Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

The first part is a chord namer, it's live but not perfect, there are many like it, but this is mine (I'll link below).

The second step which I'm part way through is creating a model to describe musical scales based on patterns from the root note. You might have read for example, that Major Scales all have the same pattern starting from the root note, which is Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half.

We can represent that in code as an array of integer counts of half steps, eg: [2,2,1,2,2,2,1]. From here, we can take an array of the note names, [ C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, B ], then start on the index of the root note of the Major Scale we want. Lets do that by removing the notes not in the pattern below. We end up with the C Major scale:

[ C, -, D, -, E, F, -, G, -, A, -, B ](Returning to C for the final step in the pattern)

You can do this starting from any note, using that pattern, and end up with the right scale.

I was surprised to learn that while there are some edge cases, a huge portion of musical scales follow a pattern you can use to generate a named scale from the root note. It works for Major, Minor, Pentantonic scales, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor and so on.

This was a breakthrough for my understanding of music, and made me realize that memorizing scales is more about memorizing scale patterns, which drastically decreases the amount you need to memorize and lets you use foundational building blocks rather than arbitrary knowledge to play.

Another breakthrough for me while building the chord finder, was noticing that much of music theory is like that. It's all about learning the building blocks and applying it in real time, so that it sticks in your memory. All major chords are made of the same pattern, so if you have the root note, the major scale pattern, and the major chord pattern, you can quickly figure out any major chord, and later any complex chords, from there.

Chord progressions are the same! They follow patterns based on the scale. So when people say learning scales is important, they're not being preachy, it's because they are the basis for all music theory patterns.

https://whichchordisthis.com/

Array indexes starting at 0 is unintuitive for beginners, I would never recommend a programming student learn arrays starting at 1 just to make it easier.

Proper playing technique is often unintuitive for the beginning musician, but encouraging it for accessibility will be destructive to their progress.

Conceptualizing a new difficult concept in a way that makes sense to you is good, foregoing convention is bad.

This has led me to start learning music theory myself, as there is definitely value in the 'by-the-book' method as well. I believe the combination of both by-ear, and by-theory can increase the possibilities of composition. However I have also seen classically trained musicians not willing to step outside of the box because of the classical music theory mindset, too.