Why Classical Harmony Doesn't Work Anymore

Not such an authentic cadence now, is it?

A lot of people think of music theory as, like, the "rules" of music, but is it? Well, that depends what sort of music you mean. Music is an evolving art form, with new styles developing new vocabularies, and it often takes the academics way too long to catch up, so we wind up with these ideas about how music is supposed to behave that just don't reflect how it actually does. Can we fix that? Well, maybe, but we might need some help from the field of music cognition.

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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:


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.

[jeffreytam]

Music teachers: we live in a society
Jazz: 20 minute solo
Rock: *0-3-5*

[RÅNÇIÐ]

Would the real cadence please stand up!

[KrisCadwell]

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.

[ians]

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!

[tom_]

Ive never heard V-I called authentic, ive always called it a perfect cadence

[scottblair]

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.

[zerronyx]

My teacher told me my D7b5 was "wrong"

He plays christian rock...

[Frownlandia]

I wonder how many people will appreciate the Riemann Hypothesis reference over the line, "Is there a way to prove that?"

[ivan_osorio]

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.

[yetanotherbassdude]

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.

[GhabrielPeper]

I liked when you mentioned Marshall Mathers and draw an M&M

[elliotsmelliot]

I’m laughing way harder than I should be at the real slim shady joke

[qiuz]

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.

[actualizedanimal]

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.

[peterjuff]

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.

[Alberto-nykf]

you should do an analysis on The Pixies's Where is My Mind!

[rcjd]

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.

[wiesorix]

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.

[jlbqk]

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.