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Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

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Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#1

Post by pil0u »

I started to learn the piano 1.5 year ago, as an adult who never studied music before.

It is a slow, peaceful journey and there is no silver bullet: practicing is the key for improvement.

I have a weekly class for music theory, which I enjoy a lot. What I seem to be a slow learner at is reading notes fast (treble and bass clef), and remembering the theory and logic behind the tones.

I don't practice much music theory outside the class. I consider building paper flashcards because music paper is quite specific.

What is your experience? What process or tool would you recommend to learn music theory?

PS: sorry if some words feel weird, music vocabulary is so different between French and English

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#2

Post by ofalkaed »

Practice reading sheet music, which does not mean playing what is on the page but reading the page and understanding the harmonic structure in both the vertical and the horizontal. Starting out this means sitting down with some sheet music and a pencil and marking up the pages. This will also help you learn the notes and more importantly the intervals. And play those scales, circles of fifths, triads, arpeggios through the 7ths, etc. Sing the note names as you play them, it will really beat it into your head both the staff position and the sound even if you are not good at singing them at proper pitch.

Flash cards are not great here since you loose context, you want to study both the vertical harmonic structure of chords and how that evolves through time in the horizontal structure. Just download a bunch of sheet music and print it out or buy a notebook/pad of staff paper and write it out.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#3

Post by pil0u »

ofalkaed wrote: post #2

Practice reading sheet music, which does not mean playing what is on the page but reading the page and understanding the harmonic structure in both the vertical and the horizontal. Starting out this means sitting down with some sheet music and a pencil and marking up the pages. This will also help you learn the notes and more importantly the intervals. And play those scales, circles of fifths, triads, arpeggios throu…

> Flash cards are not great here since you loose context

That's exactly why I staled and wrote here, the flashcard system felt off to me.

Thank you for your detailed feedback, it's really helpful. It's good to read that there is no secret sauce for theory either.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#4

Post by lfciv »

This is a bit of a less traditional way to learn, but I'm big on learning from chords. Find a song you love on Ultimate Guitar Tabs and learn to play the chords – play them in different inversions and experiment with tweaks (adding a 7 or 2). Over time as you get comfortable with those chords and their inversion start to fill in the gaps following your ear. Personally I find this style of playing new songs more motivating as I can play a variety of pop songs and I can play them quickly and make them my own. An unfortunate side effect – I'm not great at sight reading

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#6

Post by dtagames »

Two books I'll throw in here: Foundations of Diatonic Theory [0] which gives the simplest, modern, math-based explanations of how notes and chords relate. It's a college workbook that you write-in for the exercises. Really terrific.

Also, not a theory book but the most important music learning book I've read: The Perfect Wrong Note [1]. Reading this permanently changed the way I approach learning the piano (or synth. in my case) and I my playing has vastly improved over the last couple of years because of it.

[0] https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810862333/Foundations-of-Diatoni...

[1] https://www.halleonard.com/product/331733/the-perfect-wrong-...

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