Is music theory just cope for people that can't "feel" music?
No. Theory actually helps you better articulate the musical ideas in your head. Before theory I had all these ideas in my head but when I went to produce the outcome would be completely different. I was still making stuff that I thought was good and sounds good, but now I'm actually making what I was actually thinking. Now I know what exact notes I need for a sound I want or what key the song should be in. Theory makes people that can feel music actually know what they're feeling.
I don’t know, man.
>>130549201No. You've just exposed yourself has having a sub 90 IQ.
>>130549201for the vast majority of people playing music, the amount of theory useful to learn is so laughably miniscule that it is just pathetic that people complain about it.
>>130549544Just say say you never made money off music on YouTube bro
someone who can 'feel' music is almost guaranteed to be still using music theory principles so i don't know how this can be the case
>>130549722yes, and what people fail to realize is that if a "feel" based player is good enough there will come a time where they have to communicate with other musicians. if a keyboard player asks what chord you played and all you can do is drool and say 5th fret on the 3rd string, then just lol
>>130549201You can't write actual music without knowing some theory. As in scoring or composing anything. You can't even learn piano without learning it in passing because the nature of the pianos whole and half steps make it incredibly obvious. It's just guitarists wallowing in the shitty matrix note system who struggle to pick up basic theory because the notes aren't as blatantly obvious as they are on a piano. Basic theory isn't even difficult or complicated and you can learn it in two hours. Up through the 12 notes, the major scale, the 7 chords in a key, how chords are named, what the modes are, what people mean by voice leading, what a time signature is, all this can broad strokes be learned in 2 hours. After that it's just brute forcing practical application and memorization and as a player building the muscle memory to not have to think through what you learned and can play through these ideas instinctively.
>>130549726i mean a competent keyboard player will know what that is anyway. this is kind of a shit example, but i see what you mean
>>130549201No, hating music theory is for hacks who cant articulate their actual perspectives beyond vibes.
I see a lot of music theory resources with regards to chords/scales but not so much resources with regard to rhythm, especially post-2015 genres. Any reccs?
>>130549790Why would they tell you everything when they can just gatekeep the good stuff for themselves?
OP your question has about as much merit as asking if Adam Driver has a serious career
>>130549790In what way? People play in 4/4 and 3/4 almost all the time. Practical polyrhythms are 3:2 and 4:3. What are you looking for exactly? Syncopation or swung rhythm? Odd time signatures specifically? Shit hasn't changed since 2015.
>>130549790theory and style are different things, kind of
>>130549848Dance music, fast stuff with all those complex fills, it scratches my brain yet when I try to break it down I can pick out and break down a few repeated phrasings here and there but there's plenty of it that I can't figure the rhyme or reason behind
>>130549821To see what else can be done that combines things in a new way
>>130549879Dance music is all 4/4 and based on old disco ideas. If you're a drummer just look into 70s disco and funk bands and learn their fills and grooves. Then gate the shit out of them when recording because that is the modern sound and speed up the fills.
>>130549201There is a goldilocks zone between knowing no theory at all and knowing so much that everything is explainable and predictable. That is where you should try to be and why I refuse to go into all that shit about maj7sus4whatever, else music risks losing its magic. I know the basics and that's enough for me, I just fuck around and play "wrong" notes or chords on purpose and if it sounds good that's great, I don't need to know exactly why it works.
Is OP just retarded faggot?
>>130549879You mean IDM?Most of it is random
I don't know anything about music, really. I don't really know what a chord is. I don't know what key is. I don't know what a riff really is (like a repeated phrase?) What's phrase and what isn't? Melody? Is that the general doot-dooty-doot of the song ? Fuck if I know. I produced one song in my life and that was during the pandemic. It sounds like a demo for a really cool song, which was enough to prove to myself that anyone who has passion can make music whether or not they know anything about music theory.
>>130549416>Theory makes people that can feel music actually know what they're feeling
>>130549790Nonsense. Kids learn this in middle school band class.
>>130549201this is the dumbest shit ever and it's basically sour grapes for people that don't know any theory
>>130551520i agree and that's basically where i consider myself now and i can say knowing theory has made me an infinitely better guitarist than beforeas a guitarist, i know all the notes on the fretboard now and i know the intervals and how they make chords/scales and i know how to make the major scale, the minor scale, relative major/minor and how to find them, the chords of the major scale, just enough about modes to be familiar but not enough to actually be good at them, and that's totally fine
>>130549201yes unironically yesit's for jacob collier types
>>130549201What does this question even mean? Cope for what?
>>130549875Doesn't answer the question.
I've had an intuitive feel for melody, rhythm, and harmony since I was a child, which I honed through years of making music, and finally capatulted into the stratosphere by learning theory.I'll admit it almost ruined my music for a few months because I thought I had to follow the "rules" but I've come to realize it's a tool of communication.
>>130549693honestly. You can just learn major/minor/mixolydian scales and basic rhythm and know enough to write pop songs
>>130557785I feel like the major/minor scales are already engraved in every western music listener's head, I doubt most people even need theory to know when a note is out of key. Tons of pop songs also vascillate between major and minor (All I Want For Christmas is You does this for fuck's sake) so you probably don't even need the ability to distinguish them
>>130555624Yeah man fuck knowledge shits retarded
>>130557849for sure. I find melodies by just improvised soloing so I want to say it'd be needlessly hard to write melodies without that muscle memory, but honestly so many people do just hit random keys until something sounds good so fuck it you don't need anything really
>>130549201OP you sound like a punk
yes this particular persistent intrusive thought is massive cope
modes are kind of redundant and already basically side loaded into scales as is. know modes is like 2% percent increase in talent at most
>>130558020>honestly so many people do just hit random keys until something sounds good so fuck it you don't need anything reallyThis kind of ties back to the original question, because most people don't have the innate ability to do that, in which case maybe they could learn theory and become good musicians but not great musicians. The same is true the other way around, a musician with an insane ear but no theory knowledge won't be as competent as one with both. All the top classical composers knew their theory
>>130558115yeah, the endless debate. Honestly I generally do agree that learning theory is better, but I've been playing music for so long at this point that shit like the shaggs or whatever is interesting to me because they're making decisions I'd never in a million years make. I recognize that my brain is fried for that opinion but I am envious of people who can approach shit raw with no theory sometimes. I think my take just learn theory if you're interested, if you're the type of person who needs to solve the mystery of why certain things work. If not then fuck it you can still make cool shit, you're just limited in one direction. You could potentially make shit thats simple musically but rich in texture/tones or whatever
>>130558139>endless debate.ok, be realistic mate. obviously it's the difference between "HEY GUYS THIS SONG USES MODAL VARIATION" and wondering who will song on your jungle track
>>130558149by endless debate I just meant that I've seen the "is it always better to learn theory" discussion an endless amount of times.But yeah, if you're just sampling shit like jungle you can trial/error your way through everything. Not everything needs theory of course so when I hear that discussion I'm assuming it's people talking about actual songwriting and shit
is there people who are naturally better at music than others? some people who don't know a thing about music theory can make great songs while other people incredibly musically inept and can't make a single good song
>>130558182I doubt it, I think it comes down to taste more than anything. A lot of the people who are incredibly well practiced on their instrument can't make anything good because they don't have any ideas, they just play in an orchestra or something. Somebody with minimal knowledge but good taste and creativity can go further
Depends on the genre. If you want to play punk or basic pub rock, you don’t need to know anything, hell you barely need to play on time. If you want to play prog metal? You might need to know a lil theory
T. Rick Rubin
>>130558162i think my first post in this thread was that theory is inevitable, maybe that is an actual music debate idk
>>130558202im not sure. I'm more so talking about the skill of song writing where everything works rather than the skill of just one instrument. Taste is important but sometimes it seems like people don't have the sauce. There could be two guys who make songs, one is prolific and can put together songs that are great while the other take a long time to make songs and the product is a muddy mess
>>130549201I don’t have theories as much what might get claimed as ‘speculations’ and to that i have the feels that much of that might get transposed from hofstadter’s geb and i am an strange loop as speculations on loops and i would hazard that loops almost create own expectations for environment and that loop and sampling are partly environmental aspect that bracket speculation pattern or something like that Also there were traditional church mode theory to practice; musica enchiriadis or something like that
There are literally no downsides to learning theory. When you’re improvising a solo, it’s great to have a target note it should end on. Or when you’re writing a chord progression, it’s nice to know what chords will fit together in a conventional way vs sounding spicier and narrow your potential options accordingly. Or if you are writing a song and don’t know what to do next, it’s nice knowing a handful of tried and true next steps to give you some guidance til you can flesh it out some more. Even if you can’t play any instruments and you’re just fucking around in Suno, writing a specific prompt will get you a lot closer to what you want than just vague vibes.
