Author here. I'd love to hear from HN which resources to study music (theory) might I overlooked so far. Everything counts: from books and papers on theory to ear training exercises to YouTube videos. The higher is rarity*value, the better.
Music cognition such as Sweet Anticipation by David Huron and everything like that… especially note Music and Memory by Bob Snyder which expresses everything except harmony in a style that avoids traditional notation, and Sounds of Music: Perception and Notation (out of print) by Gerald Eskalin who also wrote Lies My Music Teacher Told Me
For the most part, "music theory" amounts to music-notation-and-style-grammar because very little of it is actual theory (i.e. explanation) until you add real science which means music psychology (because notation patterns and physics patterns are not music, music is a mental experience).
I'd also recommend:
- Nahre Sol - https://www.youtube.com/@NahreSol (Composition, reinvention, exercises, more theory recently)
- David Bruce - https://www.youtube.com/@DBruce (Composition techniques)
- Sideways - https://www.youtube.com/@Sideways440 (Film and musical soundtrack analysis/rants)
- Tantacrul - https://www.youtube.com/@Tantacrul/videos (Maybe. "Music meets sociology"?)
Those 6 channels plus r/musictheory (pre-2018) are basically my entire Music Theory / composition education. A quick note that r/musictheory is not the same thing as it was back then. IIRC there was a big switch/restart some years back, not sure what happened. Still a good Q&A forum today.
Great analyses and teardowns of all kinds of classical music. I'm especially fond of his Bach chorale analysis.
This is not particularly useful to most musicians, but from a music theory perspective, it's one of the best introductions to set theory (the musical version) around.
I didn’t really start to grow until I started to learn as many covers as I could and how to improvise a solo over the changes.
The theory part helps only in that I know how a dim7 chord looks, sounds and feels but most importantly how it is used by composers.
That being said, Mark Levine’s Jazz Theory book is excellent. And get a copy of a Real Book and watch YouTube videos on the voicings used by players and you’ll expand your harmonic palette immensely!
Actually, I never bothered googling video courses on undergrad music theory and relied on books instead
I've also used the approach in the first few chapters to teach people with no music experience to sing the "ison" drone of byzantine chant. In my experience it's a dead simple and reliable way to introduce people to their latent musicality.
https://www.dummies.com/book/academics-the-arts/music/music-...
I thought music as a set of languages is way easier than it happened to be. A CS degree and passion for linguistics doesn't convert into fluency as fast as I wished, and now I see why I'd need 4 years of music college + 4 years of an actual degree.
I love comparing the differences between piano and guitar as instruments for learning music. They have such different strengths and weaknesses. Changing keys with a capo is like using the "pitch shift" button on an electronic keyboard. Since music is only a strong hobby of mine, I have never come to any conclusion on those matters.
I learned a LOT when I received a free high-quality piano (that had been in storage) and decided to tune it myself. That's a rabbit hole I am still amazed by. I got a lot of use out of http://piano-tuner.org/ Piano tuning is such a complex art and science.