Orlando Fiol wrote:

>None of the Beatles could read or write music, yet many of their balads
>show a particular and marked resemblance to Schubert or Schumann's lieder
>in their harmonic constructs.

Whenever I knock popular music on this list (which I admit I do rather too
often--I'm trying to break the habit), someone responds with the example of
the Beatles.  My reply is in two parts: (a) They may resemble Schubert and
Schumann in some ways, but my position is, why not go for the real Schubert
and Schumann, and not a pale resemblance? (b) When I think of popular
music, I think of the vast bulk of what people listen to today (usually
I only hear it when I am in the car with my kids and they have control of
the radio), and it is certainly not of the quality of the Beatles, to say
nothing of the two S's.

>Other pop artists that I know are able to come up with very interesting
>and elaborate melodies, chord progressions and rhythmic ideas without
>necessarily knowing the names of the processes they undergo to achieve
>those results.  In fact, much music throughout the world has no etic
>lexicon of music theory, yet ethnomusicologists study such music in great
>depth to try and uncover the possible theoretical underpinnings that may
>not have yet developed a vocabulary by the practitioners of those forms
>of music.

Certainly it is the case that the music must come first, and the theory
after.  (Otherwise, what would the theory be about?) But as I recall,
the original question of this thread was something like: what help does
studying theory give to performers and creators of music? The rather
simple point I would like to make is just that, to the extent that you
are carrying on the millenia-old human tradition of basic singing and
dancing, you don't need theory--you just do it.  But human beings have the
ineradicable urge to tinker with and improve things, even when they really
don't need to, and if you do that enough with singing and dancing, you wind
up eventually with the likes of Schubert and Schumann.  And to make music
on that level, a bit of theoretical knowledge sure helps.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]