Important: Changes to Community Guidelines

[Machinesworking]

There is nothing wrong with what stringtapper said here. I suppose if you base your reply on your history with him it makes some sense, but in terms of what he said right here, he's 100% right and you're 100% wrong.

It's this sort of reply that wins you no friends. I know that stringtapper has come at you full force etc. but not everyone knows that, and IMO it's best to reply to people about the subject at hand, whether they're stirring the pot or not.

What the fuck has Strapper's shit-stirring and miserable, pathetic slander of me got to do with you anyway?

He's dead right, you know fuck all about theory, calling him a sad man in response just makes you look like a sore loser.

I'm a noob with theory, but even I recognize that your advice on it is pretty bad. There's nothing rude about saying that, it's simply a fact, and it begs this basic question, if you're an expert on Marxism and I start trying to tell you about the Soviet Revolution, I make blanket statements that are only partially true, and in some cases dangerous vast generalizations, then wouldn't it be wise of me to listen to you if you correct me or comment about it?
Well Stringtapper tried that with you and theory, he's an expert, you're a noob, but even as a noob you basically told him he was trying to keep you from 'teaching people', enter the flame war, and you two are now best friends. Of all your arguments and problems with people here this one stands out to me as the one where you sunk yourself.

[stringtapper]

I'm a noob with theory, but even I recognize that your advice on it is pretty bad. There's nothing rude about saying that, it's simply a fact, and it begs this basic question, if you're an expert on Marxism and I start trying to tell you about the Soviet Revolution, I make blanket statements that are only partially true, and in some cases dangerous vast generalizations, then wouldn't it be wise of me to listen to you if you correct me or comment about it?

Well Stringtapper tried that with you and theory, he's an expert, you're a noob, but even as a noob you basically told him he was trying to keep you from 'teaching people', enter the flame war, and you two are now best friends. Of all your arguments and problems with people here this one stands out to me as the one where you sunk yourself.

Thank you.

This was a point I tried to make early on with him. He likes to hold people to a rigorous standard when it comes to subjects he knows about, but when it came to music theory he was fine with throwing out these willy-nilly half-baked explanations of things and then starts saying I'm "slandering" him when I called foul in the exact same way he would in a thread on global warming or socialism.

[TomViolenz]

-

[stringtapper]

I just don't understand why anyone here thinks his expertise in these fields is any better!
I usually just see copy/pasta of walls of text that have nothing to do with the point under contention

But I guess him claiming to be an expert on Marxism for so long, was enough to convince y'all...

Well, I guess that's a fair point. I'm pretty open about who I am, what I'm doing, and what my qualifications are. I guess I just tend to believe when someone has that much to say about something that they, well… know something about it, especially when I know hardly anything about it or don't really care.

I guess that's a bit naïve.

[Machinesworking]

I just don't understand why anyone here thinks his expertise in these fields is any better!
I usually just see copy/pasta of walls of text that have nothing to do with the point under contention

But I guess him claiming to be an expert on Marxism for so long, was enough to convince y'all...

I think it's pretty obvious funken has read reams of books on Marxism and on Trotsky. Where you could hold contention with him on it is more on the lines of him being a 'true believer', which does generally cloud ones perception on a subject.

[TomViolenz]

-

[TomViolenz]

-

[stringtapper]

I'm a noob with theory, but even I recognize that your advice on it is pretty bad.

Support or retract this. I want a detailed explanation, right here, right now, on why you think are justified in saying this.

Why don't we let you do it for us?

Thanks! I would finish it but it's at the limits of my knowledge so I really need a bit of help or a lot of research. I'll see what I can do anyway, thanks for the reminder.

End.

[stringtapper]

Since I have conclusively demonstrated that my criticism of your basic music theory knowledge is based in fact it is now safe to conclude that your continued characterization of my criticism as "slander" is, in fact, slander.

But it was me that proved you wrong, and you who apologised to me, if you remember. Go and read the 'A minor' thread, it was on about page 3. And I asked you to read my tutorials and let me know if you spotted any errors. And I don't remember you reporting any.

You never proved anything. I just let it go because it seemed clear that you weren't prepared to understand why someone who by their own admission "doesn't know much theory" has no business writing tutorials about theory.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

The problem is that your "tutorials" have very shaky explanations that meander through musical concepts of varying degrees of complexity without providing any kind of foundation.

Things like this:

A minor (Am) is the same notes as C major (C).

C major just emphasises the C note more.

What is that supposed to mean to a beginner? Emphasized where? In the melody? In the bass? In every chord? In the saxophone part?

You're essentially trying to condense the entire notion of tonal centers into a single, vague sentence.

It's hubris on your part to think you know enough to teach others, but of course people who don't know any better are going to thank you all day long in the comments section and thus another half-baked musician is born.

Trust me, it's very easy for someone steeped in the subject matter to tell when someone who doesn't have a full grasp of it is trying to explain it.

Your explanation of why the V chord in minor is major (it isn't always) is summed up with a link to a wiki page. Seriously? As I said way back in that thread, slow down, learn the material yourself and then think about making a tutorial.


I have a serious proposition for you. Go to the KVR music theory sub forum and post your tutorials and be sure to ask them for some feedback.

I want to watch that because there are a couple of folks there who know a lot and are a whole lot more disagreeable than I have ever even thought of being with you through all of this. They will rip you to shreds.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=99

[stringtapper]

I explained why I used the term "central tone" in place of tonic. It was precisely to avoid terminology that others might not know. I should have just used tonic.

[stringtapper]

Root note is the standard terminology for your "central tone", and is obviously different in A minor and C major as in one it is an A and in the other it is a C.

No, the standard music theoretical terminology for that is "tonic", I just didn't want to assume people knew it and used something more descriptive.

"Root" applies to every scale step within a scale in relation to the chords built from them. In A major A is the root of the I chord, but A is also the tonic or "central tone." In A major D is the root of the IV chord but it is not the tonic, the key doesn't revolve around that tone and its constituent chord.

Sorry for being hard on you, and no I didn't read the article, it's just that as a music theorist by profession I am often wary of one-liners like "C major is the same as A minor" especially without the "context" of such a statement being explained in the same space where the statement was made (the same thread). There's a lot of musical disinformation that happens on the internet, one glaring one being the refusal of many to understand enharmonic spellings and why for instance a D# is not the same thing as an Eb.

Anyway I applaud you for wanting to bring music to beginners, I'm just a little… up tight when it comes to how music is taught.

I think the point here is that my explanation was about SCALES and I had not got onto chords. And "central tone" is NOT a common or standard term.

Wikipedia says "The tonic is often confused with the root, which is the reference note of a chord, rather than that of the scale."

Yes I did use the word 'root' note for the first note of a scale. Is it not the same thing for an A minor scale and an A minor chord? I said, ok, maybe strictly speaking I should have called it a tonic when talking about a scale. I was not preparing someone for an exam, I was teaching a way to learn 121 scales and chords in 5 minutes and never forget them, so they could at least start making tunes.

Your problem is nobody can understand what you're on about, partly because your ego gets in the way any you prattle on about "enharmonic spellings" and "why for instance a D# is not the same thing as an Eb".

The thread was written by a beginner, who you probably put off music for life. Well done.

That you had not gotten into chords only solidifies the point that you shouldn't have been using the term "root" to explain scales since that's not the context in which the term is used.

I explained why I used the term "central tone" in place of tonic. It was precisely to avoid terminology that others might not know. I should have just used tonic.

Maybe you can't understand. I have hundreds of university undergrads I've taught in the past who would disagree.

[stringtapper]

The thread was written by a beginner, who you probably put off music for life. Well done.

I have a method to enable complete beginners learn all the major scales, all the minor scales (natural, and the chords associated with them, in 5 minutes. I invented this, not you. You couldn't teach a beginner because you don't understand the concept of simplifying the first steps.

The answer to the question was given by me and others before you ever got into that thread to promote your site!

[stringtapper]

Here was the post I gave right before sunken entered the thread:

stringtapper - thanks for hanging out around here.

Thanks TD. Yeah sometimes it's good to step away from the antics of The Lounge and get on topic.

To lay it out completely and organize what others have already touched upon, what adonis needs to do is just look at the structure of the A minor and A major scales and draw the comparison.

A minor - A-B-C-D-E-F-G

A major - A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#

Find where each note of the two scales lies on the piano roll and then shift any C, F, or G that happens in the bass line up a half step. If it's an audio file then as someone said you're going to have to find where the Cs, Fs, and Gs are in the line and edit them to their own clips and then use the clip transpose feature to raise them a half step.

Edit: or you can just use a clip envelope to transpose the notes within the audio without creating cuts.

Question answered.

[stringtapper]

I have a serious proposition for you. Go to the KVR music theory sub forum and post your tutorials and be sure to ask them for some feedback.

I want to watch that because there are a couple of folks there who know a lot and are a whole lot more disagreeable than I have ever even thought of being with you through all of this. They will rip you to shreds.

Oh you'd love that wouldn't you?

In fact I already have done, and someone called JumpingJac read all my tutorials for me. It's had 7,000 views. I got a lot of useful feedback on there.

I can't find anything of the sort in the first 12 pages.

JJF knows his stuff and is a good model of someone who can write an online tutorial for beginners. He also shares my views on the dumbing down of music education on the internet.

[Machinesworking]

I'm a noob with theory, but even I recognize that your advice on it is pretty bad.

Support or retract this. I want a detailed explanation, right here, right now, on why you think are justified in saying this.

I'm not going to go through all the threads to find your gems, but one recently comes to mind. You basically suggested to people to avoid playing second, seventh and sixth intervals and suggest sticking to the third, fifth and fourth ones.

Your starting point on your site for theory is based on the A minor scale.

All the white notes form the scale A minor. This is our starting point for all the major and natural minor scales.

A minor scale is simply not what contemporary theory is based on. I mean you literally start people down the wrong path from the get go.
I'm not having a go at you, I'm a total noob at theory yet I know that the starting point for beginners is and always will be the C Major scale. The Major scale is what beginning music theory tutorials are based on, and to suggest otherwise will cause problems later on down the road. For the simplest explanation as to why this is true, when learning other scales the Major scale is mostly always the reference. We went over all the basics before even approaching Minor scales in the class I'm taking. This also applied in school when learning theory as a kid, the C major scale was the starting point.

I think you have great intentions with all this, I'm not pointing this out to be mean etc. but because I think you let your ego get in the way with this whole thing. Theory humbles me, and that's not a bad place to be, it can be where you learn new things. and there's nothing wrong with being wrong, it's OK to make mistakes, if you learn from them.