Where to learn music theory and harmony and not getting bored?

[kessel]

The only music theory that will not seem boring to you is music theory that directly impacts your ability to make your music sound the way you want.

If something bores you, it's a sign that either a) it doesn't help you make your music sound the way you want, or b) it does, but you don't realise it.

Boredom happens when you hold the opinion that "this isn't worth it".

That's right, I mean, I don't think it isn't worth it, I actually know it is, but I think one of the things that stops me from learning music theory is that I often see the same names in the lessons and a lot of classic artists among these.

I like to listen to classic compositors every now and then, but are very rarely my references and at the same time I feel learning their pieces is like trying to build a house starting with the roof.

Maybe I should start by looking for songs I really like and would like to learn how they're written, then every time I see names like Mozart, The Beatles, Beethoven... I loose interest almost instantly.

 

[MartinH.]

That's right, I mean, I don't think it isn't worth it, I actually know it is, but I think one of the things that stops me from learning music theory is that I often see the same names in the lessons and a lot of classic artists among these.

I like to listen to classic compositors every now and then, but are very rarely my references and at the same time I feel learning their pieces is like trying to build a house starting with the roof.

Maybe I should start by looking for songs I really like and would like to learn how they're written, then every time I see names like Mozart, The Beatles, Beethoven... I loose interest almost instantly.

Have you tried transcribing songs that you like yourself?

 

[kessel]

Have you tried transcribing songs that you like yourself?

No, JohnG recommended this to me too at the start of this thread and I actually think it can be a great idea, I hope I can try that this weekend and see how it works. Thanks, I think that could help

 

[MartinH.]

No, JohnG recommended this to me too at the start of this thread and I actually think it can be a great idea, I hope I can try that this weekend and see how it works. Thanks, I think that could help

Mike Verta's approach pretty much is transcribing (daily) the things that sound like things you'd want to write yourself, learn how they did it and expand your toolset, make the devices your own, learn about the right contexts to use them etc., and then much later "learning theory" is just "putting names to all the things you already use and understand". "Theory is derived from great music, not the other way around".

 

[kessel]

"Theory is derived from great music, not the other way around".

Nice sentence, very true. Yes, I'll try this way, I think hat could work

 

[SchnookyPants]

Nudist colony?

 

[Jerry Growl]

• For harmony theory: best place is at the piano/keyboard. Why? Because it's laid out right before your eyes. On a guitar everything shifts with the strings.
• Play with triads moving only one voice at a time (any 1/3 notes changes with every next chord, 2/3 stay on the same note), try to find out every new chord's harmonic place (each chord has a several functional possibilities which usually depend on the chords played before). When you arrive at dissonance, try to solve it to a consonant chord.
• Try finding and playing progressions in all keys (minor first, then major). Go through the whole circle of fifths in II-V-I variations, etc
• Try jazz harmony theory too (it's actually less complicated to read and learn because it's not so drastically historically cluttered as classical harmony theory).

 

[ed buller]

"Pick one of your favourite bands, or bands whose music you admire. It's a fast and fairly painless way to learn theory; if you already play pretty well, even faster."


John is spot on !

your motivation should stem from hearing a piece of music and saying " Wish I could have written that"...that's why most people study...to find out how it works. If you don't like a lot of classical music fair enough...avoid studying that. I suspect that if you made a list of ten pieces of music you absolutely love and would like to find out how they are made, that would help. If you have a DAW just import them as audio files and learn them all....off by heart. So you can play them in any key. Ingest them !!!....so the fabric of the music becomes a muscle memory ( either on guitar or piano ). As you do this slowly try and figure out whats going on. look for key, Harmonic movement ( how quickly things change ) use of melody...etc. Your goal here is to find out the DNA of these pieces so you can write music like them. Almost certainly you will spot patterns. You prefer maj to min keys. You don't like perfect cadences. You like drones and pedal points...etc. What you are doing is learning the process by taking stuff apart..if it's stuff you love..............you'll never get bored. And then armed with these little nuggets try writing your own music using what you have learned . I get asked to copy stuff all the time. "we can't get clearance for this...can you write something like it ?"......by the time I've finished I have learned heaps !


best

ed

 

[kessel]

• For harmony theory: best place is at the piano/keyboard. Why? Because it's laid out right before your eyes. On a guitar everything shifts with the strings.
• Play with triads moving only one voice at a time (any 1/3 notes changes with every next chord, 2/3 stay on the same note), try to find out every new chord's harmonic place (each chord has a several functional possibilities which usually depend on the chords played before). When you arrive at dissonance, try to solve it to a consonant chord.
• Try finding and playing progressions in all keys (minor first, then major). Go through the whole circle of fifths in II-V-I variations, etc
• Try jazz harmony theory too (it's actually less complicated to read and learn because it's not so drastically historically cluttered as classical harmony theory).

"Pick one of your favourite bands, or bands whose music you admire. It's a fast and fairly painless way to learn theory; if you already play pretty well, even faster."


John is spot on !

your motivation should stem from hearing a piece of music and saying " Wish I could have written that"...that's why most people study...to find out how it works. If you don't like a lot of classical music fair enough...avoid studying that. I suspect that if you made a list of ten pieces of music you absolutely love and would like to find out how they are made, that would help. If you have a DAW just import them as audio files and learn them all....off by heart. So you can play them in any key. Ingest them !!!....so the fabric of the music becomes a muscle memory ( either on guitar or piano ). As you do this slowly try and figure out whats going on. look for key, Harmonic movement ( how quickly things change ) use of melody...etc. Your goal her is to find out the DNA of these pieces so you can write music like them. Almost certainly you will spot patterns. You prefer maj to min keys. You don't like perfect cadences. You like drones and pedal points...etc. What you are doing is learning the process by taking stuff apart..if it's stuff you love..............you'll never get bored. And then armed with these little nuggets try writing your own music using what you have learned . I get asked to copy stuff all the time. "we can't get clearance for this...can you write something like it ?"......by the time I've finished I have learned heaps !


best

ed

Very nice recommendations, had to copy/paste them into my personal notes to not forget them for the next months, looks like I have some good starting points, thanks a lot

 

[Garry]

Not sure if Rick Beato reads this forum, but

Actually I haven't used youtube for that purpose yet, the videos I've used so far were from guitar and piano online courses (jamplay and music2me), but I barely used them because I always preferred the practice lessons. I watched a couple of the mDecks videos but they're usually related to their app.



Yes, I guess what I need is just to have my guitar or keyboard in my hands while learning the theory just to apply it directly, which for me is the best way to memorize what I learn, but I also think it must make a lot sense when learned because I notice it when listening to some musicians.

Some musicians show clearly that they know theory in their works and I want to get to that point where you know the rules but are not a slave of them, which in my opinion is the highest a musician can reach in these terms.



Thanks for the wishes and tips, I know Rick Beato's channel and I think he is not showing everything he can there but maybe in his website, I guess the channel is also a way to get paying customers, which I totally understand, and I also guess he will show more when buying courses directly from his website, maybe worth a try some day.

I didn't know about Signal Music Studio so I subscribed to it already and will start watching the videos tonight when I get home. Your description on Mike Verta let me think that it could be interesting as a further step when I learn at least the basics on the other channels, so I guess I'll start with Signals Music Studio channel and see how far I get.

Thanks to everyone again for the help

Not sure if Rick Beato reads this forum, but he just uploaded a video today here to address those that complain that his videos are too complicated! He gives a nice run down of the essentials that you need to know, in order to get value from his other more in depth videos. I found it helpful and it made me think of this thread.

 

[MartinH.]

Not sure if Rick Beato reads this forum, but

Not sure if Rick Beato reads this forum, but he just uploaded a video today here to address those that complain that his videos are too complicated! He gives a nice run down of the essentials that you need to know, in order to get value from his other more in depth videos. I found it helpful and it made me think of this thread.

He holds up a phonebook sized printout of his e-book and says "It's 461 pages, but it has all the theory that you need for this channel"...

 

[Garry]

Yeah, his channel is hundreds of videos though, so that doesn't seem incongruous to me.

 

[ism]

"Theory is derived from great music, not the other way around".

That's not entirely true. There exists underlying mechanisms of cognition and perception, which are much better understood in recent decades, as well underlying mathematical structures and principles. So while there's certainly a sense in which theory is abstracted from great music, this isn't quite the same as saying that music theory is purely an epiphenomenal gloss.

 

[MartinH.]

Not sure if Rick Beato reads this forum, but he just uploaded a video today here to address those that complain that his videos are too complicated! He gives a nice run down of the essentials that you need to know, in order to get value from his other more in depth videos. I found it helpful and it made me think of this thread.

I watched the rest of the video now, thanks for sharing it here! He says he doesn't want to get bogged down by repeating basics over and over again in his videos and I can understand that. There's always less material for intermediates because beginners are the biggest market everywhere, so it's great that he takes the risk to just cater to intermediates. And the top comment under the video says "If you can't learn from Rick it's hopeless. What a great teacher.", so his style clearly works very well for some people. Not for me though. And I want to stress that I'm not "complaining" and I think he's a cool dude for sharing so much free educational material with the world! But his style couldn't be a worse match for the way I would need the knowledge explained to me to get anything out of it. I could follow along as long as he was talking about stuff that I already knew (though I can 100% guarantuee I wouldn't have understood any of it if I hadn't had that prerequisite knowledge), but as soon as he started on the circle thing I was completely lost. Is that the "circle of fifths" (headline says something different)? In case it is, that's the thing I already didn't understand back in school. In fact he very much reminds me of the teachers that I didn't understand a thing from in those days, including my music teacher.
But you can't please everyone and I seem to have found a teacher that works well for me with "signals music studio". His way of giving context to the thing he's about to teach before throwing the first notes at me works sooo much better for me:

That's not entirely true. There exists underlying mechanisms of cognition and perception, which are much better understood in recent decades

So what you're saying is "there was good music before the theory was fully understood yet"?

as well underlying mathematical structures and principles.

The only theorybook that I tried to read (and gave up on) was by Hindemith and in the beginning he talked a lot about mathematical relationships between notes that are certain intervals apart, and natural overtones within the sounds of instruments, and that - even if I only understood parts of it - I found to be a useful way of looking at it, because when things can be explained in a granular down-to-the-numbers way, then I often understand them better. E.g. much in computer graphics and programming I understand better because I can follow it down to bits and bytes and there's no more fundamental understanding to be had for certain things. It's a fair bit more complex in music though imho. At least for me it's harder to grasp.

So while there's certainly a sense in which theory is abstracted from great music, this isn't quite the same as saying that music theory is purely an epiphenomenal gloss.

I apologize, but I don't understand what you mean.

 

[kessel]

I seem to have found a teacher that works well for me with "signals music studio". His way of giving context to the thing he's about to teach before throwing the first notes at me works sooo much better for me

That's one I think I also share with you. For me just talking about music theory doesn't help much, I need to see it, and I mean see it on an instrument not in a graphic.

I'm putting a couple of things together that might work for me and I want to share them here in case somebody whose mind works like mine when it comes to musical theory might want to try it out, not sure if it works as I'm just starting with it.

Based on the recommendations I have received in this same thread I'm going to start by analyzing songs I like from other artists as well as my own songs to find out what I'm doing and how can I get better to my musical objectives.

What I've done so far is getting a couple of plugins that can help me find out the notes of the songs I want to study. I have scaler for midi sources and I just bought Mixed in Key Studio today to do the same with audio sources in case I start analyzing a song by some artist as a help to transpose those notes into midi.

One of the reasons I want to translate the songs into midi is to sync my DAW with an external tool that helps me transcribe the MIDI into musical notation. I've downloaded MuseScore for free for that matter. There are alternative software options to any of these three programs for midi, audio and notation respectively.

So my next step is going to be taking a song I like and start "deconstructing" it with these tools and parallel have some digital books on harmony and music theory where to look for more information when needed, like harmony rules, chord functions, notation rules... and of course my keyboard and maybe one of my guitars on the side just to play and test what I'm learning if needed.

I think this way I could really have fun learning the theory and if it doesn't work for me I hope it works for someone else who may read this. I'll keep telling you how it works for me and sharing my experience with this great community that hat given me so good ideas about where to start from. Thanks again and I hope I can tell you some good things about my progress soon

 

[Garry]

I watched the rest of the video now, thanks for sharing it here! He says he doesn't want to get bogged down by repeating basics over and over again in his videos and I can understand that. There's always less material for intermediates because beginners are the biggest market everywhere, so it's great that he takes the risk to just cater to intermediates. And the top comment under the video says "If you can't learn from Rick it's hopeless. What a great teacher.", so his style clearly works very well for some people. Not for me though. And I want to stress that I'm not "complaining" and I think he's a cool dude for sharing so much free educational material with the world! But his style couldn't be a worse match for the way I would need the knowledge explained to me to get anything out of it. I could follow along as long as he was talking about stuff that I already knew (though I can 100% guarantuee I wouldn't have understood any of it if I hadn't had that prerequisite knowledge), but as soon as he started on the circle thing I was completely lost. Is that the "circle of fifths" (headline says something different)? In case it is, that's the thing I already didn't understand back in school. In fact he very much reminds me of the teachers that I didn't understand a thing from in those days, including my music teacher.
But you can't please everyone and I seem to have found a teacher that works well for me with "signals music studio". His way of giving context to the thing he's about to teach before throwing the first notes at me works sooo much better for me:





So what you're saying is "there was good music before the theory was fully understood yet"?


The only theorybook that I tried to read (and gave up on) was by Hindemith and in the beginning he talked a lot about mathematical relationships between notes that are certain intervals apart, and natural overtones within the sounds of instruments, and that - even if I only understood parts of it - I found to be a useful way of looking at it, because when things can be explained in a granular down-to-the-numbers way, then I often understand them better. E.g. much in computer graphics and programming I understand better because I can follow it down to bits and bytes and there's no more fundamental understanding to be had for certain things. It's a fair bit more complex in music though imho. At least for me it's harder to grasp.


I apologize, but I don't understand what you mean.

Yes, signals music studio was the site I originally recommended to the OP at the beginning of the thread, he’s awesome.

For me, no one source will give you everything, but a combination of some of the suggestions on this thread will go a long way.

 

[MartinH.]

Can't thank you and MartinH enough (and everyone really !) for this great great thread!!! Can't wait to get some more feedback on your new process and how it works for you!

I didn't even know "signals music studio" before reading this thread, and everything else I said has been said before by Garry, JohnG, and the others, so it's indeed "everyone else" you should be thanking, but I'm glad it's helping you too!

Yes, signals music studio was the site I originally recommended to the OP at the beginning of the thread, he’s awesome.

Yeah, his channel is truly youtube gold and his videos are short and entertaining enough that I should be able to get through them all. Thanks again for this recommendation! If you know or find any similar channels (fine too if they're aimed at guitar/metal composition), please let us know!


Youtube has a bad habbit of boxing you in into always recommending the same kind of stuff, instead of actively broadening your horizon. I discovered a bit about how the recommendation algorithm works by deleting all my youtube cookies (I don't use an account on youtube or google) to get a "clean slate" a couple of times. When you open a youtube link in a private browsing window, it's like youtube knows nothing about you anymore and recommends you stuff based on the first video you opened in that window. So if it's a music theory video, all recommendations under "related videos" are for music theory youtube channels. Thought this might be usefull if people want to do some exploring. Works for getting music recommendations as well.

Thanks again and I hope I can tell you some good things about my progress soon

Sounds good, let us know how it goes!
To cite Mike Verta once more, he strongly recommends transcribing things that you can get the score for, but using that only to "check if you got it right". Meaning transcribe the first few bars by ear first, then look at the score and cover the parts you haven't transcribed yet with a sheet of paper, see how close you got and make mental notes of all the things that surprised you.
But I understand if you're mainly interested in stuff where you can't get the sheet music for (same for me). My favourite transcription trick is when I think I got the right note, I try how it sounds with the ones above or below in sync with the original, and if both sound very dissonant, I probably got the right one. I started doing that after I noted that I often was off by a fifth, even when using a frequency analyzer tool like the free voxengo SPAN to look for peaks in the frequency spectrum that can give me hints to what plays, because the frequency of a note one fifth higher often is part of the overtone frequencies, and in the spectrum of a full song it's really hard to see what's a note frequency and what's just an overtone.
Try not to get too reliant on tools long term, but they can be a good way to get you started and will likely teach you things too.

 

[Vik]

That's not entirely true.

That statement ("Theory is derived from great music, not the other way around") is still extremely important IMO. The first ever written books and theories about harmony and music theory wasn't of course written by someone who had read other books. The initial observations was based on what works (according to what feels right when we hear it). So experimenting, by finding harmonic solutions based on what sounds right (teach of us) is IMO a very useful way to get to know harmony, and if one is working with songs one really like, it certainly isn't boring. One of one of my teachers' first lessons was about creating a set of variations of C minor based on what I felt sounded good. It was a very useful and helpful advice, which probably also should work well in your situation, @kessel.

That, and - if possible - starting to take private lessons from a teacher who adjusts his lessons to his students more than he expect the students to adjust their way of learning to the teachers's routines would probably also be very helpful.
Besides, if someone has trouble learning how most people play and deal with harmonies - why not just play/deal with them in other ways?

 

[dzilizzi]

Another thing I've found helpful is things like the Chord Track in Cubase. You can select any chords in the first option. But what is really helpful in learning theory is the modified Circle of Fifths option, where you pick a key and it basically gives you the chords that work with it. (Toontrack also has this but with more options for extended chords like 7ths and sustaineds). And even more interesting is the third tab where it suggests chord progressions partially based on the chords you've used but mostly on various music theory styles. A lot of the suggestions I would never have thought to use.

Mostly I find the actual circle of fifths to be only useful if you are trying to remember how many sharps or flats are in a key. And if you just memorize the keys, which you can do using something like www.musictheory.net it isn't really that useful anymore. I could be missing another use for it.

 

[Leon Willett]

every time I see names like Mozart, The Beatles, Beethoven... I loose interest almost instantly.

You loose interest... as you should!

Because you are not interested in that, and therefore shouldn't spend time on it.

What you are interested in is making the music you want.

If your music already sounds how you want, you don't need to learn any theory, or to get bored reading about the theory of how to write like Mozart.

If you feel your music still isn't coming out the way you want, then you need to learn the RIGHT KIND of theory, in order to fix that.

People are recommending transcribing stuff you love, which can offer some insights.

But it's hard to derive the hidden rules that are making the piece sound the way that it does, even when you transcribe it, or even have the score itself in your hands.

Reading a novel -- seeing all the words in front of you, in plain sight -- does not teach you how to write a great novel. Because there are hidden things going on, like character development, plot design, all kinds of stuff... Hence storytelling theory to the rescue.

Music is the same, there are many things going on that a beginner is unlikely to spot, even when looking at the score itself.

If you are capable of deriving all the "rules" of the music you love from transcribing it or looking at the score, then awesome!

Most people (myself included, when I first started looking at scores... wasted many years deriving mistaken assumptions from scores), need help with that. That help is: the right kind of theory.