5 ms·

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

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 25d ago
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pprotas 25d 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 25d 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 25d ago
    "implies"
  - mcluck 25d 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 25d ago
  Because such posts get tiring after a while. Strong dunning kruger and all that.
- iainctduncan 25d 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?"
  - PaulDavisThe1st 25d ago
    How does it confuse people? There is "western music theory" ala Schenker, voice leading, serialism etc (to mention a couple of names that some people might have heard of) but that describes things to do once you've got a scale and chord system. This is "12T music theory", describing how you might get to a scale and chord system. I don't see how it is confusing. You can spend a lot of time doing "western music theory" without ever understanding most of what is in this article, that is certainly true. But the fact this this outlines a bunch of stuff that undergirds what a composing (or improvising) musician might consider "music theory" doesn't invalidate it, or make it confusing, IMO.
chrisjj 25d 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 25d ago
  Done on purpose. The assumption here is that this theory is the one and only theory.
  - chrisjj 25d ago
    Sad but true.
- TheOtherHobbes 25d 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 25d 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

sddsasdasda 25d ago

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pprotas 25d 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 25d 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 25d ago
  "implies"
- mcluck 25d 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 25d ago
Because such posts get tiring after a while. Strong dunning kruger and all that.
iainctduncan 25d 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?"
- PaulDavisThe1st 25d ago
  How does it confuse people? There is "western music theory" ala Schenker, voice leading, serialism etc (to mention a couple of names that some people might have heard of) but that describes things to do once you've got a scale and chord system. This is "12T music theory", describing how you might get to a scale and chord system. I don't see how it is confusing. You can spend a lot of time doing "western music theory" without ever understanding most of what is in this article, that is certainly true. But the fact this this outlines a bunch of stuff that undergirds what a composing (or improvising) musician might consider "music theory" doesn't invalidate it, or make it confusing, IMO.

chrisjj 25d 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 25d ago
Done on purpose. The assumption here is that this theory is the one and only theory.
- chrisjj 25d ago
  Sad but true.
TheOtherHobbes 25d 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 25d 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