I want to advance my music knowledge... help!

[anomandaris1]

So basically, everything is fine if it's working. My basic understanding of music theory is good enough for making music. Advancing my music knowledge is either for the love of it, or for the fun and beauty of discovery. I learnt a lot from reading these posts, thanks so much guy. I guess I will continue to journey myself into this mist of knowledge, .

Knowing music theory will help you to compose in different styles or improve your skills in making more sophisticated compositions in your primary or favourite genre.
The song that posted you is good, but if you knew more about the commercial broadway jazz, it could have been even better (it's interesting that your track is straight 4/4, while this style is usually in 12/8).

I can recommend you "Arranging concepts complete" by Dick Grove. Wonderful book and is a must, if you want to specialise in the commercial jazz styles.

[AutoTonic]

Free yourself from bad habits and physical limitations and try something new like a new instrument, at least for a session. I also, since I have developed this program myself, can recommend you 'AutoTonic' which reinterprets your average MIDI keyboard so it becomes a completely new and intuitive instrument that allows you to map any scale existing onto the white keys of your keyboard by using the black keys as function toggles: AutoTonic – Realtime MIDI Note Transposer

[adXok]

Click the link text below or click on the picture - will send you to the whole article:


Plain Notation System

[A_SN]

I always see lots of people talking about exotic scales. I think this is a crutch for the uninspired and shouldn't be seen as a direction to follow that leads to anything. I think it's more important to really master the minor scale as a base from which to work, then know how to work from there. I think that for instance an important point to focus on is understanding the relationship between diatonic functions, much more than exotic scales or even chords (people tend to learn chords in a vacuum, for instance you learn what a diminished triad is, but this doesn't tell you where it fits best in a scale).

Ultimately I think you can compare music to language in the way you learn it. Everybody learns their mother tongue by hearing it/speaking it, whereas later in life you learn other languages by studying their grammar. That's why I struggle to understand Polish declensions while little kids get it without even thinking about it. I think the former clearly gives better results than the latter, but the former isn't always an option. With the former you know how to express yourself properly not just from knowing of so many examples of doing it right, but because from those examples you can just figure it all out on your own.

The analogue for the former approach for music would be learning to play things and practicing playing. Pick something challenging and interesting, figure out the best way to memorise and understand it, learn all the notes, understand the whole structure, then do it with a hundred pieces and you'll understand music better than anyone who just learnt to tell a Romanian scale from a minor Neapolitan scale. The caveat is that it doesn't work if you just learn where to put your fingers (like guitarists who only care about tablature), you absolutely need to understand the diatonic function of each note you're playing.

I think this is what is missing in a lot of people who try to make music these days. How many pieces have you really studied and know by heart? I'm tempted to think that for a lot of people making electronic music that number is pretty close to 0. Learn a jazz solo you find interesting (here's one I learnt many things from for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWvpUWOGHIw), or a whole theme from a movie, try to understand it until it becomes simple and obvious, and your understanding of music will advance greatly, for each new challenging and interesting piece you can study might contain many new lessons.

Remember that you don't master music until you can express yourself with music, just like any other language. And trying every church mode looking for interesting sounds isn't going to help you achieve that.

tl;dr: actually learn musics, not just things about music.

"Sunshine of my life" by Stevie wonder which uses the wholetone scale

Just for the weird little intro apparently. It seems a lot of pieces listed as using a wholetone scale use it just for a small thing. Guess what, it's hard to make listenable coherent music that normal humans can enjoy without at least a perfect fifth in there somewhere, if you understand music well enough this goes without saying. So that's exactly my point, good for you if you know what a wholetone scale is (not that it should take you more than a minute to understand what it is), but it's not exactly going to help you tremendously.