I find this to be backwards. Music doesnt derive from music theory. Instead music theory develops to understand and examine music that already exists. A huge e

I find this to be backwards. Music doesnt derive from music theory. Instead music theory develops to understand and examine music that already exists. A huge error that a lot of music theory hobbyists make is to overuse it or use it in contexts where it doesn’t make sense (e.g., using theory developed to understand Mahler to understand EDM). As much as we like to imagine that music derives purely from the mathematical relationship between tones and that aliens would produce the same music we would based on universal physical principles, that’s not the case.