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> As an adult I do want to speed up the learning process I understand the desire but it's also very important to realize that these things take a LONG time to

> As an adult I do want to speed up the learning process I understand the desire but it's also very important to realize that these things take a LONG time to develop. You can't really expect yourself to grasp chord progressions until you have a firm understanding in scales and you can't just gloss over it and be familiar with it, you have to internalize it. You have to get scales under your fingers... you have to feel the pull of the leading tone to the tonic... you have to be able to sing them and know them inside and out or your knowledge of chord progressions will be built on a shaky foundation. The equivalent to project euler would be to just compose your own songs. Seriously, compose then analyze. Since music is subjective there's no way to say, "you're song is correct, move on to the next song". Also, there's no real correlation between song writing and theory knowledge that I know of. You can know about theory a lot but still not be good at writing songs. Also knowing theory doesn't make you a good musician by any stretch of the imagination. Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive (i.e. it doesn't tell you HOW to write or what you should write, but rather is just a language to describe what you've written) You can know about programming like if you're good at math you probably have a sense of what programming is about but until you sit down and type out some code, you're likely to not be any good at programming. > My main goal is to be able write songs of quality at least slightly above total crap. You will write total crap. The best thing you can do is come to terms that you'll write crap probably for years and that's okay. Here's the first song I ever wrote way long ago: http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/4dd02b77f3dc95b0de340ce9df58a20a1404029f http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/4dd02b77f3dc95b0de340c... Bleh... not exactly something I'm super proud of other than the fact that I did indeed finish it and I was honest with myself about what level of song I could write at the time that I wrote it. I'm still not a super great musician, but I've at least improved every song since that one!

kev6168 12y ago
A very nice 'Lullaby', I enjoyed it, thanks. Also thank you for the tips. > Since music is subjective there's no way to say, "you're song is correct, move on to the next song". Are there some kind of music "compiler" or "linter" for educational purpose out there, which check for a song's obvious and blatant violations of fundamental composing principles? This might helps beginners to hone in on the basics. I know the rules are meant to be broken later, but at the beginning, the 'compiler/linter' is efficient and cost effective in guiding the student and checking their practice work.
- scottious 12y ago
  Thank you :) I think a "linter" like that would be kind of like a linter for analyzing poetry or short stories. It's so subjective that the most it could do would be offer very superficial suggestions without really understanding context. Things like "does it have a rhyming scheme and meter". And that's not that useful because some poetry doesn't rhyme, and some doesn't adhere to a meter. Like, is 50 Shades of Grey bad writing? some might say so... but can you deny the popularity of it? Are the people that enjoyed reading that book wrong for enjoying it? Trying to apply an objective measure to quality of writing or music is futile, I think. Same goes for music. You might write a song that some stuffy old classical music PhD would scoff at but maybe children LOVE it. How could a linter possibly know that? I say embrace the subjectivity of it. Write a song, ask people what they think of it. Accept that you will not write super great songs right away and just keep writing and experimenting. Use theory as a language to explain what you've done in songs you wrote and songs that you like. Good luck!!

kev6168 12y ago

A very nice 'Lullaby', I enjoyed it, thanks. Also thank you for the tips. > Since music is subjective there's no way to say, "you're song is correct, move on to the next song". Are there some kind of music "compiler" or "linter" for educational purpose out there, which check for a song's obvious and blatant violations of fundamental composing principles? This might helps beginners to hone in on the basics. I know the rules are meant to be broken later, but at the beginning, the 'compiler/linter' is efficient and cost effective in guiding the student and checking their practice work.

scottious 12y ago
Thank you :) I think a "linter" like that would be kind of like a linter for analyzing poetry or short stories. It's so subjective that the most it could do would be offer very superficial suggestions without really understanding context. Things like "does it have a rhyming scheme and meter". And that's not that useful because some poetry doesn't rhyme, and some doesn't adhere to a meter. Like, is 50 Shades of Grey bad writing? some might say so... but can you deny the popularity of it? Are the people that enjoyed reading that book wrong for enjoying it? Trying to apply an objective measure to quality of writing or music is futile, I think. Same goes for music. You might write a song that some stuffy old classical music PhD would scoff at but maybe children LOVE it. How could a linter possibly know that? I say embrace the subjectivity of it. Write a song, ask people what they think of it. Accept that you will not write super great songs right away and just keep writing and experimenting. Use theory as a language to explain what you've done in songs you wrote and songs that you like. Good luck!!