Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

Without a good concrete example, this sounds like a terrible idea.

Scale -> basis makes no sense to me. The scale climbs up and down, like how you scale a ladder. The basis… does not do that.

Tonic, dominant, subdominant are used mostly in discussions about functional harmony. The biggest reason why it would be a total disaster to rename tonic -> primary is because we already use the terms primary and secondary here! For example, V is the “primary dominant” but nobody actually says the word “primary”. Primary chords are taken from the scale of the tonic, and secondary chords are taken from a different scale. So V/V is a “secondary dominant”.

As someone who has spent too much time on music theory and not nearly enough time on learning to play songs, I'd congratulate you for doing this in the right order.

I've mostly learned music theory by a haphazard procedure of following my interests, which I would not recommend. :p

But one concept that really opened my eyes when I was learning music theory (from the perspective of a not-so-good guitar player) was how "everything" can be built from a scale, or more precisely -- a pattern for spacing a set of notes.

So, C major scale:

C D E F G A B C

half tones between 3rd/4th notes and 7th/8th notes. whole tones everywhere else. Begin with any other note, and follow that pattern, and you have the major scale for that root note:

D E F# G A B C# D

G A B C D E F# G

F G A Bb C D E F

Write any major scale vertically, then next to it rewrite it beginning with the 3rd note then again with the 5th note. Read it horizontally and you have the primary chords in the key for that scale

CEG c major

DFA d minor

EGB e minor

FAC f major

GBD g major

ACE a minor

BDF b minor flat 5 (i think... was always fuzzy on this one)

Of those chords, the famous "3 chords" for a folk/blues/rock song will be the 1st, 4th, and 5th (the 3 majors) with the 6th (relative minor) or sometimes the 2nd or 3rd thrown in fairly often as an extra or replacement.

Write another vertical column there starting on the 7th note and you will get the notes in the 7th chords for the key (although rock/blues traditionally will use some variations on those).

"Rotate" that list to begin with a note other than C and you are defining a new mode (and there is one for each possible starting note). Begin with A and you have the Aelion mode (aka A Minor).

The pentatonic scales are just subsets of this scale (e.g., minor pentatonic is the minor scale without the 2nd and 6th notes, so ABCDEFGA becomes ACDEGA)

It really depends what you're trying to achieve. Music is like language. If you want to write a novel that's different from if you want to visit as a tourist. If you're interested in Jazz theory, then don't get a textbook on classical theory (Analogy: if you want to learn Portuguese, don't study Spanish instead, even if knowing Spanish will help). If you want to compose original music, you don't need music theory. If you want to compose in a particular style, then study that style and its conventions. If you want to talk with other music theory people, err... why in the hell would you ever want to do that? It will bring you no joy and will take over your life nonetheless.

I'm a huge fan of http://openmusictheory.com/. It's succinct, comprehensive and utilizes examples where relevant (such as songs through embedded vimeo players - not exactly revolutionary, but it's something a book can't offer). Did I mention it's open source?

EDIT: I also really like this YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdEcLQ_RQPY&t=74s&ab_channel.... The videos are relatively short, so if you like fast-paced high-density videos then you should enjoy this format.

OMT is a good resource, but it seems to have gone unmaintained https://github.com/openmusictheory/openmusictheory.github.io Someone should either get in touch with the authors or fork the project.