yep. I see.

I still feel that 'Musis Theory' will steer most pop musicians away... I think theory should not include popular music, even if it isn't generally as complex and diverse as classical music as a whole.

I mean, there are a great deal of creative 'popular' bands out there. Like the Mars Volta, Sigur Ros, Radiohead and a host of artists in electronica...

while they might not be musicians like Beethoven etc were they are still pushing the boundaries of what defines music, and I think this is as much worth exploring as the harmonic structure of a great Sonata. I don't know if what I'm taking about here would really fit into a music theory forum...

Hence the addition of Music Philosophy I mentioned.

Ah.
Sounds good.

I guess this is a "music appreciation" topic.

I have just gotten back to this thread. That actually isn't too surprising to me to about Bach, given his era and how I understand it. For that matter, it isn't like rock music doesn't have several billion songs in E

It's a bit tough to properly explain this, because I am obviously not going to be able to get too technical. I really should get more knowledgeable in this area overall, because the emotional aspect of key signature choices is a discussion I've wanted to uncover for a long time.

I hear melody lines and chord progressions as elements of a story, for lack of a better term. This "story" fleshes itself out both in terms of note intervals AND scale, doing so tone by tone. The effect of a well-placed minor-6th is different in G minor than in E minor, although obviously the interval and its overall note message of "I am the tone 4 semitones down from the root" is the same no matter the scale. I feel a sense of one instant of rage in the former case, whereas I have a sense of an instant of closure in the latter. The G minor scale has always sounded madder (in a violent sense) than E minor's smug confidence. I'd say that yes, this is more a noticable difference on a guitar or bass than say, a piano or perhaps a flute. It is still palpable however.

To put it another way, try listening to the 3rd movement of Vivaldi's Summer - transposed three half-steps down. I believe Vivaldi knew that movement HAD to be in G minor. I have heard versions of the Four Seasons done by orchestras that were inexplicably tuned down a half step, or prehaps the recorder was at a wrong speed. Either way it's practically unlistenable to me, and practically unnoticable to so many others.

For an example from this century, Gary Jules' cover of "Mad World", played on a piano, would not have anywhere near the effect of hopeless sadness as it does now in F minor; it would have a different effect and possibly even compel Jules to sing it with a different cadence.

As a part-time songwriter, I take many factors into account when contructing a melody, and if I wish an overall overtone to be gloomy, or curious, or hopeful or whatever, I will most often choose a key signature based solely on that. Then comes the task of figuring out which parts of the scale I feel that particualr key has as strengths, and trying to ensure I work with those parts at the right times. I've not really found a mathematical formula to determine this, either. But going back to that minor 6th (why not?), I would say that I tend to almost completely ignore it when writing anything in B flat minor, because I feel that's when its "effect" is most irrelevent to anything I'd be trying to do with that key anyway.

Hope this rambling has been somewhat useful

I won't say you're wrong, , music is what each individual makes it, but I mentioned synaesthesia in another thread. Perhaps this has more to do with that than anything else.

While I'm not a synaesthete, I believe that in a composer (or any creative artist) synaethesia can only strengthen the emotive powers of their creations. So, in you seerix, I would assume those emotional connotations are more a blessing than anything else.

Personally, I know that I've felt that different key signatures are ultimately meaningless because I don't really 'feel' a difference with them (except maybe E minor... becuase I play in that key a lot on my guitar... and letting that low E string ring is always fun... ) But then I recently, I've come to have little doubt that some of the greatest composers would have percieved a difference, however small, in differnt keys.

I cannot get rid of these associations. I was just trying to explain, as best I can, that they do indeed exist and what some of them are. I've done everything I can to make this make some sort of sense, but if the two examples I gave don't do anything to illuminate my situation, I guess there really isn't anything I could do. Perhaps I do indeed have synaesthesia, as Papa has said. Even now I'd be surprised to find this to be true. I always thought it was simply perfect pitch, and that others who had that would experience a similar set of circumstances regarding scalar choices.

Alright Seerix, you have perfect pitch. If someone plays you a random note on a piano, without looking at the keys, can you tell them what it is?

Transposed music can have a disturbing effect on people with perfect pitch. It's common knowledge. I don't think it's something you can "fix."

I do not have it myself. I've heard good and bad things about this "gift."

Exactly Roivas. I can identify notes on demand. This was discovered back in high school, or rather, I discovered that other people, even many musicians, can't actually do that.

There are times when I wish I did not have it, for sure. My aforementioned horror of hearing the Four Seasons one semitone lower extends to a similar situation with Beethoven's vaunted Fifth Symphony. That was another recording disaster that should never have taken place. It sounds just so "wrong" in B minor I had to give a CD away...to someone who enjoyed it thoroughly.

On another note, I did look into synaesthetes a bit, and I don't believe that their situation and mine are quite the same. I do see colors, yes, but not as stark solids a few feet in front of me. I see them as overlaying whatever I am already looking at.

Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Richard Wagner didn't have perfect pitch.

Mozart, Leonard Bernstein, and Paul Shaffer did (do) have it.

I have relative pitch. I can measure out intervals in sheet music and "hear" a piece without playing it on the piano (after arbitrarily picking a note to start from). It's still a very laborous process...hope this gets easier for me soon. I don't know any composers who can hear scores in their head. Honegger claims to be able to (in I am a Composer. London, Faber [1966]). Singers can do this...but their only reading one "voice" at a time and I can do that. I'm talking about entire orchestral scores.

Sometimes I have problems deciphering major/minor sixths and other intervals when they are descending.