What I’ve done:
Hooktheory is more modern: https://www.hooktheory.com/books
Learn an instrument & go through the level 1-5 theory books. Be sure to play the notes while you work through the book.
Make songs & apply what you’ve learned.
Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
151–160 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#152Back in the early 2000s I quit my engineering job and went to music school for a few years. We used Mark Levine's excellent "Jazz Theory Book" to cover the theoretical aspects. It presents theory in the context of trying to understand how to improvise over jazz harmonies - I found it very useful. It's a textbook though: you're going to have to invest some time in it to get the most out of it. https://www.amazon.co.uk…
Did you go back to engineering or stick with music?
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!…
Perhaps 'ordered basis' for 'scale'. Or perhaps 'discrete spectrum', just searching for a term that conveys its meaning intrinsically. I had in mind a reform akin to how modern lisps have rename CAR and CDR to first and rest respectively. For example the Lydian Mode, could be referred to by a codeword that can be unwrapped to understand what exactly it is. In general I am always in favour of trying to advance the exp…
Scale is nice and short, it’s one syllable, and it goes up and down like how you scale a ladder. “Ordered basis” and “discrete spectrum” sound outright hostile to me. We want to make musical scales accessible to five-year-old kids here, not undergraduate math students. This is not the way terminology should evolve.
I can get behind car/cdr -> first/rest.
I could get behind renaming the modes, but I’m not sure how to rename them. I would be hesitant to name them after notes or using numbers, since that would be confusing. As it is, I can say “C dorian scale” and that’s a pretty concise and unambiguous name for a series of notes. Maybe I could say “C minor, natural sixth scale”. It’s a bit verbose and modes are fairly rare. It’s also a bit weird—would I then say “A dorian scale” as “A minor, sharp sixth scale”? Already I’m a bit confused by this terminology. Maybe “A minor, major sixth scale”? The “major minor” is a bit weird.
The trick with advancing expressiveness and meaningfulness is that 1) you are going to have to memorize new meanings even if the words are familiar and 2) if it’s not usable by experts, it won’t be adopted by experts and you’ll end up with at worst, multiple incompatible sets of terminology.
Face it—I’m going to have to do a fair bit of memorization to learn music theory. It is unavoidable with music theory as it is with other subjects. So I might as well pick nice, short words like “scale” which make some intuitive sense, rather than pick “ordered basis” which is a total mouthful. After all, I will only spend a short amount of time memorizing terms, and a much, MUCH longer time using them.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#154I took a year-long course in music theory as an undergrad; I loved it, and learned a great deal! I recommend sitting in on a university music theory course if it all possible. But, if not, I can at least recommend the textbook we used: Kostka and Payne's Tonal Harmony . If you want to learn slowly, from the beginning, it's a great resource. Our instructor told us that, by the end of the first semester, we would be wr…
Kostka and Payne is not usually recommended. Knowledgeable experts tend to prefer texts by Laitz, or Aldwell (previously, Aldwell & Schachter). Bear in mind though that the latter authors do require some 'intellectual' effort, but this will hopefully pay off in understanding. Kostka and Payne is the sort of textbook that's preferred by instructors at a music dept, where the students don't actually care that much abou…
I taught music theory for 8 years, and we used Laitz. It's a solid textbook. The book I learned from myself was Walter Piston (!) which is extremely old-fashioned, but unlike Laitz, Piston worked from a defined 'canon' of classical music within which his theory was consistent. Laitz tries to incorporate many different kinds of music, and then he often reaches quite simplistic conclusions. Kostka and Payne is absolutely fine, though, if you want to know 'enough' and the pedagogical style is excellent.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#155Back in the early 2000s I quit my engineering job and went to music school for a few years. We used Mark Levine's excellent "Jazz Theory Book" to cover the theoretical aspects. It presents theory in the context of trying to understand how to improvise over jazz harmonies - I found it very useful. It's a textbook though: you're going to have to invest some time in it to get the most out of it. https://www.amazon.co.uk…
> #1 thing you can do to help your music theory understanding is to train your ear
I live down the road from a custom guitar builder Patrick Cummings, he also offers private lessons, we were talking about learning guitar, and he was telling me the exact same thing. He said something like, "If you can't hear the music, you will never understand the music." He apparently focuses the first few weeks of lessons on ear training.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#156Back in the early 2000s I quit my engineering job and went to music school for a few years. We used Mark Levine's excellent "Jazz Theory Book" to cover the theoretical aspects. It presents theory in the context of trying to understand how to improvise over jazz harmonies - I found it very useful. It's a textbook though: you're going to have to invest some time in it to get the most out of it. https://www.amazon.co.uk…
I've been looking for a good music theory book for quite some time now, never expected it to find on hacker news though. Thanks a lot, will definitely check that book out.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#157I would highly recommend How Music Works by John Powell. I've been playing piano since I was a kid, but, being technical, having music explained in scientific terms was the one thing that really upped my game. Everything before this book always seemed like religious teaching and I could never really find a place for the knowledge to hang on to in my mind.
There's also a book with the same name by David Byrne, but I can't comment on that one.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#158justinguitar.com has a (paid) course on beginner music theory for guitar. I don't know what level you're at, but I found it enlightening to know how chords are constructed, and how they relate to scales.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#159There are lots of complicated answers here. All you need is to be able to build scales and chords using the circle of 5ths. Just learn how to write out the notes for a scale like E major. Then learn how to write out the notes for all of the chords in that key. If you do this and learn how to build scales and chords everything will start to make sense. I have a music degree. This is the key. This page is a good start. https://www.tempomusicards.com/lessons/chord-formulas-and-th...
I would also add that to really use theory you have to know the notes on your instrument. You can know them as audible intervals, letters and written musical notes. Tab is worthless. I learned to read music for school and it transformed my knowledge of the instrument.
Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
#160I recommend that you follow Kent Hewitt (piano), Adam Neely (bass) and Rick Beato (guitar) on Youtube. They all talk about various aspect of music theory, composition, etc. Kent Hewitt is providing more of a full-blown online jazz course, Rick Beato makes incredibly interesting analyses of songs of all style (mostly rock) but also talks a lot about scales, harmony, improvising, etc. Adam Neely is all over the place :…
Rick Beato's series "What makes this song so great" is fun if you want to see/hear theory applied to rock songs. And learn about rock music song construction or rather destruction since he plays the isolated tracks of the instruments and vocals. It isn't theory instruction its theory discussion and straight fandom.