71–80 of 243 posts
Any book on common practice harmony will help with most pop/rock and classical up to 20th century. I used Harmony by Piston and happily recommend it. For some jazz theory The Jazz Piano Book by Levine was good for me.
I'd say if you want to make it last learn how to apply it. Music theory is one of these things I learned multiple times (even as a minor in University) and forgot multiple times. The theory I learned, though, was never really relevant to my artistic work, whether it was playing guitar music or making electronic music. Whenever I tried writing something based on the theory I learned, I found it to be super boring. Thu…
I personally don't think theory should be used in this way, but it is very tempting to try to use it this way.
I think of theory as just a naming system and a way to chunk information. It's DESCRIPTIVE, not PRESCRIPTIVE. When composing your ear should guide you first and foremost and theory should just kind of be in the background... if you're fluent in theory then it's just kind of there gently assisting you when you arrange/compose/perform.
So for example, I might hear something in your head and play it at the piano and think "I like that... good starting point". In the background my brain says "I iii vi6 ii7 V with melody: mi re mi sol do mi re mi sol do do re do re (etc)" that's all completely automatic for me, I get it for free. It's like this automatic connection between what I hear in my head and what to label it and they kind of feed off of each other (if that makes sense)
Here is a small yet information-dense book: https://woodenbooks.com/index.php?id_cms=8&controller=cms#!M...
Keeping the fundamental unity of musical elements in mind, build a framework of knowledge and practice including the following concepts.
Harmonic series as the basis of musical intervals https://www.oberton.org/en/overtone-singing/harmonic-series/
Intervals as ratios, and how the simplicity of ratios relates to consonance: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_ratio - http://legacy.earlham.edu/~tobeyfo/musictheory/Book1/FFH1_CH... - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Music/mussca.html
Polyrhythms as simple intervals (3:2, 2:3, 3:4, 5:4, etc.) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyrhythm - https://www.musical-u.com/learn/making-sense-of-polyrhythms/ - https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/polyrhythmBeatGenerator.ph...
Ear training to recognize intervals and notes - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Scales_and_Interv... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/intervals
Building chords from intervals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music)#Intervals_in_... - http://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/the-basic... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/chord-identification
Building major key from intervals (R, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7) - https://www.howmusicworks.org/202/The-Major-Scale/Intervals-... - http://onlineguitarlessons.co.uk/major-scale-intervals-and-t... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/scale-identification
Stacking chords from scale tones - http://www.jazclass.aust.com/scales/scastc.htm
Extended chords to add color and emotion - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/extended-chords/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_chord
Major key chord function - http://hubguitar.com/music-theory/chord-function - http://openmusictheory.com/harmonicFunctions.html - https://www.jazzadvice.com/chord-function/
Circle of KEYS as a compositional tool showing diatonic chords for each key and common modulations - https://harmoniousapp.net/p/d9/Circle-of-Fifths-Keys - https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/music-theory/what-i... - https://blog.landr.com/circle-of-fifths-infographic/
Other geometric representations of musical elements - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnetz - https://imaginary.github.io/web-hexachord/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_rhythm - http://www.groovemechanics.com/euclid/ - https://dev.to/erwald/euclidean-rhythms-and-haskell-5ecj
Rotating major scale to get modes (and how diatonic chords relate to modes) - https://blog.landr.com/music-modes/ - http://www.jazclass.aust.com/improvisation/im12.htm - https://onlineguitarbooks.com/2012/01/06/functional-harmony-...
Chord substitution (functional, modal, and tritone) - https://lotusmusic.com/lm_chordsub.html - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/chord-substitution/ - https://mixedinkey.com/captain-plugins/wiki/easy-chord-subst... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borrowed_chord - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/borrowed-chords/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone_substitution - https://jenslarsen.nl/tritone-substitution/
Modulation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation_(music) - https://www.musicnotes.com/now/tips/a-complete-guide-to-musi... - https://www.artofcomposing.com/the-art-of-modulation-part-1
Compositional forms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_form - https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_the...
Some excellent musicians/teachers - Jacob Collier - https://www.imusic-school.com/en/music-theory/lessons/jacob-... - http://brightonjazzschool.com/jacob-collier-masterclass - https://www.youtube.com/user/jacobcolliermusic/playlists - Kate and Ray Harmony - https://hackmusictheory.com/home - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDKiHSPstsj0silp519gt6w - Nahre Sol - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8R8FRt1KcPiR-rtAflXmeg - Jazz Duets - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqimxUbWsE26KSpx2_OcmmA - Signals Music Studio - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRDDHLvQb8HjE2r7_ZuNtWA - David Bruce - https://www.youtube.com/user/davidbrucedotnet - Benn Jordan - https://www.youtube.com/user/angeldvst - Omri Cohen - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuWKHSHTHMV_nVSeNH4gYAg
Here's how I approach it: forget about all the historic naming like "perfect fifths" and just think in terms of the modern 12-note equal temperament. Every note is a number, e.g. 440 Herz = 69, the standard guitar tuning has strings from 40 to 64, etc. Every interval is an integer, up an octave is +12, major chord is a triple of {x, x+4, x+7}, minor seventh chord is {x, x+3, x+7, x+10} etc. Then, as a the second game…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/188...
Books aside, in my view the #1 thing you can do to help your music theory understanding is to train your ear: if you can't reliably identify all the intervals within an octave and identify major, minor, diminished and augmented triads, as well as the basic 4-note chords (major 7, minor 7, dominant 7, minor-7-flat-5) by ear, knowing a bunch of rules about tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone won't be all that useful. Back in music school days I practised daily with EarMaster and within a couple of months had gotten solid enough at recognising intervals and chords by ear that it made all the other music learning I did subsequently much much easier. I am sure there are way better ear training tools now!
He teaches a set of 2 comprehensive introductory music theory classes at Princeton, and he makes the lecture notes public: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/teaching.html. These are a really underrated resource and have now grown to be as complete as a full intro theory textbook.
There is a serious lack of stuff that teaches music theory from the ground up (how a lot of us hackers like to learn). So much of the confusion around music theory just comes from most theorists using using old, incredibly crufty "data structures" to describe music, when the actual material isn't so hard. Tymoczko is one of the few researchers pushing back on that. He is best known for his higher-level, mathy research (he wrote the first music theory article ever published in Science), but those lecture notes are a great way to get started for anyone who gets frustrated with learning theory the traditional way—which is pretty much everyone.
Here's how I approach it: forget about all the historic naming like "perfect fifths" and just think in terms of the modern 12-note equal temperament. Every note is a number, e.g. 440 Herz = 69, the standard guitar tuning has strings from 40 to 64, etc. Every interval is an integer, up an octave is +12, major chord is a triple of {x, x+4, x+7}, minor seventh chord is {x, x+3, x+7, x+10} etc. Then, as a the second game…
x + 12 = 880 Hz in your notation.
The reason and importance of intervals are due to the harmonic series.
Perfect 5th = 3/2 * x (or x + 7 in your notation)
Perfect 4th = 4/3 * x (or x + 5 in your notation)
The 12-note equal temperament is a little off from these ratios as a hack to allow multiple key signatures. You'll find that 3/2 ~= 12_sqrt(2)^7.
You can go into complicated chords too, and you'll still find dualities and the hormonic series behind it. A major chord is a stacked major 3rd with a minor 3rd and together they range over a perfect 5th.