Looking for smart theists for reasonable discussion/debate

[mitchellmckain]

Bloody hell. I defer to your expertise. I've been a professional musician for close to forty years but that doesn't mean anything, obviously.

Of course it means something. It means you can earn a living playing an instrument, whereas I cannot play any instrument at all. It just doesn't mean that you know everything about music any more that a masters or phd in physics means that you know everything about physics.

I looked up the blue note and the harmonic seventh using google but I cannot say that I understood any of that. Does it make any sense to you?

[humanguy]

Bloody hell. I defer to your expertise. I've been a professional musician for close to forty years but that doesn't mean anything, obviously.

Of course it means something. It means you can earn a living playing an instrument, whereas I cannot play any instrument at all. It just doesn't mean that you know everything about music any more that a masters or phd in physics means that you know everything about physics.

Yes, but I wouldn't go up to a guy with a masters in physics and challenge him about what he knows.

A "blue note," that's something I don't think I've ever heard any musician talk about. If we're in G flat they'll say, for example, "play an A" or "play an E," which are the minor third and flatted seventh of that key. Also, in G flat a C is a flatted fifth which is used very extensively in blues and jazz and could also be considered a "blue note."

Play E C B A Gb on the piano with your right hand, starting on the E and going down, and you've just played a very typical blues lick in G flat.

"Harmonic seventh," that seems rather arcane, anyway I've never heard it called for or spoken of. I very much doubt you'd ever see it on a big band chart. To be perfectly honest I've never heard of it. I'll have to ask one of my big-brained theory-expert buddies.

[Pseudonym]

Woah, humanguy. I'm not pulling rank on you, honestly! I have nothing but complete respect for anyone who has managed to earn a living as a musician. I wish I were that good.

My music background is completely amateur (I still play cello in amateur light opera/musical theatre every now and then), though I've done a lot of formal music theory training.

As far as tuning goes, I think of it this way:

To most people, a "second" is 1/86400 of a mean solar day. Most people may not be able to remember the fraction, and most don't know what a "mean solar day" actually is, but almost everyone knows that there is a standard-length day, and a second is an easy-to-find fraction of it.

To a physicist or an astronomer, this definition is inaccurate. To them, a second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom".

The folk definition of a second is very, very close to the physicists' definition. It's so close that most people don't know about or care about the difference. But physicists demand more of their timekeeping standard than most people do, and hence need to take into account details which are unimportant to most people.

A "blue note," that's something I don't think I've ever heard any musician talk about. If we're in G flat they'll say, for example, "play an A" or "play an E," which are the minor third and flatted seventh of that key.

I'm surprised you've never heard of blue notes, though you might have instinctively played one and not realised what you were doing, or a singer might have done it with you and it just sounded right. On a fretted guitar, you usually play the minor or diminished note and bend the string to make it slightly sharper. If you've ever done this on a third, fifth or seventh of a scale, then you've played blue notes.

Quick rant: My inner music theorist just gawked at the suggestion that the minor third of G flat is A and the flattened seventh is E. Even in the well-tempered scale, this is wrong. The minor third is Bbb (i.e. B double flat) and the flattened seventh is Fb. If you were to write a harmonic minor scale on Gb as Gb Ab A B Db D E Gb (or something), it wouldn't be obvious to most instrumentalists that you really intended to write a scale. If you wrote it Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, then the intention would be far more clear.

On behalf of the musicians of the world, please take care in spelling your notes correctly!

Also, in G flat a C is a flatted fifth which is used very extensively in blues and jazz and could also be considered a "blue note."

Right, but it's still an approximation. A "blue" flattened fifth is actually somewhere between G and Gb.

"Harmonic seventh," that seems rather arcane, anyway I've never heard it called for or spoken of. I very much doubt you'd ever see it on a big band chart. To be perfectly honest I've never heard of it. I'll have to ask one of my big-brained theory-expert buddies.

It's probably not used in big band, no. I'm sure you've heard it, though. It's also known as the "barbershop seventh" for reasons that should probably be obvious.

After singing the classic ditty "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", occasionally someone ends with a coda of "and many more". That last note is a harmonic seventh. If you try to play it on a piano, you'll see what I mean. Neither the major nor minor sevenths are quite right.

One more thing: The difference between just intervals and well-tempered intervals is sometimes important in symphonic orchestration, because some instruments throw around a lot of overtones which, if not careful, can cause audible clashes with other parts. Good orchestrators are aware of this. If there's a sufficiently long or important chord to be played, they will ensure that if, say, the timpani is playing the tonic in a particular octave, then the third of the chord shouldn't be played exactly three octaves higher because it could clash with an overtone.

Maybe we should move this to a new thread.

[humanguy]

Quick rant: My inner music theorist just gawked at the suggestion that the minor third of G flat is A and the flattened seventh is E. Even in the well-tempered scale, this is wrong. The minor third is Bbb (i.e. B double flat) and the flattened seventh is Fb. If you were to write a harmonic minor scale on Gb as Gb Ab A B Db D E Gb (or something), it wouldn't be obvious to most instrumentalists that you really intended to write a scale. If you wrote it Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, then the intention would be far more clear.

On behalf of the musicians of the world, please take care in spelling your notes correctly!

Well, but you're just wrong there. A is the minor third of G flat. B flat is the major third. Find me a music theory book that states otherwise.

A G flat minor triad is spelled Gb A Db. A Gb minor seventh chord is spelled Gb A Db E. This is standard procedure, man. When guys are in the studio they're not arguing about what it all means, they're just playing the music. And if any piano or guitar player at that session saw Gbmin7 on his chart here are the notes he'd play: Gb A Db E, or some inversion thereof.

Maybe we should move this to a new thread.

Um..no, let's not. Well, feel free to do so if you want, but I've had enough of this ridiculousness. However, I'll run your spelling of a Gb minor scale, Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, by the guys on the jazz forum I contribute to and I'll let you know what they have to say about it.

[Pseudonym]

Well, but you're just wrong there. A is the minor third of G flat. B flat is the major third. Find me a music theory book that states otherwise.

I'll take a look. Most theory books probably won't mention it explicitly, I suspect, because Gb minor is a rarely used key precisely because it has nine flats. It's easier to say F# minor, which is the same in the well-tempered scale. When it occurs, it's usually only because of transposing instruments.

It's not definitive, but there's plenty of stuff around on the web:

A G flat minor triad is spelled Gb A Db. A Gb minor seventh chord is spelled Gb A Db E. This is standard procedure, man. When guys are in the studio they're not arguing about what it all means, they're just playing the music. And if any piano or guitar player at that session saw Gbmin7 on his chart here are the notes he'd play: Gb A Db E, or some inversion thereof.

To be honest, it really doesn't matter in practice unless you're writing it. It it's a fake book or chord notation, then it's probably not relevant. But if you're writing down the notes of a minor triad or scale, it had better damn well look like a minor triad or scale.

However, I'll run your spelling of a Gb minor scale, Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, by the guys on the jazz forum I contribute to and I'll let you know what they have to say about it.

Please do. I predict that you'll get a mix of two responses: some will agree with me, and some will say "technically true, but who cares" and proceed to rant about anal retentive classical musicians who can't even improvise.

EDIT This could, of course, just be a culture difference between the classical world and the jazz world.

[humanguy]

To be honest, it really doesn't matter in practice unless you're writing it. It it's a fake book or chord notation, then it's probably not relevant. But if you're writing down the notes of a minor triad or scale, it had better damn well look like a minor triad or scale.

A Gb minor triad looks like this: Gb A Db. Nobody writes it out though, not usually anyway. What you'd see on a chart would be Gbmin, Gb- or Gbm.

Now a Gb minor scale, well which minor scale do you mean? There are several, you know. Harmonic minor? Melodic minor? Natural minor?

Dorian? Locrian?

Now then, Pseudo, here's your test question. What's the difference between this: Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, and this: F# G# A B C# D E F#?

And here's your bonus question: what kind of minor scale is that? Now bear in mind that it has a flatted sixth.

[Pseudonym]

A Gb minor triad looks like this: Gb A Db. Nobody writes it out though, not usually anyway.

Classical musicians need it written out for them because they don't know how to read chord notation. The principal exception is organists who know how to read figured bass. All you'd use for that is a flat sign, to indicate that the third note is lowered by a semitone.

Incidentally, I don't think I fully explained why this matters. In many instruments (e.g. cello, which I play), we learn specific fingering patterns for, say, a generic melodic minor scale which we can then use no matter which note we start on. If a melodic minor scale is written like a melodic minor scale, we can just play it. If it's not written like a melodic minor scale, we need to do some head scratching to work out what it's supposed to be.

As noted, it's more typical for a piece to be written in F# minor than Gb minor. But thanks to transposing instruments and modulation, it can happen that you have to play a double flat or double sharp.

On the issue of culture differences, until the advent of microtonal music, classical music did have a much stricter idea of what it means to be "in" a key, and there are fairly strict rules about this. Blues, jazz and some types of rock are partly microtonal, so I can imagine that the rules are more relaxed.

Now a Gb minor scale, well which minor scale do you mean? There are several, you know. Harmonic minor? Melodic minor? Natural minor?

It doesn't matter because they all have a Bbb in them. It matters even less if you're only talking about the triad.

Now then, Pseudo, here's your test question. What's the difference between this: Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, and this: F# G# A B C# D E F#?

Assuming the well-tempered scale, the difference is enharmonic spelling.

And here's your bonus question: what kind of minor scale is that? Now bear in mind that it has a flatted sixth.

Flattened third, sixth and seventh. That'd be the natural minor, or Aeolian mode.

[humanguy]

A Gb minor triad looks like this: Gb A Db. Nobody writes it out though, not usually anyway.

Classical musicians need it written out for them because they don't know how to read chord notation.

That's too bad.

You mean chord symbols, not chord notation. Chord notation is just writing out the notes of the chord.

But it's really not that big a deal, chord symbols. Here's a pretty typical chord symbol: Dm6,9. What would you say the notes of that chord are?

[Pseudonym]

You mean chord symbols, not chord notation. Chord notation is just writing out the notes of the chord.

Err... yes. BTW, I might have given the wrong impression. We know how to read chord symbols, we just generally don't know how to play from them. And yes, I know what Dm6,9 means. The triangles confuse me, though; classical musicians don't use that.

Incidentally, I've been thinking more about enharmonic spelling. Spelling words "correctly" in your natural language doesn't make a single bit of difference until you have to write something down and show what you've written to someone else. At [i]that[i] point, using conventional spelling is critically important. But if you never had to do that, you could write phonetically your whole life and nobody would care.

[humanguy]

Err... yes. BTW, I might have given the wrong impression. We know how to read chord symbols, we just generally don't know how to play from them.

I don't understand. How can you not know how to "play from" a chord symbol if you can read read and understand a chord symbol?

(And the triangle means a major seven chord.)

[Pseudonym]

Oh, it's entirely lack of practice. It's just like how a pianist isn't usually trained to play directly off guitar tabulatiion, even if they understand what it means. They would typically have to transcribe it first.

[jordi ray]

To be honest, it really doesn't matter in practice unless you're writing it. It it's a fake book or chord notation, then it's probably not relevant. But if you're writing down the notes of a minor triad or scale, it had better damn well look like a minor triad or scale.

A Gb minor triad looks like this: Gb A Db. Nobody writes it out though, not usually anyway. What you'd see on a chart would be Gbmin, Gb- or Gbm.

Now a Gb minor scale, well which minor scale do you mean? There are several, you know. Harmonic minor? Melodic minor? Natural minor?

Dorian? Locrian?

Now then, Pseudo, here's your test question. What's the difference between this: Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db Ebb Fb Gb, and this: F# G# A B C# D E F#?

And here's your bonus question: what kind of minor scale is that? Now bear in mind that it has a flatted sixth.

I'm not even really trying to get involved in this conversation, but being the stickler for accuracy which I often tend to be, I feel compelled to correct you on a technicality: As you know, the distance between the first and second notes of a triad must be some kind of third. Also, again by definition, the distance between the second and third notes of a triad must be expressed as some kind of third.

Hence, Gb A Db are indeed the correct notes for a Gb minor triad, but technically, those notes should always be expressed as Gb Bbb Db. I know you're aware of this because of your correct identification of the notes in a Gb natural minor scale. It's just a technicality which I couldn't resist bringing to your attention.

[Rian]

I'm surprised you've never heard of blue notes, though you might have instinctively played one and not realised what you were doing, or a singer might have done it with you and it just sounded right. On a fretted guitar, you usually play the minor or diminished note and bend the string to make it slightly sharper.

On my harp with the sharping levers, I get some cool sounds by plucking the string then slightly moving the lever up and down - same idea.

( I love off-topic discussions! We have some good musicians here!)

[Pseudonym]

We have some good musicians here!

I'm sure that you and humanguy are good musicians, but I wouldn't rush to judgement on me without hearing me play.

[tonyenglish7]

The fact that it takes knowledge and understanding to discuss music was my original point. It is specified complexity which allows the creation of beauty and artistic meaning. Why is it that way? Random chance I guess...