Kamen

Yes. Also, most DJs tend to use software like FL Studio.

It depends on how you look at it. Pure or "bare" tones are produced only by electronic means (signal generators / oscillators) as pure sine waves. The spectrum of the other sounds is composed of many such softer pure tones, many sine waves with lower and lower amplitudes, and from this viewpoint one may say that harmony is inherent in the musical tone alone. And this simple acoustical fact is fundamental, since "real" harmony, scales, etc. evolved around it. As for the compositional practice, simpler melodies tend to imply harmony more clearly and even when they are not simple, you probably envision shadows of harmonic possibilities here and there while writing the melody. And if you begin with block chords only, you may find some melodic traces in your mind, considering that the mere change from chord to chord is already melodic activity.

As a note, in order to build -some- understanding from their readings, the reader should build on a basis of fundamental knowledge in acoustics and mathematics, otherwise would get lost immediately, since most of the topics are rather specific and hardcore technical to the point that composers, sound designers and studio engineers would hardly need any of this, unless they want to be researchers or DSP implementers. So, before jumping into this, make sure you know about acoustics fundamentals, calculus, trigonometry, complex numbers, Fourier series and transform, sampling and aliasing, etc.

Maybe it's time to change music notation? There are such propositions already.

Speaking of mistakes implies right and wrong. According to you, what is right and what is wrong in art, in music?

Who? Myself. Why? Because I value individual self-development and would like to minimize external influences.

Thank you for finally seeing and agreeing upon what I showed with simple words in just two lines, but you prefered to jump into "words of advice" or what not instead of digging a bit deeper and understanding what I imply... until SSC helped you with the digging. What happened demonstrated once again a popular trait of the majority of humankind, but that's another topic.

To put it like you: I disagree. As was pointed out, composers are musicians. A musician is someone who compose / write, perform or make / produce music. ;) "Writing a script doesn't make you an actor" shows nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musician

Composers who are not musicians is like apples which are not fruits. Composers are musicians. The correct title would be Composers who are not instrumentalists.

I don't classify them as fruits, but if you prefer calling them like that and sticking to this definition, no problem. By the way:

I have refused the term art music as futile and hilarious. Music is art. Tomatoes are vegetables. Art music is like vegetable tomatoes.

"Music is intended to influence the spiritual constituent, not mind" - note that this is just your own assumption and view about music. I'd say it influences both, unless one have closed their mind for it. Most people are actually unaware of what music influences and don't have clear definition and distinction when it comes to spirit and mind. Having one requires knowledge of spirit and mind as well as their properties, but most people don't truly know them(selves).

Personally, I would use as one of the explanations that the m6 degree is very close (frequency-wise) to the tonally more stable 5th degree. Psychoacoustically, this means that it falls strongly within the same critical band of the auditory system, so the ear wants to hear the 5th degree; there is a kind of tonal gravity. As for why lower leading tones work better than the upper ones, I would again look at it psychoacoustically - the interval root of the 2nd is the upper tone, so by moving upward there is a motion toward it and not away from it, which is perceived as a stronger motion. Similarly, motions down by fifth have strong finalizing effect (as opposed to up by fifth), because the interval root is the lower tone. This reminds of Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, where he explains the root progressions of chords (ascending, descending and super-strong), as well as to Hindemith's theories.

I didn't post anything here until now, because she is basically indifferent to me. And so my post is not going to be long. The 'o' in pop music becomes longer and longer, designating both the age and the evolution of pop music. Thus, at roughly the middle of the 90s it started to evolve into poop music, and this cycle ended with the end of the previous century. There is no doubt that there will be tripple 'o' soon. Fortunately or unfortunately, Lady Gaga is a child of this particular period, marked by cheaper composing / songwriting and cheaper arranging. Finally, we have the loudness war to make it flatter and more plastic (over-compressing and killing dynamics, ultimately distortion due to artifical pumping and clipping in some albums). So there are such pieces inside her case as well.

Just as a sidenote, I don't use (and don't like) much of the tuning terminology that you use - I find it futile and pretentious, with MOS taking the lead. Talking about harmonic and melodic functions is also redundant; it's blurring of terms that sets some expectations, such as that functions depend on musical context. Harmonic functions imply functional tonal organization, while a composer could use tunings and temperaments in various ways. So this should rather be called harmonic and melodic relatedness or relationship, which makes much more sense.

Aliens do exist. The question is only if they'll love Bach.

These ways of constructing or analyzing scales does not make one or another scale more or less "natural", since the mere act of construction in a certain way is artifical. Also, when speaking of partials and their meaning, you should have in mind that the farther the partial in the series, the less significant it is psychoacoustically. Also, scales are not only about harmonic, but also about melodic relationships. So another explanation would be "in favor" of the Ionian mode, since the Ionian tritone resolves to the tonic, while the fourth and seventh degrees at the same time have tendencies to the third and first (eight), respectively. And so on and so forth...

I expected this, but in 17-TET, when you take all the 17 tones, you get a chromatic scale (obviously, not a 12-tone one). So you can apply my reply here, too. ;)

If you are looking for any 'rules' or guidelines, there are none, since they change with style and period. However, what has been said, together with studying counterpoint is a good reference point.

Chromatic, since it contains all the other scales which I can get by removing tones, haha!

Who said Wendy Carlos? I like her stuff a lot. I'd suggest to not only experiment with various tunings (both theoretically and practically), but to also pay attention to the timbre, since timbre, scale and sonance are related. Using a FM synthesizer is great, since once you learn how to program it, you can create virtually any kind of sound you want and match it to the scale.

Simply put, it's obsolete and unsupported. But there are better formats than both MP3 and VQF anyway (OGG, MP4, MPC).

I would suggest you to also add two more audio compression formats to your article: 1. TAK (Tom's Audio Kompressor), which roughly combines the high compression ratio of APE with the speed of FLAC. This is perhaps the most advanced lossless codec, but for the moment it's rather exotic, not widely known and supported. 2. MPC (Musepack) is a lossy audio format with strong emphasis on quality. That's what I use for home listening since quite a long time. At 210 - 250 kbps it usually sounds transparent. Simply put, it's the best lossy codec quality-wise.

Perhaps, this is the Kostka & Payne book? I haven't seen this book, but I don't think it's the best choice for self-taught people, I think there are some books which are better explanation-wise. As far as I have read, this one looks at harmony in a too vertical way and doesn't pay enough attention to the horizontal dimension and voice leading. As for the CDs... Come on, what about people in the past? They didn't have any CDs or tapes, only books, but they knew their stuff and survived!

Let me put it this way: Theory is a collection of abstractions. That's all about it. Theory explains what the ear already knows. When the dominant seventh chord was used for the first time, noone had any theoretical tools and documentations about it. If you are spending your life inside the theoretical box, you are not artistically free. What theory gives me is understanding developed like putting a puzzle together, since I look for what is beyond rules and style - the universal principles of perception. That's all that really matters. But you might want your modulations to not make sense and deliver a kind of separating and striking effect. In this regard they would be fine, since they would fulfill your desire. Even though I am not very much into jazz, I like what the great jazzers say: "If it sounds OK, then it's OK". So I mostly pay attention to the inspiration, I try to aurally imagine things very well. And if I like them and find them fitting together, then they are fine and there is no reason to not write them down the way they are. And if something sounds OK, but doesn't seem to fit very well theoretically, then it is either beyond the style that the theory in question explains or there is this thing (mostly on a larger scale) that sometimes analysis deviates away from perception for it's own cerebral sake - that is, it pays attention to things which aren't that important for the ear, but since what is going on on aural level is what really matters, I might decide to ignore this. And then one might decide to use their theoretical background as a playground with pointers from which to develop ideas: "Hmmm, I am not sure what I really want, but I want this or that kind of sound, which I can achieve by using this or that, so let's play around with it for a while".