Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke can’t read sheet music

Anyone who doesn’t know music theory are talentless hacks

if you make "some of the greatest" music then why would you need to read music that other people made? You can make "some of the greatest" on your own.

Radiohead stinks btw.
Faggy music

>Temporary secretary
Kek

Theory isn't a requirement to make music, but it can help you explain wtf you are doing to the reat of the band, and it can help you be more technical in your own playing (adding onto chords because you KNOW that sus7 sounds good vs. 'Oh, that note sounds cool there')

People that can't read sheet music can't compose their own string arrangements.

Jonny Greenwood knows music theory and he accounts for at least 40% of radiomeme's greatness

try more like 50-60%. radiohead has been the jonny and thom show for like 15 years

Fuh You

I don't understand this. Do you mean they can't read at all or they can't like sight read it fast? Cause it takes literally less than a day just to learn to read it, I can't imagine how you can be a musician for decades and never feel like spending 1 day to learn such a basic thing.

Both The Beatles and Radiohead are utter shit

reading music isn't technically a necessity for music theory

Just like you don't technically have to know how to read to understand and speak english
You don't even have to "see" to understand and speak english, so why wouldn't similar practices apply to music

might not be directly related but it worked for me

preaching ignorance is pretty retarded desu (this is directed mainly towards op)

didn't paul learn to read sheet music when he was a beetle?
thom york is a hack btw

Paul McCartney created the greatest songs of all time by intuition, because he's the greatest musician of all time. Call me when your garbage favorite musician write a song as half as good as Yesterday.

Knowing music theory doesn't make you a good musician. Why do people still believe it does? Music is an artistic expression of feeling not a math equation.

>Music is an artistic expression of feeling not a math equation.

Labels have made it into a math equation via algorithms to formulate exact bpm and tempo that makes a hit.

zach hill didn't give a shit abt music theory and still made math rock, so yes

>>Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke can’t read sheet music
Proof?
>>Made some of the greatest music of all time
That's purely subjective. I think Yorke is mostly fluff and garbage.
>>Adam Neely and Jacob Collier can
True because they both study music inside and out.
>>Never made anything of value
Again, purely subjective. I think they make awful music, especially Collier, but there seems to be an audience there as well. I don't like it though, sounds too gimmicky and forced.

>Is music theory really just a meme?
Why would it be a meme? You compared 2 pairs of random people and your conclusion is purely based on your subjective taste.
If you're good at music theory, you're not necessarily good at music; you're simply good at theory. However, if you learn music without it, you're basically reinventing the wheel via trial and error; you will come to similar conclusions as the people before you (or the people who study music). People think they know music theory when they learn major and minor chords and scales and then they get pissed when they're still shit at music and can't compose something original (no shit) and they vent their frustrations towards music theory, when in reality they're just barely begun the journey, they're not even at 1 percent yet.
Obviously there are good musicians who haven't read music (theory) books or studied musical scores at all, but this music usually isn't harmonically, melodically or texturally that developed, it's usually pop music; that's why you always hear how Hendrix didn't know any but do you ever hear about a classical composer or a great symphony written without someone knowing music inside and out? No because you have to master form and development to make something like that and the way to master that is years of studying your predecessors and learning.
Whether or not you make that next step and create a truly transcendent piece of art, is a variable, an X factor, that you probably can't fully learn.

Attached: music theory.png (800x445, 42K)

And let me expand that making music is not an unconscious work. It's purely rational most of the time, you usually make rational decisions when you make music and you rewrite and fix things along the way and over time. The most emotional person in the world will not necessarily make a good musician, it will probably sound like Hobo Johnson or some shit; but rather the person who has the knowledge (and/or that X factor) who also knows how to code those strong emotions into their music, will.

So in conclusion: there are good and bad musicians that knew or did not know theory. Usually you need to know more to create more complex works or works that follow a certain formula (for example the sonata form in the case of a classical symphony). If it helps you, study it, it can never hurt; music theory is not a meme, rather the phrase "it hurts your creativity" is a meme. If it doesn't help you, then don't.
All of OP's musicians have an audience and whether you like them or not is in majority your subjective interpretation.

There's an interview Thom gave about the score for Susperia where he talks about how it took him an eternity to write everything down because he technically "knew" how the music scales worked on paper but it wasnt natural to him at all. So I guess he can't read it "fast", like if you handed him sheet music he would be like a kid with a book sounding out the words

Music is not subjective. Morality can be subjective, but not music.

>Is music theory really just a meme?
If you've ever talked to music bfa/mfa guys you will know that yes it is 100% a meme. Most of them jack off to Tame Impala

/thread

70%, since he actually serves as the arranger more often now.

Paul would literally dream songs and ask the other Beatles which song it was and they said they don’t know, must be yours. That’s just once in a lifetime talent. Don’t see why it makes music theory a meme though.

Or if you're Sibelius you eschew form entirely.

He did that twice; one was great, the other sucked. Music was laborious for him - he worked on refining the same song many times.

Paul wrote the best song of all time while dreaming. That's how much of a genius he is.
>the other sucked
Yikes!

music is art, art is subjective, music theory is only useful for an analytical viewpoint but it can't be used to "create" good music. so all in all, yes it is a meme

t. took a semester of music theory in college

name any big musician(s) that use(d) music theory in their music. go on, try.

shit like tool and yngwie malmsteen is not "big"

John Coltrane

Miles Davis

The vast majority of pop music is created by producers that are well versed in theory.

I'm pretty sure Brian Wilson did and he was pretty big. (as in morbidly obese)

Literally all of them, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Even rock bands that dont know shit about theory when they get signed to a label go work under a producer that does know theory.

yngwie doesn't formally know music theory, he just studied a lot of classical music and made out the structure and patterns himself