280 karma · joined December 4, 2011
> Jimi Hendrix. Elton John. David Bowie. The list goes on.
Are you somehow implying that these musical icons don't know their scales? Please tell me that's not what you're doing.
Yeah it does lack merit. It's hideous. Why don't you do a tiny bit of research into the costs of such a thing, and also factor in that it's been around for 140 years and never caught on.
No, because you just dismissed the traditional map for keyboardists.
Charlie Parker was on the stage as a young lad, just learning, and didn't know all his tunes that well. At a jazz jam session, Elvin Jones, the drummer, hearing Bird's lack of tune knowledge, was not amused and proceeded to throw a cymbal at him on stage and told him to get lost. Parker then went on to practice 12 hours a day until he mastered the literature, and he's become somewhat famous since then. Parker could have whined about how unfair the pro players were towards him, but he didn't, he went home and did his homework and came back and kicked everyone's ass. Not saying you need this level of determination, but a level of open mindedness would be a good start.
You want to be a poet? You need to learn your language first. Same with any art form. Is it condescending to tell someone they need to know their craft well to be a professional? I guess it is these days but it just delays the inevitable practice needed to become a professional.
Yes you absolutely did. Your whole point is that 11/12ths of musicians' muscle memory is needlessly redundant. Let's see what you got that is better than this. You use a fully transposing MIDI keyboard and play everything on the white keys, am I right?
God forbid that complex things are messy. They are, until you learn the system and can have mastery over it. You only have 1/12th the work to do as us normal musicians, so it should be much easier for you.
One could make that claim about literally anything. Maybe it just didn't resonate with the people who would have wanted to make it work. It's kind of Darwinistic, some ideas catch on and others are dismissed out of hand because they look like an accordionist's nightmare.
What an extraordinary claim.
> Yes, and for good reason. It means the student can skip learning 11/12ths of the required muscle memory. That's a very significant, and very measurable gain.
That seems to make sense. Unfortunately you can't provide any proof or evidence. I could claim that my one-key keyboard with 88 transposition buttons was superior, but I don't, because it's not.
> I find it's rarely a constructive thing when someone tells others how they "should" think. You're not really offering any evidence to counter the other user, you're essentially just saying "you're wrong, just stop questioning things and get in line."
OP is making all kinds of claims about how current keyboards, music theory, and notation ("verbiage" -- jargon?) are overdue for a "refactoring" to the "codebase". My evidence is: the current state of the art of music theory and practice in Western civilization. OP's evidence is hand-waving conjecture not backed by anything. But you want me to defend my side?
> get in line
If that means "learn your scales like every other grown-up musician" then yes I will be kind of harsh about it. That's the barrier to entry, because no one wants to hear a musician who doesn't know what they're doing.
> Your argument is like saying Mandarin must always be written in traditional characters because it's just complex, it's as efficient as it can be. Yet China went from traditional to simplified characters, and Vietnam abandoned characters altogether and uses an alphabet, despite having one more tone than Mandarin.
Nothing of the sort. The complexity of language is baked in there. Whether it's one character that says 47 different things depending on the inflection, or 47 characters that describe one thing not depending on inflection, the complexity is going to be there. OP wants to make an improvement to the music system to ostensibly reduce complexity, which while appearing admirable, seems to be based more on his frustration that the "vain professional musicians" are making things too hard for him. Which is misguided energy in my opinion.
> You're allowed to say you just personally aren't interested in new notation or theory verbiage. But you need some pretty strong evidence if you want to claim that the current methods are as efficient as they can be when human history shows that most times, lack of innovation is due to cultural and political factors rather than lack of opportunity for improvement.
As efficient as theoretically possible, ever, for the rest of time? Probably not. As efficient as is practicable by today's professional musicians? Yes for sure. But improvements are always welcome.
> cultural factors
There is no way to separate cultural factors from music, which innately involves culture. It's not like music exists in an ethereal vacuum and if it wasn't for politics and culture, music would be better. Music is part of the fabric of culture.
No one believes that. Please provide evidence.
What about a hepatologist who doesn't like using "-ase" for enzyme names? What does that even mean?
It's important to learn things as they are before confidently offering improvements. Else you will be called out by someone who knows what you don't.
I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
".... In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." --Jon von Neumann
That looks like an accordionist's nightmare.
Still waiting for one tiny scintilla of evidence.
It doesn't, most students are able to navigate their 12 keys by year one.
Please show me one scintilla of evidence of your supposed improvements to the codebase. One. Scintilla.
> I have just presented a way. Were you willing to listen?
I didn't see any practical way if you presented it, just a lot of wishful thinking. Are you saying you have an improved method for a keyboard layout?
There were two minor scales left out: Melodic and Harmonic minor, and each of those has its associated modes. Also they change depending on whether you're ascending or descending the scale. Yes that's an additional few hundred modes. We want to be complete in our descriptions.
> Oh, I'm a child now?
Are you making simple music? You tell me.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Your baseless assertion sounds confident but is backed by nothing.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I see nothing here but a naïve attitude about the nature of music and musicians. I invite one citation as to the veracity of this claim.
Your approach is simply not feasible. Let me demonstrate.
Here are some options:
The newly chromatic keyboard is all white/black/white/black alternated keys, WBWBWBWBWBWB for one octave.
How do you look at that and figure out where C is?
Likewise, a new keyboard can be all white keys. WWWWWWWWWWWW
How do you know where anything is?
We need some patterns in order for our brains to be oriented to the instrument. The pattern of WBWBWWBWBWBW (standard 12-note sequence on keyboards), is a well-understood one that makes it practical for keyboardists to make music.
If there exists a 3rd option which makes orientability and fast muscle memory easier than it is, it needs to be innovated.
You seem to think that making the keyboard more symmetrical, or more uniform, or different somehow, makes it easier to learn. It doesn't work that way. However if you in fact have an improvement not obvious to those in the industry, many players would be thankful for your work. The field of music and music instrument technology is alive and well and waiting for your invention.
Now to address your mode concept..... Your presumption that everything is just Ionian mode transposed is absolutely incorrect. Each different mode (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian (those are all modes of just the major scale)) has its own identity. I'm surprised that you as a musician are unaware/blind to this, or consider it "needless complexity imposed by the vain professional musician community". Also, altered dominants and the various minor modes, in addition to the major scale modes I mentioned. Yes that adds up to probably 300 or 400 scales. Which takes a lot of work, regardless of whether you have a standard keyboard or a WWWWWWWWWWWW keyboard.
There is no simple way of saying Gbmin7/B. It's just complex. It takes years of learning. The syntax is as efficient as it can be, it's not like millions of musicians aren't thinking about this stuff. It's complex, because simple music is for children. Music has its jargon, as does medicine, geology, or programming, and you should stop thinking about it like it's a secret language meant to keep you pesky programmers out of it.
OMFG with the butt-hurt laziness. Jesus. You're taking it as the professional musician conspiracy being your mighty oppressor, but what I meant is, being a musician takes work. There is no way around it, we are wired to hear it. The keyboard as it is is laid out for efficiency. If you have for instance a keyboard with only 12 keys on it, plus 2 for up/down keys or something, well now you are at 14 keys in addition to thinking about when to modulate, so we are back to square one in terms of complexity. Music is complex, get over it.
Baseless assertions aside, if there exists a world where jazz musicians don't have to know all their scales, plus altered dominants, plus chromatic substitutions, it would be of great interest.
Agreed. As someone with a professional music background, I would simply disagree about the nature of the work involved. If reducing the workload from 144 scales to 12 helps makes someone sound like Jimi Hendrix, I'm all for it.