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Comment by amingilani | Hacker News Reader

> How much do you see a path from A(rticle) to S(ound in your ear).

Very clearly. The author constructed a melody from first principles in the article. You can take any song, deconstruct it using the information in there and begin to see why it sounds nice.

> This article is trivializing music down to a few not-so-important facts

This is a music theory lecture with code examples. Hardly “not-so-important”.

> mistaking some math for anything that would help `programmers` (?) understand music.

Compared to the lessons on https://www.musictheory.net this is definitely programmer/engineer friendly. It’s better than my old go-to at https://www.lightnote.co

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For a programmer, deriving intervals and chords and then hearing the code produce them is a pretty effective bridge

Sure.

It is a trope amongst gigging musicians that over-intellectualizing the feels is a massive no-no.

Hence the joke about Db being the saddest chord... also Phil Collins said that, he would know :-D... ...and C# being the most evil chord. Hilarious.

I persist: "before you can be good, you first have to be bad" is more helpful music theory than that whole JavaScript visuals page.

I know the trope. My first guitar teacher taught me how to play songs but didn’t know the notes on the fretboard. It’s a bit like being able to drive a car without understand what the clutch and gears actually do.

But personally, I couldn’t handle not knowing why the clutch needed to be pressed, or why a chord shapes is the why it is.

I put it to you that seeing a chord: on paper, or in math or in chord notation, (eg. FminSus4) is something you should only master once you are able to hear that chord. Otherwise you are (that's a quote) "dancing about architecture" and hurting your ability to understand sound.

If I might be allowed some pedantry, it’s Dm that’s the “saddest of all keys”:

https://hub.yamaha.com/brand/creativity/the-saddest-of-all-k...

Music theory is just that. Theory. There is no set of laws.

Creating melodies by doggedly applying any system is almost guaranteed to feel tired, predictable and boring.

I like to think about it as an opinionated framework. Once you have the basics, you can take an unpredictable sounding song and deconstruct it to understand why it sounds so good.

I don’t really have a problem with systems.

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