Posted by birdculture 3 days ago
Over time, I developed shorthands for understanding theory like i can easily look at a fretboard and know which note it is.
But what bugged me is that you seem to imply the reason why you couldn't learn a instrument was because you did not understand the why. That makes very little sense to me. I know several professional musicians who don't even know what a mode is or what formal notation is. One of them has pitch perfect ear, he can literally hear anything and tranpose that on his guitar. He has no idea how notes work and just writes tabs.
So while this is very nicely from a programmer point of view and an objective explanation of things but learning all this will not make you a better musician is the point.
Practice above all. Dont try to fit all theory into the pratice but understand what you are practicing particulalry using the theory. Otherwise you end up with all theory and no practice experience of using that theory and creativity.
As a perosn who likes code, this is interesting. As a musician who also understands music theory, this is kind of alienating in terms of how it presented. Like if someone just read this article and thought they understood music theory now, they would be pretty unsufferable to actual musicians.
My 8 year old hardly ever practices but just looks at the music and knows the notes on piano and violin.
In any case, I agree that this isn't that helpful to being able to play, it's just an interesting way to understand why things are as they are.
I do not have perfect pitch, but I could always do what GP's kid does. I am now a pretty good amateur singer.
What matters for this is learning to read the music notation and developing a sense (mostly subconscious) of scales and harmony. Perfect pitch does not help either of those things.
Quite a lot of people learn by imitation without knowing the underlying theory. Some people need a theoretical framework so that they have a mental model with which to understand everything else.
Fundamentally, you’re arguing against learning theory. Not everyone learns the same way. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with a basic fact of life.
Furthermore, in real life, I have seen the same approach actually be detremental to learning guitar. Its a bit like football - there is a physical skill level to the sport which you can practice and then there is a theoritical part (tactics and formation) that help you understand the game and play better.
But if you just want to start by kicking a ball and you know everything about Pep Guardiola's new counterattacking system. Yet when you are kicking the ball and practicing the basic skills, you are not thinking woah am i a midfield playing the right side and looking for a pass? That type of thinking is not useful when you are learning how to kick a ball.
Ideally you should do the two together and work really hard on practice first if you actually want to be a footballer is my point. If you say oh no everyone is different, some people just like tactics, I don't think I say anything against it.
Theory first is not a good way to learn an instrument is my qualified statement. Not that theory is not important or doesnt matter or everyone should follow the same way of learning.
Hi Claude
> The system we want, where the octave is pure and the fifths are pure and everything closes into a neat loop, does not exist and never has. Every tuning system in history is a different choice about where to dump the error.