It’s got to be different depending on your goals. Do you want to join a local jazz band? Go the singer / songwriter route and hit up open mic nights? Set up a bedroom studio and put out breakcore tracks? Write classical choir pieces? Just keep in mind your goals when you’re studying, so you don’t end up, like, stubbornly slogging through counterpoint for four months and hating every moment of it, only for you to forget it all because you want to write rock songs.
There are a few resources I point people to on YouTube as an intro:
There’s the Reddit r/musictheory FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/wiki/index/ First question is, “I'm new to music theory, how do I start learning? What are the best textbooks/websites/apps to use?”
stubbornly slogging through counterpoint for four months and hating every moment of it, only for you to forget it all because you want to write rock songs.
Counterpoint is a great ingredient to progressive rock à la Gentle Giant.
That brings us to the nature of innovation: applying a technique in a novel way or in a market where it was unknown.
I like to watch YouTube videos like those of Adam Neely [1].
Rant: I imagine reading a novel, in which every paragraph came with an additional author note/explanation of the actual meaning. Clearly leaving room for interpretation and ambiguity is part of the enjoyment of reading or even writing that book.
This is to say, if we are going to make music, we don't necessarily need to constraint it to any particular theory or rules on how it should sound, which chord should come after the previous, etc.
On the other hand, some theory can go a long way in making the music understandable, like sharing a language with the listeners, and to collaborate with other musicians. It is a balancing act.
A lot of tutorials/books that say they are about "music theory" are really just about "music notation". Actual music theory (why is the major scale arranged the way it is? Why do chords often have neat frequency ratios? Why are there 12 semitones in an octave?) you have to dig a bit deeper, these are quite good:
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Tangental: what’s your favourite resource for learning about music theory/composition from scratch?
It’s got to be different depending on your goals. Do you want to join a local jazz band? Go the singer / songwriter route and hit up open mic nights? Set up a bedroom studio and put out breakcore tracks? Write classical choir pieces? Just keep in mind your goals when you’re studying, so you don’t end up, like, stubbornly slogging through counterpoint for four months and hating every moment of it, only for you to forget it all because you want to write rock songs.
There are a few resources I point people to on YouTube as an intro:
43 Music Theory Concepts (what order to learn) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeS8txkoUH4
How I’d Learn Music Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pirdPK5avU
There’s the Reddit r/musictheory FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/wiki/index/ First question is, “I'm new to music theory, how do I start learning? What are the best textbooks/websites/apps to use?”
Counterpoint is a great ingredient to progressive rock à la Gentle Giant.
That brings us to the nature of innovation: applying a technique in a novel way or in a market where it was unknown.
Bring your moves to new horizons !
I like to watch YouTube videos like those of Adam Neely [1].
Rant: I imagine reading a novel, in which every paragraph came with an additional author note/explanation of the actual meaning. Clearly leaving room for interpretation and ambiguity is part of the enjoyment of reading or even writing that book.
This is to say, if we are going to make music, we don't necessarily need to constraint it to any particular theory or rules on how it should sound, which chord should come after the previous, etc.
On the other hand, some theory can go a long way in making the music understandable, like sharing a language with the listeners, and to collaborate with other musicians. It is a balancing act.
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1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siHfCV6vuSc
A lot of tutorials/books that say they are about "music theory" are really just about "music notation". Actual music theory (why is the major scale arranged the way it is? Why do chords often have neat frequency ratios? Why are there 12 semitones in an octave?) you have to dig a bit deeper, these are quite good:
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/
https://www.lightnote.co/
Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom - https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/MusicTheory.html
Guy Michelmore in Youtube, to make it fun, and his Thinkspace learning platform, for the most formal bits.