Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

news.ycombinator.com

221–230 of 243 posts

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#221

There are two ways of learning music: by ear and by sight. The first way is often (but not always) associated with or referred to as the "jazz way" in Western music. Either way works if you just want to play the music, the main use for theory is composing music. (And to sound vaguely intelligent when dissecting a piece of music but by itself that has little value unless you work in a conservatory or art museum) There…

another main use for theory is to communicate about musical concepts, for example, a lead sheet in jazz:

gø | C alt | f-∆

or, to abstract this further:

ii ø | V alt | i-∆

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#222

Back 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 tried doing ear training a couple of times in my life and it has been always absolutely frustrating. All methods I've tried just ask repeatedly which interval/chord/note it is you are listening without actually having any sort of method on how to develop the skill on how to listen.

I'm trying again now with a new method which consists in singing the notes. In a couple of days I've got better results than weeks of Ear Master or other similar software. My hypothesis is that it works because when trying to imitate a pitch with your voices you a) have to listen closely to the pitch and b) you internalize some pitch "muscle memory".

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#223
I helped bridge the gap in my own guitar playing from “can play tabs” to “can vamp and improvise from a scale” by making / using a random tab generator: https://www.asciitabs.com/random

I think building the site helped more than using it... breaking the concepts down into code helped me to see the broader patterns and abstractions more than just reading about it.

I also like forcing arbitrary constraints during practice. Can you make a simple song from only firsts and fifths in one key? Now add in sevens. Then do a key change every 8 measures (but same pattern). Now invert part of the pattern during the key change. Etc...

That kind of practice helped me intuitively understand what sounded good and what didn’t, which helped me finally grok the theory / vocab i was reading online but didn’t really get before then

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#224
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just find the black and whites puzzling. 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 diff…

Guitars get multiple rows done too. And a zigzag would be nicer than here two and there three. But yes, I probably have to learn the keys for a few days and things are good :)

> Guitars get multiple rows done too.

True. Honestly, from an engineering and UX standpoint, guitars are just breathtakingly brilliant. We don't give enough credit for how amazingly expressive, flexible, simple, and robust they are.

It's an analog instrument that you can make for a few hundred bucks out of a couple of pieces of wood and some wire. It lets play chords of up to six notes with one hand while articulating each note individually with great expressive control using the strumming hand. It allows a player to cover a huge range of chords across the entire chromatic spectrum and even supports bends and slides. At the same time, a beginning can make something that sounds nice within a couple of hours. It is simple to adapt it to electronics. And even when acoustic, it sounds great.

Total mechanical marvels.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that there is no real "bottom-up" when it comes to music theory. Sure there's a couple of rough audio-acoustic rules like how simple fractions of frequences sound more harmonious because there's less beating, but those rules are few and don't get you far. 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…

Expanding on your comment about vowels, I don't think it's fair to say that music is completely arbitrary in the same way as, say, language. Whereas for language we can be pretty confident in saying that it really is truly arbitrary, e.g. see the birth and development of Nicaraguan Sign Language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language To put this another way, two hypothetical languages developed in co…

> Two musical traditions developed in complete isolation would be different, but not completely different. There is still an underlying theory that unifies them to some extent.

What theory do you have in mind? My (limited) understanding is that across cultures there is wide variance in rhythms, time signatures, how many tones span each octave and what emotions are associated with different intervals and chords.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#226

There are two ways of learning music: by ear and by sight. The first way is often (but not always) associated with or referred to as the "jazz way" in Western music. Either way works if you just want to play the music, the main use for theory is composing music. (And to sound vaguely intelligent when dissecting a piece of music but by itself that has little value unless you work in a conservatory or art museum) There…

another main use for theory is to communicate about musical concepts, for example, a lead sheet in jazz: gø | C alt | f-∆ or, to abstract this further: ii ø | V alt | i-∆

Those are the ASCII notation for lead sheets?

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you make a note a tonic center? If any of the same seven notes can be a tonic, what makes it a tonic?

by it's function in the overall harmonic scheme, and through it's positioning and usage relative to the other notes. "tonic" is another way of referring to the "key" of the song.

I know these words, question is exactly how these relationship work that a note becames tonic?

If I'm writing a song and want to make La the tonic, what should I do?

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

another main use for theory is to communicate about musical concepts, for example, a lead sheet in jazz: gø | C alt | f-∆ or, to abstract this further: ii ø | V alt | i-∆

Those are the ASCII notation for lead sheets?

no, these are chord progressions using standard notation in jazz lead sheets. they both show a version of a very common and foundational progression called a "two five one" or ii-V-I.

the first shows this progression in the key of F minor (really, F melodic minor if you want to get into it).

the second describes this progression in roman numeral scale degrees, useful for transcribing this progression to any key.

either are going to be pretty much second nature for all players except for those at the beginning stages of their playing.

ø = half-diminished, or m7b5, comprised of scale degrees 1, b3, b5, b7

-∆ = minor-major, or mM, comprised of scale degrees 1, b3, 5, 7

alt = altered, or altered dominant. this type of harmony is ubiquitous in jazz since the 60s. one of the most straightforward ways to look at this is through melodic minor scale modal theory. the "locrian" scale in this mode, or mode built on the seventh note in the (ascending version of this) scale, gives scale degrees:

1, b2, b3, 3, b5, b6, b7

or, in the language of the upper structures used in jazz:

1, b9, #9, 3, #11, b13, b7

note the presence of the 3rd and the flattened 7th - these are the core elements of a dominant chord. all of these other notes, with the exception of the root, are "altered" e.g. raised or lowered by a half step from their original position, relative to the major scale.

this mode is often referred to as the "super locrian" mode.

there are dozens of options for voicing an altered dominant chord, "alt" is very general notation. when a player sees this, the context, their ear, their experience, whatever other information there is in the song, will inform what they actually play. at this point is where getting into some listening would be quite helpful!

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#229
Well, whose theory? If you wanna see some deep stuff, look no further than Al-Farabi. But if you want more tempered things that feed into the achievement culture, this thread is full of good suggestions. You could also go to a used book store and just read old fake books. They usually had a primer or two as to what's going on.

As for the good Western harmony? I personally just watch Ted Greene geek out on the guitar. You could pick up his book Modern Chord Progressions and try a few of his voicings--they're angelic. Chick Corea and Barry Harris have also published extensively on different aspects of music theory. Both have monster ears and an elegance for explaining. I also dig the whole Almir Chediak "Songbook" series published by Lumiar editions. He's literally the guy that transcribed the book on Brazilian music.

Stephen Feld's explanation of the "lift-up-and-over" prosody of Kaluli weeping ceremonies may, however, just give you a sense of the many beautiful theories of music might you or I learn.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You apparently need an intro to music set theory: https://ianring.com/musictheory/scale

Edited link: https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/
Post reply on HN