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Comment by H1Supreme | Hacker News Reader

Recognizing melodies by ear is a hugely useful skill, but I can't help but think it's going to be nearly impossible to do without a sound foundation in music theory.

Tabs are, in large part, paint-by-number. Lots of guitarists out there are only interested in learning a song. Regardless of key, mode, or what the notes actually are. And, tabs satisfy that group by saying: "Play this fret on this string".

To write tabs, you'll need to be able to make an educated guess at what's being played. ex. "Is that a minor pentatonic scale? Or are they arpeggiating a minor 7th chord?". If terms like that aren't in your musical vocabulary, and you haven't played enough to recognize the difference, I don't see how a guitarist would even begin writing their own tabs. Maybe the author is assuming this skill set.

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Having learned guitar in a way that's somewhat similar to what's outlined in this article, I will say that someone doing this transcription-based method will likely naturally consolidate their "making tabs" into "making chords" pretty quickly, because the patterns occur often enough. I'd also say that producing your own tabs is very far away from a being a mere tab-consumer, it's just a natural introductory medium because tabs are very easily digestible to a beginner and, as you say, satisfy the craving.

I think that starting off with easy songs, and with enough brute force as you scale up, you can become organically familiar with these concepts to make the educated guesses you're talking about.

Many renowned musicians were able to effectively create music utilising these concepts despite never formally learning music theory, and by just learning by ear.

> To write tabs, you'll need to be able to make an educated guess at what's being played.

Knowing the theory certainly makes the process faster because you'll recognize patterns, but you can definitely work through most songs without knowing anything about music theory. Just pick up your guitar, slow the track down and try to reproduce the tones.

Back when I first started playing guitar, my teacher had me transcribe the melody to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (from memory). I didn't even know the major scale at that point, but by trial and error I improved my intuition for translating melodies in my head to the fretboard, which is remarkably useful as a guitarist, not only for improvisation, but for composition as well.

That's not to say that knowing music theory isn't helpful in transcribing and in general, but I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite. A lot of my foundation in music theory came from transcribing first and putting things together afterwards.

> I didn't even know the major scale at that point, but by trial and error

That is not productive. Sure, you can do that once or twice. But it gets painful quickly.

> but I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite.

I firmly believe it is a prerequisite. Just by knowing what an interval is and playing that repeatedly, trains your brain to recognize it. Specifically 1-3-5 interval range.

This is also one of those things that varies with the individual. When I was a kid taking cello lessons, I learned to play by ear. For classical students, theory doesn't really start until college.

I know very little theory, but I've been playing jazz for almost 50 years, and I know hundreds of melodies along with enough of their harmonies to improvise and accompany other players. Many people pick up tunes from the radio or hymns at church, even if they don't play an instrument.

I think a helpful tip for ear training is that you can do it without an instrument, just by hearing stuff (tunes, rhythms, accompanying parts) and trying to sing along. For beginners, this avoids the awkwardness of the instrument and its technique getting in the way.

If you develop your ear and learn your way around your instrument, then you can learn to play along by ear and then just write down what you're doing.

>For classical students, theory doesn't really start until college.

Well, unless, you are studying here in Hungary, for example, where it starts pretty much right away... (though it is a separate class).

Maybe this is the reason behind the old saying: "All of the good composers were either deaf or Hungarian."

> you haven't played enough to recognize the difference

I think the key bit here is that this is aimed at someone who is proficient, but not "good" ie can play tab, but not much else.

I think its perfectly possible to transcribe if you don't "know" musical theory, but for guitar, you should need to know chord shapes.

The key or mode is probably not actually that important, because you are transcribing rather then improvising. Obviously it will reduce the search space considerably if you do know what key/mode its in.

But you'd be surprised at how much musical theory is innate, or at lease learnt through listening.

Learning formal music theory helped me a lot when I was a teenager playing guitar and piano, and having absorbed all that theory more than fifty years ago helps me to continue enjoy playing and improvising music now.

But over the years I realized that there were gaps in the Western classical theory I studied.

A relatively small one is that I never systematically studied jazz harmony, and I still don’t have a good sense for it. I can’t make my improvisations sound like jazz even if I try.

Another, bigger gap is rhythm: I have listened over the years to music from all over the world with interesting and complex rhythms, but I cannot explain those rhythms or reproduce them. The classical notation and theory I learned is not up to that task, either.

The biggest gap, in my mind, is my lack of exposure to any formal theory of melody. I like good melodies, I think I have a sense of some features that separate good melodies from drab ones, I think I am able to create pretty good melodies, but that all came from listening and experimentation and playing. I once (again, more than fifty years ago) looked through some music theory books in my college library that covered melody, but I didn’t get anything useful out of them.

The videos on music theory that crop up on my YouTube feed all seem to be about chords and scales. Maybe some music influencers should start producing in-depth content on rhythm and melody, too.

I may be wrong but I don't think there is a theory of melody in as there is go harmony or counterpoint. A good melody can't be constructed from rules. That's what makes them magical.

As I write this, I think when a melody sounds good it's likely related to the implied harmony in the notes being used, and obviously the expectations the listener gets and how they're handled. But I don't think there is a system of constructing good melodies in Western classical music theory.

I'd say that once you understand practical harmony, counterpoint, diminutions, common schemata, some basic elements of form, you've pretty much understood what classical music theory has to say about melody too. There's definitely an element of playing with expectations in a fully "creative" and rule-free way, but knowing the theory underneath is how you understand what the expectations are.

You can figure it out by ear with music theory. You use different terms but who cares. Theory is useful of course but not required.

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