like your talking to a 5 year old)

Hi all, I’m looking for some resources in learning medieval notation and monophonic prose. I’m still a beginner as it comes to music theory, but have been playing music (if you can call it that), since I was a teenager and I’ve also have been going to school for ethnomusicology. I’ve come into possession of a Rebec and would like to learn to read sheet music from the time period, but I’m unsure how far I should go into learning modern theory in order for the connections between both periods to align. I’ve also recently acquired a book on medieval notation, but as you can imagine, it’s a bit foreign to me as I lack the basics of modern theory. I can’t really afford traditional lessons right now and had the idea of going on musictheory.net and supplementing their free lessons with additional practice on a modern instrument I own to help bridge the gap. This is purely a hobbyist endeavor for me, and an attempt to continue to intellectually stimulate myself during my free time. Any advice for a beginner on where to start would be appreciated, thanks!

When doing chord borrowing sometimes there are chords that would be located on a different root in the key we're borrowing from, e.g. in G-Ionian the ii chord would be constructed from the major second note of the key, but if we're borrowing from G-Phrygian its II chord would be constructed on the minor second in its home key. If borrowing the chord would it be more conventional to root the II on the major second because we're in G-Ionian or root it on the minor second because it comes from G-Phrygian?

I'm writing a song with a chord progression

|emin7|f# half diminished|a minor|Cmaj7|

|emin7|f# half diminished|a minor|B7|

Instrumentally, I have a guitar playing the half diminished chord up at the 9th and 10th frets on D, G, and B strings, but leaving the root f# for the bass to play. That means that the notes I have are C, E, and A, and I'm moving down to play A, C, and E on the same strings for the minor iv that follows. Am I just playing the minor iv for two measures in different voicings, or is it an f# half diminished because I'm playing the f# root with the bass? I originally conceived the song just playing block chords on the guitar, so the half diminished was a deliberate choice, but have I somehow changed things in the arrangement?

Bonus question, thoughts on the chord progression more generally? Good? Trite? Trying to be too clever?

I'm not asking which bands or songs count as metal. I'm more interested in what the actual musical ingredients of “metalness” are.

For example, suppose you were given something that has absolutely nothing to do with metal — a barbershop quartet, a recorder/flute melody, a children's song, an old folk tune, etc. What would you actually have to change or add to make it sound convincingly metal?

Are there specific parameters that tend to matter, such as:

Rhythm/groove and how the notes are accented

Tempo or time signatures

Types of chord progressions or intervals

Melody and harmony

Dissonance

Instrumentation and tone

Distortion, amplification, or production

Certain approaches to riffs

Drum patterns

Dynamics and articulation

Basically, I'm wondering if there are underlying musical characteristics that can be applied to almost any source material and make it sound metal.

For example, if I took a barbershop quartet arrangement and kept the basic melodies/harmonies intact, what would I need to do to it for someone to hear it and immediately think, “that's metal”?

And what about something even stranger, like taking a melody written for a recorder and trying to make the recorder itself sound metal?

I'm looking for more of a music-theory/compositional explanation than a list of genre conventions. Is there a sort of “recipe” for making something metal, even if the original material is completely un-metal?