I self taught myself a few things over the years and I can play my way through a lot of songs. But I'd like to dig deeper into music theory and have never been able to sift through a vast array of music theory blogs and tutorials to find something that made sense. I want a different perspective from the HN crowd. How did you teach yourself music theory?
Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
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Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#2In college, but now I try to stay with it. If you’re thinking classical, writing simple 4-part harmonies over a melody line or studying simple scores could be good. Try to learn about one new chord/progression/cadence at a time working from basic to esoteric and look for examples of how it’s used or figure out his to use it yourself in simple harmonies. I don’t have a good example textbook, but I’m sure you could find something. To me, being able to pick out certain chords or bass notes by ear is the coolest part, so maybe just follow whats motivating you in the first place.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#3There's a great tutorial from Decypher Media (who's a software developer I think).
Part 1/4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyXqcoEzX70&t=419s
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#4Can't recommend this highly enough. First time chords ever clicked for me.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#512tone's YouTube channel is amazing, especially his Building Blocks playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTOOWe_yLwY&list=PLMvVESrbjB...
I'm also working on Harmony Explorer - a CLI tool that lets you hear any chord. It's brilliant for seeing what a chord progression sounds like before taking the time to play it on your instrument of choice: https://github.com/tiniuclx/harmony-explorer
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#6These are the notes that are used to teach Harmony at Berklee: http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PDFmusic/Berkleeharmony/Ha...
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#7I wrote a course on it!
It's a bunch of short, interactive lessons to help you visualize the concepts. Still going strong after about 3 years now.
If you check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#8This is probably not what you are looking for, but for beginners visiting this page. This website gives you a nice start and shows how old hits can be played: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#9I'd start just practicing scales and intervals. Without knowing how they feel when you make the movements yourself it felt kind of empty to me.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#10Know and practice your scales.