Comment

Comment by quadrangle

This isn't "music theory" (although almost everyone thinks it is). This is "music jargon and notation systems". A theory is something that explains an observed phenomenon. This jargon and notation stuff doesn't explain music, it just guides you through the jargon and notation.

I have a music degree and learned all this stuff and a lot more. This presentation is an excellent, high-quality overview of this non-theory junk.

It's extremely culturally-biased and, again, offers no real theoretical explanation.

If you want real understanding of music in a useful way for real people, I recommend Bob Snyder's book "Music and Memory: An Introduction" which was actually written to teach creative artistic people about how music actually works rather than how aristocratic European music notation works.

For some other perspectives, check out http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/htmlRT/contents.html and http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html (normally I wouldn't push these on average folks, although they are superb but the HN crowd should be fine with them)

parent quadrangle 12 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton