Trouble understanding why some people are reluctant to learn music theory.

[lunardigs]

... which takes time

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

... which takes time

For real.....and seems like folk are pretty stretched out.

[Uncle E]

Too true. If you're not making money from it, not getting college credit for it, or not getting joy from doing it, then why would you?

[lunardigs]

Right.
Good thing about it though is it's been a lifelong effort. Which, in turn, keeps the ideas coming.

[Michael L]

This free epub textbook "Comprehensive Musicianship, A Practical Resource" clearly and systematically explains musical ideas useful for composing. It includes embedded audio examples, with sight singing (!) and ear training exercises.

https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/comprehe ... icianship/

[ROTMetro]

I chose to play Bach when I practiced as a kid. I tend to make the most generic sounding choices. So I lean on whatever to help break out of the mold I trained under.

[HerrSaxer]

A lot might be deterred from school music theory lessons with "forbidden" parallel octaves and fifth while powerchords sound so good. Often theory in school is limited to classical music and it's rules without clarifying that it's about classical music only.

[cron]

For me, not being fluent with notation makes it difficult to get into. Sure you can pick up the circle of fifths, the very basics of modulation etc when described in text and diagrams, but it's quite tough/painfully slow going beyond that without notation fluency. Obviously you can't expect to read a book without understanding the language its written in, but getting to the point where you can begin really learning is super daunting. I'd assume a lot of people making music these days don't own/play an instrument (tbh it's been 10 years since I picked my guitar up and I always sucked), probably a lot of amazing producers have never even touched one, and becoming fluent with notation means some serious dedication to sitting down and playing.

There's also that feeling of having stalled. Whenever you learn a new skill, there's all this exciting low-hanging fruit to pick off that keeps you excited and engaged, but I probably stripped that vine raw a full 20 years ago when it comes to music theory. I got really into fractal and 3D art during the pandemic, and by far the hardest part was transitioning from low-hanging fruit to the beginnings of finesse. The exciting rapid improvement slows down and the dedication begins. I'd love to have that experience properly learning music, but the vine is looking pretty musty and I'm not sure that trajectory is available to me any more.

[Michael L]

there are many online resources for learning notation scales and chords, like earmaster.com or artofcomposing.com or Ethan Hein's blog or the Everyday Tonality book but learning from a *Real Person* like a local teenager can be more fun

[mjolnir]

A lot might be deterred from school music theory lessons with "forbidden" parallel octaves and fifth while powerchords sound so good. Often theory in school is limited to classical music and it's rules without clarifying that it's about classical music only.

^That is EXACTLY what I went through in my first year of college... up until a buddy of mine who was rather advanced asked the teacher about some Jazz chords. Then all of a sudden the teacher was politely like, "Well, actually those chords just don't exist." And we were dumbfounded as a class, but then he picked up the beat and was like "...within the structure of music by Bach".

But we didn't learn this stuff until the teach told us mid semester, and not until AFTER my buddy asked about Jazz chords.

But if you think about it, most pop music across the ages, is very unlike Bach.
I really wish colleges would quit teaching such a limited repertoire and calling it "Music" in general.

However, on the bright side, schools like the Berklee School of Music have programs where you can take a whole course on Duke Ellington or Miles Davis or something like that (at least back in the 1990s they did). I'm not joking. This is legit and the teachers are prepping the virtuosos for real life success, in my opinion.

And these days we have fun(?) videos like this now...

...which I don't agree with, yet it's entertaining.

[MattOCM]

Hello there,
MIDI chord pack are, imo the best way to trigger inspiration, samples an AI do too much of the work. At least with chords, there's more creative headroom.

[jancivil]

[Ah_Dziz]

Mostly the people who don't want to learn are put off /Intimidated by the notation (key signatures and relative keys) and terminology. Learning all the modes by playing them in various positions and then learning the symbols for chords along with forming them on an instrument and what inversions are is a good starting point. Also teaching what frequency is and how that maps to pitch and at the same time creates a recognizable timbre (if people are semi good with math this concept is easy and makes lot's of things about sound more intuitive). Also explaining intervals in terms of "constructive and destructive interference" rather than "consonance and dissonance " is helpful because "pleasing to the ear" is a very subjective thing.
Unfortunately it's not where most theory books start. I bought a few theory books when I started out. They took me years to get through and there's a huge amount of things in them that I've never thought about again or had any use for. I got way more use out of a chord book I bought when I got my first keyboard. It was just every named chord up to 11ths along with all the ways to write it and every inversion. It had all the inversions shown on a keyboard as well. I discovered lots of neat and useful things by simply playing all of the listed chords for a given note in different sequences and then picking two different notes and trying combinations of the chords based on those notes together. And on and on.

[jancivil]

People's aptitudes vary so widely... we can't ignore it in this kind of consideration.
As to math and music theory, there isn't anything beyond basic arithmetic in M.T. per se. Music is a language.
So my math aptitude is a good ways from tip-top but there won't be a whole lotta use for it in my toolbox. For instance, intuitively one guesses since A @ 880 cycles is twice A=440 it seems like the next A "an octave higher". One needs more than this to suss the exact frequencies of the other 11 occurring before the 'octave' replication.
Then one needs the information to grok why after 12 tones we're even saying "octave". Tip: it's not a math problem.

This kind of material won't tend to be included in a music theory course, not that I'm familiar with anyway. If you're going to get into tunings and temparament this'll tend to come up, but that's going further than music theory is generally expected to encompass.

But as far as math and this topic goes, we have the math as children.
The aptitude that I believe has one *apt* for MT is for a grasp of grammar and syntax.

I have no idea why notation is tough for people. But I was trying to learn something yesterday I had to put off til later because it was tedious & no fun at all.

[mjolnir]

I think it's a combination of the cultural elitism and reliance on lots of memorization that gets people down.
Not everyone is going to experience the cultural elitism, but if you compare music theory based tunes to everything else it starts to stick out like a sore thumb.