https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/188...
Books aside, in my view the #1 thing you can do to help your music theory understanding is to train your ear: if you can't reliably identify all the intervals within an octave and identify major, minor, diminished and augmented triads, as well as the basic 4-note chords (major 7, minor 7, dominant 7, minor-7-flat-5) by ear, knowing a bunch of rules about tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone won't be all that useful. Back in music school days I practised daily with EarMaster and within a couple of months had gotten solid enough at recognising intervals and chords by ear that it made all the other music learning I did subsequently much much easier. I am sure there are way better ear training tools now!
Then, as a the second game-changer, learn the circle of fifths. Start with a note like C, and keep adding +7 to it. You'll get FCGDAEBF#C#G#D#A# - note how the sharped notes repeat the pattern of the nonsharped ones, easy to remember. The "keys" and "modes" stuff is just intervals of seven consecutive notes on the circle. Say you choose FCGDAEB, that's one key, then every mode is to be found by choosing one note out of those seven, and hopping over one note until you play all seven once: e.g. FGABCDE is one mode (Lydian afair), EFGABCD is another one etc. The "major" and "minor" keys are just different names for two of those seven modes. Pentatonic scales are those same modes with some notes omitted. Blues and harmonic minor scales are those same modes with some notes inserted. Overall modes, not keys or chords are the key to actually composing music intelligently, so learn them and learn to play them.
This should give you a good start in practical music theory.
He teaches a set of 2 comprehensive introductory music theory classes at Princeton, and he makes the lecture notes public: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/teaching.html. These are a really underrated resource and have now grown to be as complete as a full intro theory textbook.
There is a serious lack of stuff that teaches music theory from the ground up (how a lot of us hackers like to learn). So much of the confusion around music theory just comes from most theorists using using old, incredibly crufty "data structures" to describe music, when the actual material isn't so hard. Tymoczko is one of the few researchers pushing back on that. He is best known for his higher-level, mathy research (he wrote the first music theory article ever published in Science), but those lecture notes are a great way to get started for anyone who gets frustrated with learning theory the traditional way—which is pretty much everyone.
He talks a lot about the why of doing certain things in music.
His step by step "jazzification" of a pop song was an eye opener for me:
So if you take any note and then go +0, +3, +5-2 in logarithm, meaning you calculate f, f3, f5/2 then you get a major chord.
Once you're working on the frequency ratios like this, you will be able to spot arrangements that can be mistaken for one chord, even though they actually are the overtones of something else. That's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntonic_comma
The basis of good harmonic development is then to travel around the harmonic space and then to deliberately produce these dual-meaning situations so that you can use them to jump around in the harmonic space.
As an example, consider F-Major, f#-minor, B-major. Implicitly, you are replacing the #f-minor with a g-flat-minor, which is why the jump to B-major then makes harmonic sense.
Or as another example, consider F-Major, f-minor, Db-Major, a#-minor, Gb-Major. Each pair shares 2 notes in the well-tempered tuning, but by following this trail you are completely walking out of the C-Major scale that you started with.
You need to be able to find time to synthesize learning how to read music, playing music that challenges you but is within reach of your ability, ear training, and music theory.
You don't need to do this in a learning context, but playing with other people (especially if it's music you are learning) is a great magnifier in my experience.
I would recommend trying to learn new songs while also learning intervals, major/minor pentatonic scales, basic modes, scales, modes, chords, and arpeggios.
Counting rhythms is a little tricky to learn on your own. If you can, I would take a theory class or 2 to learn this; however, YMMV.
I used to be obsessed with this stuff, but I feel like it's not really important. It's sort of like the periodic table: you can memorize all of the factual information, but I would argue that what is really important is understanding the interaction of various elements. The table is a reference; it is not chemistry itself.
I would also add that to really use theory you have to know the notes on your instrument. You can know them as audible intervals, letters and written musical notes. Tab is worthless. I learned to read music for school and it transformed my knowledge of the instrument.
It's a bunch of short, interactive lessons to help you visualize the concepts. Still going strong after about 3 years now.
If you check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Went through all the typical self-learning resources: Udemy courses, Youtube videos, books, blogs, tutorials, forums, etc.
In the end I followed the oft-given advice and got a teacher. I was explicit that I did not want to necessarily follow standard curriculum - I wanted a music equivalent of a "good math teacher" - one with enough comfort and breadth to go places with me if I have questions and explore areas of interest. I am literally GIDDY with excitement now. The teacher is not my sole source of knowledge - maybe 30% - but provides direction, explanations, motivation, ties concepts in, and honestly provides accountability ("I will practice this scale / review this concept before next class") that keeps me going.
I resisted it for much too long thinking that in this day and age there are enough resources not to need an old-fashioned teacher; and indeed I wouldn't recommend an old-fashioned teacher; but a flexible and knowledgeable expert for completely invaluable for me.
A lot of the videos are from a guitar-playing viewpoint, but they explain the effect of the different music theory concepts.
One change of mindset I had to make from learning maths/compsci to learning music theory is that starting at first principles is not always helpful. I found it easier to just accept things like "minor sounds sad" without really getting why, and keep playing songs and learning at the same time until the picture gradually fills out.
I have a hunch that so many of my engineer friends are musicians because music theory is happily systematic - it reminds me a lot of category theory & FP. It meshes perfectly with my brain at least - but just knowing theory without feeling it is useless. Learn to feel.
Personally as a guitarist I kind of hacked my way into music theory to being able to improvise over and compose pop/rock/electronic by only using intervals and scale degrees. I can hear chords progressions, I know why a V I cadence works, can identify and play in modes (dorian, lydian...), but I can't name the notes so transcribing into a DAW is cumbersome but at least I can compose freely. Not ideal but considering the minimal time I invested it's a very good return for me.
Concretely the idea is to focus only on patterns and formulas. The steps would be to learn to play and hear intervals, then construct chords, e.g. Major chord is 4+3 semi-tones, minor is 3+4, another +3 is minor 7 or +4 for major 7. Then by using a scale (e.g white notes on the piano for key of C major/A minor) it's easy to find the chord on each degree. After that learn a few common chords progressions and being able to identify them in everyday songs should come naturally. Finally practice composing melodies by targeting chord tones and you are ready to start composing.
I found this video does a very good job at providing this overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgaTLrZGlk0 (edit: the second half of the video).
I recommend sitting in on a university music theory course if it all possible. But, if not, I can at least recommend the textbook we used: Kostka and Payne's Tonal Harmony. If you want to learn slowly, from the beginning, it's a great resource.
Our instructor told us that, by the end of the first semester, we would be writing four-part chorales and that we'd sound like Bach. That sounded thoroughly ridiculous and I thought he was full of shit. But, no, he was right -- after a semester I was able to do precisely this.
Although it is billed on a monthly basis which I'm not a fan of, I comfortably completed all the current material in under a month so I found the value very good and plan to resubscribe once more material is released.
(Tangentially, Audible Genius is from the same guy as Syntorial, which is a very well-regarded hands-on course in subtractive synthesizer programming which I also recommend if that's of interest, but that's not directly related to music theory)
From there, there are tons of other courses that discuss things like chord progressions which you can combine with this experience to be more deliberate with your melody and harmony to communicate what you're trying to communicate with your music.
The Signals Music Studio Youtube channel in particular I find to be approachable for a theory novice but also inspiring to try new things and stretch beyond the basics (for instance, dabbling in modes).
That said, self-learning music is both viable and highly enjoyable. Here are some topics you should probably cover:
- Scales
- Modes
- Rhythm and time signatures
- Musical notation
- Chord Progressions / Regressions (this is extremely high value to learn)
- Chord Voicing (using the same notes in different octaves)
- Song Forms / Structure
- Harmonics, resonance, and dissonance (this is all about ratios, and typically very interesting to those who enjoy maths and physics)
- Instrumentation, including the practical range of each instrument and voice.
- Writing and arranging music.
- Non-western approaches to all of the above
In terms of the course of learning, I recommend: - Get lessons from somebody you respect and enjoy working with. They should be able to help with theory.
- Learn multiple instruments. Just like learning additional programming languages, adding another instrument furthers your enlightenment significantly.
- Play lots of music with consistent daily frequency.
- Listen to LOTS of different kinds of music. Listen actively, picking apart melody, rhythm, chords, and structure. It really helps to transcribe songs you like to develop a critical ear.
- Hang out with lots of different musicians.
- Spend time in a good DAW / digital audio workstation. Like your IDE, it can help you create music while giving you the power of a good linter and test suite. Record simple melodies then practice editing them in a Piano Roll view.
- Music doesn't move fast like programming. Some of the best educational materials available today are 75+ years old.
- Improvisation is one of the best paths towards discovery IMHO, but you have to be learning other musical idioms to expand your own improvisational pallet.
Have fun. Music theory is very enjoyable to study, and any work in that direction will improve your performance abilities far beyond what you might expect!
I recommend my friend David Newman's YouTube channel as a great first start to learning music theory basics and training your ear. His music theory and ear training songs are ingenious.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHJPt4PanqqHQcuUif88o0Q
Once your ability to read music is trained up to a basic level, I also recommend listening to classical music while reading the full orchestral scores. This can vastly improve your skill levels with reading music. Scores are available for free online from IMSLP, and in print at very affordable prices from Dover Publications and others.
I have also added many links from this thread so that the above becomes one place to find them all.
Music theory is a pretty broad subject and there are a ton of pathways through music theory that take you to different parts of it. I would start by trying to figure out a “map” of the different parts you are interested in.
Almost any course will start with major/minor diatonic scales, then intervals, and then chords. If you combine notes with rhythm, you get a melody. If you combine chords together, you get harmony. Figuring out how harmony works usually starts with “functional harmony” which is where you learn about tonic/dominant/subdominant chords and cadences. The main gotcha here is that there are a couple competing systems for writing names of chords, and you should at least be aware of them so you’re not surprised by a “V6 chord” because that name means two different things depending on which system you use.
This gives you a pretty good foundation for understanding music or writing your own. It’s also not too hard to get this far on your own. Music will still seem mysterious and weird, but that’s normal.
From there you can go in a bunch of directions—there’s atonal music, jazz, traditional counterpoint, nonfunctional harmony, modes, alternative scales, alternative tunings, etc.
I recommend the book The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis. Personally, I would go through the first chapters until it introduces strict counterpoint, and then consider the rest of the book as a “menu” that you can read in any order (kind of). For the second edition, that means doing chapters 1-8, and then you can feel free to skip around chapters 9+. Don’t just follow the book with pencil and paper, actually play the exercises on a real instrument and train your ear (and get an ear training app, if you think it will help).
Finally, I recommend buying a stack of staff paper from the local stationary store. It shouldn’t be hard to find. Alternatively, you can use a computer program to write music, but the choices are a bit intimidating. I’m using Dorico these days but it’s $100. Don’t rely on tabs if you want to improve theory. Tabs are cheat sheets for performance, they make theory and analysis harder.
Any book on common practice harmony will help with most pop/rock and classical up to 20th century. I used Harmony by Piston and happily recommend it. For some jazz theory The Jazz Piano Book by Levine was good for me.
But what I was missing was a coherent path from beginner to more advanced levels without having to cobble it together myself which wouldn't work well because I don't know what I don't know.
I endend up buying bundles of the 12-part (and growing I think) "Music Theory Comprehensive" course on Udemy and it has been amazing value for the money so far.
https://www.udemy.com/course/music-theory-complete/
I think one should start music theory with some free basic introductions that are everywhere to see whether you actually enjoy learning about it. After that I reckon the best way forward is to put some money down for either books or courses.
https://tobyrush.com/theorypages/pdf/en-us/the-whole-enchila...
Try looking at the way the waves propagate and interfere, learn about acoustics and how physical objects respond to incoming sounds by vibrating themselves at specific frequencies which depend on their geometries.
This approach will give you the basis blocks upon which generations of musicians have built a language and cultural norms that also take into account understanding the listener and its emotions.
Try to find something which interests you and dig as deep as you like.
Whatever the tools (books, websites, etc) you use, never learn anything that your ear can fully grasp. For instance, in learning Harmony, many apprentices forget to put first their ear on the thing. Instead, they take an exercise as a puzzle or abstract problem, just a matter of only applying the rules. Just don't do this.
The second advise is as important as the first one. Learn basically from the masters. I do really learnt what matters when I see and hear what the best composers are always doing. Books are fine only with the real music in the horizon.
I'm also working on Harmony Explorer - a CLI tool that lets you hear any chord. It's brilliant for seeing what a chord progression sounds like before taking the time to play it on your instrument of choice: https://github.com/tiniuclx/harmony-explorer
Heres a link to the YouTube playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yqUeiMn_g&list=PLJTWoPGfHx...
*I am in no way affiliated with this guy, and to my knowledge he does not charge for any of his lessons anyways.
The most important thing I can recommend while starting out is to focus your ear training on hearing scale degrees (e.g., if I play a C major chord and then play a random note from the C major scale, you should be able to identify which note that is out of C, D, E, F, G, A or B). A lot of naive ear training resources recommend learning to hear intervals (e.g. a perfect 5th, which is the interval between C and G or E and B), but intervals only really have meaning in the context of a key, and so understanding them in that context is much more important. A good app for training with this on iOS is Politonus: it'll play a few chords to establish a key, and then it'll play a random note from the key and prompt you to guess which one it was. As you improve with this, you can have it play multiple notes at a time, or even notes outside of the key.
As for the good Western harmony? I personally just watch Ted Greene geek out on the guitar. You could pick up his book Modern Chord Progressions and try a few of his voicings--they're angelic. Chick Corea and Barry Harris have also published extensively on different aspects of music theory. Both have monster ears and an elegance for explaining. I also dig the whole Almir Chediak "Songbook" series published by Lumiar editions. He's literally the guy that transcribed the book on Brazilian music.
Stephen Feld's explanation of the "lift-up-and-over" prosody of Kaluli weeping ceremonies may, however, just give you a sense of the many beautiful theories of music might you or I learn.
There are a couple of books aimed towards electronic music producers I thought were quite good, this one is fairly short but to the point with some good examples of real world uses of the topics it covers: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Theory-Electronic-Producers-p..., this one is more comprehensive: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Computer-Musicians-Michael-H...
Years ago (like 20 years ago), I remember printing off a really cool website which had an intro to music theory, I think it was called something like Lizard’s Guide to Music Theory, but that must be wrong as there are no hits - does that ring any bells for anyone?!
Let's be real here, there's no way to truly learn music theory without practicing. It's like math, algorithms, you don't have to learn it to compose (if you are talented you can easily cruise on raw talent) but you have to practice with pen and paper (or computer or instrument) to actually learn it. Many replies here focus on the mathematical patterns and relations, they are useful observations but ultimately has little bearing on the actual usage of theory.
There's also the Music Student 101 podcast, which many people recommend highly (I've only listened to a few episodes).
The musictheory subreddit is also one of the best subs I've found, for all levels.
A big +1 to the suggestion about ear training; I sure wish I'd pursued it more seriously and earlier -- probably no other activity can transform one's understanding and ability to the degree ear training can, not to mention it makes one _much_ more able to play + improvise in a group setting --
Finding a beginning book / course / etc that engagingly + logically shows the relationships between scales and chords, modes, etc, and addresses some aspects of rhythm, was immensely helpful for me -- if it uses your instrument, so much the better -- mine was Richard Chapman's "The Complete Guitarist"
Once you have the basics in hand, there are a lot of elucidating paths available to follow, but one book on counterpoint that absolutely _turned my head around_ is Joseph Fux' "Steps to Parnassus" also called "The Study of Counterpoint" -- total lightbulb --
I also strongly recommend Aaron Copland's "How to Listen to Music"
I think building the site helped more than using it... breaking the concepts down into code helped me to see the broader patterns and abstractions more than just reading about it.
I also like forcing arbitrary constraints during practice. Can you make a simple song from only firsts and fifths in one key? Now add in sevens. Then do a key change every 8 measures (but same pattern). Now invert part of the pattern during the key change. Etc...
That kind of practice helped me intuitively understand what sounded good and what didn’t, which helped me finally grok the theory / vocab i was reading online but didn’t really get before then
Nonetheless, you can definitely teach yourself the basics via books and the websites recommended below. But once you want to go past the basics, you're going to want some kind of expert/teacher/tutor to ask questions of and to review composition exercises, so that you can understand harmony, voice leading, etc.
That being said, if you're a musician, learning music theory is enormously helpful. You understand what you're seeing on the printed page as much more than a series of notes and chords, and your musical intelligence as you listen is greatly increased. Good luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JJncSUdUU&list=PLReW5Mv77O...
I've also enjoyed the Leonard Bernstein Norton lectures at Harvard in terms of overall theory of why things sound good to our ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHi36dvTdE&list=PLKiz0UZowP...
The first part is a chord namer, it's live but not perfect, there are many like it, but this is mine (I'll link below).
The second step which I'm part way through is creating a model to describe musical scales based on patterns from the root note. You might have read for example, that Major Scales all have the same pattern starting from the root note, which is Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half.
We can represent that in code as an array of integer counts of half steps, eg: [2,2,1,2,2,2,1]. From here, we can take an array of the note names, [ C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, B ], then start on the index of the root note of the Major Scale we want. Lets do that by removing the notes not in the pattern below. We end up with the C Major scale:
[ C, -, D, -, E, F, -, G, -, A, -, B ](Returning to C for the final step in the pattern)
You can do this starting from any note, using that pattern, and end up with the right scale.
I was surprised to learn that while there are some edge cases, a huge portion of musical scales follow a pattern you can use to generate a named scale from the root note. It works for Major, Minor, Pentantonic scales, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor and so on.
This was a breakthrough for my understanding of music, and made me realize that memorizing scales is more about memorizing scale patterns, which drastically decreases the amount you need to memorize and lets you use foundational building blocks rather than arbitrary knowledge to play.
Another breakthrough for me while building the chord finder, was noticing that much of music theory is like that. It's all about learning the building blocks and applying it in real time, so that it sticks in your memory. All major chords are made of the same pattern, so if you have the root note, the major scale pattern, and the major chord pattern, you can quickly figure out any major chord, and later any complex chords, from there.
Chord progressions are the same! They follow patterns based on the scale. So when people say learning scales is important, they're not being preachy, it's because they are the basis for all music theory patterns.
EDIT: I also really like this YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdEcLQ_RQPY&t=74s&ab_channel.... The videos are relatively short, so if you like fast-paced high-density videos then you should enjoy this format.
Music theory is one of these things I learned multiple times (even as a minor in University) and forgot multiple times.
The theory I learned, though, was never really relevant to my artistic work, whether it was playing guitar music or making electronic music. Whenever I tried writing something based on the theory I learned, I found it to be super boring. Thus, to this day, music theory doesn't make a lot of "sense" to me.
Thus, I'd say if you want to learn music theory, try to make it part of a creative process. Learn something new and try to write a little piece based on that, and so on. That way, it gives you creative tools instead of just being boring.
Learning the basics will be boring, not going to mince my words on it. Treat it like a pattern exercise, since that's what most of it is. The theory is stupidly dry, as useful as it can be, but I don't think there's really any other way to learn it beyond wrote learning.
If you can do that, you have an entry into music theory that will resonate much better. In our piano example, what are the cords you're playing? Learn how to chart them out.
Then keep playing.
Over time, you'll develop a feel for how chords and notes work together. As you develop that feel, go back to music theory and see what the official names for what you're doing. Then you get to learn tonics, and how V7s "feel right" resolving into tonics, and so forth. But you really need to already know it, in your bones. Otherwise it's just so much math.
As I was learning piano, I was required to read a lot of music theory. I guess I got it, but I didn't really get it. It was just a bunch of patterns. When I stopped playing for other people, relaxed and started just playing for myself, I got it. I understood the material in such a fashion as not to think about it. Now if I'm riffing on some stuff, I might feel for an augmented minor II or something, and I'll recognize that's what I'm doing. I can tell you the name. But unless I'm in a weird key (perhaps doing realtime key transposition) I don't sit back and do the math in my head as I play. I have a subconscious mastery. Note: although I took lessons for 12 years, I'm no expert. I don't even play the piano anymore. I play _at_ the piano, that is, I use the piano to sing. But it was that mental relaxation that was necessary for me to have all of the pieces come into place.
The wrong way, for me at least, was thinking that music theory was some kind of programming language, where you start with patterns and work towards songs. If I had mastered my instrument, yeah, but that would be after many more years of playing. You don't construct music, you feel it. If you're Beethoven, you can do both. I'm not Beethoven.
Hope that helps!
I've mostly learned music theory by a haphazard procedure of following my interests, which I would not recommend. :p
But one concept that really opened my eyes when I was learning music theory (from the perspective of a not-so-good guitar player) was how "everything" can be built from a scale, or more precisely -- a pattern for spacing a set of notes.
So, C major scale:
C D E F G A B C
half tones between 3rd/4th notes and 7th/8th notes. whole tones everywhere else. Begin with any other note, and follow that pattern, and you have the major scale for that root note:
D E F# G A B C# D
G A B C D E F# G
F G A Bb C D E F
Write any major scale vertically, then next to it rewrite it beginning with the 3rd note then again with the 5th note. Read it horizontally and you have the primary chords in the key for that scale
CEG c major
DFA d minor
EGB e minor
FAC f major
GBD g major
ACE a minor
BDF b minor flat 5 (i think... was always fuzzy on this one)
Of those chords, the famous "3 chords" for a folk/blues/rock song will be the 1st, 4th, and 5th (the 3 majors) with the 6th (relative minor) or sometimes the 2nd or 3rd thrown in fairly often as an extra or replacement.
Write another vertical column there starting on the 7th note and you will get the notes in the 7th chords for the key (although rock/blues traditionally will use some variations on those).
"Rotate" that list to begin with a note other than C and you are defining a new mode (and there is one for each possible starting note). Begin with A and you have the Aelion mode (aka A Minor).
The pentatonic scales are just subsets of this scale (e.g., minor pentatonic is the minor scale without the 2nd and 6th notes, so ABCDEFGA becomes ACDEGA)
I recommend studying the basics in any book and also watch Barry Harris on YouTube when you understand the basics to get some cool a-ha moments. https://youtu.be/F8JJncSUdUU
This is definitely not the most efficient way to learn music theory, but for me it always helps to have a project running alongside whatever I'm studying in order to immediately reap the benefits of new knowledge.
https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Theory-Essential-Musicians-In...
I went through a lot of resources and this is the one that worked for me.
My advice would be to pick one good source, stick to it, and spend time to learn the material. It's easy but one has to devote some time and work. Use a pen and paper, do the exercices, be focused.
There are specific resources given for beginners.
Personally I went with the large The Complete Musician by Laitz as most recommended it, and I’m quite happy with my choice.
It goes very deeply into all aspects of playing and composing music as well as understanding it.
The style Is a bit academic but the overall level is quite accessible and very clear.
Here one of his free videos that got me interested:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=v7l6Y6fTPDw
or
There's also a book with the same name by David Byrne, but I can't comment on that one.
It has been really helpful to me
Don't discount the ability to fast-track your progress with a good teacher, too.
The 'theory' part is important too, so follow any of the advice of these other folks.
TLDR: I think the single best way to learn music theory is to learn to play piano, and work with a teacher on weekly lessons. Do a harmonic analysis of every single song you learn and check it over with your teacher. THERE IS SIMPLY NO SUBSTITUTE FOR LEARNING WITH A TRAINED AND EDUCATED MUSICIAN. I learned this the hard way.
> [I] have never been able to sift through a vast array of music theory blogs and tutorials to find something that made sense.
I like to think of music theory as a LANGUAGE. Sifting through blogs and tutorials is kinda like googling "how do I learn Chinese?" yeah there's probably a lot of resources out there but it's not going to feel very productive to just dive in in this way. You wouldn't feel confident about learning Chinese using online resources so why would you feel confident learning music theory in this way?
The real problem with trying to learn from online resources on your own is that there's no feedback... you will absolutely have gaps in your knowledge and persistent misinformation that cannot be corrected because nobody is monitoring your progress.
Also learning from online resources can often feel hollow. For example, I can teach ANYBODY what a major scale is in 15 minutes. However, to truly and deeply understand the major scale can take years, it's more than just the rules about how to construct one. You have to really go over ideas many times and a teacher will be able to know your strengths and weaknesses and how to improve.
If you learn piano from the ground up (use a book series like Alfred's Adult All-In-One) with a teacher, I guarantee that after those 3 books (which will take years to get through), you will have a decent grasp on theory. Don't try to tackle these books on your own, there's a lot of stuff that's not explicitly covered in these books. If you try to tackle it on your own I guarantee you that you will not get the full benefit and you will very likely teach yourself incorrect technique and you will be left with a lot of misinformation. You need to do harmonic analysis of every song with a teacher and get comfortable doing them yourself.
For me, the theory was fairly easy. But it was still hard for me to translate theory to actually composing music.
It did help me in a way to narrow down the notes to play. But it left me feeling that I am missing something.
Hooktheory is more modern: https://www.hooktheory.com/books
Learn an instrument & go through the level 1-5 theory books. Be sure to play the notes while you work through the book.
Make songs & apply what you’ve learned.
Part 1/4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyXqcoEzX70&t=419s
This is a really nice app that takes you through a lot of music theory. I would recommend using it with a good pair of headphones though.
You're welcome. ;-)
Here is a small yet information-dense book: https://woodenbooks.com/index.php?id_cms=8&controller=cms#!M...
Keeping the fundamental unity of musical elements in mind, build a framework of knowledge and practice including the following concepts.
Harmonic series as the basis of musical intervals https://www.oberton.org/en/overtone-singing/harmonic-series/
Intervals as ratios, and how the simplicity of ratios relates to consonance: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_ratio - http://legacy.earlham.edu/~tobeyfo/musictheory/Book1/FFH1_CH... - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Music/mussca.html
Polyrhythms as simple intervals (3:2, 2:3, 3:4, 5:4, etc.) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyrhythm - https://www.musical-u.com/learn/making-sense-of-polyrhythms/ - https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/polyrhythmBeatGenerator.ph...
Ear training to recognize intervals and notes - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Scales_and_Interv... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/intervals
Building chords from intervals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music)#Intervals_in_... - http://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/the-basic... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/chord-identification
Building major key from intervals (R, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7) - https://www.howmusicworks.org/202/The-Major-Scale/Intervals-... - http://onlineguitarlessons.co.uk/major-scale-intervals-and-t... - https://tonedear.com/ear-training/scale-identification
Stacking chords from scale tones - http://www.jazclass.aust.com/scales/scastc.htm
Extended chords to add color and emotion - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/extended-chords/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_chord
Major key chord function - http://hubguitar.com/music-theory/chord-function - http://openmusictheory.com/harmonicFunctions.html - https://www.jazzadvice.com/chord-function/
Circle of KEYS as a compositional tool showing diatonic chords for each key and common modulations - https://harmoniousapp.net/p/d9/Circle-of-Fifths-Keys - https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/music-theory/what-i... - https://blog.landr.com/circle-of-fifths-infographic/
Other geometric representations of musical elements - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnetz - https://imaginary.github.io/web-hexachord/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_rhythm - http://www.groovemechanics.com/euclid/ - https://dev.to/erwald/euclidean-rhythms-and-haskell-5ecj
Rotating major scale to get modes (and how diatonic chords relate to modes) - https://blog.landr.com/music-modes/ - http://www.jazclass.aust.com/improvisation/im12.htm - https://onlineguitarbooks.com/2012/01/06/functional-harmony-...
Chord substitution (functional, modal, and tritone) - https://lotusmusic.com/lm_chordsub.html - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/chord-substitution/ - https://mixedinkey.com/captain-plugins/wiki/easy-chord-subst... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borrowed_chord - http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/borrowed-chords/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone_substitution - https://jenslarsen.nl/tritone-substitution/
Modulation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation_(music) - https://www.musicnotes.com/now/tips/a-complete-guide-to-musi... - https://www.artofcomposing.com/the-art-of-modulation-part-1
Compositional forms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_form - https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_the...
Some excellent musicians/teachers - Jacob Collier - https://www.imusic-school.com/en/music-theory/lessons/jacob-... - http://brightonjazzschool.com/jacob-collier-masterclass - https://www.youtube.com/user/jacobcolliermusic/playlists - Kate and Ray Harmony - https://hackmusictheory.com/home - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDKiHSPstsj0silp519gt6w - Nahre Sol - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8R8FRt1KcPiR-rtAflXmeg - Jazz Duets - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqimxUbWsE26KSpx2_OcmmA - Signals Music Studio - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRDDHLvQb8HjE2r7_ZuNtWA - David Bruce - https://www.youtube.com/user/davidbrucedotnet - Benn Jordan - https://www.youtube.com/user/angeldvst - Omri Cohen - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuWKHSHTHMV_nVSeNH4gYAg
This is a very good place to start and at least validate that you have the foundations. I mean both their courses and chord progression/melody database.
Also, playing around with their composer is a very very easy and pleasant way to actually grok harmony.
Rhythm/dynamics/etc you would need to learn somewhere else, but most people don't have a problem with that anyway.
Disclaimer: While hooktheory is a better resource than the ones posted by others, I see that they have started marketing their product as 'Pro'. This cannot be further from the truth - there is nothing 'Pro' about it - it is pure schoolboy stuff, it is just very well done.
I think the only thing you’ll need to know going into it is how to read sheet music.
It doesn’t really go too much into counterpoint or melody if I remember correctly, for those there are couple YouTube channels I ended up watching that are pretty much just a narrator analyzing other people’s music:
1) 8bit music theory
2) Richard Atkinson
There are others but those are my favorites.