
Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People - dmmalam
http://academic.udayton.edu/tobyrush/theorypages/
======
jtheory
Teaching music theory is _damned hard_.

You very quickly find yourself making statements like this (taken from the
second PDF in this series): "A tuplet is any non-standard division of a note.
These are usually written as a group of notes delineated with a bracket and a
number showing the division being made." It's correct in grammar and sense,
and about as exciting as a lawn-mower repair manual.

This is probably the best series of music theory cheatsheets I've ever seen,
though... just about any other music theory resource you can find, online or
off, gets bogged down _immediately_ in sleep-inducing language. I had to poke
around a bit to find the example above.

The real problem is the "building blocks" approach to music theory pedagogy;
that is, making students learn all of the basic concepts before they can do
anything remotely interesting or useful.

It's really, really logical. It's also a sort of mental torture, in the realm
of music theory, because a lot of the building blocks are arbitrarily weird
for historical reasons, and it takes too much meaningless memorization before
you can do something as trivial as sight-reading a piece of music you could
_already pick out by ear 10x faster_. What about doing basic analysis of a
piece of music? So, so many building blocks required first....

I think it's possible to make learning theory enjoyable, but it'd be damned
hard (and not possible in a static form).

That said, if you have the external motivation already to make the slog
through the basics, these are solid references to help get the details
straight in your head.

~~~
dizzystar
The way this teaches it is very difficult. They make the same mistake as all
music theory lessons, which is to dive right into the Circle of Fifths without
ever mentioning _how_ the Circle of Fifths is derived.

I've been thinking about writing a music theory lesson for programmers and
"normal" people. I swear it is a conspiracy theory of music teachers to make
music theory seem hard. Once you see the logic of how it all comes together,
it is head-slapping easy. Music theory is all created from a few easy-to-
remember patterns.

I already wrote a bit of music theory code in Python. Maybe this will be my
Thanksgiving project.

~~~
mietek
I'm hoping one day to find an explanation of what music really is; why do
certain patterns of sounds appeal to us; why do we share a sense of melody,
harmony, rhythm.

Ideally, this explanation would ignore centuries of historical cruft, starting
instead from the physical and physiological basics, and making full use of the
infinitely malleable sound generators we all own.

~~~
zandomatter
A little something like this? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0DXxNeaQ0>

------
commontone
I'm the author of the pages, and wow... I was wondering where all the sudden
traffic was coming from. Thanks, dmmalam, for getting my stuff on the front
page, and for those who emailed and let me know about it.

First, sorry about the Issuu thing. These pages are actually several years
old, and at the time Issuu was actually the easiest way I knew to make them
available without burning out my personal hosting bandwidth. I created the
index page later on, but used the Issuu links since they were there. (You have
to understand, there has never been more than a trickle of a demand for them
outside of my own students.)

The other reason I was a little hesitant to bundle them all together is
because I'm still working on them, and I didn't want to "publish" something
that had the air of being complete.

But the internet has spoken... I've added a link at the top of the page which
takes you to a single PDF. (Thanks to jamie_ca and pyroMax for doing this
before I stumbled into the party.) Oh, and I fixed the <title> tag, too.

Also, thanks very much for the other feedback that has been sent my way; I do
genuinely appreciate it. While I'd like to retain sole authorship (at least
for now) rather than make them open-source, I most definitely welcome comments
on how they can be improved.

~~~
steamer25
One thing I noticed so far is that you make mention of half vs. whole steps on
while discussing accidentals on page one but they're not defined until the
major scale is introduced on the fifth page. That could throw beginners off a
bit.

------
Cogito
This looks like a great resource, that is severely suffering from lack of
accessibility (as pointed out by many others here). I emailed the author,
hopefully they will be able to improve the usability. Following is the guts of
message I sent, for reference. The documents look over a year old in most
cases, so I doubt we will see much, but you never know!

\----

First of all, thanks! These are some excellent notes. That said, it is
_extremely_ irritating trying to read them. If you could provide the ability
to do one or all of the following it would be most excellent:

1\. Download of the entire pdf as one document

2\. View the documents as a web page/series of web pages

3\. Open-source the documentation so others can contribute/provide fixes

------
mertd
This is truly a great effort. At the same time I am frustrated by the choice
of the medium. We are well past the age of disseminating information through
print. I would love to "hear" the concepts described. Why not make an
interactive web page? Maybe sprinkle some audio samples here and there? It
seems convoluted to not use sense of hearing to describe music.

~~~
msluyter
Indeed. The ability to click on an interval and immediately hear it -- and/or
simultaneously see it played on the piano -- would be quite nice. (Or,
conversely, the ability to see piano notes instantly rendered on a staff and
have the intervals identified.) Combining two learning pathways -- visual and
aural = win.

~~~
jtheory
If Java applets don't make you wince too badly, I have some interactive music
theory concepts and drills freely available here:

<http://www.emusictheory.com/interact.html>

and here <http://www.emusictheory.com/practice.html>

I largely ran out of time to extend/improve it several years back, but it
still gets quite a lot of use; students of subscribing teachers can use MIDI
keyboards as well, which makes the instrument/theory link quite tangible.

------
cllns
FYI, the name seems to be playing off 'music for geeks and nerds':
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4295714>

<http://musicforgeeksandnerds.com/>

~~~
pav3l
I remember that book being posted on HN, but was hesitant to order it. Has
anyone here read it? What are your thoughts?

------
R_Edward
OK, I can understand never including a leap of an augmented fourth in a single
voice. That's just cruel to your singers. But an augmented second? As in a
minor third? As in the first two notes of Greensleeves? or Misty? Whyever not?

~~~
mysterywhiteboy
An augmented fourth sounds great as long as it is then resolved e.g. to the
fifth. See "Maria" from West Side Story[1] for the probably the most well
known use of an augmented fourth. The first interval when he sings "Maria" is
an augmented fourth.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VpdB6CN7jww#t=38s)

~~~
R_Edward
You're right, it sounds great--but it's darned hard for the average singer to
nail it. In any case, I'd still consider your example to be an exception to
the general rule, while the augmented second is used so often that I have to
believe the author meant something other than what he actually said. (To be
excruciatingly precise thought, augmented seconds are not used nearly as often
as minor thirds, which are sonically identical, even though they're
musicographically different.)

------
wallflower
OT: I am not a musician, still kick myself for giving up piano lessons after
only a couple years. I believe that anyone who writes software can learn from
how musicians practice and get better and don't or do get in a
creative/skills/motivation/passion/Groundhog-Day rut...

One of the most interesting books I have in my library is "Effortless
Mastery". Recommended by a musician and artist.

[http://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-
Master-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-Master-
Musician/dp/156224003X)

~~~
gtani
Werner's book has value for software devs or mathematicians that read it, if
you're the kind that falls into a trance, given a suitable problem to think
about.

These also

<http://sivers.org/berklee>

<http://sivers.org/kimo>

<http://sivers.org/session-musician>

<http://sivers.org/sakamoto>

------
pav3l
Thanks for posting this, I have had some very vague ideas about some cool
music-related side projects that I could work on, but never knew how to go
about learning the theory (enough to at least formulate some well-defined
projects). This looks like a good start. Hoping the discussion here will pick
up to see more suggestions for math/cs oriented crowd.

------
akandiah
It's good, but I dislike the way that it's presented. If you want something
that's presented a little better, you may want to try:
<http://www.musictheory.net/lessons>

------
weewooweewoo
Anyone who spent time to download every single page want to upload the set?

~~~
brunorsini
...please? it just makes zero sense downloading these files one by one, such
is the state of the internet. whoever is benefiting from this, please allow me
to just send you a few bucks for not going through this awfulness...

------
justinator
This looks great; I hope the other puts a title on the HTML page!

------
ronyeh
Thanks, this is a nice summary of music theory. I wish the font were more
readable... though I like how it conveys a casual feel.

------
RossDM
This is pretty sweet. I wish there was a better way of browsing through all
the cheat sheets in some kind of full-screen view.

~~~
raylu
I am also rather annoyed at issuu. If these were all in one PDF file, this
would be much easier to consume.

------
scurvyscott
This is awesome, nice work, thanks for sharing.

------
jws
Issuu wins for most annoying way to break my web experience. I have a
perfectly serviceable PDF renderer, but instead I have to let Flash have a
shot at my security to get a slowly loading page that has navigation obscuring
the content and ignores my scrolling input, requiring me to use their invented
elements and watch their slow, jerky, scroll animation. Going to the next page
requires closing a tab, searching for which page I was on last in a grid of
similar thumbnails, clicking the next one, clicking again to _really_ go to
the page, and one more click to approve Flash (ok, that one is self
inflicted).

That was a lot of effort on their part to make an interface annoying enough
for me to ignore this work.

~~~
sigsergv
Luckily you can (after stupid registration) download these pages and read them
offline.

~~~
jtheory
Yes, one page at a time.

After providing your age (I just turned 99 today!) among other required
fields.

~~~
jamie_ca
At least he licensed them CC visibly - Here's the first section merged:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1002031/Music%20Theory%20Fundamental...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1002031/Music%20Theory%20Fundamentals%20-%20Toby%20Rush.pdf)

~~~
brian_cloutier
Thank you so much. I would love the rest too, if you feel like making another
pdf.

~~~
pyroMax
Here you go, all pages merged, plus a little bonus:

<https://www.dropbox.com/s/ln23462k6gu2ay8/Music_Theory.zip>

~~~
keithpeter
Tip of the hat (repeated in 6/8) for using some of your time to save the rest
of us a bit of time.

