[pmoriarty]

"music theory is happily systematic"

Funny, when I tried multiple times to learn music theory it seemed very unsystematic to me, and more like the result of hundreds of years of accretion by lots of people who thought their own way and did not have any kind of coherent, overarching system or vision in mind.

If it was more systematic it would have been a whole lot easier to learn.

[ehnto]

It is actually pretty systematic, but with edge cases. The trouble I find with music theory teachings is they don't have systematic approaches at all, they use brute force memorization and some of the more shallow constructs. When you dig deeper, you can see the underlying patterns that created the things that get memorized.

[abannin]

Theory is very systematic if you start with listening, but will seem haphazard if you start with the physics.