This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books.
If you actually want to learn music theory for the purposes of playing I strongly recommend you just follow whatever tutorials for your instrument and style and if you get to the point where feel you want to learn more and take it seriously in and of itself, buy “The Jazz Theory Book” by Mark Levine[1]. In spite of what it says, there really isn’t any such thing as Jazz theory - it’s just music theory, and this book is a great presentation with lots of good examples. If you like jazz (or the western popular music tradition including rock, pop, funk, etc) you’ll come out understanding how that music works better than most people. If you’re doing a music degree, there will be books recommended by your music programme, but honestly, Levine will cover most of what you need if you’re not doing a straight classical course in which case you’ll want to augment with a more conventional source so you understand the “rules” they want you to follow when writing pastiche counterpoint etc.
If you want to get big into composition and/or want to understand late romantic and 20th century music, get Harmonielehre and “Structural Functions of Harmony” by Schoenberg. Together they are by far the best harmony books I have ever seen and go super-deep into why the western classical tradition works the way it does. If you compose there’s a decent chance they will change your life forever as his approach is to not take anything for granted but exhibit everything with examples from masterworks of the western tradition. Amazing books both of them. Harmony is not a spectator sport though - to get full benefit you have to get the books and work through stuff on the piano. It will reward you immensely.
If you want something else that will blow your mind, read “The technique of my musical language” by Messiaen. If you read Levine first this will have the additional benefit of showing you where the “diminished” and “augmented” scales and the whole “harmonic major” thing come from.
You say that the article isn't music theory but don't bother to say why.
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-theo...
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.
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.
Because such posts get tiring after a while. Strong dunning kruger and all that.
> 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.
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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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Music theory is a way of describing that cool thing you played, not the other way around
Music theory is absolutely an indispensable tool for musicians and composers. You can play music without it, but that’s just putting an unnecessary upper bound on what you can achieve.
More than anything, it’s a vocabulary to talk about the thing you’re doing with others.
The only people I know who are productive as composers or arrangers are familiar with theory.
Because they can write it down. Good for them.
Retiring from music due to RSI suggests practical experience.
Disclosure: Musician
Definitely gatekeeping. I'm no wiz by any means, but I've done (and still do) a fair amount of paid work (gigs, studio recordings, teaching, etc.) and I would not describe Grade 5 ABRSM as "very basic"
Many subject matters are initially so confusing and inaccessible that I have often wished for an audio-visual video lecture series in the following format:
Part 1: Music theory explained in just 5 minutes
Part 2: Music theory explained in just 20 minutes
Part 3: Music theory explained in 80 minutes
Etc. Starting with an extremely simplified overview and then making the overviews progressively more detailed.
Many people instead try to give simple explanations without making them short. But no confused beginner wants to be overwhelmed by a huge wall of text, let alone by a long theoretical book.
Unfortunately most people who have become knowledgeable about some subject matter then quickly and thoroughly forget how confusing, overwhelming or intimidating it was before.
When I see my friends who are into music play and talk about different instruments, it actually feels like magic to me. I tried to learn Violin some years ago but I could never understand why the note was correct. I do know that if I had learnt Keyboard instead, I would know where the correct notes are but I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is. Any pointer as to what I can do? Because I dont think learning music theory is going to be enough for me.
At many western music schools, if piano isn’t your first instrument, it is compulsory to study piano as a second instrument. The reason for this is that it really helps when understanding harmony. You also do ear training, which is meant to solve the problem I think you’re describing. I expect you would find ear training resources on youtube or something now but I did it the old-fashioned way where you start by listening when people play major / minor chords, all the intervals, learn to recognize inversions etc and then move on to doing transcriptions of music you like. I have box files full of transcriptions I did when learning. But Levine (for example) includes some ear training advice.
Thanks! That's actually very helpful :)
> I am still not able to recognize a sound and understand what note that is
That is called "perfect pitch" and it is not necessary to play music. It's very rare to have perfect pitch, and it seems to be innate, not something you learn.
Contextual note recognition (relative pitch) is what musicians normally use to jam. It comes with practice and contextual clues that you pick up over tens of years (including familiarity with your jammate's instrument, even if it's not the one you play; familiarity with multiple eras of music theory; pure practice), so this shouldn't be your #1 priority since it just comes along for free (or a bit of practice), as you learn. Music playing 101 is just... playing music in your instrument. You don't need to recognize notes until you want to jam, which comes years after you start playing an instrument.
Some people seem to just be physically unable to distinguish relative pitch though.
You might want to start here: https://www.musictheory.net/ (not affiliated, I just think it's a very good resource for Music Theory 101).
Isn't perfect pitch just when you can tell a note without having a reference tone?
Once you have a point of reference things just go up and down and from there it should be manageable to identify each note.
Also, not sure about the innate thing. Seems to me that it's just a neural pathway that can be created by playing or listening to a whole lot of music while being aware of which tone is which, for example by reading the score alongside.
> Some people seem to just be physically unable to distinguish relative pitch though.
I used to think I was pitch blind until one day it just clicked. It just takes practice in my opinion.
There's nothing magic in it. Any two pitches that have a rational number ratio with a small denominator sound "correct".
It's just a quirk of human physiology. The real creativeness and ingenuity comes from rhythm and the interplay of repetitive and surprising sounds. The pitches are not important.
Yes, he could have approached it differently.
It’s really good at explaining the octave, the fifth, it shows the mathematical basis for why just intonation has “wolf notes”, and why we use 12-tone equal temperament.
Once it hits the 12-tone scale, and explains why we generally avoid the tritone, it doesn’t explain very well why we generally use diatonic instead of chromatic scales (well, OK, great music can use chromatic scales, but there’s a reason “Entrance of the Gladiators” sounds like a clown show).
I would had, after explaining how 12-tone gives us an almost perfect fifth and fourth, explained that a major third is 5/4, and a minor third is 6/5, and that the thirds are noticeably but tolerably out of tune in 12-tone equal temperament.
Once we have the fifth and the major third, we then explain the major chord (Base note, 3/2, and roughly 5/4). Next, we explain the perfect fourth. From there, we can show the I IV V chord progression. And once we have I IV V we can then demonstrate the major scale. (The linked article shows us a major scale but doesn’t explain why the major scale is tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone—it’s that way because if we take all of the notes that exist in a I IV V chord progression, we get the seven notes of a major scale)
After I IV V, I would then look at a basic 4/4 rhythm, quarter notes, eight notes, the kick drum, the snare drum, and the closed hi hat.
I IV V, the major scale, and a simple 4/4 rhythm is enough music theory to write a good number of rock and pop songs.
I IV V and the major scale is roughly equivalent to understanding variables and variable assignment. Adding the structure of a 4/4 rhythm, with kick, snare, and high hat is equivalent to if-then-else and while.
From there, if I were to continue, I would next explain the minor third (6/5) and minor scale, the pentatonic scales (minor pentatonic gives us a large number of rock guitar solos), and probably show the I V vi IV chord progression.
Obviously, this is very basic, but things like ABRSM Grade 5 are the music equivalent of Forth-like and Lisp-like languages: They can be useful, but just as the majority of programs aren’t written in Forth or a Lisp dialect, the majority of music doesn’t use, say, an irregular time signature.
What is your opinion of open music theory v2? People on reddit think very highly of it. https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/
Doesn't look like really a "v2" to me, rather v1 a bit re-arranged. A true "theory" able to explain present music (or even Jazz from the seventies) and also support its creation is still widely lacking, or just a naive variation of what was used for classical music. Tymoczko & co go a bit in a more general/useful direction where the theory eventually can also be used to define algorithms which can "compose" credible contemporary music, but still a long way to go. The latter is like the "litmus test" from my humble point of view whether a theory is indeed useful.
I don't know it personally but skimming it looks pretty good.
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As a non-musician non-Western programmer, the only music book that is making sense to me (still reading) is Robert Snyder's Music and Memory[1]. It's the first book that doesn't trick me by trying to pass cultural artefacts (notes, scales, raga, etc.) as some universal truth, or douse me in medieval pseudo-science (Pythagorean small ratios, etc.)
I am not an expert, so maybe this book has its own shortcomings which I am being blind to. But this is the first book on music I have been able to read this far without having to fight the urge to fling it against a wall.
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262692373/music-and-memory/
If you like that book, you might also enjoy David Huron's books on voice leading and anticipation. I have not read the book you referenced, but from the description it seems like a similar approach.