Learnmusictheory.net, also hack music theory on youtube
Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
11–20 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#12Rick Beato on YouTube. Look no further.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#13I have been collecting links to high-quality learning resources here which you might find helpful: https://learnawesome.org/topics/2a08a6c6-ac26-415d-a6a5-5e1b...
I have also added many links from this thread so that the above becomes one place to find them all.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#14I wrote a course on it! https://www.lightnote.co/ 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.
I was going to recommend it. I did not go through the course yet, but it seems very promising and I liked what I saw a lot.
Thanks for doing it!
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#15I hired a tutor. Even with weekly lessons for 2+ years, it required a lot of sustained effort and dedication. Like most everything in music, it requires a lot of practice and there are no real shortcuts.
Nonetheless, you can definitely teach yourself the basics via books and the websites recommended below. But once you want to go past the basics, you're going to want some kind of expert/teacher/tutor to ask questions of and to review composition exercises, so that you can understand harmony, voice leading, etc.
That being said, if you're a musician, learning music theory is enormously helpful. You understand what you're seeing on the printed page as much more than a series of notes and chords, and your musical intelligence as you listen is greatly increased. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#16I would suggest that you look at the frequency relationships in logarithmic space. +-2 = one octave, +-3 = C to G, +-5 = C to E.
So if you take any note and then go +0, +3, +5-2 in logarithm, meaning you calculate f, f3, f5/2 then you get a major chord.
Once you're working on the frequency ratios like this, you will be able to spot arrangements that can be mistaken for one chord, even though they actually are the overtones of something else. That's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntonic_comma
The basis of good harmonic development is then to travel around the harmonic space and then to deliberately produce these dual-meaning situations so that you can use them to jump around in the harmonic space.
As an example, consider F-Major, f#-minor, B-major. Implicitly, you are replacing the #f-minor with a g-flat-minor, which is why the jump to B-major then makes harmonic sense.
Or as another example, consider F-Major, f-minor, Db-Major, a#-minor, Gb-Major. Each pair shares 2 notes in the well-tempered tuning, but by following this trail you are completely walking out of the C-Major scale that you started with.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#17There are endless resources, but the most important thing is to pursue the playful goal-free explorative learning part of it first. Just discover relationships between pitches and sounds yourself. (It’s not the same, as pitch is a perceived quality.)
Also worth to study Debussy scores and check harmonic constructs note-by-note, later.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#18Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#19The book "Music Theory for Computer Musicians" has helped me a lot. It is quite easy to find as a PDF file online.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#20I use Edlys Music Theory for Practical People with my students.
Don't discount the ability to fast-track your progress with a good teacher, too.