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Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

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Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#101

Post by maroonblazer »

shirleyquirk wrote: post #47

I grew up in a family of classical musicians, got a degree in music, and was briefly a professional classical musician myself. So my advice may be very out of touch with the experience of someone learning for the first time, but my experiences learning beyond European classical music theory left me feeling insulted. The basics of music theory are presented as though they are the foundations upon which all subsequent…

Also a classically trained, now jazz, musician and agree with all of this.

Neely is good. I'd also recommend Music Matters on YouTube. His style is very easy to understand once you know the basics of notes and chords. He explains many of the different ways chords can fit together. His Bach 'tear downs' are absolutely fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/@MusicMattersGB

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#102

Post by efficax »

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #83
tarsinge wrote: post #44

For years I made the error of learning music theory without enough ear training. You have to hear and feel the theory, it's not only intellectual. Then I found 2 exercises are all I needed for playing and composing music by ear: - Functional intervals / scale degrees: https://tonesavvy.com/music-practice-exercise/220/functional... . If you start tone deaf like me checked "Fixed Key", learn all the intervals, then res…

I thought tone deaf was permanent. Can you link Fixed Key? Is it an app?

anyone who can hear can learn relative pitch, although some people seem better equipped and a very very small number seem to have absolute pitch

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#103

Post by easyThrowaway »

shirleyquirk wrote: post #47

I grew up in a family of classical musicians, got a degree in music, and was briefly a professional classical musician myself. So my advice may be very out of touch with the experience of someone learning for the first time, but my experiences learning beyond European classical music theory left me feeling insulted. The basics of music theory are presented as though they are the foundations upon which all subsequent…

I mean, it's useful if you need to quickly express something to a fellow musician, like, "just give me a I-IV-V Gm four bars loop".

Everything goes quickly out of the window once you get into the production side of things, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#104

Post by tarentel »

tarsinge wrote: post #44

For years I made the error of learning music theory without enough ear training. You have to hear and feel the theory, it's not only intellectual. Then I found 2 exercises are all I needed for playing and composing music by ear: - Functional intervals / scale degrees: https://tonesavvy.com/music-practice-exercise/220/functional... . If you start tone deaf like me checked "Fixed Key", learn all the intervals, then res…

I used Earmaster a few years ago. It is not free but it covers everything from sight singing, which works fairly decently, to rhythm detection/dictation, chord detection, melodic dictation, interval training, etc.

It was a ton of practice and for me not very fun. I already knew quite a bit of theory but after putting in the work it's helped a lot. Prior to this I had only done some sight singing, basic interval training, and some basic chord progression detection.

I can pretty much play close to instantly anything I hear in my head. I can also play anything I hear in real life as well, almost, if the music is incredibly fast or complex I might not remember it well enough to do so. Even if I can't play something I hear though in real life I can break down the higher level parts and structures pretty quickly at the very least.

Either way, if you're new to this or don't want to pay for software since you can probably do a lot of this for free, I would definitely start out with sight singing. It'll speed up learning intervals and melodic dictation much faster than if you don't learn how to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#105

Post by gspencley »

It sounds like when you say "theory" what you mean is sight-reading. I'm not aware of any tools but there must be lots of options online. I learned from books and it's just a matter of practice.

There are lot of music theory books that I can recommend, but it sounds like your class has you covered. Sight reading is like learning to read a spoken language. You just need to do it every single day and it will come with time.

If anyone else is interested in books that I would recommend for theory:

- Elementary Rudiments of Music by Barbara Wharram (a good intro book)

- The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine (this is my "theory bible" and, despite the title, is not limited at all to only jazz music)

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#106

Post by BurningFrog »

Mr-Frog wrote: post #25
haihaibye wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

Quincy Jones OTOH, had a very extensive musical education.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#107

Post by smeej »

ofalkaed wrote: post #17
pil0u wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flash cards are not great here since you loose context That's exactly why I staled and wrote here, the flashcard system felt off to me. Thank you for your detailed feedback, it's really helpful. It's good to read that there is no secret sauce for theory either.

The problem with flash cards is they don't actually help you with your problems which are remembering the theory and sight reading. Sight reading is more than the note names, it is also the action of moving your fingers and not just finding the note on the keyboard but keeping your hands in the right position so your others fingers can do what they need to do. So you set your metronome nice and slow and play through…

This is a super super super beginner question, but what's a good resource for learning the "correct" fingerings?

I took 9 years of piano lessons, but I was very young (I quit when I was 12, 25+ years ago), so I have a vague memory that there's a "right" way to do things, but no idea where to go to re-learn it.

I quit as soon as my parents would let me because I thought sight reading was supposed to be as easy as reading written words, and if I hadn't been able to master what I thought of as the most basic skill in 9 years, I must be hopeless.

Now I understand that sight reading is actually a much more advanced skill, so I probably wasn't hopeless after all.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#108

Post by automatom »

I very much learn by getting my hands dirty, so if I were you I would find a project. Either write a a simple song and put in on paper, or incorporate concept you learn about music theory into a song or riff on the instrument of your choice. I honestly don't think reading music is 100% essential depending on what your goal is for learning theory.

I take piano lessons over Zoom (a byproduct of COVID, but I work remote so it's convenient to sign off of work and migrate over to my keyboard in my office for my lesson). I needed an excuse to practice more scales and expand my own knowledge of theory and be able to more intuitively find a key while playing or build cords. I ended up building this rudimentary scale-generator in Rust.

I did so because I primarily wanted to learn Rust but also wanted a tool to practice and memorize more diatonic major and minor scales.

This CLI tool is far from perfect or what I would call done, but I'm sharing in case you may find some use out of it or just as an example of what I did to expand my knowledge. In writing this I learned a lot about how diatonic scales are structured, and how Western musical notation was designed in such a way to make intervals easier to play on instruments such as the piano. It really forced me to understand how the major and minor scales are structured in order to be able to model it in the code.

https://github.com/tlegnard/scale-generator

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#109

Post by mtalantikite »

tarsinge wrote: post #44

For years I made the error of learning music theory without enough ear training. You have to hear and feel the theory, it's not only intellectual. Then I found 2 exercises are all I needed for playing and composing music by ear: - Functional intervals / scale degrees: https://tonesavvy.com/music-practice-exercise/220/functional... . If you start tone deaf like me checked "Fixed Key", learn all the intervals, then res…

> You have to hear and feel the theory, it's not only intellectual.

This is the most important part, for sure. The theory needs to get into your body.

I'd also suggest to the OP to find a teacher that specializes in jazz, because the practice of improvisation requires you to embody that theory. A good teacher that focuses on improvisation will help you navigate through all the different building blocks you need, which happens to be theory.

I studied your typical classical piano as a kid, abandoned it in college, and later in life came back to it with a jazz improvisation teacher. It's amazing how little you actually learn about music when all you're doing is reading sheet music as a kid. Now when I go back to play, say, Bach, I can see so many other things going on since I've spent so much time hearing and feeling the improv theory.

There's also a great YouTube channel I've been watching, based around the teaching theory of Barry Harris: https://www.youtube.com/@thingsivelearnedfrombarryh2616

Re: Ask HN: Tools to learn music theory?

#110

Post by JoeDaDude »

The generally accepted way to learn music reading is to use the mnemonics like FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine for the treble clef. So, basically, you need memorization with drilling to get you to associate the lines and spaces with notes.

But there is an alternate method [1] in which you learn a small number of reference lines and spaces, and learn the remainder as being separated by so many steps up or down from the references. You'll still need to drill and practice, but maybe this will feel more natural to you. Anecdotally, I can tell you that I used the mnemonics for a very long time and still made occasional dumb mistakes, but then I used the reference notes method and noticeably improved my sight reading.

[1] https://musophone.com/read-music-fast/

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