Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
I self taught myself a few things over the years and I can play my way through a lot of songs. But I'd like to dig deeper into music theory and have never been able to sift through a vast array of music theory blogs and tutorials to find something that made sense. I want a different perspective from the HN crowd. How did you teach yourself music theory?
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadPart 1/4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyXqcoEzX70&t=419s
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1302D94F247600CD
I'm also working on Harmony Explorer - a CLI tool that lets you hear any chord. It's brilliant for seeing what a chord progression sounds like before taking the time to play it on your instrument of choice: https://github.com/tiniuclx/harmony-explorer
https://www.lightnote.co/
It's a bunch of short, interactive lessons to help you visualize the concepts. Still going strong after about 3 years now.
If you check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback.
I have also added many links from this thread so that the above becomes one place to find them all.
Nonetheless, you can definitely teach yourself the basics via books and the websites recommended below. But once you want to go past the basics, you're going to want some kind of expert/teacher/tutor to ask questions of and to review composition exercises, so that you can understand harmony, voice leading, etc.
That being said, if you're a musician, learning music theory is enormously helpful. You understand what you're seeing on the printed page as much more than a series of notes and chords, and your musical intelligence as you listen is greatly increased. Good luck!
So if you take any note and then go +0, +3, +5-2 in logarithm, meaning you calculate f, f3, f5/2 then you get a major chord.
Once you're working on the frequency ratios like this, you will be able to spot arrangements that can be mistaken for one chord, even though they actually are the overtones of something else. That's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntonic_comma
The basis of good harmonic development is then to travel around the harmonic space and then to deliberately produce these dual-meaning situations so that you can use them to jump around in the harmonic space.
As an example, consider F-Major, f#-minor, B-major. Implicitly, you are replacing the #f-minor with a g-flat-minor, which is why the jump to B-major then makes harmonic sense.
Or as another example, consider F-Major, f-minor, Db-Major, a#-minor, Gb-Major. Each pair shares 2 notes in the well-tempered tuning, but by following this trail you are completely walking out of the C-Major scale that you started with.
Don't discount the ability to fast-track your progress with a good teacher, too.
You need to be able to find time to synthesize learning how to read music, playing music that challenges you but is within reach of your ability, ear training, and music theory.
You don't need to do this in a learning context, but playing with other people (especially if it's music you are learning) is a great magnifier in my experience.
I would recommend trying to learn new songs while also learning intervals, major/minor pentatonic scales, basic modes, scales, modes, chords, and arpeggios.
Counting rhythms is a little tricky to learn on your own. If you can, I would take a theory class or 2 to learn this; however, YMMV.
I used to be obsessed with this stuff, but I feel like it's not really important. It's sort of like the periodic table: you can memorize all of the factual information, but I would argue that what is really important is understanding the interaction of various elements. The table is a reference; it is not chemistry itself.
There's also the Music Student 101 podcast, which many people recommend highly (I've only listened to a few episodes).
The musictheory subreddit is also one of the best subs I've found, for all levels.
you can just click on the link and read for half an hour and you’ll have more practical understanding than you’ll ever squeeze out of all of the comments here that purport to tell you the one critical concept that makes it all fit together. (or the ones that want to tell you how all the existing terminology is dumb and should be replaced. ugh.)
It basically covers everything we covered in that time-span. Everything is explained quite simply and clearly.
Also, don't neglect ear training!
He talks a lot about the why of doing certain things in music.
His step by step "jazzification" of a pop song was an eye opener for me:
https://youtu.be/lz3WR-F_pnM
This is a really nice app that takes you through a lot of music theory. I would recommend using it with a good pair of headphones though.
Music theory is one of these things I learned multiple times (even as a minor in University) and forgot multiple times.
The theory I learned, though, was never really relevant to my artistic work, whether it was playing guitar music or making electronic music. Whenever I tried writing something based on the theory I learned, I found it to be super boring. Thus, to this day, music theory doesn't make a lot of "sense" to me.
Thus, I'd say if you want to learn music theory, try to make it part of a creative process. Learn something new and try to write a little piece based on that, and so on. That way, it gives you creative tools instead of just being boring.
I personally don't think theory should be used in this way, but it is very tempting to try to use it this way.
I think of theory as just a naming system and a way to chunk information. It's DESCRIPTIVE, not PRESCRIPTIVE. When composing your ear should guide you first and foremost and theory should just kind of be in the background... if you're fluent in theory then it's just kind of there gently assisting you when you arrange/compose/perform.
So for example, I might hear something in your head and play it at the piano and think "I like that... good starting point". In the background my brain says "I iii vi6 ii7 V with melody: mi re mi sol do mi re mi sol do do re do re (etc)" that's all completely automatic for me, I get it for free. It's like this automatic connection between what I hear in my head and what to label it and they kind of feed off of each other (if that makes sense)