What are your thoughts on music theory? Is it useful in expressing yourself creatively?

The extent of my knowledge is really just the circle of fifths for finding keys for bridges and choruses that will work. I’ve been writing songs for a year and a half and wrote one with three slightly unorthodox key changes recently, was quite happy with that.

I would like to know more about how harmonies work.

theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Alright Donald calm down go have yourself a Big Mac

I mostly noodle about on cigar box guitar and a cheap korg synth. If you take the 12 bar blues there are a fuckton of ways you could play it. I think of music theory as a toolbox of useful knowledge that you can mix and match how and when you need. The more complex you make your music, the more theory you will find useful to depend on. If you play alone and have only one string you wouldnt even need to know how to tune your instrument as there will be no possibility to fail harmony. As soon as you start playing with others they will have different expectations of required theory (with blues being low, but a lot higher if you play irish, jazz or classical). If you play with a 'DJ' you likely already know more theory than him outside of maybe rhythm.
My advice: Get a sense of rhythm, learn some basic songs & 12 bar and just try to apply the nuggets of theory you learn after that to the songs you know and learn from there.

I love metal, rock, jazz m8.

I gotta disagree there. Most of what you claim to be "intuitively generated" is actually just rote repetition of musical patterns you've been exposed to. There's a reason musical creation has developed over the years and humans didn't come out writing 10 voice counterpoint right out of the bronze age.
Music theory IS a source for musical creation, it's a textbook on centuries' worth of written musical ideas. IMAGINE, for example, an engineer "intuitively" discovering microwave ovens, without studying the written texts, works, and discoveries of the thousands of physicists, researchers and engineers that came before him.

If you don't study theory, you'll write the most entry-level musical ideas you've been exposed to over and over again, and will be so ignorant to that fact that you'll think you have "intuitively" generated something that has already been created, and documented for literally centuries

The Beatles didn't know theory and were hugely innovative to the point where music theorists still are analyzing their work. They may have known about basic concepts, but they were mainly just using their ears (intuitively generating it).

Are you saying that they were just repeating patterns that they had heard before?

This doesn't just apply to the Beatles, by the way.

>Are you saying that they were just repeating patterns that they had heard before?
Yes. The Beatles innovated nothing from a theory standpoint, most of their music just blended forms they were already exposed to, (rock and roll, blues, rag time, jazz), and further popularized it. To THEIR ears, they were generating it. There is not a single harmony, interval, or "chord" that were "invented" by the beatles or that hadn't been already recorded or written down by artists before them. Beatle's only innovation was to borrow and mix them.

Look at it like art school. Yeah you can be great at painting in a way you found yourself but then at art school you try things you'd never thougjt of. Then after learning all this different things of interest you return to painting and lo abd behold, you got better at expressing by being more free in the medium.

Music is like this.
To me before theory I coyld play in any color but after theory I can play in any shade.

Were you having a stroke while typing this?

This is an extremely bold statement.

Many music experts agree that the Beatles were doing extremely interesting things from a music theory standpoint (aolean cadences etc) and would absolutely disagree that they weren't innovative at all in that respect.

And I would also argue that all innovation is a form of "borrowing and mixing."

I really don't believe the whole Beatles never knew music theory so I don't have to learn it either argument. I mean they lived and worked in the professional music scene. They were constantly working with George Martin and in contact with the greatest musicians of the era. Know one thinks music theory ever came up in a conversation once or twice?

The Beatles' entire thing isn't so much what they did (in and of itself, nothing they did is extremely innovative), it's the polystylistic developments where they mix all those things at once, and the context they did it.

That said, it's still really great pop music and ought to be listened to.

They may have known concepts, but the point is that they were writing music mostly by ear and weren't like referring to the circle of fifths or whatever to see what chords they should use.

Everyone is different right? it helps me understand the lines or melodies that pop into my head

>probably the most influentual band to ever exist
>universally agreed to be enormously innovative, both stylistically and compositionally
>everyone still knows all of their songs
>wrote timeless melodies that could be instantly recognized whether they were being played by an orchestra or a death metal band

yeah you totally got it dude, they're just a pop band and weren't innovative at all.

Basic music theory knowledge makes literally every aspect of being a musician easier. Anyone who shuns it is only hurting themself.

Without music theory, you are simply and amateur, throwing shit at a wall and hoping something will stick - you are an autistic kid trying to draw a house with a crayon, compared to the great masters of art.

Knowing theory will give you more tools with which to express yourself in a way that probably sounds good, but knowing all the theory in the world won't help you if you're just shit at writing music. Knowing theory does not make you a good musician, and being a TECHNICALLY SKILLED musician does not mean you're good at writing music. There's no formula or method to composing that will just dump a good song in front of you if you study it hard enough

factually incorrect