Re: anti-looper bigots

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

> when I was a freshman music major studying first year theory according 
>to Paul Hindemith, we were instructed to avoid parallel fifths in all of 
>our assignments

The rule to never use parallel fifths (and octaves and primes) is much
older than Hindemith and comes from the early Baroque era.

Now for us power chord generation people, this rule is often hard to
understand, and so it makes sense to see where it originally came
from:
Back in the early Baroque era, the human voice was an important
instrument, not only as a lead instrument, but also in multi-voice
harmonies (as in choral harmonies). Now the predominant singing style
at that time for solo singers was to sing jumps portamento, i.e. for a
fifth jump from D to A not sing the D, then sing the A, but to sing a
quick glissando from D to A.

Now obviously, if several singers were doing that in a homphonic
passage, then they all would do that glissando with a slightly
different timing - which would mean they wouldn't be in exact
intervals during the glissando.
Now this sounds especially ugly if you are moving in parallel in very
pure intervals - prime, octave and fifth - so this was to be avoided.

Just my historical two cents.

           Rainer