Music theory. The easiest?

[musicbykamt]

Please tell me the fastest and easiest way to learn music theory I've been making my own music for years and I really need this. Thanks!

[Benedict]

The "problem" with Music Theory is that, like Maths, most people who know maths already use maths to explain maths. While it is perfectly correct, 1+1 is always 2, if you don't grok math language yet, it is circularly pointless. I watched my partner (who is good at maths, physics etc) try to teach her youngest math with math. It was failing. I put aside maths language, and reverted to bananas and pieces of pie. We got there. Wee thing got good at maths.

In that spirit, I made a whole series of videos that take one through the basics of Harmony in practice. I focus on the basic mindset and avoid all the usual self-referencing Thou Shalt finger-waving that puts people off.

Intro video:

Whole series: https://benedictroffmarsh.com/2023/08/0 ... effective/

[jancivil]

Can't advise not knowing where you are in your journey and what you want from MT or where do ypu see yourself headed to with it. Harmony theory, past the basic introductory facts generally or even pervasively is quite conservative in that the principles hark back to procedures of JS Bach in the early 18th c., music that was derived from lines; as opposed to here are chords like a solid block of three or more notes always sounding at the same time and what goes better in a melodic line with those. So pop music is grounded in the latter. The one doing a strings arrangement might better have that education in voice leading though.

So there are rules, for reasons. The goal is clarity and nimbleness. These reasons may work against you, for instance if you want to make metal music.

START with ear training. Get to recognize intervals and a sense of the character or feels from them fluently.

[lfm]

There are no rules, or don't let rules limit you.
- but if to transfer into notation some stuff helps

At the time I had a song I felt like hiring a vocalist for, I came to needing notation
- what key is this in?
- and comment was, that is a bit low for me! Can you raise the key two half steps, please
- so were into transposing and scale and key came into the picture, so had to learn some basics

So look for harmonising chords from a scale, like major or minor, that will probably be useful.
- you have 7 notes in a scale like that, the octaves up and down
- 1, 4 and 5 from root note of major scale are major chords, 2, 3 and 6 become minor chords, and 7th it's own thing
- this is from taking notes 1,3 and 5 interval from each position in the scale,
- then you come into what jancivil wrote, about intervals
- some will create major third, two full steps or minor third three half steps, making the chord major or minor

Then you create inversions of those chords, and making each of the three basic notes in the bass.

I visualize from keyboards/piano, I find that easy to find the way.
- so start with only white keys to make the major C-scale something to start with which intervals are there

But if going orchestral and all instruments involved and make notation there are many things above this, if to make notation for that.
- each instrument in an symphony orchestra is a bit different how they are notated if to hire people

As OP made plenty music already, the feel for it is there. But translating to more people some things help.

IF this is "kicking in open doors" don't be offended, OP were very vague in what he knows....

[jancivil]

I don't know, but it's shown to be pretty typical in this kind of post, what's missing with people today is learning music from other people's music FIRST. Before we abstract anything.

I don't remember having to think about how a chord was constructed, I'd played the usual open position chords off of sheet music, some of it had barre chords, so when I got more interested in the guitar and went to take things off of records it wasn't a mystery, the distances and relationships and whatnot.

I figured out most of side one of Abbey Road. You Never Give Me Your Money impressed me because it went places, it didn't just sit there. I learned tons of things off of that one song. I sought to learn all of the parts. I learned standard moves in rock guitar like parallel sixths in key, how McCartney modulated key; voicings off of the piano part and how the bass articulated the chord changes.

McCartney never knew formally what a lot of it was called. I knew running sixths, major and minor sixths within the key were sixths, it seemed obvious. I watched guitarists on TV, I went to concerts and stood close to the stage and watched. I pestered people that played and asked questions. There was no book. At this time I'm 14. I didn't get a course in theory til I was 18. I felt I had to because I needed to know how Bach did that. I had a head start on it, big time.

[Michael L]

The most exciting way for me to learn theory is Bandcamp. There is so much variety, you can really zero in to the musical style, ideas and theory that works for you.
BC has a lot of top-tier musicians with very innovative musical theories, but not over-produced like streaming is, so it’s easy to learn from. The high resolution downloads are quite helpful with details, and sometimes I email the producer with questions. I have learned more from BC than anything else. YMMV

[EatMe]

Please tell me the fastest and easiest way to learn music theory I've been making my own music for years and I really need this. Thanks!

The Dutch music theory book that I studied, "Algemene Muziekleer" by "Theo Willemze", starts with a line about the book possibly being dangerous, because music in practice, practical music, is more important than using any music theory behind it.

The good news is: The book "Algemene Muziekleer" is the best book I ever bought.

The bad news is: it took me at least 6 years to finish the book. Some things really need time to fall in, process, and some items need to be read 5 times and seeked examples for before understanding one theoretical point.

[jancivil]

music in practice, practical music, is more important than using any music theory behind it

The problem with this statement is the absolutist 'than using any'. It's a naive statement but stated so very confidently as though a solid truism.

It's bizarre to see that given that your threads are clueless abstractions in terms of chord names where use of will have well disabused you of mistakes decoupled from practice entirely.

(I mean, a host of complicated-looking chord symbols based in "Bm7 #5"? Bm#5 is B D Fx (double sharp); in practice it's only ever B D G: G major in first inversion. It's theory for its own sake yet you skipped theory really. No one hears a 'minor augument fifth' triad, it doesn't exist in the real world.)

There's a whole practice involved in developing one's own musical language, you develope a vocabulary; if you haven't encountered more than what you do just talking all the time, and know how it was constructed it doesn't happen. Your dichotomy is false.

[jancivil]

The "problem" with Music Theory is that, like Maths, most people who know maths already use maths to explain maths.

In that spirit, I made a whole series of videos that take one through the basics of Harmony in practice. I focus on the basic mindset...

Intro video:

Advisement for people that are looking for basic information on harmony, I'll save you ten minutes of your time: this totally isn't that topic.

The producer mindset you accurately portray and seek to correct in that video has a problem that should be addressed more directly and succinctly: they've never done any music before; learn music by doing music, we start with other people's music and if we're apt for this we see and hear it working.

"Music Theory" is an abstraction of that on a different plane.

Even Miles Davis has said don't learn music from music theory.


If there's finger wagging "don't do this" bugging you or that here, look: there are two choices with people that make mistakes like the above, leave it be or say this is not how it works. It'll only waste people's time and need correcting later.

[Michael L]

Paul McCartney said he and John not knowing how to read or write music was an advantage. When he sat down to write, his mind was a 'black box' so any tune he heard was original, and had to be memorable enough that he could play it for John. They would then play it together a couple weeks later for George and Ringo in the studio, just before recording.

[jancivil]

I was thinking about McCartney last night after Bombadil brought it into one of the Off Topic threads, 'and he still can't read music'.
There is nothing he did for Beatles where notation won't have been an unnecessary step; he got an idea, he went directly to forming it physically, he knew what it was. Not only was he super adept at songwriting, the parts he wrote were of the highest level of musicianship. His bass parts, you couldn't improve on them.

But take for example the piccolo trumpet part in Penny Lane: he just sang the lines to the guy. I don't get the sense they were worked on, he was gassed on some Bach he'd heard and wanted to get that in his music. It's perfect writing in the style. Yes, it's derived, but anybody else, to do that means they had the training and studied it.
But even beyond this, he had the whole concept, the song's chord progression suits the lines perfectly.

I felt I had to have 'theory' because I heard Bach organ fugues (before that Keith Emerson's fugue); I wasn't going to grasp how that's constructed picking it off the record. And I hadn't sorted polyphony on the guitar really. By the time I got in a class, I'd been writing parts with fair facility; my training was copying what was played, lights were turned on in my mind.

So, there's a level of making music that doesn't need the abstraction; verbal language is superfluous, notating it means you can't remember it once you're no longer playing it. However knowing things will take you to a further plane of musical thought.