Pedagogical Approaches to Music Theory Reimagined: From the Perspective of the Motherboard.

Abstract

Understood dichotomously, music is subjectively aesthetic on the one hand, and objectively scientific on the other. The code demonstrates music’s objectivity via tonal theory’s systematic procedures. Tonal grammar adopts circles, modulo functions, formulaic tables, and algorithms as needed for use in composition and analysis. The grammar and its co-requisite methodology thus translates well to object-oriented programming. At the same time, however, this program demonstrates the limits reached when thinking about music exclusively as an objective discipline. Basic computer programs do not have the ability to intuit, synthesize, or extrapolate. The somewhat ineffable nature of human understanding fills in the gaps in the rigid structures necessitated by tonal grammar’s elements......... --- It is therefore clear that to have a complete theory of music, one needs to understand it as a study of an objective science as well as an inquiry into the multivariable and conditional components of subjective intuition. (from Conclusion)