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Comments
But you can still learn to orchestrate without reading music.
Music theory is useful for:
It isn’t necessary for any of the above. For me it helps deconstruct others music and give an extended palate and purpose to what I might just create noodling.
Yes, I consider them two separate but related areas of knowledge.
Music theory vs. sight reading/scribing.
I mentioned my cello-playing daughter. She can sight read really well, she can write music down with effort, but she has no clue about music theory beyond understanding basic concepts and terminology as it relates to a specific piece she is learning. She doesn’t have an idea of how these music theory concepts connect to the larger picture.
She is in the inverse situation compared to composers who cannot read/write music on paper.
Great comments, as always!. Enjoying reading them all. 🙌🤘
Glad to see there’s many other “punk spirits” around. I too though that music theory would spoil my soul and instincts. At a young age I could see how the kids who would take guitar lessons would end up playing bossa nova to show off. It really put me off.
I should start another thread with. Who hates guitar solos?. I do. Not all solos, of course, but the technical ones where they fly over some scales at full speed just give me shivers.
It’s funny cos I switched from the 6 string guitar to a 3 string CGB for the more “primal” feeling. I enjoy not knowing the chords and finding my way around by instinct. But I guess that’s enabled by many years of playing guitar.
I do think I need to learn the basic chords on a piano. Gain a little confidence. And for that, knowing the basic theory of what makes a chord is very helpful. Again, it was trying to play the Push that made me realized I had never stopped to think about the third/fifth/seventh and so on.
As long as music theory doesn’t turn into music practice, I’m ok
I know I - IV - V.
Does that count?
😃
I have my own theory about music, music is like this:
There’s a note (until there’s a note, it isn’t music yet), and it has a frequency (or tone), and it has a duration
After that note, there might be a gap, and if there is a gap, it has a duration
After that gap (or if there isn’t one, after the aforementioned note) there might be another note
That new note might be higher, or lower or the same tone as the previous note, and it has a duration
After all this, there might be more notes, which are higher, lower, or the same tone, in varying durations, and maybe separated by gaps, in varying durations, and this general way of doing things continues until the music stops
All aforementioned durations vary in length
That’s it
One thing that’s helped me a lot is the Circle of Fifths. If you can get that fixed in your mind it gives you a picture of the relationship of all the keys and chords. Because it’s a circle you can visualize it as spacial relationships.
If, for example, you write a song in C with the chords C F and G, you can ‘see’ the chords you would use if you changed the key to, say, D very quickly.
Also, you can visualize the relationship of other chords to C by noticing their distance from C on circle. Then, if you shift the root key those relationships around the circle stay the same.
(The smaller inner circle here are the relative minor chords associated with their major keys)
I was a music major for 1 quarter. The year at my university was divided into 3 quarters instead of 2 semesters. So for that one quarter, I took the music theory course sequence for music majors.
The theory I learned made it easier to learn melody lines, figure out chord progressions, etc. by ear. Useful for learning to play cover tunes. Also useful for creating my own parts to go with someone else's song.
So you did it in triple meter?
I use theory a bit and know a lot of it but it mostly just helps me get my ideas out faster with more fluency and gives me a language to express that with other musicians. You can get really far on just ear alone for sure but knowing theory has just helped me get to that point faster. It really doesn’t railroad you as much as you would think cos I don’t strictly adhere to theory but it is another tool I can use in my musical arsenal
I didn't get it either until I realized summer was/is the 4th quarter.
I couldn’t have said it better. I adore Fugazi. For the record, my favorite guitar player is Elliott Smith, that man had 6 fingers and 2 hearts.
I keep seeing this circle and I don’t understand it 🤯. I’ll try and find a YouTube video on it. But I don’t think I have a problem with identifying what chords sound good at a given moment. I can just try them out, gives me (naive) impression that I’m in charge. Although Inevitably you’ll probably end up in the same place only slower, but then it’s MY chord.
Ah, a quarter rest.
Quite the dad joker you are
do it in triple meter
Yes, definitely. One thing you could try is playing guitar chords by following the circle diagram. Start with C, G, F and you’ll hear why they are next to each other on the circle. Then go from C to other chords and you’ll hear their flavors as they get further away from C. Then do the same thing starting at a different key and you’ll hear how all the >relationships< between chords stay the same for each key around the circle.
I too like doing it rather than hear somebody talk about it - ( but on the other hand, knowledgeable people will have in depth info too that might be useful.)
Most music theory is user-friendly and trivially easy to learn, so why not do that? Music theory in your brain is still the best generative app.
Interesting video. The hyperbolic racial rhetoric doesn’t get us anywhere musical, but there is utility in the core observation. I’ve learned Western, Mid-eastern, and Indian music theories. It’s like having three different generative apps, each with its own recognizable style of output. I highly recommend it. This stuff is not difficult to learn. Installing a new generative app in your brain is very fun and rewarding.
This article should ease your mind: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/
Basic theory has helped grow my sense of confidence while playing, jamming and writing way more then just randomly playing notes and chords until I find the right one.
Sometimes out of frustration I just smash chords or notes until I find what I’m looking for. But most of the time When it comes to new ideas for melodies knowing the scales and how to relate them to the chords of a progression is very beneficial for me.
Totally agree with this. Homer was blind. He didn't need to write it down. But to communicate it over thousands of years, and to be able to decipher that communication… those things require theory.
You can be pretty sure Homer listened to a lot of poetry. I imagine he knew the rules but he didn’t create using them. He had a feel for it.
I know very little theory beyond the very basics. My music (voluminous as it is) came from a focus on melody, note to note feeling, the shapes my fingers take on a keyboard and listening to a lot of music.
As a result I don’t play very well with others, but I’m fine on my own. I can’t reproduce what I do. My musical memory is the worst.
Somehow I found a way to do the things I dreamed of musically. It involved surrender, risk taking, and being nonjudgmental. I took the alternate path. I was taught to come from a feeling place. This feeling is everywhere.
Learning to access it has absolutely nothing to do with music theory.
If you use not knowing theory to beat yourself over the head, then learning theory may not resolve the shortcomings you feel. All the greats knew what they were doing. They got it to work within the context of their own musical aspirations. Most know all there is to know to be musically great… somehow.
For me personally music theory is very important , not so much as sight reading , which I can do, but just knowing theory , knowing chords, scales etc throughout years has been necessary , especially for recording sessions or doing shows with live bands. while learning songs by ear is definitely a big part of it, being able to read a chord chart greatly speeds up the process in most cases for me. And also aside from that being able to look at a chord chart and play a song, it also can inspired new ideas. One of my most used IPad apps is Ireal Pro, I would highly recommend it. It’s a great pratice tool and shows you the notes in the chords of songs and it can show the chords in different voicings. I don’t think it’s 100% necessary for everyone to learn music theory but I think even on a basic level it’s very useful.
I’m a former Band geek: scholarship, jazz band, site reading, transpose on site, perfect pitch, all that. Music theory for me is nice if I need it. But when I’m writing a song I just hit a note and then hit then next one that sounds nice etc. I know it’ll end up in a key and a mode and a rhythm but not by design.
You left out playing more than one note at a time, I think. And feeling, I’m thinking.
Everyone should watch this, at least fora while.
Music theory isn't necessarily needed if you're producing beats, but if you want to break away from the 4-bar loop/8-bar loop and even learn to notate music, music theory is a must. Not just Western music theory mind you, but music theory from all over the world to broaden your horizons. Here is the melodic sketch for my upcoming Chiptune "OK GO!" to be released on my "Within Gadget" EP.
I'm notating my next melodic sketch even as we speak.
Nice
What do you think of Bb/D instead of Bb/F in line 2, m.2; and Dm - C/D - Bb/D - E7 in the last 4 measures of the sketch?
Chiptune is king! ✊