A directory of books, resources and courses for studying everything about music and sound
This is version 2. Version 1 was a single page with all screenshots, which may have loaded slowly
- Go through Ableton's guide
- Explore Hooktheory's TheoryTab: search for your favorite songs and anime openings. Honestly both of their books are top-notch and well worth the money
- Play around with Bartosz Ciechanowski's visualizations on the essence of sound
- Skim through Toby W. Rush's overview to intensify a fear for classical music theory
- Listen to Beethoven's sonata #5 movement #1, also see what we as a society know about it
- Stare at visualizations: classical, jazz harmony and jazz solos
- Watch a gamelan multitrack and try to make sense of it
- Press "scan"
Music languages can be divided into a number of families. Historically, the most dominant and influencial one is Western family of languages. Its languages share some common traits:
- 12-tone temperament
- major/minor keys
- homophony
- chords in thirds
- any of the 12 notes can be a tonic
The languages are (roughly speaking):
- Rock - probably worth exploring the first, as it's the simplest and pretty popular. It makes sense to start here and expand into other Western languages later on - as they share a lot of concepts. By the way, pop music (structure-wise) it a super-genre combining bits of rock, jazz and other stuff
- Classical - the biggest chapter here, as it's the main focus of all research and teaching (despite its unpopularity according to streaming stats). Subtopics: pre-classical, advanced
- Jazz. Subtopics: harmony, lego, solo
- Barbershop
- Movies
- Video games
- Bach chorales
- Other genres like R&B, country, dance electronic, gospel
- Western regional traditions (eg. Latin)
Non-Western music languages are different families. As they were developed all over the globe, they don't share many common features.
The families are (roughly speaking):
- Maqam languages
- Southeast Asian percussive languages
- Balkan languages
- many other traditions
Broad overview on non-Western languages
- Research
- Composition
- Visualizations
- Maps of genres
- Listening guides
- Ear training
- Piano
- Neural networks
- Pseudoscience
- Sociology of music
- YouTube, podcasts and lists of resources
- Sound design
- Digital composition
- Mixing
- Microtonal music
- Notable instruments
- Institute of Sonology: One-Year Course
A real-time feed of new resources in Telegram
Do you know how to enroll in a music theory program after a computer science BSc (without a completed formal music degree)? Please, let me know: [email protected], t.me/vitalypavlenko (asking for myself)