hey, welcome to 12tone! one question I get asked a lot is (HENRY: hey 12tone, how much
music theory do I need to know in order to make good music?) and as a music theorist,
you might expect me to say something like the more the better.
learning music theory is an essential part of becoming a great composer, improviser,
and all-around musician.
but I don't actually think that's true.
I mean, it can certainly help, but lots of amazing artists have made tons of great music
without ever taking a theory class, so honestly, if you ask me how much theory you actually
need to know, I'm pretty convinced the answer is none.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
this video is sponsored by Hooktheory!
ok, so, if we're gonna get into this, we have to talk about what knowing theory actually
means, because there's actually two different ways to learn stuff.
or, I mean, there's a lot more than that, but for our purposes we can simplify it down
to just two.
first, there's explicit learning, which is the stuff you learn by having it explained
to you.
if I tell you that E major is the IV chord in the key of B, that's learning explicitly.
the other side, though, is implicit learning, which is the stuff you learn by doing, or
by being.
when you're noodling around on your instrument, you're implicitly learning which combinations
of notes and which physical motions produce sounds that you enjoy.
when we ask if you need to know theory, we're usually talking about explicit knowledge.
should you take a theory class, read a theory book, or watch a theory video? and yes, you
should definitely watch theory videos, otherwise I'll lose my job, and I like my job, but honestly,
a lot of what you'll learn from those sources won't be that helpful in actually making music.
like, consider one of my favorite theoretical devices, the diminished 7th modulation.
I made a whole video about this, link in the description, but basically, it works like
this: the diminished 7th chord is symmetrical.
that is, it's built by stacking the same interval, in this case a minor 3rd, over and over.
this makes it kind of like a chameleon.
if we look at D diminished 7, it contains D, F, Ab, and Cb. on the other hand, F diminished
7 is F, Ab, Cb, and Ebb, which is a fancy name for D. they're the same notes.
in fact, this same pitch collection can be arranged into four allegedly different diminished
7th chords. this means that, in at least one perfectly valid sense, there's only three
actually different diminished 7ths: this one, this one, and this one.
all the other apparent variety is really just playing around with roots. and the cool thing
is that all three of these diminished 7ths have a valid function in every key, so if
we're playing in, say, Eb major and we want to go somewhere else, we can just hit D diminished
7 and then resolve it wherever we want.
Jake from Signals Music Studio described it as a portal, which I think is a great analogy:
it can take you from anywhere to anywhere else.
now, you might be thinking that sounds really interesting, or you might be wondering why
I'm telling you about it, but one thing you're probably not thinking is "hey, I'm gonna use
that in my next rock song."
that's because it probably wouldn't work: diminished 7ths are a harsh, ugly sound, and
they're not stylistically appropriate in many genres. this technique worked really well
in 19th-century classical music, because they both used diminished 7ths and needed lots
of clever ways to change keys, but that's not really what we're up to these days.
many of your favorite artists either don't know this trick exists or, if they do, they
don't care.
the structure is valid, but the tool isn't useful.
and music theory classes are full of stuff like this, things that are interesting, but
not super relevant to the stuff modern musicians are trying to make.
why?
well, partly because making you a better musician isn't the only point of learning theory, and
partly because music academia in general spends an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over
a very narrow collection of European classical music, but even if it didn't, there's still
a fundamental problem: music theory is, by definition, stuck in the past, because it's
trying to describe a moving object.
it takes time for us to develop good models for new ideas, and musicians don't tend to
wait for us to catch up. by the time we've got a satisfying explanation of what they
were doing, they've come up with a dozen more things for us to explain.
there's a reason, for instance, that chord loops have been an important part of modern
popular music since at least the '60s, but most of the serious theory about them comes
from the last couple decades.
in that sense, music theory is kinda like cartography: we can only draw maps of places
we've already seen.
but again, that's all explicit theory.
what about implicit theory?
well, I'd argue that in order to make music that other people enjoy, you actually need
a lot of implicit theory knowledge, but here's the good news: you probably already have it.
you've been learning music theory implicitly for as long as you've been listening to music.
it's a process called enculturation, where you slowly learn the norms and behaviors of
a particular culture simply by existing within it, and it starts before you've even begun
to form long-term memories.
my favorite example is just, like, who taught you to sing Happy Birthday? if you're American,
at least, there's a good chance no one did.
you just went to birthday parties, and by the time you were old enough to join in, you'd
heard it so many times that you already knew how it went.
you also probably learned other children's songs like Mary Had A Little Lamb and Twinkle
Twinkle Little Star, and from that you started to develop a sense of what music was supposed
to sound like.
you learned about things like the major scale, common meter, and melodic contour, all without
anyone telling you anything.
and that process continues for the rest of your life.
adolescence is another particularly important time, because it's when you really start to
develop your adult musical tastes.
Sideways talked about how this happens in his video on Coco, link in the description,
but the short version is that the reward system in your brain is extra sensitive in your early
teenage years, so you're primed to develop emotional attachments to certain musical styles
that will last for the rest of your life.
like, I was 13 in 2003, at the height of nu metal's inexplicable popularity, and to this
day I still listen to artists like Linkin Park, Evanescence, and Disturbed when I just
want to put on something easy to enjoy.
my tastes have expanded a lot since I was a teenager, but those are my musical roots,
and they're the things I keep coming back to.
that's because I like them, but more specifically, it's because I understand them.
I have a deep, intuitive grasp of the musical vocabulary those artists use, because I've
spent a long time absorbing that vocabulary.
I know the sorts of chords they play, the melodic gestures, the rhythms, the song forms,
I even know what the instruments are supposed to sound like.
if I'd never taken a music theory class, I might not be able to tell you what these songs
were doing, but I'd still know what they were doing, and I'd be able to tell if another
song wasn't doing it right.
and that's just from listening to music.
this whole process gets supercharged once you actually start trying to play it.
by the time you pick up an instrument, you've already learned all sorts of things about
how the music you like works, and without any sort of formal instruction, you'll naturally
gravitate toward playing things that align with those values.
like, consider the axis progression: (bang) it's one of the most common chord loops in
modern popular music, and these days it's a bit of a meme in music circles, but the
reason it got so popular in the first place is because a lot of people just thought it
sounded good.
they'd heard other people play it, or something like it, and when they went to figure out
a cool chord progression for their next song, they naturally wound up playing this.
they may not have even realized it was the same chords as that other song they liked,
it just worked.
it fit all the rules they didn't know they knew.
and this process of enculturation can work surprisingly fast: new artists learn from
old artists, building on their ideas and creating new trends in the process.
they work by ear and by instinct, which allows them to stay way more current than actual
theorists.
it's a lot easier to develop an intuition than an explanation.
it's also usually more accurate, or at least more comprehensive: you're hearing every component
of the music, even if you're not consciously recognizing most of them, so your gut instinct
for how it all works is going to involve lots of little details you may not be able to fully
describe.
now, it may bother some people to call this process music theory at all, and that's fair.
it certainly doesn't look like the sort of thing you'd learn in a music theory class.
musical enculturation is a natural, unspoken process that occurs at the population level,
whereas music theory is the attempt to uncover and explore the underlying structures of that
population's music, but I really don't think they're that different.
after all, any good analysis has to start with intuition: if your explanation doesn't
match what you're hearing, then, no matter how many fancy theory words you use, it's
a bad explanation.
music theorists are still responding to their own enculturation, it's just a bit more formalized.
but if that's true, why bother with explicit theory at all?
I mean, besides the fact that learning things is fun, is it just an intellectual exercise
with no musical utility?
nah. it's useful.
a while back I was talking to Adam Neely, and he described theory as recipes for music,
which I love.
it's such a great analogy.
like, for the past couple years I've been developing this recipe for stove-top mac and
cheese.
it's delicious, I'm up to 7 cheeses, and it's by far the most complicated dish I make.
but over that time, I never bothered to look up how to actually make mac and cheese.
I just tried things.
if they worked, I kept doing them.
if they didn't, I tried something else.
figuring it out on my own was part of the fun, but I could've got to the same place
a lot faster if I'd started with a more complete recipe.
and music works the same way.
you can make amazing music with no explicit theory knowledge, but knowing the tricks of
the trade helps you get to that point faster.
I often describe theory as a way of filling gaps between inspirations. if you write your
entire song by just following all the rules you know, it's probably gonna sound mechanical,
but if you have a great idea for part of it, theory gives you the tools you need in order
to build an entire piece around that idea.
another thing theory can do for you is help you find those ideas in the first place.
let's go back to that map analogy: if you're an explorer, it helps to know which areas
haven't already been explored.
learning theory lets you know what people have been doing, which also tells you what
they probably haven't been doing, and that can be a great place to find your next big
thing.
theory also exposes you to kinds of music and kinds of musical thought that you may
not have encountered otherwise, giving you new lenses through which to consider and potentially
improve your work.
it gives you options, and it opens doors.
and the last thing theory gives you is a vocabulary.
implicit learning doesn't do that: there's no default language to describe things you
picked up instinctively.
that makes it harder to communicate your ideas to other musicians, but more importantly,
having a name for something makes it easier to recognize, which makes it easier to repeat.
once you know it's there, you can explore why it works, and use that exploration to
inform future musical decisions.
it lets you take your instincts and make them intentional.
so no, you don't need theory, but that's not because it's not helpful.
it's because you're already really good at it.
you just don't know all the words.
but if you want some help, you might want to check out Hooktheory.
another question I get asked a lot is how to get started learning theory, and if that's
you, Hooktheory has lots of great resources to help you out.
many of those resources are even free: I've personally done a bunch of research using
their trends tool, which lets you search for specific chord progressions in their database
of over 25 thousand popular songs.
it's great.
they've also got theory tabs, which show the chords and melodies of those songs laid out
in their own clear, easy to understand notation, and, of course, there's Hookpad, their songwriting
sketchpad, which can even make suggestions for interesting chords to try if you get stuck.
that one's not free, but I can offer you a special deal: the first 1000 12tone viewers
to click the link in the description will get 20% off a bundle that includes not just
a lifetime subscription to Hookpad but also both of Hooktheory's interactive books, which
are a great guide to the basics of music theory for songwriters.
and hey, thanks for watching, and extra special thanks to this video's Featured Patrons, Duck
and Howard Levine.
if you want to help out, and help us pick the next song we analyze too, there's a link
to our Patreon on screen now.
oh, and don't forget to like, share, comment, subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.