Theory & Impro Do we really need theory?

[mizmar]

Tell me more about this athletic engineering. Throwing a ball precisely at a target is purely the result of trial and error and muscle memory. There's no "engineering". I have yet to see a single golfer pull out a slide rule and do any calculations before a putt. Lucky guesses aren't engineering.

Exactly.
That's exactly my point. One might analyse what's going on in a sport with (academic) physics. Design improvements in technique with (academic) engineering... But the sports person isn't - exactly not - doing calculations with a slide rule or whatever...
I do think there's more to world class sport than a pile of lucky guess.. and a sports science boffin could say something about it in a PhD dissertation... Even if they're just mediocre at sport...Because having a PhD is a qualification for being a sports scientist... Not an olympic champion.
Geddit?

 

[mizmar]

... Although, in fairness, I'm not sure sports science - with their hormones, go-faster swimsuits and shoes etc - have done sport any good.
Maybe Olympians should go back to running around Greece naked and musicians should go back to playing pentatonics.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Olympians should go back to running around Greece naked and musicians should go back to playing pentatonics.

Also naked

 

[cappers]

None of the "greats" in the arts got to where they are by FIRST having a PhD. It doesn't mean that they didn't go to University or a conservatory, or study and apply themselves. etc......

I didn't intend to infer that a PhD or any other qualification is a necessity to be an artist, great or not.
Love of music and the instrument(s) they play plus dedication and practice is enough.

In order to progress in my given field in science I had to do a PhD. It is almost an academic formality to demonstrate that one was competent enough to do research, get published results and to lead and mentor others.

How one plays and sounds is the key 'qualification' for a musical artist, not how many papers about chord/modal progressions in Eastern music one has had published. That could a fun endeavour but I don't think that is a need, more a want.

 

[cappers]

One thing I learned over the decades - particularly regarding the arts and humanities - never answer an polemical rant with facts.

Reminds me of the joke:
Why are academic arguments so vicious?

Because the stakes are so low!

 

[mizmar]

Reminds me of the joke:
Why are academic arguments so vicious?

Because the stakes are so low!

Sayre's law, turns out.

 

[MikeMorrell]

Tell me more about this athletic engineering. Throwing a ball precisely at a target is purely the result of trial and error and muscle memory. There's no "engineering". I have yet to see a single golfer pull out a slide rule and do any calculations before a putt. Lucky guesses aren't engineering.

I respectfully disagree about 'trial and error' in sport. I don't know about golf balls, but I recently watched a BBC 'Click' programme that showed how a Rugby ball was tracked in 3-D by 3 sensors around the pitch for training purposes. Mainly for kickers but also for throwers. Combined with the GP, accelerometer, and physical performance data of individual players (which is now common in both Football and Rugby), players get personalised feedback on their performance in any 'sport context'. So yes, the players themselves don't do the 'tech stuff' but I submit that they do (with advice) 'engineer' their individual performance improvements based on the data collected.

 

[Colin the Bear]

It seems odd to me that a commercial opportunist or jobbing dance band leader like Bill Haley is credited with bringing 12bar to the attention of the masses. Boogey Woogie was popular way before Bill.
And then there's Elvis.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Boogey Woogie was popular way before Bill

Indeed it was

And then there's Elvis.

Later than Bill Haley?

 

[Colin the Bear]

Indeed it was


Later than Bill Haley?

Well... That's alright was 54. Rock around the clock was 55.

From what I've read, just a little before my time, Bill being a dance band leader, saw which way the wind was blowing, and gave the kids what they wanted. Credit to him for being skilled and talented enough to carry it off successfully.
Elvis and others were more interested in bringing "black" music to a wider audience.

It may all be retro history. They were all in it for the money/work.

 

[MikeMorrell]

That kind of seems a bit ironic but it all makes sense if you think of it as white man bringing a blues format to white folk, popularising it, and so opening the doors to black artists in that market. Must have been quite a cultural slap around the face for Americans at the time. Although I'd argue that there was very little blues feel about Bill's music. Just because something is a 12 bar doesn't make it a blues.

(Yes it's "International Revive a Good old Thread Day")

FWIW, I'm not sure that any one musician opened up the blues to white folk. Sure the mass popularity of Elvis and Bill Haley helped enormously. But after the 2nd world war (1960's), my understanding is that many Black gospel/blues musicians (including Muddy Waters and Leadbelly) toured Europe. W.C. Handy (1873 – 1958) was a Black and pioneering jazz/blues musician. In 1949, he appeared (aged 75) on the US 'Ed Sullivan show'. Whose audience - I assume - were at least 50% White.

View: https://youtu.be/cSuTTSOctGw?si=0vjXKFSZ5AbUrC7E

PS. I'm (again) a participant in a series of 10 'jazz improvisation workshops'. Most of the numbers we play are from a much later date. But this is one of the (10) numbers we are improvising on in this series.

 

[MikeMorrell]

My personal opinion on the value of learning theory is that 'it depends'. The term 'theory' covers a wide area. From learning to understand the 'form' of a piece to learning to read and play sheet music through learning to play in different chords/scales/modes.

So IMHO, it depends on what you need to know to play the music you what to play. Now and in the future. Some sax players can pick up what they need to play with little or no 'theory'. Others have to able to read and play notes (with the given key signatures and timing). Others (like me) have to instantly improvise on rapidly changing chords and on varying chord intervals between tunes,

I can't remember where the quote came from, but it's always stuck with me: "the wider your musical vocabulary is, the better you can express yourself personally". I wholeheartedly agree with 'personal expression'. I've long given up playing 'written out' solos.

This comment is not intended as an opinion for or against learning 'theory'. Just a prompt to try to learn as much 'theory' as you need to learn.

FWIW, my 'Jazz improvisation workshop' leader has a masters degree in music. In time, he's been a professional guitarist and still gives guitar lessons to students. He also plays piano, drums and sax and gives 'improvement tips' to those players. One of the great things I enjoy about the workshops is learning more about the 'theory': the 'form' (16 bar Blues or AABA), which scales/modes to use in improv and why, etc. Again, I feel that the wider 'vocabulary' helps me better express my 'personal solos'

 

[Vlad]

When I started as a teenager I went through the old Tune a Day book and got a basic grasp of simple notation type malarkey, then along came Punk and I was thrown ( by choice obviously! ) into fairly raw and simplistic rock ( for want of a better word) ethos in which any sort of musical theory was entirely irrelevant, the nearest I got was writing a cheat sheet chart of notes on a fag packet to transpose to/from Bb or Eb to 'concert' C that the guitars were in.
Any parts, licks or lines I played were effectively made up out of my head in jamming/rehearsal to (hopefully) suit whatever song it was.
I continued in this vein thru the Punk and Post Punk eras, I also played bass in numerous bands then too ditto.
Naturally this whole thing was a phenomenon of it's time, but enabled many of us deadbeats to get seriously into playing music, and even get paid for it , that otherwise would've had no chance.
Tbh in some ways this though, with hindsight, did me no favours as it gave the strong impression that reading and theory as such was a waste of effort, but came to regret it later when struggling with reading written parts.

 

[lydian]

I respectfully disagree about 'trial and error' in sport. I don't know about golf balls, but I recently watched a BBC 'Click' programme that showed how a Rugby ball was tracked in 3-D by 3 sensors around the pitch for training purposes. Mainly for kickers but also for throwers. Combined with the GP, accelerometer, and physical performance data of individual players (which is now common in both Football and Rugby), players get personalised feedback on their performance in any 'sport context'. So yes, the players themselves don't do the 'tech stuff' but I submit that they do (with advice) 'engineer' their individual performance improvements based on the data collected.

Fair point, but you've literally introduced an engineer gathering and analyzing data and formulating a solution for the athlete. The athlete still isn't doing the engineering. The engineer with the engineering degree is doing it. (Full disclosure, I'm a decent engineer but a terrible athlete).

But back to the original topic, I agree that formal education is much more a predictor of success in a technical field than in music performance. So do we (musicians) really need theory? No, but it helps, especially if you lack a deep, intuitive understanding of music.

 

[turf3]

Umm,

Have none of you heard of Louis Armstrong? Bix Beiderbecke? Paul Whiteman? Jimmie Rodgers? Mamie Smith? Bessie Smith?

Or, maybe,

...Benny Goodman?...

Ever hear of a little ditty called "In the Mood" by some obscure trombonist named Miller? Guess what song form it is?

The idea that Bil Haley "introduced white Americans to 12 bar blues" is just ridiculous.

Sheesh! The VERY FIRST jazz recordings ever made, from the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a whilte group, featured "Livery Stable Blues". A 12 bar blues. In 1917. The records sold like hotcakes. To white people.

(Don't misunderstand me; the ODJB was NOT the first jazz band, not by a LONG shot; jazz was invented by African-Americans, absolutely; but the ODJB were the first to record; so once 1917 passed, the 12 bar blues was in the consciousness of white America. The HUGE jazz craze of the 1920s, and the HUGE HUGE swing craze of the 1930s, were commercially fueled by white teenagers, and a VERY LARGE fraction of the songs were blues form.)

 

[mizmar]

But back to the original topic, I agree that formal education is much more a predictor of success in a technical field than in music performance. So do we (musicians) really need theory? No, but it helps, especially if you lack a deep, intuitive understanding of music.

My first insight into the fallacy that's in play here actually came in the the domain of paintings. Specifically the impressionists. The whole movement, the idea of painting what you see and feel, out in the town or country side came about because of ... Paint in a tube.
It was the chemists et al. who created the "paint what you feel" movement. And even that would have had no meaning with an entire society, culture and tradition of admiring dawbs on canvas - or not.
Music is also an entire cultural institution; with histories, theorists, the great and the mediocre... Someone may well play what they feel; but that's only meaningful in context. And picking bits of that context as bad, being a rebel, is just part of the context. Have at it.

 

[wakyct]

I agree that formal education is much more a predictor of success in a technical field than in music performance

I'm not directing this at you lydian but I feel that this highlights the issue I have with this discussion. I think you would find very few serious musicians who haven't had a formal education.

Where? On the bandstand.

Let's flip this around. Do you think the really successful engineers learned everything they know in school?

I think people in general need to stop classifying credentials based on where they come from.

 

[Ivan]

They were all in it for the money/work.

And, quite possibly, the music

 

[Pete Effamy]

Yep. Not many of us have made that much money out of it.

 

[lydian]

I'm not directing this at you lydian but I feel that this highlights the issue I have with this discussion. I think you would find very few serious musicians who haven't had a formal education.

Where? On the bandstand.

Let's flip this around. Do you think the really successful engineers learned everything they know in school?

I think people in general need to stop classifying credentials based on where they come from.

Absolutely, they were educated on the bandstand. The master cabinet maker learned in the shop. Maybe the doctor studied the natural world growing up and came to university with a ton of practical and empirical knowledge. But unlike the other two, he/she is never going to be allowed to practice medicine without a degree. The other two will succeed based on their skills, not their academic credentials.

When you join a band or go to the studio, nobody cares where you went to school or if you ever went to school at all. The vast majority of musicians I've known did not have a formal musical education yet many play at a very high level and are very successful. Many don't know theory either. One of the greatest arrangers in history, IMO, Gene Puerling, knew virtually no theory, yet wrote the most beautiful and sophisticated harmonies. Today's arrangers study him in music school.