toaoaoad

yeah I can't believe prices now. it was ridiculous to begin with, and then COVID, inflation... i rarely go to restaurants anymore and don't really order in either, so every time i do go back out it's this shock like everything is a dollar more each time. $20 for a friggin vegan burger with no side, this is "the new normal" lol on that note, someone recently told me this is coming: https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2022/01/theres-a-brand-new-fast-food-burger-joint-coming-to-victoria-and-its-vegan/

@Alcofribasyeah it's easy to get riled up on the internet too. the OP is inflammatory as hell lol and i've been part of some of those other threads too. watmm really does seem to be the wrong place for this type of discussion, which is unfortunate but maybe not idk. part of me wants to get into this stuff while at the same time i'm aware that it's just not the place. my personal experience is getting a good five years of piano as a kid, getting heavily into electronic music in my teens and doing my own thing musically with what i had learned, and then getting a formal university music education in my 20s. so there's this kinda layering of my own musical building blocks: the basics, then free lushness, then more training. i don't worship the western system or anything, i know there's way more than that out there. and i know that electronic music is a very punk/diy art form, anyone can pick it up, which i think is great. there's a "tradition" in electronic music too and part of that involves saying fuck it to a lot of these concepts. so i have an appreciation for that alongside the other stuff and it's a big part of my own history and development of taste etc. education really can ruin music for some people unfortunately, but it doesn't have to. i had a few years feeling lost and frustrated and whatever, overthinking music. i don't write particularly complex music now... i don't really want to. to be honest what interests me more than anything is rhythm. so there you go lol

yeah as I just said above I went back and read my earlier post and realized that it was actually pretty inflammatory after all. i have a pretty shit attention span and didn't go back and cross-reference myself as i went on, no excuse for that really. tbqh i've got no argument left and hopefully this series of posts will just get buried in the rest of watmm. i suck at getting involved in debates online and that's why i try to avoid it. sometimes i get bored and/or provoked and get into situations i later regret

How bout the people who don't have to see ads don't have to see the banner either?

EDIT: Fuck me, I went back and read my original post about ae where this all started and I guess it did actually sound pretty judgmental haha. Say what you want and clean up the mess after, I guess eh Sorry bros

First immediate example that comes to mind is F7. We're in G# minor but they do a fair bit of modal interchange. Mostly what gets me is when I'm still hearing A#s in the melody when the harmony has shifted to A, borrowed from phrygian. It's more noticeable in the last section when things quiet down a bit. Does it matter? No. What is making me most uncomfortable about this conversation is the way people seem to feel personally attacked by the things I'm saying. This is such a touchy subject I'm realizing now, it's no wonder Brian chooses to just be outright aggressive rather than tiptoeing around people's feelings as I've been doing lol. Again, I've been very careful to put loaded words like "wrong" and "mistake" in quotes because these terms are only being used to refer to the existing system in place, the system which S&R are ostensibly very much using to make this music apart from these few stray notes, but do not necessarily reflect my own views - I never like it when people use subjective terms to refer to objective phenomena, like when people say "the weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow".

Good point, cheers. I honestly couldn't open the article, my browser kept rejecting it. I'm cynical obviously. I don't expect great change from these "evil entities" and it just seemed a bit laughable that Neil Young of all people would have an impact (boomer jokes go here) but I don't really know the whole story

at the end of the day it's about personal taste, and if i haven't made that clear yet then i am now. personally yeah these notes grate on me a little, in some cases and maybe not in some others. i have my own personal experiences and soul journeys and dark nights of the soul with autechre's music, make no mistake about that. and i said a few posts back that i'm not trying to convince anyone not to like something, particularly not our beloved ae. but rather in the interest of this being an actual post about harmony and not just a B.T. shitpost, and also cause i was bored this afternoon, i decided to go off a little about harmony and stuff. it all came together because a) this is personally interesting to me because i am both a music nerd and an ae fan and occasionally these things challenge each other, and b) because i find it curious that they like to make these statements about being uneducated or whatever (sorry for shitty paraphrase); statements like that, plus the "magic" aspect fans attribute to their music, hero worship etc, would make it seem as if they reinvented music itself, where in fact they are very much using the existing harmonic system. sometimes, anyway, like on SIGN. sometimes they do have more abstract/atonal harmonies, a lot of the stuff on NTS is quite ambiguous for example. but in these situations where their programming does seem to be based on traditional harmony, and these dissonances - mistakes or not - pop up, people go "oh it's because they are above all of that" and it turns into this massive value judgment where people are being oppressed by these old systems etc which is a big fucking lol considering we're talking about a single fan on an idm forum talking about something he noticed.

once again, this is not what i said. you're really misinterpreting my posts and taking this a bit far tbh "doing a disservice to yourself" lol wtf all i was ever saying is that it's about context. ae, and any musicians, are free to do whatever they want. that's a given, and some might say it's a luxury granted us by all the musical progress up to this point. but there's a difference between choosing a selection of dissonant notes, and using an existing system (major/minor/modal) which is prone to certain so-called "mistakes". obviously they learned what major and minor scales are etc. they've programmed all this stuff into their algorithms. but there's this one area where things overlap a little and you end up with certain dissonances that some people are going to notice and some are not. my point all along is just to point out that this exists and to demonstrate the concept behind it. not trying to make this a big judgment about ae or to have people challenge each other about how to appreciate them.

I mean, people are free to talk about whatever they want here lol who's stopping you? why frame it like this as if you're being oppressed somehow? if anything it's more like the taboo here is questioning anything about the subforum artists, shaking that pedestal in any way lol

yeah. i try to put these loaded words like "mistake" and "wrong" in quotes because it's not necessarily my personal opinion, but just the general points about harmony. how this got turned into a discussion about ae... it started with that quote where they're saying they don't understand music or whatever. and so i'm just saying, that's cool, you do you. but noticing that the music does in fact use the existing western system of harmony. from there, my rant about the semitone thing was not really about ae anymore because it's something i've heard across genres. i'm not trying to say they need to go back and fix a note or whatever lol

also definitely not what i was saying. i think a lot of people just want to jump in and defend ae and that's cool. still missing the point edit: actually yeah wow this warrants an edit to say holy shit that's quite the twisting of my words there lol. you're way out of line. being a fan doesn't mean loving all their tracks, for one...

yeah, i like this and i agree. i think if they were also theoretical wizards their music might actually lose something. like it would be too over the top. it has a certain humility this way.

that's definitely not what i was saying, and as a devoted fanboy myself i'm horrified to be treading such delicate ground. but for someone who has formal training and is an autechre fan, these are considerations that do come up. if you're not affected by it, that's great. but i'd rather move on from autechre now, that quote was just the jumping off point for a bigger discussion at least in my own rambling bullshit here, which i have tried to sum up and hopefully will appease my boo brian. all previously accepted dissonances in a major/minor harmony up to this point only create a clash of only two semitones, for this example say the #11 in a lydian scale. going up in fifths this is the last remaining note of the scale, so even tho it creates a clash with the 5, it still sounds consonant because it fits into the harmony we're using. you go up one more fifth to arrive at the flat 9, and now you have a crunch where the tonic, flat 9 and natural 9 are all trying to fit into the same harmony. this is what is created by the so called "mistake" i'm talking about. usually the way people arrive at this harmonic realm when composing is by mistake when they decide to do modal interchange with the harmony but not the melody. say you're writing a song in d minor and everything's going along fine. you decide to borrow an e flat chord from the phrygian mode, very common choice. but your melody continues to use notes from the original minor scale, in this case the only "bad" note being the natural 2 (e), which would be replaced by a flat 2 (e flat) in d phrygian. harmonically speaking, you're creating a context where d, e flat and e are all existing within the same harmony, and that clash is going to usually sound shitty. two notes a semitone apart have been fine up to this point but now you're asking for three. at the same time, our ears know how to justify that, usually following the melody, and most people don't really notice. but its place in a new realm of harmony with a heavier density of dissonance is what makes it sound "wrong". learning to solo over changes drills this kind of stuff into your head: the wrong note is any note that creates a clash of three semitones in the harmony. final note, when i say three semitones i actually mean three notes separated by a semitone, which i think technically might be "two semitones" but this is already hurting my brain, i can only imagine how you all feel

you're missing the point but that's ok. no idea how brian managed to rope me into this lol you sly devil

ultimately no, at the end of the day "there are no wrong notes" and i think i said that in my post: people listen to this music and hear nothing wrong with it and that's fine. and this particular "mistake" or dissonance is extremely common, and to my ear it is obvious when it is used intentionally or when it signals a gap in someone's knowledge, the latter being far more common. my point was more so about artists using the existing western major/minor/modal systems, writing music that is based on these systems, but at the same time saying "oh we don't use any of that". it's clear with SIGN for example that the intention is to use rich harmony and melodies, even counterpoint in some cases (as with Oversteps)... this is traditional stuff. why are they saying they don't use or understand it if they're using it? why not just learn to do it right? so idk it's obviously a nitpicky thing and i can understand why no one wants to hear this shit, and i'm certainly not trying to convince anyone not to enjoy autechre's music. and yes, it does sound better when you don't use harmonies and melodies that essentially create a 3-semitone clash in a piece that is otherwise adhering to major/minor/modal rules. the more dissonance you're using, the more it will create a logic of its own, but if everything else is major/minor and then suddenly you have this note in there... well yeah maybe that sounds cool to you, and that is what happens over time - this note in particular: since it's so common, i think represents where we are currently, i guess in that regard it's actually the hippest note there is. we're already at a stage in history where "there are no wrong notes" but i think it's useful to take an interest in how we got here.

And thanks for the videos @Satans Little Helper and @thefxbip, I watched a bit, but they are long, so I'll have to come back to it another time. I have to admit I've got a limited capacity for this stuff anymore, reading about it, following the news etc. I'm just as burnt out as anybody else. I kinda envy those who have stopped worrying about it, tho I can see the dangers of their ignorance, but it seems some people have been able to enjoy glimpses of freedom over the past two years and I've just been on edge the entire time. That's my own shit but yeah ignorance really is bliss and I just wonder what it would be like to stop caring and if maybe now is the time.

I couldn't load that page but does it say that Neil Young's outrage had zero impact on spotify endorsing misinformation?

the thing about AE tho is their lack of "traditional knowledge" is very apparent in a lot of their music; even programming their melodic algorithms they overlook certain clashes of notes that are not quite "yeah i thought this clash sounded cool" but rather just, oh they didn't know that when you shift to a phrygian chord in a minor key you can't play the natural second over it (this is probably THE most common "wrong note" i hear in music across genres btw)... and i say wrong note because it doesn't work as an intentionally broken rule, it just doesn't, it sounds like shit every single time. but because the mistake is so common... i guess it's not a mistake anymore? obviously ae fans still eat it up without a second thought. but i digress. i don't understand this pride some people have in rejecting a formal knowledge. if they aren't interested in learning theory, why do they keep trying to write harmonically intricate pieces? you're either in it or not. that was my rant in the melody thread EDIT: and for the record i'm a massive autechre fan (duh) so this criticism has always had to coexist with the massive respect and admiration i have for everything else about their music, the meticulous programming and sound design, all of which i have NO knowledge of at all, so it kinda balances out. but yeah it's balanced with the occasional facepalm at their melodic/harmonic choices and occasional mentions of how proud they are to not know traditional theory, especially when it's so fast and easy to learn the basics. still ego, i'm guessing. it always is

well i think it's also worth noting something that puts people off. when you learn theory from square one you kinda have to "learn the rules before you can break the rules", this is particularly true in jazz education. this is difficult for most people to accept because we live in a world where, musically speaking, anything goes, and we've been listening to all kinds of stuff all our lives that either "break the rules" or are built on pre-established patterns of the "rules" being broken and now sound normal. this just gets truer and truer all the time. but it is extremely helpful to do things that way. play by the rules first. forget everything you know, forget the fact that the notes they're calling "wrong" sound right to you because you heard them somewhere before. music has this "magical" quality for a lot of people and they don't like being told there are rules. and like i say, in the end, the rules do get broken in all sorts of ways, and a lot of the time this eventually results in advancement/expansion of the musical palette itself (i.e. dissonance becomes consonance) if enough people are breaking the same rule or whatever and it becomes commonplace. but there's no shortcut to that. remember any self-taught musician is still benefiting from history. my first year in uni was a bit tedious because i had to take courses with lots of stuff i already knew. and yet that process was actually extremely helpful. knowledge has to be built up sequentially. so yeah i already knew that stuff but it was really useful to go back and reframe it in a structured way, which led to the next thing, and from there the next, etc. and in the end, once you've learned the "rules" (sorry to keep using this word but maybe there's a read the rules joke in there somewhere) then you know how and why to break them. you could jump in and just break them anyway, and maybe even get away with it. but your music will always be better if there's knowledge behind it. it just will. i don't know how else to explain it and a person probably won't believe it until you've experienced it yourself, so you have to want to in the first place. it doesn't mean you have to go on and use everything you've learned. and it absolutely does not mean that education is oppressive. people interpret it that way.... people don't like to be told what to do; this seems truer now than ever with anti-vax rhetoric and all that, the age of the individual, notions of "freedom"... so yeah i guess i don't blame anyone for not wanting to go thru this process unless they really want to enrich their experience as a musician, especially since it's hard to see why until you've gone thru the process yourself.

lol yeah tbh I don't know how long it would actually take someone cause I had the advantage of learning as a kid, where time as we know it works in a very different way than it does for frustrated and impatient adults who already have a notion of themselves as musicians. learning has to be fun/interesting to make you want to do it. it's probably better to go slowly than try to do it in a week or whatever. but i think for the average EKT watmmer this post seems to be directed at, yeah if you're already making music and have been doing so for awhile, but feel you're hitting a wall because you don't know any theory, you could probably watch a handful of youtube videos or get a book or two and learn pretty quickly. the tone of the OP was not quite encouraging lol so it's hard to tell this wasn't just a shitpost. people will only learn if they want to. even being frustrated by obstacles arising out of gaps in knowledge is not necessarily enough to make someone want to put the time and effort into learning something "the legit way". adult learners have lots of ego shit to overcome, never mind reduced cognitive ability (like attention span and ability to retain information), compared to children, so it's no wonder people are resistant. i am exactly this way with plenty of other things i could stand to learn so i don't mean to "talk down" to anyone when i say jfc just pick up a book. even if it's true lol i probably have lots more to say about this idk

I'll have to try it next time I'm downtown... used to live closer to there but I never would have thought to go there (I think I had them confused with that "vegan butcher" place which is called something else..) lol edit: damn page break, this was re: @Zephyr_Nova

Where dis?

Lol I realized I don't actually want to be part of this conversation