It's very western-focused, especially when you describe the chromatic scale as "modern music".
I would also lose the "from first principles" by-line. The pentatonic scale description was neat in that you talked about how frequencies that sound good together have certain clean ratios, but when you jumped to chromatic scale, there was nothing about how that was derived other than "filling in the blanks." I love the site in general, but the "from first principles" by-line implies a few things that are kinda missing. It's more accurate to call it a visual introduction to western music theory.
A while back this article popped up on HN: https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2 That one dived more into the physics and math that derive different music systems. As I was reading it, I wanted some interactivity like this. So well done! There's a lot of detail in there that could give you ideas for additional visualizations. It was also criticized here on HN a bit for also failing short of it's "first principles" promise, so worth finding and reading that discussion too.
The other thought I have is make the notes keyboard-playable. A lot of the examples are around playing notes together, and shifting between them using a mouse is too slow.
Sure, but even in western music the chromatic scale is considered to have been exhausted in the 20th century. Modern music has moved on to use other notes and sounds and in many cases is not even pitch-centric.
>Sure, but even in western music the chromatic scale is considered to have been exhausted in the 20th century.
Yeah, but by people like Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and the like, or the wilder jazz guys. Not exactly what most people enjoy with a cup of coffee.
>Modern music has moved on to use other notes and sounds and in many cases is not even pitch-centric.
I think that for e.g. electronic, dance, experimental music etc, the chromatic scale/classical harmony/etc. is still a good foundation -- the additional not pitch-centric focus is either in rhythm (which is orthogonal) or in sample/noise-based focus which usually just goes with "if it sounds good, it's ok" kind of approach.
So, not much micro-tonal or other approaches going on in practice.
It's out there if you open your eyes a bit. There is a TON of microtonality in blues guitar playing - they just don't use the $10 academic words for it.
Well, I'm from a country where lots of folk music is microtonal.
That said, I don't consider the blues guitar playing a major example of microtonic music, $10 words or not. There are some elements, but you can find much more impressive examples in African music for one (part of which could have been inspiration for early gospel/blues musicians).
That's a bit like saying the alphabet has been exhausted, so we should come up with new letters.
There is a huge, potentially indefinite space of possibilities of combinations of melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre, even within the constraints of the chromatic scale
It's less from a be-PC point of view and more from a "what (in some sense arbitrary) decisions led to the western system of rules, and what are alternative ways of making rules?"
You know, understand that this isn't the only way of doing it, and see how the physics could be applied in other ways (and have been). Appreciate the full breadth of complexity out there.
While the name that you propose might be technically correct I would recommend sticking to the "from first principles" kind of name. This introduction was created for beginners (like me), and the name was attractive and was what I expected. Maybe a footnote with this information could be useful.
Yeah, it would be nice if he mentioned the ratios the chromatic scale is based on, as well as the difference between Pythagorean tuning and equal temperament. Honestly, I thought even the pentatonic scale should have been explained.
I like the demos. The transition from ratios to equal temperament was kind of jarring. It might help to not jump straight from the pentatonic scale to a chromatic scale and then go back to the major scale later, but to introduce the pentatonic scale, and then describe major and minor chords as 4:5:6 and 10:12:15 ratios, and then show how the major scale can be constructed simply by trying to get as many usable major and minor triads out of the least number of notes (while emphasizing that the major scale isn't the only solution, and that other "modes" exist).
Once you've established that the major scale is useful and in no way mysterious, then you can point out that if you divide the octave up in 12 logarithmically equal parts, you end up with equal tempered notes that almost line up with the ratio-based major scale. (I once threw together a diagram to illustate this that you can find here if you scroll down a bit: http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/cbg/justintonation.html) From then on, you can treat equal temperament as an approximation that implies the ratios you described at the beginning.
(Side note: One idea I try to impress on anyone who demonstrates the slightest inkling to write about music theory is that I really wish there existed something like Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language", but for music. Music is full of lots of little "tricks" that you can find scattered about in books, but I haven't ever seen anyone try to systematically collect as many of those as they can in one place, with a clear dependency graph.)
> The transition from ratios to equal temperament was kind of jarring
I agree. I'd like the course to comment on the fact that the ratios used in the pentatone scale and the 0th, 2nd, 4th, 7th and 9th powers of the 12th root of 2 don't match exactly.
I think you explain things very well. I've tried several music theory courses and quit all of them partway through. They were too fast or too tedious. It's hard to strike that balance, but somehow you did.
One thing that you did that helped me get further is sticking to that rainbow row of notes, as you explained notes and chords. I think most of the lessons I've tried move quickly to piano keys, where the relationship among the notes is more cluttered, because of the black and white keys.
Also the interactive little things, simple as they are, are very helpful. I know even these simple things took quite a bit of work to throw together. I think they are critical to how engaging your lessons are.
This is the first time I've understood diatonic chords, how a key called C Major could have a chord called D Minor.
(I am not much of a musician nor a serious student of music theory. If I were, I guess I would have eventually learned diatonic chords some other way. But it just goes to show you how good this course is, that a person with a passing interest in music theory was able to quickly learn even that.)
>> I've tried several music theory courses and quit all of them partway through
I feel like I'm a musician at heart. If I could delve into music with a purely exploratory and child-like fascination, I think I would enjoy it immensely.
But I can't fathom beginning. Every. single. intro. into. music., is a lecture forcing theory unto you as though "theory" is the very definition of "music". The consensus from experienced musical folks is to shove theory down your throat; you should not be allowed to even touch an instrument until you've drunk the "super serious music cool-aid"! Music is supposed to be one of the most intimate ways we express ourselves, and yet Western culture dictates that there is a singular method to begin exploring it, and it's far too serious and far removed from any kind of natural process.
Had my introduction to programming, starting at the age of 7, been the shoving of books down my throat about Object Oriented programming and how to write 20 different sorting algorithms, I never would have become a software developer. It took me 5 years of accomplishing nothing - and enjoying that exploratory process - just to figure out the basics. Another 5 years to begin digging into the core things that make a developer a developer. And then another 5 years (and counting, a decade later) actually learning how to tie it all together and use the acquired knowledge as a set of skills.
Music in the Western world is taught in such a way that they're trying to cram 10 years of knowledge - that you should be picking up along the way - as pre-requisite knowledge. It is taught as a job aiming to produce immediate ROI rather than skill/talent that accumulates over time.
Sample phrases from the OP that are spreading the all-too-serious cool-aid - the same things you hear from every music professional (italic emphasis mine).
>> A lot of music theory is about limiting which notes to use in your song to a small set that sound good together.
>> not all of them sound good together... Lets listen to some garbage
>> Because not all of the 12 notes sound good together, we must select a set of notes to use in a song.
>> start exploring which chords are safe to use in each Key
Why is it deemed necessary to instruct first-timers about "limiting" the notes we might use (some notes are not "safe" you know!), and telling me what does or does not "sound good". Music should have absolutely no "must"s attached to it. Let alone labelling certain combinations of notes as "garbage" - the use of that term is horrifically off-putting to someone who is looking to explore. This method of teaching completely destroys the discovery process. You tell me that "XYZ" chord is garbage, so I avoid it from day one. What if, left to my own devices, I were to discover that chord - and wind up loving it?
tldr; Teach me to play an instrument without teaching me anything about theory. Don't even teach me how to read sheet music. Just teach me how to play a few songs I enjoy. Once I can actually play with some confidence, then - and only then - bring in the information that ties together with what I have first learned hands-on. Basically, how any 3rd-world child with instruments carved out of wood would learn. No books. No sheet music. Just an instrument and a patient MENTOR, rather than a classroom teacher who's trying to make a classical prodigy out of me in record time.
I agree. If you want to learn to be a musician, you should start with practice instead of theory. The same goes for learning a language. It's better to learn a few phrases and sentences before the teacher sits you down and starts diagramming the nouns, verbs, prepositions, and so forth.
But just because this course exists doesn't mean you have to go through it first. Go and learn your instrument. Then come back in a couple years when you want to round out your understanding.
Thanks for the idea, but sadly that would not fit me whatsoever. Guitar Hero, but with a real guitar - too independent to start.
I'd need the human element - a real person, in an intimate setting - to guide me through the initial pains. A mentor, to the extent that someone would be teaching me their trade - or perhaps even their (our?) ancestors' traditions. Someone who is going to have the humble attitude of: "You will learn this, and it is OKAY for you to be complete garbage for the first year. A music teacher would give up on you after 3 months, but I will not and we will get through the tough beginning together."
Yep, like a helpless dog who keeps peeing on the carpet and just can't figure out why the humans are so agitated - until it finally clicks and the problem permanently vanishes. ;)
I get where you're coming from. I'm that way with many things I'd like to learn. There's something that feels just right about learning from someone who already has the skills.
On the other hand, Rocksmith really is far more than guitar hero. It's instrument-learning gamified, with a somewhat quasi-human guide who's always talking you through what's going on, what you're learning, how to tune, etc. You get to tackle learning songs at your own pace, and there are quite a number of silly little games that--for me, having first picked up a guitar and messing with them off an on since I was 17--have really helped cement actual chords in my head ... without overloading me with theory and all that. I tend to make natural connections with things as I learn them, and Rocksmith has been a pretty fun way to engage with guitar & bass.
Anyway, the fact that it's all in a game form certainly can be an understandable turn-off. But it doesn't always feel like a game. It strikes a pretty good balance. Could be just a fun thing to do in between sessions with a human. :)
Very good post. My tip would be you should learn like Jimmy Hendrix did, and many others: turn on your radio/spotify/tidal/whatever and try to play along on any instrument you can find. Just finding the one note that sounds like the song's resolution will teach you what you need to know about the tonic, then try to catch bits of melody. 10 years of a bit of this every day and you're golden
Go grab a guitar, twiddle about with the machine heads so the strings are randomly tuned, and start hitting the strings with a book.
Absolutely no-one is stopping you from doing that (well, perhaps folk within earshot). Hell, there are guitarists, bass players, drummers and singers (whole bands!) who know pretty much nothing of music theory and still play stuff.
I majored in music and I like what I see so far. The interactivity is nice. Looking forward to seeing more. Pretty solid on the concepts that are covered but I could do with a review on part-writing and other intermediate/advanced topics :).
I haven't read it, yet, only did a quick search to see if I could fine the words "tonal center" somewhere. I think that concept is under-emphasized and resolves a bunch of common confusion about music. e.g. this post[1] that was on the front page a few weeks back in which the author did not understand what's the difference between C major and A minor.
Poking around on this, this strikes me as a good, simple introduction to the basic concepts, without burying the newcommer under a ton of jargon, which has been been a recurring frustration of mine.
Some suggestions:
I might include a bit on the diatonic scale between the sections of the pentatonic scale and the chromatic scale. Anyone familiar with Western music should recognize quickly, as a great deal of well-known music has been composed using it. It should also serve as a nice half-way point between the pentatonic and chromatic scales -- introducing more notes from which to compose melodies but all of them still mostly sound nice with each other.
I suspect the reason you covered the diminished chord in addition to the major and minor ones is because that's the chord that works on the 7th interval of a scale, as you cover in the later section. But you might want to cover the augmented and suspended chords as well (perhaps in a later section). I'm probably not the only one who, when attemting to finger a chord on a piano or guitar, missed the 3rd or the 5th, and discovered another triad that sounds interesting.
Nice work. I love that you included the pentatonic stuff first, actually. it's a great starting point for music. If I could change one thing, I would put the chromatic scale section more towards the end; I would teach it by starting like you did, but expanding pentatonic into diatonic, then harmony, and finally dealing with chromatic scale.
Looks good, I think there is a great foundation. The Pentatonic Scale feels out of place; but that's probably because I feel that pentatonic is just a mutation of other modes. Chords are really just stacked intervals, it might make sense to move them immediately after the 'harmony' section? The interface is really nice, but I don't think it clearly communicates or reinforces the idea of 'tonic', which is fundamental to understanding music theory. Please keep working on this, there needs to be a good interactive explanation of music theory!
EDIT: You might benefit from filling out the intervals section. Clearly articulate each interval, which are classified as consonant vs dissonant, etc. That would get the user/student thinking about 5ths vs 7ths, etc.
"This is known as an Octave and is not considered a new note. An Octave is the same note with a higher pitch."
Why is this so? I guess I'm totally tone deaf since I get no understanding of the sameness of notes separated by one octave by listening to them. In the same vain the good sound/bad sound example that opens the harmony section sound both good to me.
The notes that sound good together have a basis in the harmonic series, the 1st and 3rd are octaves of the fundamental, 2x an 3x the frequency. the 2nd harmonic and 4th harmonic make up the other 2 notes in a major chord. Periodic sounds that are not pure sine waves (like vibrating strings) have harmonics. Our ears are attuned to hear these harmonics and this natural phenomenon is the basis of all pitch, melody and harmony in music.
If you want the first-principles answer, it is that sounds in nature tend to occur as multiple overlapping tones one or more octaves apart, so our ears and brains have evolved to hear a sameness in them.
That is, when you pluck a guitar string that's tuned to 400hz, it also vibrates at 800hz, 1600hz, and so on. (Do an image search on "guitar string harmonics" if it's not obvious how that would work.) But we hear such overlapping tones as a single "note", whereas a 400hz tone overlapping with a 600hz tone sounds like a chord.
For the octave, if you heard them at the same time they would be a bit harder to distinguish than most other ratios, so it would be nice if the example let you do that.
And yeah, the "bad" example is not really very bad. It's a little bit tense, but there are much worse ratios they could have chosen.
Agreed. Saying they're the "same note" is an oversimplification. They're "equivalent" in certain contexts, which is an important distinction.
They aren't the same note: if someone plays A3 (fundamental is 220Hz) and then A4 (440Hz) you can easily tell them apart! In contrast, if they play 220Hz and then 221Hz an untrained listener will most likely hear them as the same note.
In some contexts a note and its octave can be thought of as equivalent: if you are playing a chord you can often replace A3 with A4 (and vice-versa) without changing the chord's feel and function. However, that isn't always true. For example, playing G#3 and A3 at the same time will sound more dissonant than playing G#3 and A4 (a minor 2nd is more dissonant than a minor 9th).
IIRC octaves are what's referred to as harmonic frequencies in physics/kinematics/etc. "Why is it the same note?" AFAIK it's because the higher ones are multiples of the base freq.
But TBH I know next to nothing about music so I could be off.
Close. Each shift of an octave doubles the frequency, so octaves are specifically harmonics that are powers of 2. Other harmonic ratios make other intervals (including intervals that aren't in our scale, when you get to bigger prime numbers).
Most instruments produce harmonic multiples of the base frequency. (Percussion instruments don't.) So if you play a note at 110 Hz, there are also pitches at 220 Hz, 330 Hz, 440 Hz, etc. contained inside it. If you play a note an octave up, at 220 Hz, it contains pitches at 220 Hz, 440 Hz, 660 Hz... which is similar enough that it sounds like "the same note".
(This doesn't explain why 330, 660, 990, ... sounds like a different note, though. Maybe it doesn't to an untrained ear.)
I haven't tested this, but my intuition is that any musical sound with harmonic (as opposed to inharmonic) partials will sound like a single note, if the first fundamental is clearly the loudest, and the harmonics follow some kind of natural distribution in terms of loudness and temporal decay.
Two notes played in an octave would be quite distinct since you have a clear first fundamental for both notes, and the loudness/decay of the harmonics is slightly different between both notes
Hmm, odd; works on my machine. iPad Air running iOS 10. Haven't spent a lot of time on the site, and I see the occasional alignment glitch, but a long way from "not usable".
I've been wanting to do something like this a while now, and I think you've done a great job! I really appreciate how you used the sine waves to demonstrate consonance, and the pentatonic section is a great intro into the world of 'just-intonation'. Cheers!
Keep up the work. If only a few people get their start into understanding the physics of music through this, it will be worth the effort. Plus I think this kind of education will be a lot more prevalent in the future. Congrats & thanks for the huge effort!)
It would have been so much easier and fun if the notes were played on hoover not on click. Or even using the keys. And you could activate a specific section by clicking it, or parking the mouse in a certain spot.
Please keep going. I've been dabbling with instruments for almost 30 years, and this is the first time theory started to click with me. Look forward to seeing more. Thanks!
