Contemporary Music Theory - Where To Begin

Is there a junior college in your area? I would think most would have a decent music program where you could study harmony and theory.

As far as your last question, the quality of a chord is determined by how far the notes are from each other. A minor chord (triad) is made by stacking a major third (four half steps) on top of a minor third (3 half steps). A major chord is made by stacking a minor third on top of a major third. Chords can get pretty crazy but the basic chords are pretty easy to figure out. 


How much music theory do you know? Can you read music? Do you know why there are flats and sharps in music? It's hard to know what, if any, advice to give without having some idea of how far along you already are.

Simple answer: train your ear.

Your ear gets it before your noggin. If anyone thinks that's bravado it is not. Music is not a "book" thing. It comes in books, yes, but it comes from and goes to the ear first.

Having said this, there are online sources: Forums I have one in my sig. Check it out. Your eyes will pop out at first, but it is VERY informative. YT videos, other music theory related websites and you'll see and hear what is being done and how it's being done and enjoy more than reading some book (Forums are book like, but you can interact on a forum) 

Not to mention some lessons on this forum, too. (Will you dare come under my wing? haha)

Do click the link in my sig (the first one)


Here's a channel I'm subscribed to on YT: http://www.youtube.com/feed/UCBKvmNibsNRtlmFUgp1_npw 
A music theory website: http://www.musictheory.net/   

SuperStruct


Hi Everyone.

I've been trying to find out how to analyze contemporary music, such as Michael Jackson's Billy Jean, any of the The Beatles's songs, old Nintendo songs, Jazz (house, smooth, etc.), 90's rock and so on. I took a few classes on tonal harmony, but those are for 1800's hymns. What kind of music theory is used to help write contemporary songs? Where do I even begin to look? I checked out Berklee, but they charge 1k for a class (that's pretty much two years worth of vst instruments for me). Are there any really good books, online classes references, etc.?

Also, I have a Final Fantasy piano book that lists the chords above certain measures such as A min and E7th. I understand that those are the chords for the current measure, but how can you really tell if it's a A min chord or a 13th chord in the 5th inversion or some crazy thing like that?

Hi Super,
 
Wow that's a pretty loaded question there. I mean that in a good way. :) I think you may be in need of some theory from reading your post. For example, as you go through your life experiencing music and knowing the sound a certain chord makes, it has nothing to do with having perfect pitch...you just know what THAT particular chord voicing sounds like. If you knew some theory and worked on pitches and got familiar with the sounds of certain chords, you can hear them on the radio and know what they are...or at least come close.
 
Like for example, I may hear a guitarist or piano player, play what sounds like an E chord to me. When I try to play it, it may be an Eb because they tuned a half a step down on the recording. Or for example, the chord formation that you would use for the first G chord you would learn on the guitar, has a sound to it like no other. Even when tuned down, it maintains this certain voice.
 
I can hum a perfect G chord at any time. Why? I have no idea. LOL! It's the only one I can hum though and nail every single time. I can then go through the notes and figure something out. I know a half step up gives me G# (or Ab depending on what school you come from lol) and a half step down gives me F#. So if I heard something that I wanted to figure out and didn't have an instrument with me, it would take me a little while...but I'd get it or come really close just by humming that G as my starting point and then making the jumps up or down to figure out the rest.
 
I can listen to a progression on the radio and to me, it may sound like Am7, F, D and E....so I've already visualized the movement of the chords. However, because I do not have perfect pitch, when I pick up my guitar, I may find that the chords are Bm7, G, E and F#. So though I blew the actual note values, the progression was in my head and I missed all the chords by whole/half step. Some guys with perfect pitch, will nail these every time.
 
People like me with relative pitch, rely on memory or just knowing what certain chords sound like...or we come close and can instantly figure out what something is the second we pick up an instrument. I can listen to something on the radio and not have a clue what chords or notes are being used. Yet give me a guitar, and I'll have the root notes figured out in under 15 seconds...then I'll put the rest of the chord formations together. This is where having a good ear can help...and to be honest, that's all I have as I do not have perfect pitch nor do I know anything but basic theory.
 
Having a good ear is important. Meaning, if you hear something, try humming or singing exactly what you hear. Over time, this can be super helpful. The more you can hear and relate to what you hear, the easier you can extract ideas from your head.
 
As for analyzing music, it depends on how you want to analyze it. Do you want to analyze the chords? Do you want to learn the difference between a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge etc? See, there are the chord structures that paint the picture for the song, and the arrangement that tells the story and further brings the picture to life.
 
Some guys analyze a song for the structure of it while others are interested in the chords played as well as why they may have been chosen or why they work. To me, this is all theory stuff that can be helpful to you. I think Chappel hit the nail on the head....some sort of school or even an online course may give you what you're looking for. But like I say...it depends what you're looking for and that's what makes this a loaded question. Rus and James nailed it also. Rus let you off easy...the dude is a theory maniac. :) But he's correct in saying it hits your ears first. The site James gave you is great and man, there is a boatload of info there...but in my opinion, I don't think I would enjoy it as much if I didn't quite understand what it all meant, you know what I mean?
 
Meaning, if you were a complete newbie to music and theory and arrangement/composition, you may get a little lost at times...where if you were a musician that was the caliber of James or had even a bare bones basic understanding of things like say me for example being clueless with a good ear, you go into it understanding things easier. I don't know anything about you musically...so please don't take it as I'm insinuating that you don't know about this stuff. I'm just saying in the event you DON'T, it may seem intimidating at first. Whatever the case, best of luck in how you decide to pursue this. Quite a few guys on this forum can feed your head with stuff that you'll be able to use forever and they'll enjoy teaching you about it. :)
 
-Danny

That is a big subject.  There are so many paths to take - I'll briefly share the path I took:  As a kid I learned everything by ear - there were no guitar teachers that taught me what I wanted to learn, so I had to do it all on my own - by ear.  I got into fusion and progressive rock, which is really complex, and having a good ear didn't really do enough.  I was hungry to know what made this music "tick".  So I bought books about music theory and it drew me to jazz.  Jazz is loaded with music theory.  It's roots are in blues.  Blues is relatively simple and is the basis of a ton of contemporary pop music.  

I would say studying blues is probably the best place to start.  It is easy and gives you the basics. 

Also - study the circle of 5ths and understand dominant, subdominant and tonic chord movements.  Then you can progress to chord substitutions.   It's all about tension and release.  

vanblah

 

Music theory for "classical" is pretty much the same for contemporary music.  The rules of melody, harmony, counterpoint, etc. don't change with the style of music.  However, what you do with those rules is up to you.

This is not true at all, you are from Memphis TN?   I can't think of many more cities in America as important to the birth of its music as Memphis TN.. Perhaps New Orleans...  This you really ought to know..

American Blues and Jazz, "which is the USA's greatest gift to music," was spawn out of African Rhythms, ( songs in the South, that grew out of a time when our country practiced slavery, ) combined with the, "blue notes," of European scales and modal harmonies.

  Classical music did not have, "a back beat, and classical composers avoided blue notes."  The blue notes in American Music where essentially, "a rebellion against what was an off shoot of a European Society that had oppressed and enslaved a group of people."  

Counterpoint is not a building block of music.  Its a stylization of melody.  Music only comes down to 4 basic building blocks.  Tempo, Rhythm, Melody and Harmony.

What is going on with music in America, and all around the world today is:  A bunch of people who refuse to self educate themselves on the history of the music they are trying to play.  I don't care if you are Nicki Minaj or Katey Perry..  What you are doing in music has buried the true history of American Music.  It does not represent the slave culture, the freedom sought, and the oppression suffered by African Americans in the South during the birth of Jazz, or the combination of European Scales and African Rhythms.

Furthermore.. Original hip hop..  That came out of New York City in the 1980s, was born by mixing and sampling the records of Jazz.  My, my, my has it lost its way...




Note to Mods and Others:  I realize this is a difficult post.  The post is not a political statement.  I would appreciate a PM, if anybody thinks this post goes too far, rather than somebody coming along to edit it, without my knowledge.  It just so happens to be the history of music in America. 

These two short books by Dave Stewart are a good place to start:

http://www.amazon.com/Musicians-Guide-Reading-Writing-Music/dp/0879305703

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Music-Guide-Composition-Softcover/dp/0879305711/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y/179-4993332-6522965

Danny Danzi

I can hum a perfect G chord at any time.

Wow, that's one heck of a talent you got there, Danny.  <grin, duck and run>

Funny that you mentioned the Beatles.  According to some of the biographies, they wrote songs around some chord one of them learned how to play.  That and trying to figure out what Roy Orbison was doing on his records.

Most of what I like about the Beatles is that they routinely broke the rules just because it sounded cool.

Philip

 
2) IMHO, much music theory overlaps most genres.

   

Running seems to overlap in sports...   When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change...   







Edit =  The picture isn't part of the quote from Philip, this forum is a little wacky.  I take full responsibility for the picture.

There is no H? How hard can it be?

"That's my original quote BTW..."

No it is not middle C, but it is what your tuner is "calibrated to" Your electronic tuner is not calibrated to C? It is calibrated to A400, and you may adjust it from there. I can hum you an a440...

Funny that you mentioned the Beatles.  According to some of the biographies, they wrote songs around some chord one of them learned how to play.  That and trying to figure out what Roy Orbison was doing on his records. 

Most of what I like about the Beatles is that they routinely broke the rules just because it sounded cool. 

Exactly!


Did n't "All You Need Is Love" switch back and forth from a 4/4 time to a 3/4 time?  Would something like that have happened if John stuck to theroy?


From what I have read over the years, they would learn new chords and then try to figure out how to insert them into a new song, based on how they sounded.  Even in the recording studio, they broke all of EMI's rules regarding the handling of they equipment. That is actually what I really admired about the Beatles, they did n't conform to the rules.

LP,
I was not implying that the Beatles did not know any theory at all, that they just kind of stumbled into being the greatest contemporary song writers of our time.  They grew in their understanding of music in a natural way that many of us did in those days, as we listened to the radio, learned to play guitar and wrote songs.  They would pick apart the songs they heard and liked on the radio to figure them out.  Their understanding of music grew as they matured.  They would learn chords and chord structures and then experiment with them to see where they could go with them.  Again, what I admired most about them was their ability to experiment, to improvise, and to try new things.  Things like starting a recorded song “I Feel Fine” with the guitar feeding back, which was a first I believe.  Actually a mistake, which John loved and made them keep it in the song.  They were not confined by theory,  but instead, like to push it boundaries.
And actually, to the OP... if you want to learn a lot about contemporay music therory, you could do a lot worse than study the catalogue of these guys. 
Here is an excerpt from a McCartney interview in May at the release of the remasterd Ram CD.   Remember, Paul is in his late 60’s at this time.  He has a life time of learning, but still is very “McCartney-like” in his description of song writing.
 
From the Ram interview:
Talking about the songs you’ve written. There seems to be two types of songs you were writing at the time around RAM, and that probably went on from the late 60s. To me, having had a go at songwriting in my life, there’s the really organic ones, like, as you say ‘Heart of the Country’, and then you’ve got the ones like ‘Uncle Albert’ with the tempo changes and really structured, and really complex things. Do you think you were influenced by the early prog-rock movement, I guess you wouldn’t say RAM was a prog-rock album? Do you think you were influenced by seeing Pink Floyd at the Roundhouse... 

What I take the influence back to was A Teenage Opera. That was a very early record in the late 60s, by Keith West... it was his only, like, big hit. That was episodic, there was a bit and it went 'buh-buh-bum', then it went there, and there, and there [Sir Paul makes some stacking gestures with his hands]. I think that was the first record I heard, and we heard, and we thought ‘that’s interesting’. You can have a song here, then you can cut like a film to another song, and you can even cut the tempo and go slow and so on. That was really the one that was the biggest influence, and then lots of people started doing it. We'd do it a bit, prog-rock did it, Townshend started doing it a bit, The Who opera and all that. I think it was just that one record that made you realize that it didn’t have to be the same tempo or the same key all the way through, you could cut like a film. 

Was that two different ways of writing that you were trying to employ? Because ‘Heart of the Country’ seems to me, as you say, to be something that you just sat down and wrote... 

Yeah, it’s like a little folk country song.

...whereas with other songs you seem it’s so complicated and intricate that it would have to be mapped out. Even something like where you would change the chord on every two beats in the bar on a track like ‘Lovely Rita’ or something like that, and I think it’s one of the hardest things for a writer to do. So many modern songs just change on the beat, and some of the stuff you were doing was so complex...

Yeah, well, you know, I think the thing is, we started, in early rock ‘n’ roll with three chords. We learned those three chords in a number of keys, A, D, E, was the first. Then E, A, B7, which meant you could be in E and do three chords. C, F, G7, but it was always the three chords but in different keys. Then we started to nick C out of its world, the world of C, and put it into the E world, so instead of just E 'dun-dum-dunna', A 'doo-doo-doo', B 'doo-dunna', E. Then you’d go E to A to C or whatever and you’d just see other chords you could stick in. 

So it was a gradual development and you were just learning other chords. Then if there was a song that you wanted to do, that was, really chordy... I was just thinking the other day, I liked the song 'Till There Was You’, I didn’t realise at the time that it was out of a musical called The Music Man, I just heard it as a song and I kinda liked it, so I just learned it. I think have even got the sheet music or something. The chords were quite [shrugs]. This was in F, and you were learning the demented chord or whatever. This was like F demen-ted! And C dee-luded! And E distracted! So there was all these kind of weird little chords that were adding to our armory of where we could go, you know. Like you say, once we got a lot of those then you would even try changing in the middle of a bar and that’s another advance. 

Was that a conscious thing that you were doing while you were writing? 

Yeah, you would just see where you could go with the thing. We never wanted to do the same thing twice. So, you know, even if Ringo would play the same drum kit and beat, for the second song of the day - because we’d usually end up doing four songs a day, in the early days of The Beatles - and we’d say ‘didn’t you just play that snare drum’ he’d go ‘yeah’ and we’d say ‘can’t you hit on the back of a packing case then’. We just didn’t want the same sound on the next record. Whereas now, you’ll get a guy who’ll use the whole of his kit for the whole album, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we were always just trying to make a different sound and see how far we could push it. 

So all of that came into play and on ‘Till There Was You’ there was a guy in Hessy’s, do you remember Hessy’s? 

Yeah, I sure do. I could only afford to buy plectrums there when I was a kid... 

We were the same. 

It’s not there now.

Is the circle of 5ths still a big deal?
 
and Danny how do you hum a chord? :)
 
Just my thoughts on music theory (and I'm college trained) if you're interested in creating something halfway original stop trying to analyze someone else's music.
 
@ SuperStruct: don't mind me, dude.
I have a website: music-lead-sheets.com
on my links page there are some excellent free sites that will give you a good foundation on basic music theory

tom1


Is the circle of 5ths still a big deal?
 
and Danny how do you hum a chord? :)
 
Just my thoughts on music theory (and I'm college trained) if you're interested in creating something halfway original stop trying to analyze someone else's music.
 
@ SuperStruct: don't mind me, dude.
I have a website: music-lead-sheets.com
on my links page there are some excellent free sites that will give you a good foundation on basic music theory

No, it isn't; however, many of us know about the gravitational pull when chords move, Yet, think it's somehow different when we try to get away from it. It's possible, but as far as Western Music, that's how music travels. Now, I know the lament regarding predictability and understanding not wanting to be. Besides, who (other than harmonic analysts - myself included) is listening to that portion as it's the melody that's remembered and sung.


Music is logical, just like math is logical.


I beg to differ with not analyzing anyone else because there would be nothing to inspire you or to aspire to. Tell that to improvisers who quote other works very often. Good composers write. Great composers, steal. (Hopefully, not in the legal sense, of course).


I still agree, but you get into: "I heard this somewhere before." It's in one users signature on this forum, something to the effect of: "Whatever you play, it's been played before." In essence, it's not what is played, but how. That isn't to say that original pieces don't exist, but given the harmonic similarities: "Hey, this sounds like ..." (Axis of Awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I).