I mean the way it’s mostly been taught and often times studied. There is a strong element of how things should be seen as according to that tradition.
Like I already stated in my earlier replies my attitude comes from being fed up with the way it’s been forced down young ppls throats in music academies, resulting in boring music and spoiled creativity.
I fail to understand how some ppl seem to think that these things exist in some kind of floating vacuum inside one’s mind instead of affecting pretty much everything they do, both in positive and negative ways.
You want to learn theory, go for it.
I not trying to stop you.
Examples of theory being prescriptive, everything regarding rhythms and the tuning of melodic instruments.
I disagree that you’re not using music theory when you make drones or techno. 1000s of people make techno every day. They assemble sounds for performance over time, and other people listen to it and say “yeah that’s techno”. So all those people have a shared understanding of techno. That shared understanding is music theory.
I 100% don’t care, or judge people, other than reading some comments in this thread.
This is what I think is strange, and the point I was making.
You don’t/can’t ‘know’ this, because you haven’t experienced your music from the perspective of having an understanding of it theoretically.
Like I said, this isn’t a judgement on you or anyone else, or the music in question, it’s just a fact.
It’s not offensive, but there is always a tone of reverse discrimination, and snobbery… ‘I don’t need theory’ equalling ‘I play by feel and instinct and without rules’, inferring people who do understand music theory are at a disadvantage and don’t have the same feel/instinct, they’re formulaic, etc. Which is BS.
I’ve been hearing this for 30+ years now, and I usually interpret it as ‘insecurities are loud’.
But, I also see the other side, usually in jazz funk circles, of people outwardly projecting their theory and find that a bit cringe.
I’m definitely not saying this, and I’m not sure anyone else on this thread is either.
Look, it’s quite simple what I’m saying.
I have about 2 hours a week free that I can dedicate to music. The accumulated knowledge/theory/instincts (whatever you want to call it) from all the years of listening to and making music is enough that I am artistically satisfied and my small but beautiful audience is entertained.
I’m already happy doing things the way I’m doing them, so why should I waste my very precious time studying things I most likely don’t need to know and almost certainly isn’t going to make me any happier, because I’m already happy.
I’ll say it one more time, just so you can all stop projecting shit on me.
I don’t give a fuck what anyone else does or why they do it.
Good post and you make some great points - but I have to point out that people keep dismissing the opinion that theory can impact your work negatively as essentially being due to a lack of knowledge or experience, “youve never done it so you couldnt know” - but it’s important to stress, as others have in this thread, that this is also an opinion sometimes shared by those with that knowledge, and they’ve expressed a lack of being able to ‘go back’ to that time.
It’s not only being presented by those resistant to learning it - and many of us have probably learnt at least some theory anyway - many in this thread have shared those experiences.
Ultimately everyone’s music journey is different, and I think some people will benefit more from education than others - many would probably benefit from a little. But there’s no wrong or right way to make art and some people don’t like frameworks. Some people can’t live without them.
I get this. And, if you were asking advice on whether you should learn music theory, which I know you’re not, you’re happy, but, if you were… I’d say no, I don’t think you should.
Its a fkn long process… easily 1-2 years of study, concurrently/followed by 2-3 years of learning how to implement it, followed by 1-2 years unlearning it and making use of it naturally in your music.
3-5 years easily.
I wouldn’t do it myself now if I hadn’t done it already. Same with learning the guitar… no way I could be arsed these days.
I like to look at this from the other side. Techno is music. Therefore you could have techno music theory; we just don’t yet (or we do, but we use different words and notations for it that most of the “traditional music theory” people ignore).
(Traditional, classically taught, “western”) Music theory doesn’t yet contain knowledge or ideas that properly capture what goes on in some musical forms. There’s no notation for raising an HPF + wet/dry mix, the squelch of a 303 through a distortion pedal. There’s no way to describe how the same rhythm played on a tight, damped funk kit and on 909s going through an old Boss mixer has quite a different effect on the listener. We currently do it by talking about frequencies and signal flows, rather than “notes”. You can try (because there’s notation for “drums”), but notation typically describes root notes and manual articulation, not the inherent tonal structure or envelopes of the sound source.
So when you try to apply music theory to musical forms that operate in areas not covered by the current state of music theory, you come up short and you are constrained.
As was said above, music theory isn’t fixed, isn’t rules and isn’t prescriptive. However, it doesn’t yet cover some aspects of sound manipulation and arrangement which are important to some musicians.
This is a bit like the Sapir-Whorf/Korzybsky model: language about a thing defines (to some extent) how we think about that thing. Music theory is a language, and thus can fall foul of the same kinds of traps as verbal language. But it’s also open and extensible.
Aren’t Ableton/Logic/Elektron project files just a form of musical notation? They contain information for all the instruments and playing instructions that are needed to play the composition.
Also, nothing stops us from inventing another notation system to work for our needs with the Octatrack for example. Many composers end up using their own notation because of the limitations of the traditional notation systems.
This has always been the case though, there has always been room for interpretation amongst notation.
The way a printed script given to multiple actors is always going to be interpreted differently, it’s the same for music… that’s kind of the point… it’s a guide, it’s not definitive.
Think of 4’33 by John Cage for the extreme of this.
And the notation for ‘raising an HPF + wet/dry mix‘ would be just that, written beneath the music on the stave if it was explicitly intended.
Otherwise, you’re talking about interpretative technical decisions.
It’s all there. How it’s used/interpreted is highly personal and subjective. Personally, I never use traditional written music (stave) notation, but I hear/think in music theory terms constantly, it’s ingrained, even when I’m banging out very average techno on my Analog Rytm.
I‘ve been learning music theory since I was 5 years old and don’t use any of it when producing.
My best tip is to save your time and listen to your heart, if you think something sounds awesome there will be many other people that feel the same
Stop the struggle with the theory and start making some music!
I believe you are still using music theory in most of your work. You work in time and cycles, with rhythm, with dynamics, with arrangement, with orchestration, possibly with melody, chords/cadences, with harmony (even “tuning your kick drums” is harmony). Theory exists which describes all of those.
Choosing to lift a brass lick from a funk record is working with orchestration and harmony. Putting your 909 kick on every beat, and cycles that count four beats is “using theory”. Bringing your pads in manually on a mixer is arrangement. etc.
Nothing in music is born out of theory. Theory is retroactive and comes after the creation. It’s description, language and communication, not the sound.
(well, ok, that’s a somewhat knee-jerk, hyperbolic statement. Some people do create new music in response to learning theory. But thinking that derivative process is more “correct” than intuition and listening and acting is a mistake.)
