Jake Lizzio

The WORST Part of Music Theory, Made Easy!

Added 2024-08-27 15:37:59 +0000 UTC

I love music theory because once you learn a concept, you can immediately start writing music with it. That can help you get out of a rut a

I love music theory because once you learn a concept, you can immediately start writing music with it. That can help you get out of a rut as a songwriter or improvisor, and can also help you appreciate music when you hear it as you recognize those concepts in the wild.

Sadly, the most efficient way to absorb all of those concepts is to first learn the arcane syntax from which the entire language of Western theory was crafted. In my opinion, this stuff is not intuitive, and is in fact frustratingly convoluted. If we invented music theory today, than surely it would look and sound different.

Fortunately though you really only need to learn these concepts once! If you learn them correctly, you can figure out intervals all on your own and make much better sense of other concepts where this stuff applies. I'll be the first to admit that I went about learning these exact same names, but never learned their "origin," which led to much enharmonic confusion when discussing advanced topics with other musicians. In retrospect, I really wish I had just sat through a lesson like this early on in my studies.

I know this lesson isn't terribly FUN, so to balance things out, I'll be doing a live composing stream on Thursday night with a focus on compound rhythms. That should hopefully alleviate the anger you feel from having to learn about doubly augmented unisons. Then next week we'll do a live Q+A before the next video comes out (which will be analyzing a section from a specific song).

See you on Thursday! Oh, and please let me know if you find any mistakes in this video. It's unlisted right now but I plan on releasing it to the rest of the world tomorrow, barring any egrigious errors.