6 ms·

Based on my own experience, I find the No. 1 obstacle in learning music theory is the difficulty, _in the early stage of learning_, to practice the knowledge to

by kev6168 12y ago

Based on my own experience, I find the No. 1 obstacle in learning music theory is the difficulty, _in the early stage of learning_, to practice the knowledge to gain a real sense of how the stuff is used and why. Take computer programming as an example. After 15 minutes of HTML lesson, a newbie can already look at her creation in a browser and the html file on hard disk, and have fun tweaking it (<html><body background="green">My home page</body></html>, remember the days?). An hour of Java lesson can result in several variations of "Hello World!" programs, created by the student. Basically, people can put their hands on the knowledge and use it to produce somewhat useful/tangible stuff. Not so much when learning music theory. After enduring the bombardment of names/concepts/terms/maths and other stuff for quite a while, I don't have the slightest idea where I can practice in using them to analyze or write some music. I wish there is a lecture in the format of "One hundred songs for one hundred music concepts". The songs should be stupidly simple (children's songs, simple pops, short classical pieces, etc.). Each lesson concentrates on only _one_ concept appeared in the piece, explains what it is, how it is used, why it is used in that way, and how its application makes nice sound, etc. Basically, show me the _effect_ for each concept in a simple real world setting. Then more importantly, give me exercises to write a few bars of music using this concept, no matter how bad my writings are, as long as I am applying the new knowledge.

dsirijus 12y ago
You're wrong about categories of analogy, but I don't blame you - analogies are a pretty slippery slopes. In particular, you're most likely conflating these because of the implementation detail - you write HTML, so writing music is an analogy. Not really - writing HTML is closer to performing music. You can teach almost everyone to perform "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on piano or "Smoke on the Water" on guitar within 15 minutes, both of which are de facto "Hello world!" equivalents to many aspiring musicians. EDIT: Removed attempt at drawing a HTML/music analogy which could be closer to truth. It is really fruitless endeavour, makes no sense.
- kev6168 12y ago
  I disagree. The rendering engine of the browser is the performer who looks at my script(HTML/CSS/JS) and produce the final result for the visitors to the web page. Writing HTML is not closer to performing music, but actually closer to composing music, if you will. Also, I think although knowing theory would help you play a song with an instrument, it's not required, is it? More likely knowing music theory is for understanding/appreciation of the composition/structure of the music. So no, playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on an instrument is NOT equivalent to writing "Hello world!" program. On the other hand, composing a super simple but complete song is closer to writing a "Hello world!" (or a Fibonacci series) program.
  - Retric 12y ago
    CSS is probably a better analogy for performing music. You generally keep the same content, but presentation is important.
cynicalkane 12y ago
Consider learning jazz. The whole approach of many basic kinds of jazz is to take some chords and turn them into music.
- kev6168 12y ago
  Thanks for the tip. Any suggestion on learning materials or where to find beginner friendly resources?
cousin_it 12y ago
Analyzing and writing music aren't the only things you can do with music theory. For me the main application at first was playing music by ear. For example, you could learn what a dominant is and how it sounds, then sit down at the piano and figure out the chords to some song that's mostly tonic and dominant, and so on. And once you have that down, you can compose some stuff meaningfully.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
scottious 12y ago
Well I think there are a number of things going on here... If the equivalent set of documents were created for programming you might have all sorts of concepts ranging from methods, classes, pointers, monads, program structure, design, markup, protocols, API, ... and a whole bunch of other stuff. A newbie to programming would be completely overwhelmed and unable to put any of it into context. I know for me, the stage at which I was doing the very simple HTML examples you listed was when I was 13. Back when you're that young, just playing around with that stuff was SO FUN for some reason. As a 29 year old guy if I were just starting out I'd be much more inclined to try to skip that step and make stuff more real-world. The equivalent in music theory would be simply playing around with the white keys on the piano (C major). Making interesting melodies (but ultimately kinda boring melodies like mary had a little lamb). To your young ears, this would be very interesting and fun. You'd play around with this for weeks and weeks and make small observations. For example, you might notice B->C has a sense of resolution to end the melody, or internalizing what C->G feels like by just playing it a lot and singing it. You might notice that E->F feels smaller and has more of a "pull" to it than A->B (in the context of C major). It's this stage that's so crucial for later understanding music theory. Adults want to skip the simple exploration and just dive right into Beethoven. We think we can use our strong analytical sense to just book-learn music theory. What I've learned is that it's much more fruitful to make observations first and then learn what music theory calls those observations. When you're writing HTML at 13 years old, you don't really know the high level concept of a "mark-up language" and how it might be manifested, you just know that there are parts in angle brackets that don't show up on the page but control the content. Later in high school when you learn the concept of a mark-up language you make that connection to HTML with extreme ease because all those memories of changing background="green" to background="black" flood back to you.
- kev6168 12y ago
  I understand it's important to have plenty of intuition, but as an adult I do want to speed up the learning process. That's one of reasons I set out to learn the theories. My main goal is to be able write songs of quality at least slightly above total crap. Maybe I have not found the right learning materials or correct way, or maybe because I am the type of persons who need to have lots of hands-on exercises to be able to grasp new concepts. Sure, programmers also need to know all sorts of things you listed, but armed with only a few concepts, a newbie can start to write simple programs from the very beginning, in the forms of piecemeal topic-focused little exercises. The result of each exercise is a fully functioning program. I wish I can find a similarly structured music theory course that uses the same approach. Also, are there projects in music which are similar to ProjectEuler.net or the likes, where you can do focused practice on specific topic? I would be happy to pay for those services.
palimpsests 12y ago
One of the best way to learn music theory (much of which is harmony) is to play jazz, or jazz-inspired styles of music – you'll get the most exposure to the most diverse array of concepts in the least amount of time (not saying it will be a short amount of time – just compared to, say, being a classical musician). The emphasis on improvisation requires players to have comprehensive understanding of the underlying harmonic concepts – you can play jazz completely by ear, but this is not the norm by any means. As a couple of commenters have said, your HTML analogy just doesn't seem to fit here, music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. The best way to learn it is through playing music, a lot, and then using concepts from music theory to go back and gain more insight into why certain things sound the way they do, why certain progressions work well, why an F natural sounds ethereal and sublime on top of a B∆9 chord while an E natural sounds awful, and so on. Again, I believe the optimal way to learn music concepts is to play (not study) music. If jazz doesn't interest you, I would ask you what your musical goals are, and what genres do interest you, and just encourage you to play, and then play some more. Ideally, play with musicians who are better than you - you'll learn more, faster, just like anything else. It takes thousands of hours to get good at this stuff.

by kev6168 12y ago

dsirijus 12y ago

You're wrong about categories of analogy, but I don't blame you - analogies are a pretty slippery slopes. In particular, you're most likely conflating these because of the implementation detail - you write HTML, so writing music is an analogy. Not really - writing HTML is closer to performing music. You can teach almost everyone to perform "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on piano or "Smoke on the Water" on guitar within 15 minutes, both of which are de facto "Hello world!" equivalents to many aspiring musicians. EDIT: Removed attempt at drawing a HTML/music analogy which could be closer to truth. It is really fruitless endeavour, makes no sense.

kev6168 12y ago
I disagree. The rendering engine of the browser is the performer who looks at my script(HTML/CSS/JS) and produce the final result for the visitors to the web page. Writing HTML is not closer to performing music, but actually closer to composing music, if you will. Also, I think although knowing theory would help you play a song with an instrument, it's not required, is it? More likely knowing music theory is for understanding/appreciation of the composition/structure of the music. So no, playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on an instrument is NOT equivalent to writing "Hello world!" program. On the other hand, composing a super simple but complete song is closer to writing a "Hello world!" (or a Fibonacci series) program.
- Retric 12y ago
  CSS is probably a better analogy for performing music. You generally keep the same content, but presentation is important.

cynicalkane 12y ago

Consider learning jazz. The whole approach of many basic kinds of jazz is to take some chords and turn them into music.

kev6168 12y ago
Thanks for the tip. Any suggestion on learning materials or where to find beginner friendly resources?

cousin_it 12y ago

Analyzing and writing music aren't the only things you can do with music theory. For me the main application at first was playing music by ear. For example, you could learn what a dominant is and how it sounds, then sit down at the piano and figure out the chords to some song that's mostly tonic and dominant, and so on. And once you have that down, you can compose some stuff meaningfully.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

scottious 12y ago

Well I think there are a number of things going on here... If the equivalent set of documents were created for programming you might have all sorts of concepts ranging from methods, classes, pointers, monads, program structure, design, markup, protocols, API, ... and a whole bunch of other stuff. A newbie to programming would be completely overwhelmed and unable to put any of it into context. I know for me, the stage at which I was doing the very simple HTML examples you listed was when I was 13. Back when you're that young, just playing around with that stuff was SO FUN for some reason. As a 29 year old guy if I were just starting out I'd be much more inclined to try to skip that step and make stuff more real-world. The equivalent in music theory would be simply playing around with the white keys on the piano (C major). Making interesting melodies (but ultimately kinda boring melodies like mary had a little lamb). To your young ears, this would be very interesting and fun. You'd play around with this for weeks and weeks and make small observations. For example, you might notice B->C has a sense of resolution to end the melody, or internalizing what C->G feels like by just playing it a lot and singing it. You might notice that E->F feels smaller and has more of a "pull" to it than A->B (in the context of C major). It's this stage that's so crucial for later understanding music theory. Adults want to skip the simple exploration and just dive right into Beethoven. We think we can use our strong analytical sense to just book-learn music theory. What I've learned is that it's much more fruitful to make observations first and then learn what music theory calls those observations. When you're writing HTML at 13 years old, you don't really know the high level concept of a "mark-up language" and how it might be manifested, you just know that there are parts in angle brackets that don't show up on the page but control the content. Later in high school when you learn the concept of a mark-up language you make that connection to HTML with extreme ease because all those memories of changing background="green" to background="black" flood back to you.

kev6168 12y ago
I understand it's important to have plenty of intuition, but as an adult I do want to speed up the learning process. That's one of reasons I set out to learn the theories. My main goal is to be able write songs of quality at least slightly above total crap. Maybe I have not found the right learning materials or correct way, or maybe because I am the type of persons who need to have lots of hands-on exercises to be able to grasp new concepts. Sure, programmers also need to know all sorts of things you listed, but armed with only a few concepts, a newbie can start to write simple programs from the very beginning, in the forms of piecemeal topic-focused little exercises. The result of each exercise is a fully functioning program. I wish I can find a similarly structured music theory course that uses the same approach. Also, are there projects in music which are similar to ProjectEuler.net or the likes, where you can do focused practice on specific topic? I would be happy to pay for those services.

palimpsests 12y ago

One of the best way to learn music theory (much of which is harmony) is to play jazz, or jazz-inspired styles of music – you'll get the most exposure to the most diverse array of concepts in the least amount of time (not saying it will be a short amount of time – just compared to, say, being a classical musician). The emphasis on improvisation requires players to have comprehensive understanding of the underlying harmonic concepts – you can play jazz completely by ear, but this is not the norm by any means. As a couple of commenters have said, your HTML analogy just doesn't seem to fit here, music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. The best way to learn it is through playing music, a lot, and then using concepts from music theory to go back and gain more insight into why certain things sound the way they do, why certain progressions work well, why an F natural sounds ethereal and sublime on top of a B∆9 chord while an E natural sounds awful, and so on. Again, I believe the optimal way to learn music concepts is to play (not study) music. If jazz doesn't interest you, I would ask you what your musical goals are, and what genres do interest you, and just encourage you to play, and then play some more. Ideally, play with musicians who are better than you - you'll learn more, faster, just like anything else. It takes thousands of hours to get good at this stuff.