r/programming 12d ago

Music theory for programmers

https://runjs.app/blog/music-theory-for-programmers
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u/C0rinthian 12d ago edited 12d ago

I highly recommend you watch minutephysics’s The Physics of Dissonance because a lot of this is rooted in western musical tradition and assumes it is universal. That is not to diminish what you have written, rather it is really important to realize this fundamental misunderstanding.

Even the bits you acknowledge you don’t know, like voice leading, is not some universal truth, but rather a convention largely established in baroque Western Europe. It serves a purpose, but should be properly contextualized.

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u/lukehaas 12d ago

Looks interesting. I'll give it a watch. Thanks for sharing!

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u/DTM0 11d ago

I'd also recommend David Bruce's videos on different tuning systems that are not 12 TET which I think will also give you a glimpse picture of systems not based on the western tradition. I think of note Arabic music with it's maqam system that has notes that don't fit neatly in the 12 tones we have and the Gamelan music is pretty good at least know about to avoid assumptions on universality.

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u/Full-Spectral 7d ago

One interesting point that Howard Goodall brought up in one of his music origins videos is that the pentatonic scale is basically there in every culture's music and acts as somewhat of a universal component of human music systems.