I'm arguing with people about music again

[tgies]

Help me straighten this out

Ideally I'm trying to inspire actual conversation about the mechanics of harmony and this isn't a simple opinion poll (in fact there kind of is a "right" answer) but that probably won't happen lel

[Poll #1095088]

Comments

[frizzy-krissy.livejournal.com]

The second one is kind of difficult. What scale are you working with? Minor or Major?
If your working with a minor key, then it might be similar enough where you could pull that off, but when working with a major key, I don't think it would work.
Basically, ¯\(°_o)/¯

[tgies.livejournal.com]

How does it matter? In terms of diatonic function, the minor scale is just an inversion of the major. We're working at a level where notions such as scale and mode have no bearing. The supertonic has the same diatonic function either way -- subdominant parallel (or tonic counter parallel, but it's used that way less often). And, in the other example, iii is functioning in in its role as tonic counter parallel.

What I'm trying to figure out here is if modern Musical Edumacation even teaches harmonic analysis, substitution by function, and diatonic functions, and if I'm wrong to expect people to Goddamn Know It after having taken a few classes on the subject. As far as I can tell, music theory as it's taught in the US pulled this seven-harmonic-functions business out of its ass to provide useful unique names for each degree on a diatonic scale and then proceeded to make the mistake of thinking it serves to totally displace the idea that everything actually fits within one of the three Germanic harmonic functions.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Where's the option for people who, in the past, would have been able to comment intelligently on such matters, but can't anymore, and are thus horribly depressed because of your poll brb going to go cut now

[tgies.livejournal.com]

I think "bbbbbbbbb" expresses that adequately