[ams6110]

It's an immense amount of effort to do it consistently. And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me.

One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that beyond being generally supportive. They are individuals that way.

[minor3rd]

> One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that beyond being generally supportive. They are individuals that way.

I grew up in a family with 7 kids and my youngest sibling is just 12 years old. I remember when my younger set of siblings were born, I was thinking "I'm going to teach them EVERYTHING I've learned at a young age, and they will be way ahead of their peers." I failed to grasp just how much of their personality is ingrained in them from their DNA and that they might not have all the same interests as me. It was a great learning experience though -- when I do have kids, I'm not going to try and shove my interests down their throat. I'm going to pay attention to what they are drawn to and give them as many resources as I can so they can pursue that interest as much as they desire.

[virtuabhi]

> how much of their personality is ingrained in them from their DNA

Is this really true? I hope not!

[khedoros1]

I don't think that personality is completely hard-wired, but different people will strongly tend toward different traits, and two people raised in an identical environment will react differently to that environment.

Interests can be encouraged because there's some flexibility in someone's natural tendencies. It's the old "nature vs nurture" discussion, about which one dominates the other.

[singingboyo]

Not to mention that siblings by definition each grow up in a different environment. The addition of a new sibling changes the behaviour of parents and other siblings (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but it's there).

Perhaps the above poster's sibling looked for other interests because the poster had already 'taken' whatever interests they were sharing. But perhaps not - it's hard (impossible?) to know.

[icc97]

Yes, it's notable that Brent's son first was interested enough to ask him and then stayed interested as he explained.

You can't start telling your child about maths if they're busy doing something else. All you can do is wait for a moment when their curiosity spots something and try to feed that.

Even when you catch their interest it's easy to break it if you can't explain it, so los of kudos to Brent for navigating it perfectly.

[jimbokun]

My teenage son is a musician and is taking AP Music Theory right now.

I ask him to tell me about what he is learning, and he patiently tries to explain it to me, but I just nod along because I have no idea what he's talking about.

[steamer25]

The gist of music theory: It sounds interesting when sounds with simple frequency ratios are played at the same time. E.g., playing a 440 Hz tone at the same time and 660 Hz tone has a 2:3 ratio. Some combinations of frequencies, when played before or after other combos can establish an expectation and then either fulfill it or negate it. E.g., if you take the ratio above and then play 440 + 587, it'll sound like it's moving forward and that the second combo has 'arrived' as you might have expected. The 587 is derived by fixing the first note but inverting the relationship from 2:3 to 3:2 (and then doubling the frequency of the second so you don't have to move so far from 660).

Most everything beyond is attaching labels to the frequencies and combos. Just as we have names for frequencies of light (red, yellow, blue) and patterns (gradient, checkerboard) there are names for frequencies of sound (A, C#, E) and their combinations (major, minor). There are also more esoteric terms (chiaroscuro in painting, neapolitan flat 9 in music) for people who've spent so much time on a subject that the basics have become boring.

Oh, and there's also divisions of and patterns for time in music theory. E.g., "hold this note for twice as many milliseconds as the previous one".

There have been some good resources here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=music%20theory&sort=byPopulari...

[andrepd]

That's the gist of music theory as much as "radiation in the order of ~100nm excites your retina and you see colour" is the gist of photography or painting. x) It's the fundamental physical explanation, but there's a world of complexity and subtlety that eludes such a "first principles" explanation.

[steamer25]

I agree that to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound and that text alone won't suffice. On the other hand, your description of radiation hitting the retina might be a decent primer on color theory which has about as much to do with photography and painting as music theory has to do with playing an instrument. My goal was to demystify the jargon by showing that it has very tangible definitions which can be understood by even analytical audiences like HN (of which I include myself).

[steamer25]

> to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound

@jimbokun: It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their vocal folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Explaining it while playing it will probably also help cement the concepts in his understanding ;) .

[jimbokun]

This is really easy to follow:

https://www.lightnote.co/

Already learned some things, thanks!

[HenryTheHorse]

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

[rkangel]

This comment would be valuable if it provided some support to the assertion that the original author was wrong.

[Double_Cast]

The problem with the above explanation is that it starts at a lower level of abstraction than is warranted. Analogously, it explains MOSFET's rather than algorithms. The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form various Scales, and how Scales influence Chord Progressions and Key Signatures.

There are 12 unique notes in an Octave (yes, octave means 8; ignore this for now). On the 13th note, the octave repeats itself (counting is 1-indexed). But of these 12 notes, only specific subsets are combined into specific scales.

The most popular scale is the Major Scale which follows the pattern "Tonic Major_2nd Major_3rd Perfect_4th Perfect_5th Major_6th Major_7th" (there exist other notations). The Major Scale imparts a generically-happy mood. But there's other scales, including: the Chromatic Scale; the Major Scale; 3 varieties of Minor Scales; 7 varieties of Diatonic Modes (including Major and Natural Minor); the Pentatonic Scales; etc. E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale.

Once you familiarize yourself with the intervals, scales, and their various notations (which is its own feat), you can jump into the meat & potatoes of Music Theory. Which mostly consists of analyzing Chord Progressions and Key Signatures in order to find commonalities in mood. Chord Progressions and Key Signatures determine a song's general mood. It's too complicated for me to summarize quickly. But it's where all the interesting stuff happens.

N.B. I've deliberately omitted various details for the sake of brevity. E.g. I could have mentioned Time Signatures, Rhythms, Tempo, Dynamics, etc.

[steamer25]

> The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form

Guess what... A perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio/interval of frequencies (+/- a small allowance for the historical/mechanical constraints that lead to well/equal tempering unless we're talking modern micro-tonalism in which case no adjustments are necessary). The inverse, 2:3, is a perfect fourth.

The example frequencies I gave correspond to concert-A, then E and D. I took a very simple/short path from intervals to harmonic function/progression to try to give a taste of the meat and potatoes before providing a link to additional sources.

I avoided music theory terms because that would've been a circular definition for any readers who had no understanding of even the basics.

In light of your post, I should've added a sentence or two about mood (major = happy, diminished = tense/scary) and compared that to how you can make a 'warm' picture using reds, oranges and yellows or a sombre picture with darker colors, etc.

[jimbokun]

"E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale."

Is there a good YouTube video introducing some of these concepts using popular songs?

[khedoros1]

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

[HenryTheHorse]

"Music Theory" is a very specific term that's used in music studies.

It is mostly a descriptive theory in that it studies musical patterns (rhythm, melody, harmony, intervals, scales, modes, chords and chord progressions) but it can also be prescriptive (for e.g. - don't use certain note intervals in a guitar solo if you are using certain chords in your song)

None of this has anything to do with Physics. Music Theory is completely abstracted from the physical world.

[Double_Cast]

Frequencies : Music Theory :: Logic Gates : Computer Science.

See my other comment.

[khedoros1]

Well...logic gates are (at a slightly abstracted level) just the reification of some of the logical concepts in computer science. Those concepts could be arrived at by observing the behavior of the gates.

Similarly, it seems like studying the frequencies and their relationships illuminates at least a portion of what music theory covers.

[opinionator1]

Wow, that's really not what music theory is at all. This kind of eggheaded simpletonism is grossly offensive and embarrasses the HN community, not to mention engineers in general. Please, the world outside of STEM is not reducible to a few hand-wavy sentences about physics.

[steamer25]

It's more about the ratios than the example frequencies I provided. That's more apparent if you play an instrument with an exposed string and a finger-board but still true if it's hidden under e.g., the hood of a piano. The definition of consonance versus dissonance is basically whether or not the ratio is simple. The overtone/undertone series from which the various scales are derived is also one only one logical step away. One step past that gets you to diatonic harmony which leads to harmonic progression/retrogression which makes up the bulk of my theory text book and the real gist that I was getting at.

If you can provide a better overview or point out how it's anything more than a bunch of terms/shorthand for sonic patterns, I'd love to be informed.

[jamiepenney]

Don't feel bad about that! My dad didn't know what the hell I was talking about when I was learning C++ as a teenager, but he asked anyway because he saw I got excited about it.

[AbacusAvenger]

My mom certainly does that for me. I try to explain non-intuitive programming concepts to her with analogies, but I don't think I succeed most of the time. I love her dearly for putting up with it, though.

[nitrogen]

Wow, more parents should be like that! I'm not a parent, but I try to do the same kind of thing for friends and coworkers in hopes of spreading the idea that others' interests are worth attention and respect even if you don't share them.

[thinkpad20]

If you’re interested in the subject, look up Adam Neely on YouTube. A great channel with a series of 10-minuteish videos on various interesting topics in music, from theory to history to physics and beyond. Not so much a “course” in music theory, morning e of a series of one-off topics mostly accessible by a lay audience. Might be good conversation starters with your son :)

[steamer25]

I was replying to another sub-thread here and had another thought:

It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch him while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their bodies/vocal-folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Having him play the sounds as he explains them will probably also help cement the concepts in his own understanding ;) .

[hycaria]

>And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me.

That is the most depressing thing I've read in a good while.

[nickpeterson]

Yeah, but I find it's true. I think that's why the first born tends to be, at least historically, the most important child. Because parents spend the most focused attention on them.

If it feels better though, as the youngest of three children, I find I was allowed to wander a bit more, and that has actually proved useful.

[slx26]

Well, when you are not the first, most of the time you end up learning a lot from your brothers/sisters. You are almost always the first for someone in the family.

[hycaria]

Then why bother if you're not even trying