4 ms·

You say that the article isn't music theory but don't bother to say why.

seanhunter 28d ago
It's a fun webpage about a programmer dipping their toes in the very most basic elements of music and documenting some of their current understanding.Imagine I wrote an article called "Programming for musicians" that was mostly about how to turn your computer on and install homebrew[1] and finished by showing you step by step how to cut and paste "hello world" in javascript from stack overflow. You might rightly say that while "programming-adjacent" the article didn't really address programming. Here[2] Is the syllabus for ABRSM Grades 1-5 music theory. So this is super-basic music theory of the level that you couldn't really expect to pass high school music without knowing. I've picked associated board because this is the most generic music theory syllabus possible, and grade 5 is very basic. If you were actually studying music you'd go way way beyond this. To a first approximation none of this is in the article. It also doesn't have any more advanced topics (functional harmony, orchestration, voice leading, transposition, key/scale relationships, advanced rhythmic concepts etc). That's why I say the article isn't really music theory. And then for completeness, when I say that what is music theory is wildly misleading I'm talking about things like "chords are notes stacked in thirds". There's so much wrong about about this it's hard to even start, but for starters it's an if and only if when it really shouldn't be. Notes stacked in thirds are chords, but there are a whole heck of a lot of chords that aren't stacked in thirds. It's like if I said "even numbers are 4 and 6". It's like sure, but there's more to it than that. [1] without mentioning that this was only needed if you were using a mac [2] https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theory-syllabus-outline-grades-1-5-from-2020.pdf https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theo...
- sddsasdasda 28d ago
  [dead]
- pprotas 28d ago
  The author admits that this article applies to only a specific flavor of music theory, and says that it only covers a small part of it. The article even mentions at the end it does not cover some of the topics you think are missing. The article is not a comprehensive syllabus of all elementary music theory, and it does not claim to be. I believe you are being too harsh, as this approach to understanding music feels much more intuitive to some (like the author, and myself), compared to traditional music education.
  - xiaoyu2006 28d ago
    I would not call it harsh. The author don't even bother to assemble sentences themselves. And a title "Music Theory for Programmers" imply it is comprehensive even at an elementary scale.
    - gjvc 28d ago
      "implies"
    - mcluck 28d ago
      The title does not imply it's comprehensive. If anything, a title like that suggests that it's only scratching the surface. If I read an article like "Haskell for C# Developers" I would not expect to be an expert in Haskell at the end. I would expect to have enough intuition to begin actually learning the language properly
  - sambapa 28d ago
    Because such posts get tiring after a while. Strong dunning kruger and all that.
  - iainctduncan 27d ago
    PhD Candidate in music and computer science and gigging jazz musicain here. It is not too harsh. Articles like this confuse people who interested in learning a topic more than they help. Yet another case of programmers thinking "I'm a programmer so I should blog about this thing I barely know anything about as if I'm an expert, what could possibly be the downside?"
- chrisjj 28d ago
  > Here[2] Is the syllabus for ABRSM Grades 1-5 music theory. I've always thought that's mistitled. Better would be Traditional Western Music Notation Theory. Notice what's absent, e.g. frequency and timbre which are nicely introduced by the current article. Music theory is a lot wider than the ABSRM syllabus. And the current article is a great starting point.
  - bossyTeacher 28d ago
    Done on purpose. The assumption here is that this theory is the one and only theory.
    - chrisjj 27d ago
      Sad but true.
  - TheOtherHobbes 28d ago
    That's sound design theory, not music theory. They're not the same thing. Music theory is about chords, scales, rhythm, and - most importantly and elusively - how to fit them together to say something interesting. Entry-level trad Western Theory gives you the concept of a basic grammar as a first introduction, but once you have that you can extend it fairly painlessly to jazz/funk/metal/pop/whatever. Advanced classical grammar - baroque and modal counterpoint, extended harmony, and such - has some useful pointers for modern song-writing, but it's a specialised skill for experts. Movie and game score composers likely know it, but it's a degree-level skill. Sound design theory is a subset of orchestration. The proof is that you can take most music and play it with simple sine wave bloops - no orchestration at all - and it remains completely recognisable. Explaining equal temperament etc sounds clever and it's interesting if you like that kind of thing, but it's a distracting level of nerdery that doesn't help at all with basic song writing.
    - oplav 28d ago
      I agree. As a (hobbyist) musician and a (professional) programmer, I would not classify this web page as “music theory” given its widely accepted definition. At UIUC, we had a class called Electronic Music Synthesis. It’s been over a decade since I took the class, but the first few lectures covered mostly everything in this web page. That content was never presented to us as “music theory”. https://ece.illinois.edu/academics/courses/ece402 https://ece.illinois.edu/academics/courses/ece402
deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
dosisking 28d ago
> You say that the article isn't music theory but don't bother to say why. His response sounded kind of gatekeep-y to me. Kind of like an academic with theoretical knowledge, but no practical experience. Many great musicians never learned proper music theory. Innovation comes from outside, not from inside the establishment.
- gentooflux 28d ago
  Music theory is a way of describing that cool thing you played, not the other way around
  - analog31 28d ago
    The only people I know who are productive as composers or arrangers are familiar with theory.
    - gentooflux 28d ago
      Because they can write it down. Good for them.
      - onraglanroad 27d ago
        Yes, being able to write is a good thing. You can get so far with just an aural tradition but the invention of writing helps.
      - analog31 27d ago
        It's way more than that. They are just more fluent at creating things like melodies and harmonies that "work" without essentially starting from scratch on every composition. I know music notation and can write things down, but I'm not a good composer. I'm at the mercy of others to write new material if that's what I'm interested in playing. And writing it down in a way that other musicians can understand is of nontrivial value if you want people to play your stuff.
  - simonask 28d ago
bonzini 28d ago
I think what he means as music theory is the next step after what this (blatantly AI-written, but passable) article talks about. This is the part that you take for granted, but it certainly is music theory in the same way that Peano's axioms are number theory even though you don't use them explicitly. The AI style gets boring very quickly, but I liked the explanation of what Western music notation is optimized for. For more information on this, there's a great and long video at https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4. (Edit: I wrote this around the same time as the reply, which more or less confirmed my hunch)
- otabdeveloper4 28d ago
  There's no such thing as "music theory". Music theory was originally a tool for music critics in the 19th century to talk about conservatory music of the time. There's nothing rigorous, systematic or scientific in it; it's mostly a historical cultural artifact more than anything else. For example, music "theory" is completely helpless when describing an EDM track or how to compose one. EDM is one of the most primitive music styles ever (barely even qualifies as music in my opinion) and yet music "theory" is worthless in this case.
  - simonask 28d ago
    Spoken like someone with absolutely zero grasp of music theory or modern electronic music. I almost want to congratulate you for the worst-informed comment I’ve read today.
    - otabdeveloper4 27d ago
      Your jimmies seem rustled. Am I wrong tho? Is music "theory" actually a theory? Can it be used to predict or construct something? Even just a two-note steady-pulse acid bass beat. I'm not asking for much.
      - bonzini 27d ago
        It's not a scientific theory, but musical theory concepts are certainly used by players when playing. Would you rather it be called music ontology or something like that?

It's a fun webpage about a programmer dipping their toes in the very most basic elements of music and documenting some of their current understanding.Imagine I wrote an article called "Programming for musicians" that was mostly about how to turn your computer on and install homebrew[1] and finished by showing you step by step how to cut and paste "hello world" in javascript from stack overflow. You might rightly say that while "programming-adjacent" the article didn't really address programming. Here[2] Is the syllabus for ABRSM Grades 1-5 music theory. So this is super-basic music theory of the level that you couldn't really expect to pass high school music without knowing. I've picked associated board because this is the most generic music theory syllabus possible, and grade 5 is very basic. If you were actually studying music you'd go way way beyond this. To a first approximation none of this is in the article. It also doesn't have any more advanced topics (functional harmony, orchestration, voice leading, transposition, key/scale relationships, advanced rhythmic concepts etc). That's why I say the article isn't really music theory. And then for completeness, when I say that what is music theory is wildly misleading I'm talking about things like "chords are notes stacked in thirds". There's so much wrong about about this it's hard to even start, but for starters it's an if and only if when it really shouldn't be. Notes stacked in thirds are chords, but there are a whole heck of a lot of chords that aren't stacked in thirds. It's like if I said "even numbers are 4 and 6". It's like sure, but there's more to it than that. [1] without mentioning that this was only needed if you were using a mac [2] https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theory-syllabus-outline-grades-1-5-from-2020.pdf https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theo...

sddsasdasda 28d ago
[dead]
pprotas 28d ago
The author admits that this article applies to only a specific flavor of music theory, and says that it only covers a small part of it. The article even mentions at the end it does not cover some of the topics you think are missing. The article is not a comprehensive syllabus of all elementary music theory, and it does not claim to be. I believe you are being too harsh, as this approach to understanding music feels much more intuitive to some (like the author, and myself), compared to traditional music education.
- xiaoyu2006 28d ago
  I would not call it harsh. The author don't even bother to assemble sentences themselves. And a title "Music Theory for Programmers" imply it is comprehensive even at an elementary scale.
  - gjvc 28d ago
    "implies"
  - mcluck 28d ago
    The title does not imply it's comprehensive. If anything, a title like that suggests that it's only scratching the surface. If I read an article like "Haskell for C# Developers" I would not expect to be an expert in Haskell at the end. I would expect to have enough intuition to begin actually learning the language properly
- sambapa 28d ago
  Because such posts get tiring after a while. Strong dunning kruger and all that.
- iainctduncan 27d ago
  PhD Candidate in music and computer science and gigging jazz musicain here. It is not too harsh. Articles like this confuse people who interested in learning a topic more than they help. Yet another case of programmers thinking "I'm a programmer so I should blog about this thing I barely know anything about as if I'm an expert, what could possibly be the downside?"
chrisjj 28d ago
> Here[2] Is the syllabus for ABRSM Grades 1-5 music theory. I've always thought that's mistitled. Better would be Traditional Western Music Notation Theory. Notice what's absent, e.g. frequency and timbre which are nicely introduced by the current article. Music theory is a lot wider than the ABSRM syllabus. And the current article is a great starting point.
- bossyTeacher 28d ago
  Done on purpose. The assumption here is that this theory is the one and only theory.
  - chrisjj 27d ago
    Sad but true.
- TheOtherHobbes 28d ago
  That's sound design theory, not music theory. They're not the same thing. Music theory is about chords, scales, rhythm, and - most importantly and elusively - how to fit them together to say something interesting. Entry-level trad Western Theory gives you the concept of a basic grammar as a first introduction, but once you have that you can extend it fairly painlessly to jazz/funk/metal/pop/whatever. Advanced classical grammar - baroque and modal counterpoint, extended harmony, and such - has some useful pointers for modern song-writing, but it's a specialised skill for experts. Movie and game score composers likely know it, but it's a degree-level skill. Sound design theory is a subset of orchestration. The proof is that you can take most music and play it with simple sine wave bloops - no orchestration at all - and it remains completely recognisable. Explaining equal temperament etc sounds clever and it's interesting if you like that kind of thing, but it's a distracting level of nerdery that doesn't help at all with basic song writing.
  - oplav 28d ago
    I agree. As a (hobbyist) musician and a (professional) programmer, I would not classify this web page as “music theory” given its widely accepted definition. At UIUC, we had a class called Electronic Music Synthesis. It’s been over a decade since I took the class, but the first few lectures covered mostly everything in this web page. That content was never presented to us as “music theory”. https://ece.illinois.edu/academics/courses/ece402 https://ece.illinois.edu/academics/courses/ece402

deleted 28d ago

[deleted]

dosisking 28d ago

> You say that the article isn't music theory but don't bother to say why. His response sounded kind of gatekeep-y to me. Kind of like an academic with theoretical knowledge, but no practical experience. Many great musicians never learned proper music theory. Innovation comes from outside, not from inside the establishment.

gentooflux 28d ago
Music theory is a way of describing that cool thing you played, not the other way around
- analog31 28d ago
  The only people I know who are productive as composers or arrangers are familiar with theory.
  - gentooflux 28d ago
    Because they can write it down. Good for them.
    - onraglanroad 27d ago
      Yes, being able to write is a good thing. You can get so far with just an aural tradition but the invention of writing helps.
    - analog31 27d ago
      It's way more than that. They are just more fluent at creating things like melodies and harmonies that "work" without essentially starting from scratch on every composition. I know music notation and can write things down, but I'm not a good composer. I'm at the mercy of others to write new material if that's what I'm interested in playing. And writing it down in a way that other musicians can understand is of nontrivial value if you want people to play your stuff.
- simonask 28d ago

bonzini 28d ago

I think what he means as music theory is the next step after what this (blatantly AI-written, but passable) article talks about. This is the part that you take for granted, but it certainly is music theory in the same way that Peano's axioms are number theory even though you don't use them explicitly. The AI style gets boring very quickly, but I liked the explanation of what Western music notation is optimized for. For more information on this, there's a great and long video at https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4. (Edit: I wrote this around the same time as the reply, which more or less confirmed my hunch)

otabdeveloper4 28d ago
There's no such thing as "music theory". Music theory was originally a tool for music critics in the 19th century to talk about conservatory music of the time. There's nothing rigorous, systematic or scientific in it; it's mostly a historical cultural artifact more than anything else. For example, music "theory" is completely helpless when describing an EDM track or how to compose one. EDM is one of the most primitive music styles ever (barely even qualifies as music in my opinion) and yet music "theory" is worthless in this case.
- simonask 28d ago
  Spoken like someone with absolutely zero grasp of music theory or modern electronic music. I almost want to congratulate you for the worst-informed comment I’ve read today.
  - otabdeveloper4 27d ago
    Your jimmies seem rustled. Am I wrong tho? Is music "theory" actually a theory? Can it be used to predict or construct something? Even just a two-note steady-pulse acid bass beat. I'm not asking for much.
    - bonzini 27d ago
      It's not a scientific theory, but musical theory concepts are certainly used by players when playing. Would you rather it be called music ontology or something like that?