Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

In the context of an electronic synth or keyboard, C# and Db are perfectly the same. In almost all traditional music, though, instruments are almost never tuned to equal temperament, so that C# and Db then mean different things.

As a famous example, Bach was very fond of his well-tempered clavier, which was a tuning method that is to be found somewhere between pythagorean tunings (usable for only one scale) and equal temperament (everything sounds equally lifeless). Bach's tuning was therefore a very carefully chosen compromise between being able to play the most common scales cleanly and sacrificing some scales in exchange for more precise harmonic relationships.

All famous European composers were experts at squeezing nice harmonics out of an un-equal tuning system where some key combinations just so happened to always sound horrible. It was called "Wolfsquinte" if you hit the wrong combination. If you limit yourself to only equal tuning, your are missing out on the slight harmonic differences that are the historical basic for all contemporary harmonic progressions.

If you start with one fixed frequency and then derive everything else as pure harmonics, that is called "Just Intonation". Wikipedia has a table on how those perfect harmonics differ from the notes that are mapped to your 12 keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament#Comparison_w...

And lastly, by only thinking about notes as the keys on your keyboard, you completely lose the concept of musical Commata, which are when the true frequencies of two notes happen to fall onto the same key on a keyboard.

Others in this thread already pointed out that C# wants to go up while Db wants to go down. The reason for that is that for violins, cello, some flutes, and Organs, they are not the same notes. They just happen to be rounded onto the same key on most modern electronic keyboards.

Since you asked to learn about harmonics, I would therefore advise against focusing on 12-keys, because that would hide the underlying complexities from your view. Harmonics are in my opinion best studied on analogue instruments like a violin, where you can actually play a musical comma, as opposed to pretending it doesn't exist.

TLDR: I think the single best way to learn music theory is to learn to play piano, and work with a teacher on weekly lessons. Do a harmonic analysis of every single song you learn and check it over with your teacher. THERE IS SIMPLY NO SUBSTITUTE FOR LEARNING WITH A TRAINED AND EDUCATED MUSICIAN. I learned this the hard way.

> [I] have never been able to sift through a vast array of music theory blogs and tutorials to find something that made sense.

I like to think of music theory as a LANGUAGE. Sifting through blogs and tutorials is kinda like googling "how do I learn Chinese?" yeah there's probably a lot of resources out there but it's not going to feel very productive to just dive in in this way. You wouldn't feel confident about learning Chinese using online resources so why would you feel confident learning music theory in this way?

The real problem with trying to learn from online resources on your own is that there's no feedback... you will absolutely have gaps in your knowledge and persistent misinformation that cannot be corrected because nobody is monitoring your progress.

Also learning from online resources can often feel hollow. For example, I can teach ANYBODY what a major scale is in 15 minutes. However, to truly and deeply understand the major scale can take years, it's more than just the rules about how to construct one. You have to really go over ideas many times and a teacher will be able to know your strengths and weaknesses and how to improve.

If you learn piano from the ground up (use a book series like Alfred's Adult All-In-One) with a teacher, I guarantee that after those 3 books (which will take years to get through), you will have a decent grasp on theory. Don't try to tackle these books on your own, there's a lot of stuff that's not explicitly covered in these books. If you try to tackle it on your own I guarantee you that you will not get the full benefit and you will very likely teach yourself incorrect technique and you will be left with a lot of misinformation. You need to do harmonic analysis of every song with a teacher and get comfortable doing them yourself.