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Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#166I grew up in a family of classical musicians, got a degree in music, and was briefly a professional classical musician myself. So my advice may be very out of touch with the experience of someone learning for the first time, but my experiences learning beyond European classical music theory left me feeling insulted. The basics of music theory are presented as though they are the foundations upon which all subsequent…
Your experience is insightful. It reminds me of a section from The Principia Discordia (not that I wouldn't recommend the rest of the book):
With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.
Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's amazing how little you actually learn about music when all you're doing is reading sheet music as a kid. I would add that historically, most musicians did not read music or theorize. They were practitioners who picked up the skill by listening to others, practicing, and improvising. Improvisation was what historically characterized musicianship, not theory, not sight-reading. As the philosophical joke goes: an…
> Theory is about music; it is not the practice of music. I'd quibble a bit with this: theory is language to speak of certain experiences and patterns one discovers in the practice of / play with music. Saying this to (perhaps) refine your point rather than contradict it. I quite agree that practice is key and theory was dead for me until one summer as a teen where I noodled freely enough in front of a piano and sudd…
The gist of it is that music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really think it depends on what level you're at. If you're still struggling to identify notes on the staff, then flash cards are just fine. If you're struggling to identify the intervals or triads, also still fine. If you can do that easily, then forego the flash cards and start analyzing Bach chorales. But I'll restate what I said elsewhere, I think ear training is much more important once you get past the basics.…
I'm curious; why would you recommend the Nashville Number System over Roman Numerals ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis )? Seems like the latter is much more widely used. Maybe I'm in a different bubble than you...
The Nashville Number System is faster to write down as you listen to a tune, has methods of indicating ryhthm associated with changes (underline means half a bar, diamond around a number means to play the note once and let it ring for a whole bar). It's just better all around for popular music. Roman Numerals are really only used in analyzing classical music as far as I know.
Part of my education, in commercial ear training class, we had to write number charts and get it right the first time through. It sounds hard, but with practice it's really quick.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, give Rick's course a try, with an emphasis on ear training. I think ear training is much more important than music theory. You'll learn theory along the way (intervals, chord quality, etc...) but it focuses more on hearing the difference. Most of music making is hearing a song and playing it back, or hearing a melody in your head and getting it into a daw in some way, music theory alone won't teach you that.…
If you listen to any of Rick's videos, he will tell you that ear training and music theory are so closely related that there can't be one without other. Of course, back in the day in music school theory was taught without ear training and that made it kind of useless. Or maybe it was more that listening was never taught, it was just put in exam and if you can't write down the chords you hear there you're not going to…
This is true. The basics are required for ear training. But once you get past the basics (reading music, intervals, identifying chords), I don't thinking going much past that is necessary.
I think I'm incorrectly assuming people want to take it past the basics when they say they want to learn music theory.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Theory is about music; it is not the practice of music. I'd quibble a bit with this: theory is language to speak of certain experiences and patterns one discovers in the practice of / play with music. Saying this to (perhaps) refine your point rather than contradict it. I quite agree that practice is key and theory was dead for me until one summer as a teen where I noodled freely enough in front of a piano and sudd…
The gist of it is that music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.
In the beginning there was no theory.
The instrument itself is all you basically need to make music. People spent thousands of years just trying not to hit the wrong notes without knowing the difference between a sharp or a flat.
Theory was reductive to begin with, it codified what was already acceptable to qualify as music.
With deeper understanding the theory can be built upon creatively on its own, and rewarding composition or improvisation achieved independent of a particular instrument. Even better documentation in many cases.
Every instrument is different, but I do think it's a good idea if you're going to get into theory, you do it on an instrument where you have the greatest proficiency beforehand.
If you concentrate on the instrument itself primarily, you might spend some time producing relatively unmusical passages, but each instrument only has so many notes. If you play each note every day for some reason or another, you can become more familiar with all of them than otherwise. If you succeed at making it sound better over time, by playing however you like more & more regardless of theory, that would be notable accomplishment.
That's more like instrument theory rather than music theory, but if your instrument familiarity is good enough you can do your part and pull your weight along with advanced theorists who can cover the academic areas that are encountered. Once you're groovin' these are the ones to build up your theory about what you're already doing together.
Edit: There's also the alternative approach of playing only a limited number of the notes available on any one instrument. Almost theoretically in a statistical way to completely limit the output to that which is proven most acceptable to the mainstream. For instance Irving Berlin only played on the black keys and became the most popular songwriter that way.