Do I need to know any more theory or do I know enough?

[HREQ]

RE: I hate learning theory, I've revisited it alot of times over the years.

My basic understanding as of now is:
Scales, Modes, Counter Melo/point
time signatures, polyrythm
modulation, modal interchange, paraell minor borrowing, 2-5-1's, secondary dominants, 7ths and up, augs, dims, whole tone, exotic scales,

I think most songs out there, pretty much are made just using a scale, it's Paraell minor, and modal interchange of same key, and some modulation to other keys

I don't see what else I could possibly learn, or the point of learning more than just basic scales and modulation / borrowing tbh

[JerGoertz]

To answer your question, you need to have a clear idea of your goals.

[vurt]

can you write the music you hear in your head?

[jancivil]

I hate learning theory

/ I think most songs out there, […]

I don't see what else I could possibly learn,

It seems to me hating a process - particularly one that’s deep like this - isn’t so conducive to a thorough-going understanding (unless there’s a masochistic dynamic that I’m not easily featuring).

The point of this seems more about validating not doing than a genuine enquiry. Compare “I hate thinking about compression” as an opener in “Production Techniques”. We should care?

We can’t know what you need from only seeing this.
Some of the best don’t know the words for what they know/have internalized from their experiences, and don’t care.
It sounds like you’re not enjoying an ease or a ready flow making the music. Music Theory has to be integrated with a whole praxis, a dry look at techniques in itself will be found wanting, methinks.

[HREQ]

I hate learning theory

/ I think most songs out there, […]

I don't see what else I could possibly learn,

It seems to me hating a process - particularly one that’s deep like this - isn’t so conducive to a thorough-going understanding (unless there’s a masochistic dynamic that I’m not easily featuring).

The point of this seems more about validating not doing than a genuine enquiry. Compare “I hate thinking about compression” as an opener in “Production Techniques”. We should care?

We can’t know what you need from only seeing this.
Some of the best don’t know the words for what they know/have internalized from their experiences, and don’t care.
It sounds like you’re not enjoying an ease or a ready flow making the music. Music Theory has to be integrated with a whole praxis, a dry look at techniques in itself will be found wanting, methinks.

To be honest, I feel like I know enough and can make the songs I want. I don't exactly hate learning but I've spent too much time learning and I hate doing it instead of opening up daw and "just doing it". I feel like I use constant research and learning as a procrastination technique instead of actually opening daw and doing the things I want for some reason, maybe related to "feeling inadequate" "nto confident enough" There's always a better musician, there's JAZZ pianists who could name any chord they hear in a song and instantly reproduce it on the keyboard. I feel like I've learned enough and want to just close the book on learning theory and get on with producing in DAW and just making music lol.

@vurt
this is a developed aural skill over time unless you are born with perfect pitch

I can figure out melodys but the more advanced things are trial are error till I figure it out. I also am fed up with this, I don't want to ear train for years with an ear training program just to be better at figuring out chords to put down / scales, meh lol

[FranklyFlawless]

RE: I hate learning theory, I've revisited it alot of times over the years.

My basic understanding as of now is:
Scales, Modes, Counter Melo/point
time signatures, polyrythm
modulation, modal interchange, paraell minor borrowing, 2-5-1's, secondary dominants, 7ths and up, augs, dims, whole tone, exotic scales,

I think most songs out there, pretty much are made just using a scale, it's Paraell minor, and modal interchange of same key, and some modulation to other keys

I don't see what else I could possibly learn, or the point of learning more than just basic scales and modulation / borrowing tbh

Most musicians stop at the pentatonic and diatonic scale. Everything past that is not needed for commercial music production unless you want more tonal expression. If you want that, I have suggestions for free educational resources, consisting of jazz theory and list of scales.

To be honest, I feel like I know enough and can make the songs I want. I don't exactly hate learning but I've spent too much time learning and I hate doing it instead of opening up daw and "just doing it". I feel like I use constant research and learning as a procrastination technique instead of actually opening daw and doing the things I want for some reason, maybe related to "feeling inadequate" "nto confident enough" There's always a better musician, there's JAZZ pianists who could name any chord they hear in a song and instantly reproduce it on the keyboard. I feel like I've learned enough and want to just close the book on learning theory and get on with producing in DAW and just making music lol.

@vurt
this is a developed aural skill over time unless you are born with perfect pitch

I can figure out melodys but the more advanced things are trial are error till I figure it out. I also am fed up with this, I don't want to ear train for years with an ear training program just to be better at figuring out chords to put down / scales, meh lol

Well your thread highlights that you still have doubts. You are not fooling anyone here, not even yourself, otherwise you would be on your DAW already.

You do not need ear training software to train your ear. You can just listen to music and reverse engineer from there through practice.

[i need Help]

can you write the music you hear in your head?

More importantly, can you write the music you hear

[dramatic pause]

in your heart?

[jancivil]

By the time I had any theory course, I had a pretty good ear and had arranged demos for a singer songwriter and then an original prog band with him as we grew. So my first in-class part writing in “diatonic harmony” was actually very accomplished, I used what I *knew* from doing music and listening and experimenting. (I knew from the evidence hearing Webb Wiggins play my writing directly I could legit become a composer.)
I didn’t wait. There was no internet and no personal computer, and tbh I think this all tends to foster an illusory mindset.*

I asked questions of people and watched guitarists during shows and on TV. By the time I was 18 and had a class, I had goals that for me otherwise wouldn’t have been met.

*Impatience to “produce” and get “in the DAW” like that’s it isn’t going to serve you well I don’t think, you’re liable to stay at this level.
I mean “I feel like I know enough“ is belied by your posts. I’ve been a musician for over half a century and I would never say such a thing.

[HREQ]

Well your thread highlights that you still have doubts. You are not fooling anyone here, not even yourself, otherwise you would be on your DAW already.

You do not need ear training software to train your ear. You can just listen to music and reverse engineer from there through practice.

Yes I said that I am doubtful/unsure lol

but I feel like I know enough already, I've literally went over the same subjects so many times over the years, but I just keep looking up more and waste more time, watching videos, etcs. I was fine not knowing anything before and just making music TBH. Now I feel like I must watch endless youtube video saved watchlists of things, same with mixing/mastering btw, MWTM etcs. I guess I do enjoy researching it for a bit, but then it becomes an obsession, and I get frustrated "why am I wasting all my time on this? I could just be in daw having fun" etcs, but now I'm just rambling and I feel like this topic is stupid now lol

why I made this topic? I don't know. Maybe to see how much other people know who make songs here, maybe to validate I know enough already, maybe to be scolded for asking a stupid question. TBH I hate the internet and endless resources available, I wish I just had a workstation keyboard instead of a daw.

[HREQ]

*Impatience to “produce” and get “in the DAW” like that’s it isn’t going to serve you well I don’t think, you’re liable to stay at this level.
I mean “I feel like I know enough“ is belied by your posts. I’ve been a musician for over half a century and I would never say such a thing.

you're correct in that we never stop learning, but in my case, I've developed a really stupid way of learning. I feel like I must go through everything possible, before I start again. In this way, over the last 10 years I've been into music production, I've only made about 20 songs, and the rest has been reading GS/KVR/ researching / writing things down / trying things out / reading tutorials...

While I see others "just doing it" and getting successful and making great songs. I am kind of justifying my words "I feel like I know enough" because I'm fed up with the internet and all the researching / debates etc. People in the 1990s, they just fricken got their instruments or whatever out and made the stuff, no one there to teach them, they learned by doing, etcs... Of course there's composers who've went through music schools first and everything, meh I don't know what I'm getting at lol

But you're right, we never stop learning, but in my case, I need to stop learning and start doing somehow until I learn to balance these things lol

[BertKoor]

Do the words "impostor syndrom" ring any bells?

In my youth I could only measure myself relative to the musicians I knew in person. Whatever there was on the radio, I could mostly figure out what it was. I needed a bit of being challenged to broaden my musical vocabulary with more complex chords. I feel I know enough theory for my own basic needs. I'm fine, thank you, although I can't catch all curved balls. But that's ok.

Now with the internet there is far more peer pressure than there ever was to get at least at the same level as those influencers. It's easier - too easy perhaps - to get a list of every single thing one could know by heart.


Music theory gives you a language to name things. There is the Active Vocabulary: things you apply in your own compositions. Contrary to Passive Vocabulary: things you can recognise in other music. And finally Not In Any Vocabulary: you don't know what you are hearing.



These vocabularies can only be expanded by training. It does not need to be hard, only enjoyable. Just listen, figure things out. In your head, or with a keyboard or guitar. You do play an instrument, right?

Is your active vocabulary large enough to speak out the musical thoughts you have?

Is it important? Maybe not so much as you think. I'd say do nothing for a while because there is no intrinsic motivation apart from the (imagined?) peer pressure.

Not as important as picking the right artist name

[lfm]

It depends who you want to impress?

I had a short seance with a piano teacher(3 lessons) and he was totally into Miles Davies.
He pointed out how MD broke a musical rule in a song and similar, that impressed him. For this teacher music was an intellectual game it seemed to me.

For me music is an international language that communicate things no matter which culture you are formed by. It hits you as a listener or it doesn't.

So I dropped this teacher. But he was impressed by MD from an intellectual point of view.

So figure out what you want with your music.
- impress other musicians
- make music that a listener cares about

If you are to set up a full orchestra you need to know a lot more. Range of each instrument, how that is notated for a musician to play it etc.

For me most difficult thing is to release my imagination to use other than traditional sounds and beats. An arranging thing. So influenced by the bands of the 60's that I grew up with.

Knowing just the basic idea of a key signature and a scale and some basic chord harmonizing has been useful. I don't care one bit about modes which is just a theoretical thing using another note as root note in the same scale. It does not help me one bit.
- just sit and fool around on an instrument and something pops out to be interesting
- some phrasing of some notes, or a chord sequence or anything
- something unexpected that makes it pop out
- and just go from there figuring out what the chords were and what the key signature might be

If you have some chord sequence and some melody it's about creating variations that makes it enteresting still after 8 bars. You need a bridge and some detours and similar.

What trip are you sending the listener on?
- it is a journey listening to music

If you have a main instrument, be better on that and that is a good foundation. I try to extend to be intermediate or more instruments. Always interesting and other ideas comes depending on which instrument you are on.

I would worry more about those things than theory.

Most of all, have fun....

[imrae]

Certainly one should be listening, performing and writing music while learning theory. Doing a lifetime's theory study at the start is not going to be very motivating.

With theory perhaps another question to consider is "do I understand everything I want to?" If you are really only interested in making commercial pop music then indeed diatonic scales and basic concepts of counterpoint, call/response, structures and modulation to dominant or relative major/minor will get you there.

But if you listen to music more widely and want to bring elements that seem special from those areas to your pop music then it will help to understand them.

I suspect that in lfm's Miles Davis example, the teacher was not purely impressed that a rule was broken; he will have been intrigued that it sounded good despite going against breaking basic principles. This implies that advanced principles exist, and so that there is more to learn...

In science we tend to be interested in phenomena that don't follow established models, as they give the best information about more subtle ones.The photoelectric effect was not just an intellectual curiousity; it was a clue that we would be able to do so much more with light.

[nanostream]

<deleted>

[vurt]

can you write the music you hear in your head?

More importantly, can you write the music you hear

[dramatic pause]

in your heart?

the rhythm is fairly simple.