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Comment by wallstprog | Hacker News Reader

You might want to give Rick Beato a try: https://rickbeato.com/

He does interesting YouTube videos on music topics, but also sells theory and ear-training courses online.

I've followed Rick for years, love his content, he's very engaging and knowledgeable and all the things, but when it comes to teaching, most of the time I find him incomprehensible even when I do already know what he's teaching/demonstrating.

Something in his approach and the way my brain works just short circuit.

Guitar-related, Tommaso Zillio (https://www.musictheoryforguitar.com/abouttommasozillio.html) is pretty good for intermediate to advanced topics. I haven't looked at his courses; I use him for more composition ideas.

Signals Music Studio is also thought provoking for ideas (https://signalsmusicstudio.com/) ; check out his incremental approaches to writing with the Locrian mode.

I agree, give Rick's course a try, with an emphasis on ear training. I think ear training is much more important than music theory. You'll learn theory along the way (intervals, chord quality, etc...) but it focuses more on hearing the difference. Most of music making is hearing a song and playing it back, or hearing a melody in your head and getting it into a daw in some way, music theory alone won't teach you that. Ear training will though!

If you listen to any of Rick's videos, he will tell you that ear training and music theory are so closely related that there can't be one without other. Of course, back in the day in music school theory was taught without ear training and that made it kind of useless. Or maybe it was more that listening was never taught, it was just put in exam and if you can't write down the chords you hear there you're not going to be a musician.

This is true. The basics are required for ear training. But once you get past the basics (reading music, intervals, identifying chords), I don't thinking going much past that is necessary.

I think I'm incorrectly assuming people want to take it past the basics when they say they want to learn music theory.

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