Thursday, February 25, 2010

How Music Works

...okay, so maybe the title of this blog entry is a little misleading: after all, we can't say we've figured out everything about music. Nonetheless, there's a 4 part documentary whose title is exactly that. It's a really good documentary, even if you already know all of the things it talks about. The presentation is simple and effective, all the while explaining a range of musical theory and historical anecdotes. Really great stuff. Obviously, it's a very Western centric view of music, but it seems to understand that.

The first part is melody, and it tracks the development of melodies and song structures over the centuries. It covers topics like the pentatonic scale, which is a scale found in almost every single culture. Neat stuff.



The second part is rhythm, and it introduces some basic time signature differences, and how rhythm shapes music.



The third part is harmony, and it explores the development of harmony, and what makes it sound good to us.



The fourth part is bass, and it shows how the idea of a bass instrument is relatively new, and how it plays a prominent role in modern music.



An important note! These videos are hosted on what looks like a Russian youtube-like site. I think they limit the bandwidth of each video some how, so sometimes not all the videos will load. Don't worry! Come back and try it again in a few hours, or on another day. It should work eventually.

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