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In case anyone is searching for a really smart, modern method for learning music theory, this is it: https://www.hooktheory.com https://www.hooktheory.com The

In case anyone is searching for a really smart, modern method for learning music theory, this is it: https://www.hooktheory.com https://www.hooktheory.com The author devised his own system for visually representing notes, it makes it much easier to understand things like scale degrees and relative notation (and thus the theory around famous harmonies, melodies, etc). I think music tools are in desperate need for improvement... Starting with notation, which is still a bit akin to forcing programmers to go straight to Assembly. Little is gained from it as most people just completely give up and then go on to live the rest of their musical lives "in the dark", without knowing how to read and write at all. This can actually be good for some but I'm sure it hinders the creativity of a lot more. I think we also need way better digital instruments... That make it easier to stay on scale (or to modulate, etc -- whatever the mood is), for instance, allowing people to just play away which is what actually matters. I've spent countless hours of my life learning scales on several different instruments and think a lot of that was wasteful. More often than not I'm just trying to stay in a given key anyway, nothing fancy... Instruments really need better interfaces :)

teen 10y ago
> I think we also need way better digital instruments... That make it easier to stay on scale (or to modulate, etc -- whatever the mood is), for instance, allowing people to just play away which is what actually matters. I'm not sure what new stuff has come out in the last few years, but Ableton Push is exactly what you're describing. It's a grid where you can select a key, scale, and tone, and then you can apply effects in series / parallel. The notes in the scale light up. There's a bunch of other stuff you can do as well. https://youtu.be/0CdMvkBOUgs?t=69 https://youtu.be/0CdMvkBOUgs?t=69
- brunorsini 10y ago
  Thanks! I've played with Push, it's pretty good... but as someone commented above it's fairly limited in many ways too. This is an interesting piece of software I have used before: http://autotheory.net http://autotheory.net. It simply translates incoming midi data so you can use whatever controller/instrument you're already familiar with. The creator is nice and responsive, he often attends shows like AES and NAMM.
nicolas_t 10y ago
Thanks for the recommendation, I just bought the Hook Theory book and it looks quite good. I've been searching for something like that for a while!
- fenomas 10y ago
  I've not read the book but the tool is amazing. I believe the authors have been working on a HTML rewrite for some years now (currently it's Flash). The whole site design got redone a month or two ago, so there may be more changes on the way.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
No, instruments really don't. The point of conventional instruments is that once you learn them - which takes years - you can instantly express almost any musical idea using all the possible degrees of freedom available on that instrument. With something like Ableton Push, you're one step removed from the sound generation, because you're triggering automata with a very limited expressive repertoire. (With Push, it's often just a triggered sample, which has almost no expressive potential at all.) You can change keys instantly on a piano. You can play any chord you can get your fingers around, in any inversion, using any voicing, with fine control of the relative level of each note in the chord. With button controllers the best you'll get is one chord per button with no fine shading of levels, no control over inversions or voicings, and so on. It's absolutely fine to make music like this, but it's not fine to demand that all music be made like this. Controllers like Push are good for performing effects - filter sweeps, and such - which aren't possible on a keyboard. But that's a different skill to learning scales, and much more expressively limited. Electronic art forms generally are more rigid and less expressive than non-mechanised media. In theory you should be able to do more, but in practice no one has cracked the problem of building high-bandwidth expressive automata that are as physically responsive and open as traditional instruments/media. Aesthetically, that can be a problem. A lot of machine-assisted art is either chaotic and formless, or formulaic and repetitive. The best classical music and classical performance lives in an expressive and creative sweet spot between those extremes, and it's incredibly hard to hit that spot with machine assistance.
- brunorsini 10y ago
  You seem to be pegged on what current controllers can do... And that's exactly what I am saying: they often suck! But they can improve and I am confident they will. When I am learning a brand new instrument I can literally feel my brain knowing exactly what I want to do way before my fingers/mouth/feet are able to perform the task at hand. How is this not an interface problem? With button controllers the best you'll get is one chord per button with no fine shading of levels, no control over inversions or voicings, and so on. No way. If you don't have to be memorizing stupid things such as "where is the minor 7th again on this one particular instrument?" maybe you could use your free mental cycles (and fingers, feet, mouth) to control that instead... And who knows, maybe you could now do 4-5 inversions in the same amount of time it would take you to do a single one on a piano. Or maybe you can do inversions way more effortlessly on another instrument and focus on really nailing the vibrato. It's absolutely fine to make music like this, but it's not fine to demand that all music be made like this. I never said this, I'm just saying that a lot more can be done with a lot less effort if instrument/controller interfaces improve.
estefan 10y ago
> In case anyone is searching for a really smart, modern method for learning music theory, this is it: https://www.hooktheory.com https://www.hooktheory.com I really want to buy the books but they're all DRM'd :-(. Here's hoping someone from there reads this page and releases it as an epub...

teen 10y ago

> I think we also need way better digital instruments... That make it easier to stay on scale (or to modulate, etc -- whatever the mood is), for instance, allowing people to just play away which is what actually matters. I'm not sure what new stuff has come out in the last few years, but Ableton Push is exactly what you're describing. It's a grid where you can select a key, scale, and tone, and then you can apply effects in series / parallel. The notes in the scale light up. There's a bunch of other stuff you can do as well. https://youtu.be/0CdMvkBOUgs?t=69 https://youtu.be/0CdMvkBOUgs?t=69

brunorsini 10y ago
Thanks! I've played with Push, it's pretty good... but as someone commented above it's fairly limited in many ways too. This is an interesting piece of software I have used before: http://autotheory.net http://autotheory.net. It simply translates incoming midi data so you can use whatever controller/instrument you're already familiar with. The creator is nice and responsive, he often attends shows like AES and NAMM.

nicolas_t 10y ago

Thanks for the recommendation, I just bought the Hook Theory book and it looks quite good. I've been searching for something like that for a while!

fenomas 10y ago
I've not read the book but the tool is amazing. I believe the authors have been working on a HTML rewrite for some years now (currently it's Flash). The whole site design got redone a month or two ago, so there may be more changes on the way.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

No, instruments really don't. The point of conventional instruments is that once you learn them - which takes years - you can instantly express almost any musical idea using all the possible degrees of freedom available on that instrument. With something like Ableton Push, you're one step removed from the sound generation, because you're triggering automata with a very limited expressive repertoire. (With Push, it's often just a triggered sample, which has almost no expressive potential at all.) You can change keys instantly on a piano. You can play any chord you can get your fingers around, in any inversion, using any voicing, with fine control of the relative level of each note in the chord. With button controllers the best you'll get is one chord per button with no fine shading of levels, no control over inversions or voicings, and so on. It's absolutely fine to make music like this, but it's not fine to demand that all music be made like this. Controllers like Push are good for performing effects - filter sweeps, and such - which aren't possible on a keyboard. But that's a different skill to learning scales, and much more expressively limited. Electronic art forms generally are more rigid and less expressive than non-mechanised media. In theory you should be able to do more, but in practice no one has cracked the problem of building high-bandwidth expressive automata that are as physically responsive and open as traditional instruments/media. Aesthetically, that can be a problem. A lot of machine-assisted art is either chaotic and formless, or formulaic and repetitive. The best classical music and classical performance lives in an expressive and creative sweet spot between those extremes, and it's incredibly hard to hit that spot with machine assistance.

brunorsini 10y ago
You seem to be pegged on what current controllers can do... And that's exactly what I am saying: they often suck! But they can improve and I am confident they will. When I am learning a brand new instrument I can literally feel my brain knowing exactly what I want to do way before my fingers/mouth/feet are able to perform the task at hand. How is this not an interface problem? With button controllers the best you'll get is one chord per button with no fine shading of levels, no control over inversions or voicings, and so on. No way. If you don't have to be memorizing stupid things such as "where is the minor 7th again on this one particular instrument?" maybe you could use your free mental cycles (and fingers, feet, mouth) to control that instead... And who knows, maybe you could now do 4-5 inversions in the same amount of time it would take you to do a single one on a piano. Or maybe you can do inversions way more effortlessly on another instrument and focus on really nailing the vibrato. It's absolutely fine to make music like this, but it's not fine to demand that all music be made like this. I never said this, I'm just saying that a lot more can be done with a lot less effort if instrument/controller interfaces improve.

estefan 10y ago

> In case anyone is searching for a really smart, modern method for learning music theory, this is it: https://www.hooktheory.com https://www.hooktheory.com I really want to buy the books but they're all DRM'd :-(. Here's hoping someone from there reads this page and releases it as an epub...