Morphogenesis26

Could someone explain how to analyse music properly? I try to understand how the doodads and whatchagizmos of different songs and pieces work, but I just don't know where to start with it.

Thanks in advance.

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z4twenny

Start by learning the major scale and how to form chords.

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Morphogenesis26

I understand the major scale and how to form chords, as well as understanding the distance and relationship between intervals, specific chord progressions and their uses, and basic song structure.

What I'm asking is how to understand the idea being conveyed by a piece of music or a song by using theory. I try to put the music in the context of the scale, but I can't get anywhere with it. I'm wondering if I have to think of it less as revolving around the scale and more about the tonal center, am I correct?

I'd really like a good analytical/compositional source material.

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z4twenny

I guess I'm not understanding what you're looking for. Theory is a descriptive tool, a scale is just a collection of notes. My second guess would be "learn harmony"

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Nietsche

Traditional music theory deals with purely musical materials on a technical level, if you want to talk about ideas being conveyed by music you want a book on aesthetic philosophy, not music theory in the strict sense.

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Morphogenesis26

I guess what I mean is that I see people talk about analyzing music and coming up with stuff about "thematic development" and having a "unified" sound, but I don't quite understand how they come figure that stuff out. Are they talking on a theory level or on something else?

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Nietsche

I don't get what's complicated about thematic development, the basic concept is you have a theme and develop it. You can see that a piece has thematic development because it has a theme which gets restated in a variety of different ways. Examples include the development section of every classical Sonata ever.

If you're talking about ANUSites waxing lyrical about how black metal is the new classical music they figure it out by taking their heads, bending over backwards and slowly inserting them into their own anuses.

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Morphogenesis26

The part about developing it is a problem I'm having. How do you develop a theme, like, give me a good example. :3

And I already knew they were talking out their asses because they never give a reason for any of it.

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food1010

I call it Theme and Variation in A major. Brilliant.

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rockingamer2

Is this type of thing what you're looking for TS?

http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/52

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