I only know basic music theory. How do I learn more?

[svetlio320]

Greetings everyone and thank you for coming. I'd been playing the piano casually for 4 years up until it recently struck me that I loved music and also that I have quite a bit of experience and could eventually play professionally. I started composing a piece and was writing the sheet music when I realised how little I know about music theory ,music notation and sheet music.  I can read it well but when it comes to small details I fail to understand them. Is there something I could do to compensate for my lack of knowledge and generally gain a more-than-basic understanding of music theory?

[ranjit]

I liked the course Write Like Mozart on Coursera, and thought it covered a lot of the basics. It's free to audit online, so you can go through it to check how much of the material you already know.

[volcanoadam]

Is there something I could do to compensate for my lack of knowledge and generally gain a more-than-basic understanding of music theory?

I don't think you can compensate for lack of knowledge, but if you want to learn you can check that YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCLKqj9NLaPAYFoowQw3S16g
I've found it extremely useful.

[adodd81802]

Go to Amazon and type "Music Theory" find the best rated books and purchase them.

Here's just a couple that are very highly rated (5 star reviews, 1000+ ratings)

Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert - The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding and Learning Music Theory Effortlessly (Essential Learning Tools for Musicians) 3rd Edition

Music Theory For Dummies Paperback – July 11, 2019

Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory: A Complete Self-Study Course for All Musicians

Music Theory and Composition: A Practical Approach

A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (Oxford Studies in Music Theory)

Contemporary Counterpoint: Theory & Application (Music Theory: Counterpoint)

Music Composition For Dummies

Music Theory, 3E (Idiot's Guides)

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Composition (Complete Idiot's Guides (Lifestyle Paperback))

That's just a few. if you're tech savvy at all you can probably grab a couple of free copies and downloads from various websites, but generally speaking a combination of Amazon and Youtube is where I'll go when I'm trying to grasp a new concept.

[lelle]

Check if there are any local courses in music theory. I did a preparatory music theory course before I entered university. If you have some specific questions you can ask here, I'm a huge music theory nerd and can try to help you out B-)

[j_tour]

Listen to most everything above.  Yeah, I mean, I still occasionally refer to a little pocket-sized Alfred Dictionary of Music (for what, I can't remember), but among textbooks, the only ones that really stick in my mind as foundational are the good old Walter Piston *Harmony*, the George Perle on serial music, and it sounds strange, but Arnold Schönberg's Harmonielehre is really good (it's not at all a book about serialism, but covers all the same ground as any text on functional harmony, in addition to being forthcoming with many examples in notation and having some very clever expository prose interludes).

But that just varies, and the basic material should be in any decent text.  Or online.  I'd just stick with one basic textbook type book, but however you can, it's really the same material.

The only reason I'm commenting is that I got stuck doing temperature control in a tiny room with ghastly flourescent lights for about four hours today. 

But, I happened to have, among a few other things, a copy of Beethoven's Rage Over a Lost Penny. 

I'm still a bit astounded at how adeptly Beethoven performed various modulations:  with even basic tools, you can identify how the composer manages, and be in a position to marvel at how seamlessly it seems to unfold.

That particular piece is not especially surprising, if you know late-early-->early-middle Beethoven (which I think is likely about when this was composed, despite the opus number:  compare to sonatas just around and before the Op. 31 triad, and then compare to much later solo piano works), but you should choose your own things to look at, according to taste.

The other score I had with me was Liszt's "Grand galop":  that's a bit more straightforward. 

But still worth looking at with some basic ideas of harmony in mind.  (I was humbled last evening playing through a few pages....it's the mileage, not the years, on the Liszt!).

So, in short, once you know your cadences and all that, just go ahead and practice by looking at whatever music you're interested in:  use a pencil, mark things up, and see the big ideas. 

Then look at the smaller ideas:  the voicings of augmented sixths, suspensions and pedal tones, how diminished harmony contributes to the authentic cadence.

Do it at a desk, ideally:  it is an abstraction over the music, the theory, so it deserves some consideration in its own right.

[timothy42b]

In my experience, the actual theory that explains why things work gets less attention in guitar centered approaches. The best resources I found were good at explaining why music works. Maybe the ultimate goal is application to the guitar, and maybe it is a longer way around but, for me, theory stood on its own. Learning to apply it was a different step in the process.

For me, theory is such a broad field with so many pieces to memorize that it's only useful to learn what has an application.  Anything else I quickly forget. 

But we're all different in what has an application.  If you improvise you need to know more than an ensemble player that only works off set arrangements, et.  If you compose you'll need to know different things than if you only play.  As a brass player I need to know when I'm on the third of the chord and when it has to be lowered out of equal temperament - a guitar player might also but not a pianist.  Etc. 

I read through a lot of Walter Piston and understood it but it was theoretical and didn't stick.  Then  I ended up running a Praise and Worship band and suddenly I needed to know specific things about chord progressions, spellings, substitutions, etc., and now when I went back to the text it made a different kind of sense. 

[anacrusis]

For me, theory is such a broad field with so many pieces to memorize that it's only useful to learn what has an application.  Anything else I quickly forget. 

But we're all different in what has an application.  If you improvise you need to know more than an ensemble player that only works off set arrangements, et.  If you compose you'll need to know different things than if you only play.  As a brass player I need to know when I'm on the third of the chord and when it has to be lowered out of equal temperament - a guitar player might also but not a pianist.  Etc. 

I read through a lot of Walter Piston and understood it but it was theoretical and didn't stick.  Then  I ended up running a Praise and Worship band and suddenly I needed to know specific things about chord progressions, spellings, substitutions, etc., and now when I went back to the text it made a different kind of sense.

It depends on at what level you intend to play. If you want to be a really fine musician and make an interpretation, you'll need to know theory in-depth. Else there will just be a lot of elements in the music that you won't see and therefore be unable to include in your interpretation.

[j_tour]

If you want to be a really fine musician and make an interpretation, you'll need to know theory in-depth. Else there will just be a lot of elements in the music that you won't see and therefore be unable to include in your interpretation.

I somewhat agree, although I wouldn't self-apply the term "really fine musician."  Many of you are just that, I'm certain, but I just consider myself "regular" as a musician.  Good at what I can do, struggle with other components I don't find useful in my regular work, but overall just sort of competent, workman-like at the keys.

For me, understanding even through-composed music means that I could take and transpose a given piece by ear, and apply various elements, like a Neopolitan sixth to other applications.  Or even with a pencil and staff paper, but that's a lot of effort.  It's sort of like a recent thread about making up ex tempore exercises:  with the right ideas, theoretically and mechanically, it's like child's play, really.  (Although I do think some of the Czerny is pretty clever....I only really am familiar with the Op. 799 which is pretty straightforward, but still, some effort was put into it on the part of Carlito).

I don't want to make it sound easy:  it's difficult, even with a solid foundation, to sight-transpose or apply abstract ideas from theory.

Perhaps some people have it easier than others, but I think everyone would agree it's a challenge in some respect.

I'm not sold on the idea of reproducing music from the page being predicated upon deeper understanding.

It's rewarding, intellectually, but one is really just being a monkey at a typewriter when it comes to performing music or sounds one has mastered:  i.e., material or styles one knows and has played a bazillion times.  You know, is the tuxedo freshly cleaned and pressed?  Does one show up on time, well-rested and freshly covered with talcum powder?  And so forth.

Not that that's easy:  it clearly is not, for many values of the variable, but I'm not convinced analysis is in the top handful of desiderata as a mere performer.

[timothy42b]

Not that that's easy:  it clearly is not, for many values of the variable, but I'm not convinced analysis is in the top handful of desiderata as a mere performer.

I'm not either.  I think careful listening goes a lot farther than an intellectual understanding of theory, for most people anyway.  Maybe not for composers, but certainly for players.