Why learn music theory?

Ask general music theory or songwriting questions, get feedback!

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jonetsu
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:
42low wrote: More and more people are creating their music without any real instrument, and reason is clear: learning to play instrument is hard. However, I still try it, because it is fun. For guitar playing, theory is not helping too much, because with guitar you can't select notes you want, but you have to pick pattern you fingers can make :-)
Well, playing keyboard is also not a given.

I'm not sure what you meant with the last sentence. You can certainly pick the notes you want on a guitar. I rarely use a pick to play guitar, I prefer fingers. Same with acoustic bass guitar.

For both or for any instrument, feeling is utmost I find. As such yes, music theory can be left a bit behind. When someone knows how to find the way on an instrument then many things can be expressed. But if playing in a band and a guy asks "please play a Dmin Sus4" then knowing what it's about surely helps.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote: More and more people are creating their music without any real instrument, and reason is clear: learning to play instrument is hard. However, I still try it, because it is fun. For guitar playing, theory is not helping too much, because with guitar you can't select notes you want, but you have to pick pattern you fingers can make :-)
I'm not sure what you meant with the last sentence. You can certainly pick the notes you want on a guitar. I rarely use a pick to play guitar, I prefer fingers. Same with acoustic bass guitar.

For both or for any instrument, feeling is utmost I find. As such yes, music theory can be left a bit behind. When someone knows how to find the way on an instrument then many things can be expressed. But if playing in a band and a guy asks "please play a Dmin Sus4" then knowing what it's about surely helps.
First of all, you messed with quotations, putting my words to mounth of 42low. Maybe he does not like that :-)

And for that "with guitar you can't select notes you want" : In guitar you can't have notes of chord in same octave. If you want to play Em7, you can't have E2, G2, B2, D3. Instead, you have E2,B2,D3,G3,B3,E4. Voicings of chords depend which chord you have, and your ability to play complex chords. And for going to more complex chord that 7th, you may hit the wall that chord is not possible to play at all. Or at least with my ability to play, I definitely can't get chords from some genius composition, but instead have to check what chords I can play, and make music with them.

Sure, with multiple recorded guitars/multiple players, all possible harmonies are possible. Or doing midi with daw.

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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by chaocrator »

Why learn music theory?
my answer: to be able to use weird exotic scales and to build chords, chord progressions & arpeggios with them.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote: First of all, you messed with quotations, putting my words to mounth of 42low. Maybe he does not like that :-)
Yeah, the quotation header was wrongly edited.
tavasti wrote: And for that "with guitar you can't select notes you want" : In guitar you can't have notes of chord in same octave. If you want to play Em7, you can't have E2, G2, B2, D3. Instead, you have E2,B2,D3,G3,B3,E4. Voicings of chords depend which chord you have, and your ability to play complex chords. And for going to more complex chord that 7th, you may hit the wall that chord is not possible to play at all. Or at least with my ability to play, I definitely can't get chords from some genius composition, but instead have to check what chords I can play, and make music with them.
You can play quite a few chords on guitar. I do not know what complex chords are, but using chord inversions and going down the neck almost any chord can be played. I certainly can play notes in the same octave within a chord. E2 and G2 can certainly be played at the same time.

I do not care at all about 'genius composition'. I have never played full pieces made by other people. I play what I can play and what I can play is often dictated by feelings, moods, etc... and expresses itself through the current ability to play. I never think about chords nor scales. Most often I do not know what chords I'm playing nor what scale I use. I know the notes I can hit on a fretboard for a given harmonic content and I know where I can 'get out' of that harmonic content to risk 'outsider' notes which in turn can make the background content evolve.

It often a question of layering and adapting. A first background layer will receive additional instruments (also guitar) and these new instruments can 'bend' the previous layer in directions not suspected at the beginning. Thus a piece evolves in creation. Still no knowledge of chords being played or scales. But the piece evolves nevertheless, organically.

I noticed that pianoteq can show which chord is being played on a keyboard. Maybe I will be able to use the chord wheel I have gotten last year and pick up automatically new chords to play along :)
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

42low wrote:Why do more difficult then it's played originally? Why compose difficult if it can be done at least the same and quicker more easy? A lot off songs wouldn't even exist if they had to be composed in full chords.
This is a great principle but although it sounds like the easy way (hey, doing less should be less effort) it turns out that it's a feeling to develop. And we all have a tendency to do more. Because more should be better.

There's a great satisfaction to remove notes, and even tracks and still find out that everything holds together. Even better with less.

Somewhere it has to do with listening to what happens between the notes. Between the notes you find the listener.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

42low wrote:The best received songs, no mather which styles, are mostly the rather simple ones with great impact. To difficult composed songs don't reach majorities in public. Probably because they wouldn't sound "natural" and "comforting".
Not sure about comforting but there's something about simplicity of expression and musical waves.
42low wrote:It is a part of the art off composing too to reach the most extraordinairy results in a way which remains possible in a relatively easy way.
It's indeed one of the difficult goals. Even if you take something 'simple' like a piano and a flute, there are always ways to complicate matters. Put more piano notes, more chords calculated changes, more flute notes. Imagine with a full band or orchestra.
42low wrote:If you would dig into the most difficult classic compositions you would find out that even all those early composers found ways to reach that, to sound exeptional but meanwhile not strumble wen to play it but to keep it possible. That's exactly why they still are respected as great composers, even hundreds off years later within nowadays standards. They were the first who showed the impossible as possible.
I did not take piano lessons much, but I did take for about 6 months, by a classical pianist who happened to be one of the top mathematicians at that time. And so I worked at playing some simple Bach tunes (that it seems his wife actually composed :) ) and found out in practice what it means to get simple and to the point.
42low wrote:If you want to learn some music theory, then learn the basics like reading notes, understanding sequences and some other stuff like basic chords. But eventually try to learn those tricks. Don't try to invent the wheel again as other musicians did invent several different ones already.
Well now, this is now where I disagree fully. While I agree that knowing 'tricks' can be useful, I feel that creating (not composing !) music is one fully free activity in which creation should be the prime star.

There's a very good saying about music from drummer and 'creative composer' Christian Vander in the last link I posted in " which song is coming out of your speakers right now?" which summarizes a lot of the intent and feeling. It's after the first piece from the seventies. I'll see if I can take the time to translate it.
Last edited by jonetsu on Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

There's one thing regarding music theory I would like to know about and it's based on a question. I can sing to most songs that are playing and hit mostly the right notes. In most if not all of the songs the vocals sit in the music being played.

Not so with XTC. And perhaps the Beatles. No matter how hard I try to sing the same notes, it's very difficult. I do that when driving the car, so there's ample time to concentrate. With XTC the vocals are not sitting in the harmonies I find like all other songs, which is what gives the XTC songs an edge amongst other things. They are somewhat perpendicular to the music and there must be some well-known theory about this.

For example:

"King for a Day"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=depsFULhqV8
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by briandc »

jonetsu wrote:There's one thing regarding music theory I would like to know about and it's based on a question. I can sing to most songs that are playing and hit mostly the right notes. In most if not all of the songs the vocals sit in the music being played.

Not so with XTC. And perhaps the Beatles. No matter how hard I try to sing the same notes, it's very difficult. I do that when driving the car, so there's ample time to concentrate. With XTC the vocals are not sitting in the harmonies I find like all other songs, which is what gives the XTC songs an edge amongst other things. They are somewhat perpendicular to the music and there must be some well-known theory about this.

For example:

"King for a Day"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=depsFULhqV8
Well thanks for getting me back into listening to a bit of XTC! (apparently Colin Moulding studied bass guitar for just 1 year..!)

As for theory: I think it depends on what you want to do. Theory can give you a framework from which to interpret everything. But it can also hinder new perspectives. Currently, I'm of the idea that studying theory serves to reassure you of the needlessness of studying theory. If you don't study it, you can experiment and come up with your own interpretations. It requires attention though. I've studied a good bit of theory. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it gets in the way. (Looking at the keyboard backwards can help break out of that though. Or just really getting into things one note at a time, finding what you like, no matter what others say or think. :) )


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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by raboof »

tavasti wrote:One of my friend has created something like 10 records of melodic / opera metal. Beginning of production was played with real guitar and bass, programmed synths and drums, real vocals. He says that about 5 years ago he stopped recording guitars, and started to make them with midi. He could play them with guitar, but that would mean spending much time on practicing guitar playing, many recording takes to get some rhythm guitar perfect. Now he can create those parts with 'programming'. He feels himself more as a composer than artist.

Now this discussion has somehow turned to talking about right and wrong things on playing guitar. More and more people are creating their music without any real instrument, and reason is clear: learning to play instrument is hard. However, I still try it, because it is fun. For guitar playing, theory is not helping too much, because with guitar you can't select notes you want, but you have to pick pattern you fingers can make :-)
It's interesting: while I can certainly relate, I've also had the opposite experience: my main instrument is the sax (tenor and baritone), and at some point I got a WX11 synth. This is a device with saxophone-like fingering, but produces digital signals that and need a separate synth to generate actual sounds. It has its own intermediate format which it can then convert to MIDI.

The fun thing, of course, is it doesn't have to sound like a sax: there are some pretty spacey synths that work well with it.

Even after some practice, though, this instrument mainly made me realize how much 'unconscious' expression I can use when I play a regular sax. Of course I could regain some of it with more practice, but mainly it'd require a ton of post-processing - to the point where just picking up a normal sax seems more effective and fun ;).

It very much depends on the kind of part you're doing, of course, though: I guess for a repetitive accompaniment thing generating something declaratively would actually be more fun and quite possibly lead to a more high-quality result. Good to have all kinds of different tools at our disposal ;).
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

42low wrote:
tavasti wrote:Now this discussion has somehow turned to talking about right and wrong things on playing guitar.
My excuses if i made that impression.
In a free discussion about music theory there will eventually be references to instruments we play since we're not PhD in theory.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by thetotalchaos »

I agree that is worth knowing music theory. And knowing it in detail can only make your life as an artist/producer easier and much richer. But knowing music theory does not mean follow music theory. Its even worse if you are afraid to break some rules in searching for original results. You want some examples of artists that like to play with the rules. How about John Cage or Claude Debussy. How about relatively modern music genres like Techno, EDM and its derivatives.
In XXI century if you play by the rules, you become nothing more than a biological music application. Know the rules, learn the rules, but compose and produce out of the box. Make mistakes both theoretical and technical. Let me know that a human produced this music. Not a bot or an application. And if you don't know music theory but nevertheless want to compose and produce music. JUST DO IT. Don't let anything stop your creativity. At the end all you need to impress with good music are your ears and your heart being at the right places.

I produced my first music when i was 11. A quarter of a century ago. One of my first compositions was me playing a particular Atari-2600 video game in sync with a drum rhythm from a Casio keyboard. And my piano teacher loved it. That one in particular. She trained me in a more jazz oriented way. And she was one of my first music fans. She gave the knowledge and the knowhow to compose and improvise music. She build a solid base to step on and improve over. Mrs Todorova was an amazing woman, amazing musician and amazing teacher.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by Dominique »

I begun to play music by following classical music curses. 2 years piano first and after 2 or 3 years guitar. This made me completely unable to play the most simple blues. It took me more than 1 year playing the same 12 mesures blues to finally get it: that's so simple.

I also took 2 years curses into a jazz school. I don't regret it because it gave me a good comprehension of how the occidental music is build. But it was a pytty. I didn't learned music but tricks: on that chord, you can play that scale, and on this one this scale. Bullshit! That's bullshit because a chord is nothing on itself but a few notes vertically arranged, and to get its musical role you must take in account the whole theme with all the instruments or at least the bass, and that both vertically and horizontally.

that's bullshit because you can play one 1 note and keep it a lot of time. It will sound good if it is the right note for that song and you play it with the right feeling. B.B King was an expert of playing so. Also, we all make mistakes. Sometime we play the wrong note, but if you keep playing and succeed to resolve it into the context of the song, we cam make that wrong note to sounds good. Well, not always, it is why practice is so important. It is one of the 2 reasons why I practice everything, chords, scales, rhythms, everything, into the context of a song.

The second reason why I do that is because I hate to practice scales for themselves. I find it completely boring, But I have a lot of fun playing scales or chords or rhythms into a song context. For the scales, most of the time don't ask me what scale I am playing because I just don't know. It was necessary for me to learn a few basic scales first, like blues pentatonic and triads. Pentatonics can be used almost everywhere, and triads are the basis of the jazz arpeggios, with 3 notes (I+III+V), you know what you play and they will always sounds good. For the other notes, like with the blues chords, just use your feeling. Another useful thing is to know the basic substitutions you can make. The first blues songs was on 1 chord, and just by making chords substitutions and introducing V-I, II-V-I and VI-II-V-I chords progressions, they made it to the jazz over the years. Beside that, what one will need most to learn to play is to practice.

Rhythms are also very important. I like to practice most of my songs with different rhythms, tempos and signatures. For me, the magic rhythm is the cuban son. It comes from the Yoruba culture of Senegal and its basis, the clave, is a 2 bars rhythm made of 2 different rhythms. For the guitar, the best tutor I know for that rhythm is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3if5ME5gGo
He show different ways to play it. I practice it everyday with any kind of songs or chords, and found other ways to play it as well. Also, if you simplify it by removing the strokes on the guitar, this allow to play it 2 times faster and you will be playing punk music or something like that.

Also memory is something amazing. It was many years ago, we was playing on a blues with some buddies, I play a solo with my guitar, and at the end of the solo, I realized I just played the melody of the Ravel's Bolero. It just fit, and the most amazing is that I played that song on the piano before, but never played it at the guitar. And it just went out and fit on that blues at that moment.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by jonetsu »

Dominique wrote: that's bullshit because you can play one 1 note and keep it a lot of time. It will sound good if it is the right note for that song and you play it with the right feeling. B.B King was an expert of playing so. Also, we all make mistakes. Sometime we play the wrong note, but if you keep playing and succeed to resolve it into the context of the song, ...
Good thoughts overall. I wanted to reply since some time. The right note at the right time. That's basically it.

What are mistakes in the end ? Mistakes happens when there's something going on that's not planned. Playing sheet music and hitting the wrong note is a mistake. In improvisations there can be mistakes, but of another kind: when the note is really not played rightly for the moment. Even 'rightly' can be questioned. If I throw a metal chord in a ambient piece it might be just OK. But it certainly doe snot carry the very well defined definition of being a mistake in the technical sense.
Dominique wrote: It is one of the 2 reasons why I practice everything, chords, scales, rhythms, everything, into the context of a song.
As for me, creating music is my practice. I took some classical piano lessons for a short while, the easy Bach material that his wife wrote and that's it. It has its drawbacks because it's a bit of work to exchange with other musicians: I have to translate to my ecosystem. If someone throws me a standard D maj9 then I have to translate to what it means for me.
Dominique wrote: The second reason why I do that is because I hate to practice scales for themselves. I find it completely boring,
Same here. I never had any interest in playing scales. I find that so empty while making music, making sounds, is such a less mundane thing. I practice by challenging myself at times. Can I really play that thing I imagined ?
Dominique wrote: The first blues songs was on 1 chord, and just by making chords substitutions and introducing V-I, II-V-I and VI-II-V-I chords progressions, they made it to the jazz over the years. Beside that, what one will need most to learn to play is to practice.
It's funny how people with some musical education refer to blues for rhythm. I find blues not really rich in rhythm. It's actually often boring, rhythmic-wise.

Funk, some folklore songs, tribal expressions, are much more richer. But people with training refer to blues.

The video link you gave is pretty good.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by Dominique »

jonetsu wrote:
Dominique wrote: The first blues songs was on 1 chord, and just by making chords substitutions and introducing V-I, II-V-I and VI-II-V-I chords progressions, they made it to the jazz over the years. Beside that, what one will need most to learn to play is to practice.
It's funny how people with some musical education refer to blues for rhythm. I find blues not really rich in rhythm. It's actually often boring, rhythmic-wise.

Funk, some folklore songs, tribal expressions, are much more richer. But people with training refer to blues
My first musical background is classical music, and I was truly making a blockage with rhythms at that time. To learn a blues was what helped me to understand how to play the rhythms, which in turn made me able to play other rhythms.
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Re: Why learn music theory?

Post by GFX_Garage »

I think the most interesting thing about music theory is that music existed long before it. It's not so much a method for creating music as it is an understanding of what is being created. Music theory doesn't determine what is appealing to the human ear and emotional response. It just tries to explain it. Of course theory has been a huge influence in the progress of music though. The understanding has helped us to be more intellectually expressive in music. It's also helped in the production and development of musical instruments.

I'm an older person; and I find that theory is an extremely useful guide, however I also find it to be incomplete. I suspect that there are scale patterns that are not yet discovered or developed... or maybe musical tastes are changing. I'm not sure what it is; but there are interesting out of key tones that exist in ascension and even resolution. Many can be found in the various forms of fusion. It goes beyond chord theory. Some brownish notes actually sound pretty good when used in certain contexts. I've found a lot of happy accidents in neo-classical guitar for instance. I've been playing for almost 40 years; and I'm still finding new exciting things. It's no wonder that we try to theorize about it. It's just that darned interesting. :)
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