Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

Yeah, they are largely a historical artifact from before the days of equal-temperament tuning. A few things they have going for them:

* They give you a visual reference point for an absolute pitch. It's easy to find any specific note by looking for it relative to the unique pattern of black keys. C is always to the left of the pair of blacks. Other instruments require different techniques to keep track of where you are since otherwise all note positions look the same. (For example, guitars have fretboard markers and players have to be careful to count frets correctly.)

* Having two rows of notes, even if not evenly distributed, lets a hand span a greater range of pitches. If all of the black keys were inline with the whites, it would be harder to span an octave without making the keys smaller which increases the risk of mistakes.

* The non-uniform layout means that each diatonic key has a different physical layout. This is a negative when it comes to transposing, but it can be a positive when it comes to composing. Picking a different key with its unique layout might get your hands to try different chord voicings or progressions you wouldn't think of otherwise. It increases the spatial variet of the instrument at the expense of less consistency.

Start from a tuning system. 12TET (12 tones per octave, equal temperament) would be conventional if you live in a contemporary western culture, but there are others.

Next step: pick a set of intervals (any number, though 4, 6, 7 are common numbers). Congratulations, you have a mode.

Next step: pick a root/tonic. Congratulations, you have a scale.

Next step: play it, over and over and over again till you can do so without thinking about.

Next step: do the above steps again, with different choices. And again, and again, and again ...

Next step: understand the differences in the "feel" of the different intervallic relationships present within the scale.

Next step: understand the impact of presenting these intervallic relationships when ordered in time (i.e. melody, one note after another), or when presented all at once (i.e. harmony, chords)

Then, when you're ready, tackle Music Set Theory: https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales (sadly limited to 12TET tuning, but it's still a fabulous start)

Bon Voyage!

They're equivalent to noting that, say, vowel sounds with similar formants are harder to distinguish. That's true, but there's no way to reason up from that all the way to Shakespeare and Dickens.

The way to look at music theory is that it's like linguistics for sound. It doesn't say "here are the rules that are required to generate X". It says "people have already generated X, Y, and Z (using whatever intuitive cultural processes and/or academic learning they had) and here are the patterns we observe about the result."

People creating music are not outputting new provable theorems derived generatively from the axiomatic rules of music theory. Music theory cannot disprove a song.

People just make stuff they and others like (or don't). And then music theorists try to find the common threads that link it to better understand how the world of music fits together. It is descriptive and not prescriptive.

Knowing theory can help you write music because it can take information you already have in your intuitive "ear" and move it to your front cortex or somewhere more accessible to your hands. But many other musicians skip this step entirely and just connect their hands straight to their intuition though tons of practice. Either path is valid for producing beautiful music.

I'm a little put off by the way you wrote that comment.