The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/12tone10201 Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) The paper discussed is Musical Style Affects the Strength of Harmonic Expectancy, by Drs. Dominique Vuvan and Bryn Hughes: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full... 2) Obviously, the framing of rock changing everything is overly simplistic: If nothing else, the blues and jazz helped pave the way. The reason I emphasized it here is because that's the only style used in the study: I brought this up with the authors as well, and they were interested in the idea of repeating the experiment with other sets of genre cues to see how that affected results. For now all we can conclusively say based on these specific results is that rock and classical are different, but obviously plenty of music theory work has also been done on the different harmonic vocabularies of other genres as well. 3) I should also note that, as a music theorist, I don't necessarily believe that musical observations _need_ to be verified through scientific methods in order to consider them valid. The humanities exist for a reason, and our methods are useful too. But I still think cognition research is useful and interesting, because it gives us another angle by which to probe the musical experience. It's not that all the scholarship on the harmonic vocabulary of rock was meaningless until someone came along and did A Study® to it but it's nice to corroborate your ideas through multiple methodologies, y'know? 4) Seriously I _really_ wish they'd included the plagal cadence as well, that data would've been so cool to see. Oh well. The authors were super receptive to my feedback so maybe we'll see them try it at some point. But even if not, huge thanks to Drs. Vuvan and Hughes, they were wonderful to work with and they're doing super cool stuff. 5) Oh, another thing: I'm honestly not convinced that the classical concept of cadences is actually all that applicable to rock in the first place. Rock music doesn't tend to want to create "stopping points" in the same way, so the harmonic tools you would use to do that just kinda don't fit with the ethos. I didn't address this in the video because it goes beyond the parameters of the study, but it's worth keeping in mind.
Its almost impossible to conduct these kinds of experiments. Most people have heard rock music allot more in their lives then classical music and its a rarity to hear someone saying yeah I only listen to the classics and nothing else as he drops the needle on Symphony #17
I agree, "cadence" isn't really the same thing in the African-American-derived forms that define the 20th (and 21st) century. Rocky v Apollo is "Authentic" (my god what an arrogant name) vs 12 bar blues. But even then, the whole idea of isolating music like this is insane to me since all music comprehension is defined by its technological, acoustic, and cultural context. Isolating components IMO shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the phenomenon we call music. (curmudgeon alert sorry)
@@Armakk I think the cadences evolved into the changes. After all, what is a 12 bar blues but a set of IV-> I and V -> I chord changes? The difference being that it also works in reverse. Every IV -> I chord change was proceeded by a I -> IV, same with the V -> I's. Edit: Of course, this may be a case of convergent evolution. It is important not to forget that.
I thought this was going to be about how the power chord is made of parallel fifths, which are so taboo in classical music, but sound awesome on a guitar. I guess you touched on that a LITTLE, but I'd love to hear more about it!
Exactly. Here, the timbre is playing a huge role, the intermodulation of guitar distortion is creating some of its own tension, emphasizing the 1st and 5th notes in a chord at the expense of the third. de-emphasizing the third robs a V7-I of the tension of the tritone in between the third and lowered 7th tones in the V7 chord. But the guitar is adding a lot of other partials that may be creating different kinds of tension not accounted for in classical theory. Classical theory is expressed independent of timbre (except in the art of orchestration). Theory also always follows practice, so if a different language is needed to explain rock, it will be developed, or perhaps it becomes and extension of classical theory. This study notwithstanding, even rock music mostly starts from some tonic, wanders through some basic chords (usually IV, V and VI) and then invariably ends in I.
It not taboo. It depends. If you write contapunctal music you should avoid 5th if you want to have two strong independent melodies running at the same time. If you spend writing som contrapunctualmusic, you will hear that 5th sound like shit if you for example go from 6th to 5th to 5th to 6th. But you have to use 5th in contrapuctual music but the intervals should go as following if it should sound good, for example 3th to 5th to 6th. If you use to many 5th in a wrong way the melody notes merge into one melody instead of two separate melodies. You'll understand when you write contrspuctual music. And you cannot write contrapuctual music with 5th because it doesn't become contrapuctual by nature. Brass uses 5th a lot as another example and there are other musical pieces that use 5th a lot in different context
Like in rock music with distorted guitars you have to avoid 3rds in the power chord because it sound garbage if you use 1 3 5 at the same time all the time. Everything depends on the context. But if you want to break the rules you do. Nothing in theory says it isn't allowed. Composers have always broken the rules if they feel to do that - if it sounds good or intentional bad. It's part of music composition to do so. If you want to have a half broken contrapuctual composition, you'll create that. If you want to create imperfections, you'll do that. It may fit into some context somewhere.
I always looked at it as a stack of Tartini tones. The fundamental note has a 5th & 8ve in overtones, & the power chords doubles the overtones so that it sounds fatter. The UNDERTONE below the fundamental also "sounds" making it fatter.
It’s one chord, there’s no parallel perfect fifths because there’s no parallel motion because there is no motion. Now if you meant movement between power chords, then yeah.
I enjoy it when a video actually goes into the details of how an experiment was conducted and how the results were interpreted. It might put a lot of casual viewers off but it's essential to any genuine search for truth.
There are two types of authentic cadences, perfect and imperfect. A perfect authentic cadence (PAC) is when both the V and I chords are in root position and the highest note of the I chord is the also the tonic of the scale. An imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) is when at least one (or both) of the cadential chords is inverted, or a diminished vii is used in place of the V chord, or the I chords highest note is something other than the tonic of the scale.
@@tom_4615 Perfect Cadence is the Commonwealth name for the Authentic Cadence too! It gets a bit confusing, but I'm Australian and the name for V-I is always taught as Perfect here, with no distinction between the American Perfect Authentic and Imperfect Authentic
I think it's primarily to differentiate from the "deceptive" cadence of using the VI instead of the I, which was a fairly popular way to add surprise and tension to a piece in western classical music.
In Canada, the Royal Conservatory used to call V-I a perfect cadence, like in other Commonwealth countries (open vs closed perfect cadence distinguished IAC and PAC). Universities always used US books, though, so students were sometimes confused. The Conservatory seems to have adopted all the US terminology since 2016 or so.
I don't know much about the techniques of the field but from a general methods perspective I feel improvement could be made. The paper definitely could've used a control. If we know the plagal candace is common to both, they should've tested that as a positive control. Similarly they should've tried some outlandish harsh non-cadance as a negative control.
I feel like a better approach would be to look at the percentages of how often each type of resolution is used in modern popular music. It's the composers who are deciding on what type of resolution or tool to use and which one they feel is most satisfying or representing of the type of composition they are trying to create. Perception of resolution is dictated by the experience of the listener. A bV7 to I resolution would have sounded strange and modal to someone growing up listening to 18th century European harmony music, but sounds natural to a modern music listener.
@@motomike71 I feel like the problem that would have is deciding what music to include in your sample. You're always going to have at least an incomplete or biased sample. Using test sentences and asking participants to rate the grammaticality is something common in linguistics research, so it makes sense that they do it here.
Something like a bII - i cadence (often used in heavy metal) would've been interesting, because (in my trained musician experience) anecdotally I'd say it would sound so out of place in classical as to likely sound flat out wrong
@@frankyi8206 Furthermore, the most important, and most significant music style of the twentieth century is undoubtedly jazz (from which even rock is derived.) A cadence that comes from a tritone substitution of the dominant fifth is not only perfectly satisfactory in jazz but almost invariably perceived as *more* advisable than a straight V7-I which would sound downright "square".
One thing I've always struggled with in my composition classes was this notion that "the V WANTS to resolve to the I!!" ...I was always just like "Sorry, I really only hear two independent chords." Eventually I just internalized the notion that that's how "normal people" hear it and learned to apply it, but I've never actually heard this supposed gravitational pull for myself.
The "rules" in classical music are derived from conventions that arose in species counterpoint and... You know what? This reply deserves its own thread.
Get a harmonica and learn to play the blues. You’ll hear it. It doesn’t take long to learn how to play cross harp and all you need is a harmonica and a blues backing track.
He probably is interested about higher physics and mathematics, in two other videos he put easter eggs about riemann surfaces (geometry) and a penguin diagram (quantum field theory) respectively. I have no idea whether he actually studied the subjects or is just interested in science communication, in any case the fact that he puts this stuff in music theory videos is just another level of nerdiness, and I LOVE IT!!!!
Something I'd love to see if it's been studied in more detail is the impact of factors outside of harmony on the listener's feelings of resolution, particularly in EDM genres where harmony is far more secondary to the rhythmic and timbral aspects than in western classical genres. The fact is that in western classical music, while timbre is still important, you can nearly always re-orchestrate any piece of music to different instruments and most listeners will still hear it as the "same" piece, because in the western classical tradition it's the abstract harmony and melody that define a piece of music. In EDM, changing the instrumentation and/or timbre, particularly when it comes to transitions like the drop that can confer feelings of resolution and transition to a new section of the music, will fundamentally alter that music and can easily make it into something most listeners will hear as completely new. I'd love to know if there's been any of this kind of cognition research into these aspects of EDM genres and how they affect listeners' feelings of resolution in the same way that different harmonic cadences can on western classical music. If there are studies that can prove that modern listeners can have feelings of resolution that are entirely independent of the harmony, that kind of torpedoes the whole idea from western classical music theory that harmony is the strongest driver of the listener's feelings in the first place.
I came to traditional music pedagogy later in life after being a rock person for a bunch of years and I had VERY difficult time getting the V-I in my ears. I truly think that at the time I wasn't experiencing the same degree of "tension and release" that the Schenkerian bros ship so aggressively and had to consciously develop it with ear training. It's clear as day now of course, but I don't think we should consider any music paradigms to be innate or self-evident. Harmony is socially constructed, yo.
Wouldn't it make more sense for the study to bake each cadence into the primer? Like, write a classical piano primer that ends with a V-I cadence as well as one that ends in a bVII-I cadence instead, and then do the same thing for the rock guitar. That would put the cadences more in the context of what an actual song in those genres would do.
The issue there is that the question being asked is "which fits better with the prime?" If the cadence is literally in the prime, it would likely automatically sound as though it fits better.
@@loganstrong5426 One possibility that comes to mind is to play the same prime but ending with two different cadences in a random order and ask which one fits better with the beginning of the piece.
@@ashtarbalynestjar8000 That might depend on the beginning of the piece and the lead up to the cadence (I think), so it would introduce even more variables... I don't really know how to test this stuff properly tho
@@loganstrong5426 Ok. Have two samples of classical music, both identical except for the resolution. Ask the listener how jarring the resolution was. Repeat this with rock music.
Pretty much all music theory books specify that the theory is derived from the ‘common practice period’ of western classical music from 1750 to the early 1900s.
Yes, that it was slowly developed to analyze music within a specific tradition is generally understood and not really debated. The fact that this limits its usefulness discussing music outside that tradition - that the common practice period does not embody all there is to music - is generally much less well understood. The idea that rock music is best described in more modern frameworks is surprisingly controversial.
Gradus ad Parnassum was published in 1725 by Austrian composer/theorist Johann Joseph Fux as an attempt to explain how the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina worked. From Bach (who endorsed the book) onward, if you wanted to get anywhere in classical music, you had to learn and use the rules Fux set down in that book. Because all music composed with these rules will sound similar, music written according to these rules is known as “common practice” music because the “common practice” was the application of Fux’s rules.
it's also worth remembering that classical composers of the 18th and 19th centuries were the rock stars of their day. Complete with obscene spending and gossip-rag scandals. hell, Liszt invented smashing his instrument on stage.
The classical vocabulary is definitely different from the common rock/metal vocabulary. This is why neoclassical metal is a defined genre, because it is fundamentally different from a theoretical standpoint. Would love to see you and Adam Neely do a collab, you seem like you would have a lot of synergy in your presentation and research styles.
@@ThOutRider2 the guitar sounds sooo sad i wanna know the theory behind it. i don't even like the song that much tbh i just wanna know whats so melancholic about the notes.
I think it's pretty cool they made an effort to analyze the effect of timbre. I've got no education in music but I've always though the insistence that C3 on a piano is exactly the same as C3 on any guitar is oversimplifying. For that matter I don't think C played on different octaves sounds the same and therefore shouldn't be treated identically. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I feel like the broad-strokes equivalence assumptions can mask some of the complexity that flavors the final piece.
Well first, the guitar transposes up an octave (so it can be written in treble clef), so C3 on the guitar will sound an octave lower than C3 on the piano. Second, the broad-stroke equivalence assumptions are the very reason common practice music sounds the way that it does-the material that matters most and is worth analyzing isn’t in the sound of the instruments, but in the individual melodies they play (as taught by composer Milton Babbitt to Stephen Sondheim). The timbres were purely aesthetic and rarely factored into analysis unless the composer was definitely trying to imitate an actual sound with an instrument (birds = woodwinds, cow fart = contrabassoon, etc.). Finally, octaves are important in common practice theory-the lowest note is what determines which inversion of a chord is being played. But when common practice theory was dropped in favor of anything different (eventually 12-tone technique), they made even octaves unnecessarily equivalent by reducing all the notes to 12 “pitch classes” so that an F# had the same function no matter which octave it was played at, so that now octaves were purely aesthetic (high notes = light, low notes = gravity, etc.). The problems inherent in classical music are arbitrary and self-imposed is what I’m trying to say.
@@albertnortononymous9020 Wow! Some musical theorists are incredibly stupid. How could someone disregard instrumentation; it makes a big difference, and dynamics and articulation make a big difference too.
The piano is an instrument that has been invented and ingeniously developed to give you clean notes. Every other instrument has its own opinion on what it wants to give you.
Maybe my experience isn't the most common, but I was taught that while the authentic cadence was the "strongest", strongest doesn't always mean "best" or "most appropriate". Like in a rock song which uses the lowered 7th and no leading tone, a V - I cadence would sound horribly out of place. If you want a strong finish, a IV - I is almost certainly stronger than a v - I and bVII - I is still at least modally consistent.
I've actually heard it called a perfect authentic cadence when it's in root position and the soprano voice ends on the first scale degree, but it'd an imperfect authentic cadence with the soprano ends on the 3 or the 5. Idk it always seemed like an unnecessary amount of detail to memorize, I wish we had spent that time learning about other things.
Well, an authentic cadence simply means chord 5 resolving to chord 1..however, an authentic cadence can be further divided into "perfect authentic cadence" and "imperfect authentic cadence"
@@WhiteTreeRightful i definitely feel you! Another one that bothered me was wasting time learn about parallel 5ths and octaves lol. Music is full of parallel 5ths now. Why do I need to know about that. Lol
Very interesting, I really like the analysis of the validity of the results. Too often, people think that one experiment/paper can provide conclusive evidence, so it's good to see you putting the paper into perspective. I think you ask exactly the right questions and the suggestion for follow-up research is very good.
They don't understand what an authentic cadence is. It doesn't need a V chord, it doesn't even need a dominant chord, the second to last chord just needs to have a dominant function to the final chord.
Another way to interpret the results is not that V-I is less important today, but is that harmony is less important today (it is to be expected that variations of something that is less important tend to be scored lower). It is amazing how many #1 songs that are made of 2-3 chords. Trying to learn more myself, I found thousands of video hours/books that music theorists have created about harmony and very few about rules that dictate how a good leading melody is made.
I am wondering if you ever studied physics or mathematics? I just love the fact that you keep putting little diagrams, graphs and functions in these videos. I love both music and maths , but I am going to try to persue science and live music as a passion, it seems like you took the opposite decision. Btw your content is always fricking great so congratulations!
Having listened to rock and metal all my life and when I started learning music theory at first the V7-I cadence sounded absolutely awful to my ears, there was something goofy and off-putting about the sound that I didn't like at all.
Same here. If anything, V7-I feels unfinished to me, I seem to prefer deceptive cadences to mediants and circling back from there. Wasted a lot of time trying to 'fix' my resolutions.
Another aspect of this might be .. does rock music really need "cadences"? Does it need to "resolve"? In bands I've been in, we've never written songs with "resolution" in mind. We jam until we stumble across something that sounds good, and tweak it until it's a song. This riff four times, this other riff four times, and end on a big E chord (really E5 or maybeeeee Em).
I'm coming from the same boat, but maybe we *are* doing that.. just without knowing it. I think not knowing the ins and outs of the theory doesn't necessarily mean you're not trying to achieve the same thing as someone who is very deliberately writing material. They just probably know how to get there more efficiently.
@@TwoScoopsOfTubert That's exactly it. The theory exists to try to explain why we think these things sound great and what rules we subconsciously follow when writing music. I studied linguistics, and this is very similar to grammar. For instance, a 3-year-old most likely doesn't know about word classes but they still have a very good grasp of how to use verbs as verbs, nouns as nouns and so on. They usually don't try to pluralize a verb, and they don't try to put an adjective in past tense. Yet, if you asked them about it, they probably wouldn't be able to explain why. I'm delighted to see music theory moving away from "one theory to explain them all" and towards theories for different genres. It makes a lot more sense, IMO.
@@TwoScoopsOfTubert but we are not trying to go to a technical space - we are getting feelings across first and foremost. Watch Tous les Matins du Monde (1991) to get a better idea of music. I think it is a wonderful eye opener that one ...
Usually I speed up videos so I watch the same information in less time. In this case I have to slow down the video because if I don't do it I don't get the information
One thing that I think is really important is that most classical music is through composed (it goes from one phrase to another without really repeating anything verbatim) wheras most rock is in some sort of ABAB/rondo form. So things that work in classical, like the very definitive PAC might not work as well in rock, where you have to loop the form over and over. Not only that, but (most) classical doesn't use chord loops, so the PAC makes more sense when ending a large phrase. This is just my perception, but the plagal cadence sounds a lot more soft than the PAC, making it more useful to loop because it is less strictly defined. Idk though, that's just how I see it, which definitely isn't universally true or correct.
I've been talking about this for years. The paper completely misses what's actually happening today as they are looking in the wrong place. Perfect cadence has been not only largely abandoned but completely subverted by much of modern pop, where standard Western Harmony often has little to no functionality at all in the classical sense.
This confirmed something that I've been noodling on for a while, that rock and classical use a fundamentally different vocabulary. I noticed this because I learned most of my music theory via this channel's intro videos and song analyses, which worked perfectly well for someone whose primary musicological interest is rock. But anytime I attempted to read works on music theory or musical philosophy, I found that they exclusively dealt with classical music and/or high-art challenges to classical music like 12-tone serialism, treating rock and other popular music as debased and musically vacuous. I obviously disagree, and I started to wonder if perhaps the issue was that the framework by which these theorists were evaluating rock music was simply unsuited to it.
That's a really great way to put it. I guess in the end, it's really just that theory tends to lag behind actual practice. You can even see this happening in the common practice period (although not as much and not as fast). The example I actually know (I'm sure there are more) is the debate over Monteverdi's Cruda Amarilli, where he was criticized for breaking counterpoint rules for "no reason". What was his main reason? It helped enhance the relationship between the text and the music. 100 years later, those types of violations became a common part of theory. I can't speak with as much authority on later music, but I think it's pretty safe to say that things like that were happening constantly. I guess in the end, I think it's really important to always remember that 1: theory only exists inside it's context, and 2: that context shifts rapidly. I think people often like to treat theory as an unmovable standard, but that's as far from the truth as you can be.
"Why Classical Harmony Doesn't Work in Pop Music" There, I fixed it. Not to diss on your video or pop music, classical harmony can be very effective in film music, musical theater, and others. Also, the authentic cadence is only a tiny part of classical harmony, so it's a bit of a stretch to say that because a lot of modern music doesn't use the authentic cadence that classical harmony "doesn't work anymore".
"bit of a stretch" is an understatement. seems to be kind of a trend with music theory youtubers now of making videos whose conclusions aren't remotely supported by their arguments. even Neely did it
Just a little sidenote that could potnetially be interesting: There is a niche for the bVII -> i and that is Power and Melodic Death Metal. This cadence is ALL OVER THE PLACE, if you make an corpus analysis of Amon Marth songs (that absolutely nobody, especially the poster of that comment would ever do) you would find that like 75% of all the songs would use either a i, bvii pendulum or another loop that uses v, vi or iv while relaying on the bvii to get back to the tonal centre. It's also very common in other styles of modern rock an metal. The sentiment that the plagal cadance sounds very 60 is kinda true and it has been somewhat overshadowed by the i -> bVII in the later years. So that music theory study was kinda smart about it's material which is something quite unusual nowadays. :D Still an amazing video!
Classical Harmony is not only Tonal music, tonal harmony it is still working when it comes to tonal music, when it becomes modal, it is a different topic. We all still really unprepared for modal music since we are taught to focus on tonal understanding of music.
Any two chords can be a cadence with the right context and preparation. Different styles of music are different contexts, I'm not surprised that the quality of "resolution" evoked by a particular cadence depends on the context. Honestly, in isolation, the authentic cadence doesn't sound like a resolution to my ears, or even really anything at all. It could just as easily be a I - IV intro to some new idea, bIII - bVII in the middle of a minor key progression, or could even be a minor scale borrowed chord setup for a backdoor cadence bIII - bVII - I.
I don't know what kind of musical background you have, but it is puzzling to me the a V-I doesn't sound like anything to you. For me personally, anytime I hear even just a dominant 7th chord, my brain can't help but hear the implied resolution from V-I. That sound is just so ingrained into me.
@@rddsknk89 My background is classical actually, so the V-I should be really strong for me, even in the absence of any other cues. I don't have a good explanation why it isn't. Possibly, it's because my exposure to classical music wasn't thrust on me, I sought it out myself. As a child, my parents rarely listened to classical music and instead listened to classic rock, motown, folk, and other pop music of the 50s and 60s.
@@rddsknk89 I think this is the case of someone really liking the sound of their own voice. Claims of "V-I doesn't sound like anything to me" when tension & release is the core of all harmonic relationships is really quite silly. As if there's no 5-1 in "classic rock, motown, folk, and other pop music of the 50s and 60s" lmfao
@@kylezo I didn't say a V-I doesn't sound like anything to me, I said in isolation it doesn't. I don't claim to have a rational explanation for it, it's just my experience. As you say, V-I doesn't appear only in classical music, though the styles I listed V-I isn't as emphasized as it is in most classical music. I provided context for my experience, I don't really think what I've stated is contrarian enough to warrant your attack. However, if maintaining your view on this matter requires you to dismiss my experience, so be it, I don't really have any control over that.
I really enjoy these videos but the icing on the cake is always one or more little stand-out doodles. A quick throw-away Feynman Diagram in this one was excellent.
Hey 12tone, I recently found your channel and it helps me understand some things and learn new things as a self taught amateur musician. Nothing really much to say but thank you!
Every musical genre has its own vocabulary, structure, articulation, meters, etc. The point here is that depending on what you’re trying to build, you will use different tools, different materials, and do different operations. So nothing new under the sun, just different.
I'm glad you have a forum to express your opinion and earn a living.You tend to use a form of logic that works for you and many of your subs, but I have my own doubts. While I don't have a label for it, I would describe it as the "I might be wrong" doctrine. It seems to be working for most. Either way, best of luck.
It's unfortunate that so many rock/metal guitarists deal with intermodulation by only playing the simplest chords. There are tons of interesting chords that sound great on distorted guitar.
I was a classically trained guitarist guitarist at Belmont university and AIM when I heard EVH said the guitar only has 12 notes so don’t drive your self crazy I do use some of it mostly to communicate with other musicians. Remember it’s called theory for a reason.-:frank zappa
I'm an undergrad in anthropology, and don't know much about ethnomusicology, but I feel like the music theorists have nothing but rage for the entire field given your videos.
In fact in Italy, at the conservatory, our jazz harmony teacher called it "plagal substitution" ; it comes from the movement of the voices in classical music. In many jazz standards (for instance "Stella by Starlight") the cadence is : IV - bVII - I
As a church musician with a strong sense of Baroque music theory (and little knowledge of pop music), many chord progressions in contemporary worship songs break my tonal anticipation algorithm. I have a hard time understanding them, and they feel kinda like they just ramble.
For example, the point of V7 -> I is to use the harmonic motion 5 -> 1 and melodic motions 2 -> 1 and 7 -> 1 including the tritone resolution 7 -> 1 and 4 -> 3 to highlight the tonic chord(1-3), while also defining the key with the tritone resolution, as the tritone is a key-defining interval(the only interval that's in each major key only once, and every tritone is unique to every major key). If you use block motions, you only get the harmonic motion 5 -> 1 but you completely miss the melodic motions of 2 -> 1 and 7 -> 1. That you use "authentic cadences" without these melodic motions as any sorts of examples and don't mention them makes it seem like you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "every tritone is unique to every major key," but: no. The tritone of F and B is native to BOTH C major and F# major (where the F is spelled E#). This is why jazz people often substitute say an F#7 for a C7 in a progression--because the tritone notes are shared by both chords, both chords can resolve persuasively (in the way you describe) to the same chord.
Whenever my head hurts from all this harmony and theory, i remember how good it was to just pick the guitar and make songs of love and heartbreak and my Feelings and dream of being a rock star without really bothering with theory nor mixing and all that bullsh... don't get me wrong, it is needed, it is essential for musician, it is an amazing field of study and 12tone is my favorite theorist, amazing teacher and person, but i just miss the innocent not caring sessions i had when i used to make music in the past
I have recently watched a bunch of your videos and didn't realize before this very minute that you are actually drawing the opposite direction you would write (in english that is). For some reason it wasn't really an issue, I believe it might be since you arent using latin letters (the only letters I know how to read) you have made your own language that compliments your voiceover and I actually don't know how to finish this sentence, but that was very interesting! :D Hey! 20 min older me here, I realized it is probably because you are left handed, and as a left hended person I know the struggle of smudging and others not being able to see what you're writing.
Also, the rock example didn't end in a plagal cadence, it was a very obvious I V motion. How can you have a musiv theory channel if you cannot hear basic stuff like harmonic function?
Props to Drs Vuvan and Hughes for having a crack at this. I think the paper should be titled “Musical Style Affects the Strength of Harmonic Expectancy in a small sample of US College Students”. I’m not confident the findings would generalise well to, say, Tuvan throat singers or much beyond folks steeped in Western musical styles.
I've kind of always had a bit of an issue with cadences while studying music and it relates to this. We are taught that some resolve better than others, but that doesn't always apply, as seen here, and that changes a lot depending on our backgrounds. I personally prefer the sound of the backdoor resolution (especially in minor), the bII (or bii) to i and IV to i. I've talked to other people that are a bit skeptic of classical ideas and what we think is that it may be due to the music i've listened to the most, both growing up and currently.
Bruh, you take the fun out of music ... but, you bring it right back again! Hey, we are in the 20’s of the 21st Century after all. We need folks like you, now that it seems that organically spontaneous free flowing rebellious music that gives earthy orgasmic explosions to the listener a reason to believe music is simply not a deceiving interlude of our daily monotonous controlled lives ... hope! Hope in humanity. That being said, music may be dead. You have your glimmers over ear candy ... Radiohead’s & Eilishes ... We’ve excepted it. What else can we do ... but that - or create. Maybe somebody will hear our personal flavors of this god-given phenomenon of music. Seriously, Always enjoy your angle. Enjoyed. 🙏🏼👌🏼
Well, though this video is interesting, all kinds of chord changes have been used in classic rock, so I was hoping that you would talk a little bit about the most important difference, which, for me, comes from the blues concept of making the tonic a dominant. And for me it opens up all kind of possibilities in "popular perception of good" sounding chord changes, even if this didn't come itself firstly with the blues, but rather contemporary music itself (and maybe even medieval music without the theory behind it, or even before and/or elsewhere). And even if you can see a I7-IV as a plagal cadance rather than a V7-I, authentic. Also, not related, but you have surely noticed that the ii-V has a simlar effect than the IV-V, and the vi-V (or even just the ii, the viiº, or V) in the major tonality, and in minor tonality the iiº-V, the iv-V, and the VI-V? Whatever, I don't know why I'm commenting. Have a good day!
@12tone I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on how this applies to "metal" Does metal have the same vocabulary as rock. I say "metal" because there are so many sub-genres I doubt even within metal there is a single vocabulary. I often hear metal being associated more with classical music and its pretty common for metal bands to "shred" some very classical sounding riffs and solos, and often they will directly utlise classical pieces such as Nightwish's Greatest show on earth, leveraging Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Are these simple "callouts" or are they fundamental to the genre vocabulary?
This is one later but It sounds classical in my understanding because some shredding is in the harmonic minor scale, like Beethoven and other romantic composers did in virtuosic pieces. That and some dissonant tritones, diminished chords and rumbling/ demonic sounds from perhaps Liszt is what may be described as similar to metal but not much other than that and it certainly doesn’t have any other big influence. Listen to malmsteen and you’ll know what is more classical than regular metal let say
Personally, having listened to rock music all my life, roughly 30 years, and the example rock bit here sounded just very annoying and half-assed. While the classical sounded very well rounded. The rock clip didn't sound like having theme or resolution at all, while the classical clearly did. However I think a lot of rock music does have tension build up and some resolution. On the other hand my opinion might be biased because I've listened to so much metal which can sometimes be very much derived from classical music, despite having been developed through bluesrock. It's very hard to actually gauge all the factors. 9/10 ten times I'd still rate those traditional classical pieces having so much more resolution over rock songs. And I'll claim that having learned the cadence and chord progression stuff, it does help making satisfying progressions. Even if you want to break rules at times for sounds, the wireframe helps so much in sniffing what'd work very well. Especially the modes seem to do a ton of heavy lifting in the best and most moody, impactful and expressing modern songs. Like having that raised 7th or flat 2nd has made some songs timeless due to how it changes the emotion and creates a hook that's often also connected to what the lyrics are expressing. The i-bVI-bVII seems to also be very common in rock and metal, but I assume that it's not distinct enough from classical music and not noticeable enough to differentiate rock music from others. However the use of tritonus definitely shows up everywhere in that line of music. However great observations about electric guitar changing the game for distortion and timbre. Although I wanna say that for the longest time there wasn't that much saturation in electric guitar distortion that it stopped you from using most chords until 90's and modern metal (80's like Van Halen was full of playing with lead notes and having fuller chords or at least implying them with intervals). Maybe the most jazzy extended chords were out of the question due to difficult intervals, but on the other hand jazz people also use a lot of shell voicing. Which is a fantastic way to introduce more interesting tonalities in distorted rhythm guitar. Still there's no doubt that guitar being the main instrument changed a lot. I regularly struggle finding out reasonable, practical and satisfying ways to fret the chord structures that sound effortless and beautiful on piano. Like just making your regular triads on electric guitar, if you want a barre chord that is sort of standard in bringing a guitar like tonality, you already have to work with inversions since the design of the guitar doesn't allow a normal human to build up from 1 - 3 - 5 intervals, almost exclusively you start with 1 - 5 and then often an octave and start building up the rest from there. Which makes it different tonality from piano which can just choose which inversions or "drops" to use freely to your taste, not because of the instrument limitation. And it comes as no surprise that putting those intervals elsewhere changes their relation and thus sound more or less, despite preserving the general feel. All this to make a comment about how guitar being the main instrument definitely changes things, want it or not, and likely results in difference of perception on how well things resolve. After all for the change in the chord structure, you might lose your leading notes and the strong resolution might become weaker since you can't resolve all the key notes beautifully with half step interval change at the same time. Although classical pieces on guitar also sound so beautiful, they are insanely difficult to play, which plays to the fact that practicality keeps you away for most musicians from composing that kind of stuff when jamming or noodling.
Very interesting video, however here in the Netherlands, we teach the backdoor cadence as a plagal cadence as well. The chord derives from mixolydian b13 scale of the main key, lets say A major like in the video. It is the same scale where the IV degree minor, in this case Dm6 or Dmmaj7 comes from, so it is just another version of a plagal chord, even though it has not the D in the base. G7 also has a Bdim triad in its upper structure, which would be another variation of the minor plagal cadence.
So heres what I got from this video... There was a study done to conduct which sets of music rules people know, and whether or not peoples perception of those rules is more determined by classical or modern tradition. This came into questions because much of modern music lacks the 'authentic cadence' a resolution key to much of classical music. They would use primes, musical pieces that hold many of the traits of its reflective genre, and genre-appropriate timbre to create a genre "mood", doing it for 'classical' and 'rock'. They then played both the V-I cadence and the VIIb-I cadences (reflective of classical vs modern eras of music), following the primes. In doing this, they would have participants select which one they liked more. The results showed that while people greatly preferred V-I in classical, there was no great differences in people's classical preference. This is impressive, because it shows that people might not be so heavily effected by style, and that classical influence still carries over to much of people's preferences. However, the presence of harmonic tendencies of genre can carry over into peoples preferences, which is why the 'tie' found in the experiment for rock music is so impressive.
Great video! Incredibly interesting topic, especially on the heels of Adam Neely's "18th Century Musicians" piece. Love this subject matter and look forward to more thought-provoking insight in regard. I tell my advancing students that there are really cool and original means to cadence using voice-leading which can create some non-traditional bass movement. Not really a classical vs rock thing, per se but...Anyway, thanks for this.
My theory(that i just started to develop on my piano), as to why 5-1 works better in "classical" (or on an instrument that doesn't distort and has the ability to clearly voice every note), is as follows: when you can hear every note of a chord, in a 5-1 you change the 3rd up by a half-step and the 5th up by a whole step, but you can keep the root as the new 5th. this makes for a satisfying, yet not overwhelming amount of change. while on an instrument (or setting) where you can't really pick out details beyond a certain point (eg distorted electric guitar; maybe with distortion even weakening certain notes and their harmony with others), you have might have a harder time making the change 3rd+1semi = new root stand out enough to be satisfying, so you have to introduce the root of the 1 chord a different way. that is by making it the 5th of the previous chord, thereby making it a 4-1 cadence. This is just a thought I had whilst playing around during this video. I know it isn't very scientific, nor is it backed up by facts, but I wanted to write it down somewhere, so why not here. Also, play around with "power chords" on piano. resolutions will sound very different. (4-1 > 5-1 in powerchords imo, whilst I would prefer 5-1 in full chords)
let's not forget Girshwin studied classical. this writing spend a lot of time talking about V I when what you study at a jazz school day 1 is tri tone subs on ii V and the fact V7 is every chord in a 12 bar I IV V. it is notable to look at really simple pop music and find the major Lydian sound and how the 4 chord can be subbed with the 4 of Melodic Minor and the diminished ladder associated with MM the title of a video could be Functional harmony vs modal harmony and why the 2 need each other 😃♥️
I think all this shows is that music theory relies more on tropes than it does math. The human brain does this everywhere. When it comes to our ideologies for example, it’s well proven that we go with our intuition first and then justify it with reason after the fact. It’s the same pattern here. We have various intuitions about music and can then go back in later and justify it with math and explanations to do with voice leadings and so on. We create tropes that become ingrained in us from a child, and when we grow up and create things ourselves, we really only change those things a little bit. This is how the dialectic happens, and so this effects art, politics, and culture. Every aspect of our lives are touched by this combination of relying on our intuitions/feelings, and our intuitions being based on what we were exposed to as a child.
I guess if Spotify and its users would open up their playlist and preference recognition, it would advance this kind of research a lot. Lots of people like rock AND classical music... but on the big scale, which composers with what style preferences do they like more? Rock and CM are just so diverse within themselves.
I can only speak for myself, but even before I got into rock/metal, I'd often gravitate towards composers that often made more intense and darker sounding pieces, such as Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, and so on. It was actually easier for me to get into rock/metal because of classical music, because to me, it sounded like stuff those composers would make but with distortion. The song that kind of made me realize that to begin with was "Blood and Thunder" by Mastodon, which I thought sounded too harsh and abrasive at first back then, but suddenly when I heard that guitar solo hit, that's when it all clicked for me and started to get into it more as a kid.
I don’t have the time to delve into the literature surrounding academic questions like this (or to learn how to do so in a field like music theory) so I’m glad we’ve got 12tone here to do it for us. Specifically emailing the authors in universally Hell on ice. I don’t want to spend 15 minutes agonising over “best regards” vs “all the best”
This is a really good video, but I think that it's important to note that it's possible to overstate the effect. After all, the study found that both forms were equally effective when played in a rock style. So it removes the supremacy of the authentic cadence, but does not cast it away into the depths of tartarus. If there is a big gap between the uses of Plagal (VI -> I) and Backdoor ( ♭VII7-> I) chord changes, and the uses of 'authentic' (V -> I), then we have yet to find the cause. (And there are many styles of rock that use the V -> I, most commonly blues-rock)
Would you ever be interested in breaking down death metal or black metal music theory? There’s a lot more complexity behind the surface to these subgenres than musicians give credit for. Awesome video and awesome drawings!
This musical code switching thing could explain why people who rarely hear more hardcore styles of music like punk and metal tend to describe it as "just noise" and don't understand why anyone would listen to it, I remember hearing green day as a kid and thinking it was super hardcore but now compared to some of the other music I listen to I hear green day as closer to pop music, and I'm certain if I showed some people who'd barely been exposed to punk or metal some of my favourite songs they'd just hear loud angry static and look at me like I'm crazy. Even I felt that way about some of my now favourite artists at first, I couldn't comprehend how it was music on the first listen because my brain hadn't been primed for it, but after listening a few times the music seperated out and I could hear the layers and the melody and the different instruments and I suddenly had a new lens through which to view music. Very interesting video
Interesting description but missed the point about the fact that we are talking about the common practice of each genre. Most of the styles share the same basics.The "rules" are to be learned so that they can be bent or broken. I tell my students that music theory rules are only rules in High School and College theory classes. They are descriptions of the common practices.
