How I 10X’ed My Enjoyment Of Music (Newsletter 12)

Led Zeppelin IV was spinning on the record player. My sister and I, ages 2 and 4, were riding around the basement on our tricycle and bicycle, respectively.

This is my earliest memory of music. Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Deep Purple's Machine Head were also on heavy rotation. We spent a lot of time playing as kids with great music in the background. These records are still among my favourites, and the memories, my most cherished.

Of course, as an impressional child, I wanted to learn to play music like the greats.

My foray into learning music was:

*drum roll, please*

Piano lessons!

I hated them, and remember quitting within a few weeks…

• I didn't sound like the music I grew up enjoying.
• I didn't like the songs I was learning and couldn't even play them with my lack of skills.
• It was deeply frustrating to drill the same things and continually fail to get them right (maybe my child-side hands had something to do with it, but probably not).
• The sheet music didn't make sense.
• I wasn't interested in learning what was being taught.
• And I wasn't learning to play music like the greats.

To this day, I've never had another structured one-on-one music lesson. And I still can barely read sheet music.

So it's probably as much a surprise to you as it is to me that music theory, of all things, magnified my enjoyment of music. 

I taught myself guitar by painstakingly playing along to tabs (many of which were wrong). I held my pick incorrectly for the first 10 years. I never learned anything past the minor scale and minor pentatonic for improvisation.

It was fun, but I knew deep down that I was limiting myself.

I eventually started writing music inspired by the tabs I was learning. This was a step in the right direction as an artist.

Imitation before innovation is a value of mine, and so that's what I did. But I never felt I was truly original, and thatultimately capped my enjoyment of music.

Music theory? I thought. Wouldn't all those rules stifle my creativity? I had a negative experience with sheet music and lessons in the past, surely I don't like this stuff. Wouldn't my time be better invested in just writing?

Then I went to college for audio engineering and naturally spent time with the Music Arts students. They were playing all sorts of improvisational stuff that was really inspiring to me.

How can I play the way they play? How can I understand what they're talking about when they're speaking during jam sessions?

I sat in on a session with my to-be bandmates of Blunt Cousin and it all clicked: I had to learn music theory.

That night, I ran to the local music shop and picked up two pamphlet-style theory books:

One on understanding chord progressions and one on understanding chord scale relationships.

I read them both in one night and barely understood what was being said. I'd ask other students and teachers at college about what I was learning. I'd spend weekends self-studying with books and my guitar.

It slowly all started to come together. The dopamine I got from expanding my understanding kept me going with my study.

That was 2015. I'm still obsessed and learning.

This letter is aimed at my past self and anyone in that same spot (though I'm sure you'll find value regardless)—At someone who's writing and recording a lot of music and enjoying it, but not feeling fully immersed, satisfied or original with their craft.

Here are my top reasons for taking it upon yourself to learn music theory.

Even the basics can open up your musical world.

No piano lessons required.

Reason 1: Because Music Theory Is Interesting To You  

Follow your genuine curiosities. Learn, build, experiment and teach. The best times of my life have been when I followed these tenets of my life philosophy.

The best reason to learn anything is because you're naturally interested in it. Humans are naturally curious. We're wired to feel rewarded as we learn new things.

This is called epistemic curiosity.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge.

Our love for knowledge stays relatively constant throughout our lives, even if we become less curious, overall, as we age.

And the great thing is that you can become interested in anything at any time. Think about the last 5 years of your life. What new subjects, hobbies, projects, experiments, jobs, or art have you developed an interest in?

If you're into music, you're already primed to become interested in music theory.

For the longest time, I was resistant to learning theory. I was a metalhead who read and wrote tablature and worked solely with my ear and numbered frets on paper.

Many of the friends I played music with in high school have kept music as a hobby. Some of them gave it up entirely. I've continued diving deeper and deeper.

And the more I learn, the more interested I become. Connecting the dots of theory and practice in music (and anything else) is deeply satisfying.

It was my college experiences with the music students that sparked my interest in music theory. It was the mathematical aspects of theory that hooked me—an analytical side to artistic expression.

In other words, it was wanting to fit in and perform with other musicians combined with the inherent math that got me interested in music theory.

For you, it could be anything (maybe even this letter). It's a logical progression to learn theory as you learn music as a whole.

Plato wrote that music is one of the 7 liberal arts (along with grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy). These arts were thought to constitute all the essential skills and fields of knowledge required by a free, well-educated citizen.

One of many perspectives to describe music is “numbers acting in time”. At the heart of music lies rhythm, the arrangement of sounds and silences across time.

Rhythm is deeply rooted in mathematical concepts such as fractions, ratios, and patterns. Harmony is also rooted in ratios, and melody in patterns. It all ties together (rhythm is harmony slowed down).

So as someone interested in math (I studied civil engineering at university), music theory is right up my alley.

And if you're not interested in deepening your understanding of music by studying music theory, don't force it. This brute force strategy is likely to be unsuccessful and may even worsen your relationship with music.

Reason 2: Because Music Theory Is Another Language To Add To Your Arsenal  

In general, we think either verbally (in words) or visually (in images).

We can also think musically in sounds (our mind's “ear”). If you've ever had a tune stuck in your head, you'll know that it's not only the lyrics but also the rhythm, melody, harmony and timbre that continually repeat.

As musicians and producers, we often tap into all three.

Thinking verbally requires language. Developing our grammar and vocabulary expands our ability to think. Expanding our ability to think increases our creativity.

I grew up in the only “officially” bilingual province of Canada (English and French). The simple fact of being bilingual in my country has been invaluable in my career trajectory.

As unfair as it is, I got ahead of smarter and harder-working peers in the job market largely due to having a second language. I've been “the English guy” in mostly French companies and “the French guy” in mostly English companies.

I use this story to illustrate that, by understanding how music works, we don’t have to work so hard to learn and write songs. Rote memorization is an ineffective learning technique.

Learning English is one of the highest-value skills in the global marketplace (and we're all online now, so we're all tied into the global economy in one way or another).

Learning how to “speak” music is an invaluable skill in the music “marketplace”.

As I entered the industry as an audio engineer, part of my job was composing for radio, TV and other media. With the clock ticking, I had to write and arrange efficiently. Understanding the fundamentals of theory literally improved my value in the “music marketplace”.

Note: writing stock music has not increased my enjoyment of music. I'm simply pointing out the market value of learning language.

Music theory arms us with a vocabulary of concepts and terms surrounding music. By studying, we can better understand the complexities and inner workings of this beautiful art form.

Music also has plenty of numbers and symbols to understand and visualize.

Language transcends and includes symbols. It is a remarkable tool for expressing thought, conveying emotions, and building complex societies. 

Mathematics is another powerful language that utilizes symbols and has allowed us to advance to where we are today (and beyond).

Music theory incorporates all of this, affording us yet another path into the infinite knowledge and wisdom of the world.

Alright, maybe those last few paragraphs are a bit esoteric.

Practically speaking, developing the language of music theory allows us to communicate more effectively with our fellow musicians while also allowing us to think deeper into our own musical endeavours.

Reason 3: Because Music Theory Enhances Creativity  

Getting back to my initial resistance to music theory, I was like many other young musicians who thought they knew everything.

“I’m too smart and creative to be chained to music theory. It’ll stifle my creativity.” This is an all-too-common objection to the thought of learning music theory.

But in my experience, the exact opposite has happened. The fact is that, without theory, my only tools for coming up with ideas were either:  

1. Messing about with my instrument until something sounded cool.
2. Having an idea in my head and then hunting and pecking on my instrument until I found the notes (if I didn’t forget the idea in the process)

And forget arranging complex harmony on top of those ideas—that would take even more trial and error to get right!

I remember learning how to type on a keyboard. It was a painstakingly slow process of finding the right key, hitting it, finding the next, and periodically glancing up from the keyboard to ensure everything was spelled correctly.

I can write as creatively as I want now because I can type nearly at the speed of thought. Imagine how many ideas fell to the wayside as I hunted for the “M” key, “T” key, or anything else on the keyboard.

Now I can write letters like this without ever looking at my keyboard. I can also, for the most part, play guitar through my stream of consciousness. Maybe the timing isn't going to be right, but I can usually intuit the frets, strings and fingerings from my mind's ear to my fingers.

Beyond improving the interface of my mind and my instrument, I use music theory of idea generation. I'll often write music based on concepts I’m either learning, struggling to comprehend, or fascinated by.

With my (admittedly) limited knowledge of music theory, I can create with a variety of tools:

• My mind's ear and interface with my instrument
• The math behind rhythm, melody and harmony
• The vocabulary of music terminology

And I still have access to all the tools I had before I knew the basics.

Once I get to writing, either by myself or with others, I can quickly identify what could work alongside what's already there.

I used to hate arranging. It was tedious (like finding the right keyboard keys). Now it's one of my favourite parts of the music production process—building up a “simple” idea into something intricate and beautiful.

And the great thing about art is that you can dive straight into the unknown and still make something beautiful. You don't have to know everything before you get started. Learn, write, experiment, repeat. You'll create a ton of great stuff along the way, I promise.

Try that with aviation or surgery and see what happens.

Music theory shouldn't be thought of as a set of unbreakable rules. It's not something to shackle your creativity. It's there to expand it. It gives you tools you know will work and also a language to help yourself “wonder what would happen if…”

And getting back to Plato's 7 liberal arts, an understanding of music helps you to play your creative/artistic role in the world.

Reason 4: Because Music Theory Goes Hand-In-Hand With Ear Training

Music production is my favourite art form. Getting good means developing a great “ear” along with knowing the technical aspects.

Music theory goes hand-in-hand with ear training. If you can train your ear to hear certain rhythms or intervals, you can train your ear to hear different frequencies, timbres and audio processes.

Strengthening your sense of hearing to identify different aspects of music opens up a brand new world to experience music from.

By the way, if you want to learn how to hear and use the most important tools in mixing, check out my course, The Mixing With Series Crash Course.

Of course, you can enjoy music without knowing exactly what's going on. By the way, theory is simply that: theory (a system of ideas intended to explain a thing)—it is not the thing itself!

Music is a universal language that we all innately understand to some degree. It's this innate understanding that draws us to music. Music theory is a layer we can use to add more meaning to the naturally inherent value of music.

It's similar to sport. Sure, we can enjoy watching a boxing match or football game, but if we aren't aware of the rules, techniques and strategies, we won't get as much out of it. 

Some would argue that “knowing how the sausage is made” would detract from the beauty of art. I disagree.

Developing our understanding of the arts, like music, is a way to deepen our appreciation. It gives us access to a completely different layer of comprehension beyond the superficial.

Recap

I hope I inspired you to begin or continue your study of music theory. It's been such a blessing in my life and I wanted to share this letter with you.

Once again, my 4 main arguments for learning music theory are:

1. Music theory is interesting to you.
2. Music theory is another language to add to your arsenal.
3. Music theory enhances creativity.
4. Music theory goes hand-in-hand with ear training.

Until next week,

-Art