https://www.chordieapp.com/, you may need https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html as companion.
Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
31–40 of 172 posts
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#32I am surprised nobody has mentioned Language Transfer. I haven't listened to the Music Theory course, only the Spanish one, but I can highly recommend it:
https://www.languagetransfer.org/music
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#33Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#34Not a Tipp about music theory, but as a general Tipp make sure that you practice hands separately https://fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/chapte...
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone asks about how to read sheet music faster, and you can't read it, it's ok to just not say anything
Michael Jackson never learned to read or write sheet music.
Out of curiosity, is there any source to endorse that?
I mean, it certainly takes a MJ to get to this level without music theory, but if the fact is confirmed... wow! (Tried to phrase it properly but "wow" conveys best that I'm speechless)
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#36The first thing I would say is that music theory is a very broad topic. You're going to have much better results if you study aspects of theory that you then practically apply in your musical life. So if you tend to play a certain style of music, learn the theory that applies to that first.
Eg say you play rock/blues piano (or generally play pop music). You might want to start with learning pentatonic and blues scales, first in the keys of the pieces you play a lot, then in all keys.
Say you like a certain player, you may want to look at a song they wrote/played, try to figure it out, try to understand how it works. So you could for example take apart the chord progression. Try to understand it harmonically, say there's a bit of the song that you like. Try to find other songs with a similiar progression. Then look at the voicings they use. Try to put those voicings into practise in your playing. Look at places you can use similar voicings for different chords.
Since you go to a class make yourself an exercise between classes to find in your normal music examples of the things you did in class.
There are very specific times when things like flashcards are going to be useful. For example, I made myself a deck of flashcards with different one-crotchet rhythmic snippets on them and used to deal myself out random bars of rhythms and then tap them out to improve my rhythm recognition for sight reading.
For theory in the mainstream/classical tradition, I would highly recommend getting the ABRSM guide to music theory by Eric Taylor. It comes in two books, and you can get "workbooks" of examples to just go through. It's a pretty solid intro to the basics and by the time you have done both books you are at the standard of "grade 8" in music theory.
From there, the traditional way to progress is to work on analyzing Bach Chorales (ie get that book which is just all the chorales) and then analyzing other major works from subsequent periods. Studying the chorales is a really excellent intro to most of the harmony that you will encounter until you get to the romantic period, and what I personally did is just work on Jazz harmony after that given that covers Romantic style harmony as well as the things that later 20/21C music does (eg if you can understand Miles you can understand Hindemith pretty much). For Jazz there are two books I would recommend, which are the Jazz Piano book and the Jazz Theory book both by Mark Levine.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#37Lots of people suggesting great ways to get around reading sheet music!
But what's a way of getting fast at reading sheet music? I picked up the piano again after quitting several years ago, and one thing I'm really struggling with is glancing at sheet music and being able to play a phrase—I need to step out one note at a time. And I'm hopeless with ledger lines, I have to stick my face close and count the lines to see what note I'm playing. Sightreading exercises haven't helped because they're either too easy (I can easily follow notes across small intervals, from my music theory training) or too hard to make meaningful improvement on (I start doing the pause-and-name-each-note thing).
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Michael Jackson never learned to read or write sheet music.
Many vocalists won’t have a deep understanding of music theory
That makes sense, but [1] lists 119 songs were Michael Jackson is the writer or co-writer. So reducing him to a vocalist [2] in this context makes little sense to me.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songs_written_by_Mich...
[2]: I'm not trying to say that being a vocalist is somehow "worse" than being a songwriter, just that removing a skill he clearly had (writing songs) is weird.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#39There's GNU Solfege [0], but I have not really used it (I was a casual piano player that realized theory just gets in the way of fun for me). It has ear training for music patterns and has some music theory practice in it. Not sure if it has a mobile version, but it's been around for a long time.
Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many vocalists won’t have a deep understanding of music theory
That makes sense, but [1] lists 119 songs were Michael Jackson is the writer or co-writer. So reducing him to a vocalist [2] in this context makes little sense to me. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songs_written_by_Mich... [2]: I'm not trying to say that being a vocalist is somehow "worse" than being a songwriter, just that removing a skill he clearly had (writing songs) is weird.
When artists buy songs they are given a credit for legal purposes (and I suppose vanity, too)