[WhompingWindows]

As a primer for music theory, this post doesn't teach much. It's using Python to derive various sets of notes in scales and modes, which is already easily available via google search, and in a more learnable format than Python code.

The most basic aspect of Western music theory overlooked here is the relationship between tonic and dominant. If you know the "home" chord aka "the I" aka "tonic" is C major, the dominant will be G major, aka the V chord. Add just the F major chord, and you'll know 1-4-5 in a "basic" key: C major. 1-4-5 is the simplest chord progression, you can play amazing grace, you are my sunshine, even The Beatles, you'll be rocking with 1-4-5.

Next level, if you add in the minor 6 (a minor) and minor 2 (d minor), you realistically know 95% of the chords you'll ever hear in C major pieces. And on the piano, this is ALL white notes, so even someone with zero musical knowledge can "solo" over your chords by just plunking any white notes while you play these chords (kids LOVE LOVE this btw, highly recommend trying with a kiddo).

I wouldn't consider double-sharps and double-flats "basic" music theory. They really aren't needed for beginners, since they're relegated to keys like C# major where you'll occasionally sharpen a note like E# (aka F) into E## (aka F#). I didn't run into these until around 5 years into my piano training, playing Chopin's F# major nocturne Op 15 No 2, there's a bunch of double sharps in that piece.

In any case, don't worry about double-flats and double-sharps or the precise notes of various modes and scales. Just learn pieces you enjoy, preferably with a mentor or teacher who can suggest improvements based on their trained ear.

[irrational]

Heh, I understood your first paragraph. I understood literally nothing in the following two paragraphs. Is this what it is like when I talk to people who don’t know anything about programming about my work? Pure gibberish?

[abakker]

Yes, it is! Music and programming both have a lot of notation, syntax, and terminology.

I am not really a programmer, but the thing I always wanted wasn't a "how to program guide" but "what is all this syntax" guide.

It is funny, but when you learn a written language, you spend a lot of time learning grammar and punctuation, but when you go to learn programming it all seems conceptual. there are lots of demonstrations of grammar and punctuation, but I rarely see nice, succinct lists of all the syntax you might encounter.

[Atlas-Marbles]

https://learnxinyminutes.com might be what you're looking for. Concise syntax guides for many languages.

[yumaikas]

So, this is for a few reasons.

Syntax is a skill floor, but it's not anywhere close to a skill ceiling.

If you want rapid-fire example of the various forms a given language commonly uses, I recommend X in Y minute guides. Those show off the various bits of syntax for a given programming language, though without rigorously defining them as such.

Part of the reason that programming syntax is usually taught by example, rather than by formalism is that the formalisms for programming syntax, well, look like this: (cribbing from wikipedia).

  program = 'PROGRAM', white_space, identifier, white_space, 
            'BEGIN', white_space, 
            { assignment, ";", white_space }, 
            'END.' ;
  identifier = alphabetic_character, { alphabetic_character | digit } ;
  number = [ "-" ], digit, { digit } ;
  string = '"' , { all_characters - '"' }, '"' ;
  assignment = identifier , ":=" , ( number | identifier | string ) ;
  alphabetic_character = "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" | "G"
                       | "H" | "I" | "J" | "K" | "L" | "M" | "N"
                       | "O" | "P" | "Q" | "R" | "S" | "T" | "U"
                       | "V" | "W" | "X" | "Y" | "Z" ;
  digit = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9" ;
  white_space = ? white_space characters ? ;
  all_characters = ? all visible characters ? ;

Can you take that grammar and write 10 examples of valid statements from it, with no other context?

vs, if I give you

  PROGRAM ASSIGNMENTS
  BEGIN
    MYSTRING := "A STRING";
  MYNUMBER := 123;
  END

That gives you a much better flavor from looking at things.

Ultimately, most programming languages should have defined grammars in their docs somewhere, but most devs use them by intuition, rather than formally.

The other thing, as well, is that it's one you get past grammar as a primary concern that you gain true fluency. And there are a lot of things that are higher level than grammar that can aid/hurt a program much more than the grammar constructs (like various patterns, know algorithms, schemes of organization for different types of projects, and so on). A mostly human-usable grammar is table-stakes these days.

If you have a specific language you want examples or a grammar on, let me know, and I'll see if I can find it.

(edited for formatting)

[fao_]

> Part of the reason that programming syntax is usually taught by example, rather than by formalism is that the formalisms for programming syntax, well, look like this: (cribbing from wikipedia).

Here's the thing though -- a "what is this syntax" guide does not imply that you need a formalism of the syntax. What the person is asking for, in my opinion, is a linkage between the symbols and the concepts.

For example, when reading mathematics, often the problem was not my conceptual understanding of the material, but merely that I was not sure how to parse the symbols and map them to what it was doing. I could read a formula, but the mapping of each component piece as a shorthand was not there. At the time I did not internalize that "square root" is literally just getting the side of a square (A somewhat silly, obvious-in-retrospect idea! But it gives you a perfect example of the kind of mapping I'm talking about) -- because of this I wasn't able to get an idea of what it was doing!

In such a case, your formalism would not have worked, because it's simply a grammar. I did not need the grammar -- examples can show that, wikipedia can show that, what I needed was enough information about the link between the symbolic, and the conceptual, that I could find reference material. What I found instead was either as you put down, literal grammars, or vast tomes of knowledge that required more vast tomes of knowledge to read and figure out what each one in turn was saying. So I would get lost down this rabbit hole.

What the solution to this is, again IMHO, is a listing of syntax, yes, but with a conceptual mapping on the right.

So not saying things that we already know -- like "this is a number", but having a construction of an IF statement, and then a conceptual mapping on the right in the form of written description of how it works, or a visual description like a flow chart.

The point of writing was to convey knowledge, it is possible to convey intuition, and yet in scientific fields we seem adverse to doing so! It's treated almost like an unspoken thing, it is covered in passing, but almost never explicitly. It's why much of "intermediate programming" is difficult to break into, in my opinion -- and the same for mathematics (3blue1brown is breaking this up, however)

[abakker]

This is the answer that actually explains my problem! I went to the Learn X in Y site that another comment recommended and scrolled to the python guide[1]. It is a list of syntax, but it is (in my mind) insane! It goes right through all the math that is there and then jumps into lists. The first thing it does is show this!

# Add stuff to the end of a list with append li.append(1) # li is now [1]

And this is exactly the kind of stuff that keeps me from getting deeper into programming. I look at that, and wonder, "what the hell is that . doing?" Now, I know enough python to know that it is calling some function on an object called 'li', and that li is a list. or something that can take a .append() command. I also know that append() is some kind of function. But, these guides never give me enough detail on what the . means. Worse, it seems difficult to find answers to this kind of stuff in aggregate. If I google everything I can find stack exchange pages on each piece of syntax and can get to the point, but for fluency and retention I really need that conceptual piece.

I don't write software, but I use python/pandas for basic work with restructuring data. The hurdle to understanding how to slice data frames was incredible for me. I couldn't understand from the examples why the behavior works the way it does. I often feel like I can get working code without any real connection or understanding of why the code works.

You're answer is great, I wish there was a solution for this disconnect since I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.

[1] https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/python/

[fao_]

I'm just glad there's someone else with the same problem!

I think the best way might be to make something like Albertini's charts for file encodings, but for programming.

An example is here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/corkami/pics/master/binary...

Of course even within that graph there could be more expansion that it would be nice to see

[yumaikas]

Also, to add a further point: Because much programming is done by intuition rather than formalism is why there can be so much unintended use of a given program.

[zibzab]

I recommend you subscribe to prof Guy Michelmores YouTube channel then.

He is pretty good at explaining music theory without boring you to death. He even has a video on 1-4-5

[tarsinge]

Scales are the set of notes you can play during the song that will sound ok to the ear.

On a song in C major (or A minor), you can play any white key.

Chords are sections based around a note.

The notes played during a chord give mood and color to the chord (harmonies). The main notes of a chord (that will sound the best) are found by taking every two notes (the note+2+2), e.g. for the C chord it’s C, E and G.

Also the sequence of the notes is the melody.

And also simultaneously the ordering of the chord “drive” the song and also the mood. The 1-4-5 the parent is talking about is a very common chord progression (C major, F major, G major). The numbers here are simply the 1-index of the note in the scale used as the base for the chord.

So while you have three dimensions simultaneously which can feel overwhelming the parent was saying that simply following the 1-4-5 progression and playing randomly white keys will sound ok.

Next step try to hit one the main notes of the chord when it is playing (C E or G for the 1 for example).

[actusual]

I think it depends on who is explaining the complex topic. The main goal for the "explainer" is to implant ideas in someone else's head in a way they can understand and relate to. This is done through a shared vocabulary. If someone knows nothing about a topic, then the entire explanation must be done in the listener's vocabulary (while slowly and deliberately introducing new terms, and clearly defining them), which OP didn't really attempt to do.

[RHSman2]

Add on top the time signature grid and then you got some real giberrish! ‘The 6th hits on the ah of 3 ok!’

[taormina]

Yup!

[grawprog]

>The most basic aspect of Western music theory overlooked here is the relationship between tonic and dominant. If you know the "home" chord aka "the I" aka "tonic" is C major, the dominant will be G major, aka the V chord. Add just the F major chord, and you'll know 1-4-5 in a "basic" key: C major. 1-4-5 is the simplest chord progression, you can play amazing grace, you are my sunshine, even The Beatles, you'll be rocking with 1-4-5.

Having learned music theory on a guitar rather than a piano, I learned this in a different order. C Major wasn't the focus at first. We started with Am Pentatonic and learned the common 1-4-5 progression and how to build chords and progressions out of that. Then added the rest of the notes of the Am scale in before finally going into root notes and relative scales and learning C major.

It's just my conjecture, but i think Am works better on guitars for learning because it's right in the middle of the guitar starting on fret 5 on the 6th string. Makes it easy, like you say, for someone to solo along with a 1-4-5 progression just by running up and down the scale. As long as you hit the right frets, it'll sound decent, you don't have to stretch too far, you get a nice clear view of the scale's 'pattern' on the frets. Plus, it's the relative minor of Cmajor meaning, you can still play along with someone just hammering white keys on a piano.

We also learned using a lot of blues music. There's a lot of easy variations you can do on a guitar in an Am blues key that can teach you all those fundamentals.

Modes were also worked in at the same time. This was probably not the best though, cause i really didn't get them at the time and only fairly recently sat down to study them and actually figure them out.

[bazeblackwood]

Just a note, it would be less ambiguous to say the chords are a 6 minor and 2 minor since minor 6th and minor 2nd are both intervals that don't relate to those chord qualities, for example the minor 2nd is a semitone above the tonic note, whereas a 2 minor chord (or ii, since lowercase represents minor chords in roman numeral chordal analysis) starts a whole tone above the tonic. Also, I think you mean the iii chord, since the ii chord is much less common. But by that measure you may as well be teaching the bVII (flat 7 dominant), which shows up all over the place in popular music (https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressio...). That said, I agree chordal analysis is quite useful as a beginning point, but mostly for teaching the instruments that, well... play chords.

[MrsPeaches]

> Just a note

This made me smile.

[bazeblackwood]

That was (p)unintentional on my part, your pointing it out was instrumental!

[scpedicini]

Good stuff, but since it seems like there is a lot of pedantic responses to this post I'm going to chip in myself and say that most traditional gospel renditions of amazing Grace also make use of the supertonic. In the key of C that would be DMaj.

[lovelyviking]

Your advice is good and most of the advices stop at this level. Do you have any advices for what to learn next?

Any suggestions about theory learning beyond of what you've described?

Something that would help with composition perhaps? Music phrasing? Some book to read?

[unixhero]

Thanks a lot. I am adding your post into my collection of Hacker News wisdom snippets :)

[strokirk]

Do you know why these chords are so common? Is it simply cultural or something else?

[hexane360]

The notation OP is using is relative to the key of your song. So if your key is C major, the V chord is G. However, if your key is F major, the V chord is Bb. So it's not that there's only a few chords used in popular music, it's that there's a very consonant group of chords for any key your choose.

Also, OP is leaving out lots of ways to modulate these basic chords into more complex ones (adding a seventh step, inversions, power chords, etc.).

Finally, as with a lot of pseudo-Pareto type things, often the few exceptions are what make or break a piece musically.

[lovelyviking]

Any suggestions about theory learning beyond this?

Something that would help with composition perhaps? Music phrasing? Some book to read? Something for self learning? I wish that melodies I am trying to compose would be better in reflecting what I like in music, and I whish to figure out what is missing.

I can improvise with different chords but it is getting boring and once I try to do something more comlex it doesn't reflect what I like.

I think I am missing something basic and simple but since I had no other option but to learn myself mostly it is probable that I simply wasn't exposed to something essential in theory, something that all good composers know very whell, something that allows experimenting but in a productive way.

May be there is a book that is like a bible for all composers and I simply never heard about it?

[ska]

I don't have any specific recommendations and am quite rusty - but years ago when I was similarly interested I just looked up a decent undergraduate music programs course requirements and got their intro harmony text followed by intro comp text; learned a lot from that.

[smharris65]

This is not a bible for composers but does cover some common chord progression for popular music: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0595263844/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

[mywittyname]

As it was explained to me by my musician aunt (and I've heard it repeated in other places): because Music Execs. Lots of successful pop music is uses the 1-4-5-(6) chord progression, thus, when executives are picking hit songs, they go with what they know will work.

It's like bringing brownies to a potluck. It won't blow anyone's mind, but everyone will happily eat them.

[fuckf4ce]

That still doesn't explain why those chord progressions became popular, and they far predate the late 20th century record industry, so it really isn't a very satisfying or informative explanation, even though it's not outright wrong (it's just a restatement of familiarity bias, which generalizes outside music).

[ska]

A fair bit of early music composition is weighted by what is easily sung, more than anything else.