Hacker News Reader

Comment by someweirdperson | Hacker News Reader

> It would be better to have some hard data on what we all collectively think makes for valid music.

"Valid"? As opposed to "invalid music"?

> As you’d expect, the tonic I is the most commonly-used chord in the Rolling Stone corpus.

If it wouldn't be the most used, would it be used as point of reference and called the tonic?

> Rock uses plenty of V-I, but it uses even more IV-I. And the third most common pre-tonic chord in rock is not ii, like you’d expect if you went to music school; it’s bVII, reflecting rock musicians’ love of Mixolydian mode.

I-V and IV-V seems to be the same with the point of reference moved to IV. And IV-bVII-V is I-IV-V.

Is a fixed point of reference really needed? Doesn't it just add unnecessary complexity?

View on HN

> "Valid"? As opposed to "invalid music"?

I think it's fair to say that sometimes people attempt to make music and aren't successful. That doesn't mean music that gets played on the radio that some person doesn't like isn't "real" music. I'm thinking more like a musician tries out a chord progression and decides it's not working musically so they never record it in the first place. Or if a cat walks across a piano the result probably isn't music. There will always be grey areas, but I think there are things that are almost universally regarded as music, and other things that are almost universally regarded as not-music. Some part of musical appreciation is subjective and culturally influenced, but some parts are innate and based on mathematical relationships and psychoacoustics that are the same for almost every human.

> I-V and IV-V seems to be the same with the point of reference moved to IV

I-V moves up by a 5th, whereas IV-V moves up by a major second. I would buy that I-V is the same as IV-I, but with a different point of reference.

> "Valid"? As opposed to "invalid music"?

Yes, I think it's clear the author means things we collectively agree fall under the category of music. And the question of what is or is not music is surprisingly complex and disputed, analagous to the question of what is or is not art.

E.g. is John Cage's 4'33" [1] music? What about a Spotify track of silence for meditation? Is a purely percussive piece music, or merely rhythm? Is atonal music, well, even music at all? Classical musicians would pretty much all say yes, but a lot of non-musicians might disagree.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

> If it wouldn't be the most used, would it be used as point of reference and called the tonic?

Yes. The tonic is determined by what the key is, not what chord is most used. (It's hard to establish the key without slipping the tonic in somewhere, but that doesn't mean it needs to appear frequently.)

> I-V and IV-V seems to be the same with the point of reference moved to IV. And IV-bVII-V is I-IV-V.

I don't think this is right. V-I has the root moving by a 5th, while IV-V moves by a second. And the second example can't be right because the relative distances of the roots of the first and last chords are different (again, a second versus a fifth).

> Is a fixed point of reference really needed? Doesn't it just add unnecessary complexity?

Yes, it's a useful analytical tool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com