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With all the discussion on theory lately, I've noticed a few things, and I'd like to offer a few thoughts:

1) Theory is description. It comes after the fact. Nobody follows rules, they are born into the system. When you speak a language, you don't "follow" a set of abstract rules that someone has forced upon you, you simply communicate in a manner that others will understand. So is it with theory.

2) Theory is not one thing. For some, theory is rudiments and nomenclature. For some, theory is analysis, a path to understanding. For some, theory is a common language that allows people to talk about music. For some, theory is a personal language that guides one's own thoughts.

3) The different things we call theory may or may not be connected. There are ways in which classical and jazz theory are similar, and ways in which they are not. In some ways, Schenkerian analysis and Neo-Riemannian approaches are extensions of traditional theory; in other ways, they are not. I've used Schenkerian approaches with Junior High students. Rebecca Shockley uses it with Elementary students. And it works. Some people learn Counterpoint and Harmony as separate and distinct subjects, others combine the two.

4) Theory is a living, breathing thing. It changes. It is not unlike the English language in this way. The usage of commas is not standardized, nor is there a consensus on when it is and when it is not acceptable to begin a sentence with "And." For beginning musicians and writers, this is frustrating. For professionals, it's freeing. Traversing the ground in between takes curiosity and courage. And little else.

I don't know all that much theory as yet, just enough so far to find my chords, a general hazy picture of chord progression and how the keys relate...but what I've learned in the last few months has literally exploded my world.

I played guitar for 10 years, but for some reason never learned any theory (even from my beginner and intermediate classical guitar classes). When I decided to take up piano, everything just became so obvious, the keyboard's layout itself is just so rational and literally cries out for (and requires) some theory to play.

Unless you've played guitar, you have no idea how beautiful and elegant the keyboard's layout is.

Theory for me is the key that unlocks the piano, simple as that.

Interesting points..I think I will make a note of them!

I've never had any problem with music theory. I just memorize all the rules and do the exercises like you do matrices. But, I do have a problem with eartraining. Any advice, Kreisler?

So .. do you think Kreisler that studying theory is important?

I am now following you in the theory study threads and i am totally interested.

But if you can tell me how the study of theory will benefit me?

Please elaborate more

Thank you Kreisler! As a theory nerd (theory major) I am sick of the bad rep it gets.

Like "K" said: theory comes after the fact. you only get the whole picture when you study, simulstaneously with theory, the practice of an instrument, and (VERY important often left behind): history, becausy Art has suffered drastical changes through history, and we're right now standing on the tip of the iceberg built in the course of the last 2000 years of art history.
with time you get to know how important theory is to understand a bit more what your fingers are playing..

I am honestly perplexed by theory and always have been. I am seemingly doomed to the conclusion that I have no theory except my ear. I was initially tempted to admit to Kreisler's fourth type, that of a personal language which guides my thoughts. This is more by default than anything else as the first three descriptions do not fit me at all.

I am not really an ignorant primitive, and I am quite sure that in terms of direct visual, tactile and aural knowledge I do possess a highly developed piano language. At one stage I took personal lessons, at considerable expense, in composition, theory and harmony, from a very prominent musician and composer here. I really tried very hard to understand theory but he found large numbers of things in my compositions and improvisations he said were definitely wrong.

The course lasted several months and, at the end of it, I still preferred my "wrong" things to his "right" ones. Although I respected his vast knowledge and his musical abilities (in some aspects, not in others) I could not, for the life of me, see the "why" of theory. In other words, while I can fully understand the sort of discussion taking place in the thread about the Beethoven sonata, I cannot see why one particular aural formation is any more inevitable or "right" than another. I am not really slow or dense, and I can fully comprehend what is being said; it is just the "why" which puzzles me.

On the other hand, when I create my own music I know all about the "why" even if I do not understand "how", the unconscious rules I may or may not be using. Also, I find it increasingly difficult to assign musical "values" to sounds, even in context. Increasingly it is a matter of trying to say green is better than blue or raspberries taste better than oranges.

In short, I can understand theory, or I think I could if I put my mind to it, but it seems to me that it tries to understand the beauty of a rose by measuring and counting its petals. That's probably the best way I can describe how I feel about it.

I am not convinced of the analogy with language at all, because language describes commonly referenced concrete and abstract external things. There is a commonality of meaning because language talks "about" something. Only in the writing of people such as Joyce does language approach the abstraction of music. Music, on the other hand, is surely by its nature, barring the more crass forms of impressionism, completely and forever abstract - rather like looking at an algebraic picture and "seeing things" in it. Such mental associations as we do form are personal and, for the most part not shared.

I suppose we all have our mental blind spots. Perhaps musical theory is for me just another of those things like religion and economics whose meaning I do not understand at all.

Well, if theory comes 'after the fact' so i guess it does not benefit a composer? Let's say he composed a melody and wants to write accompaniment to it in the left hand. :rolleyes:

A friend of mine discusses some of the issues Ted raises in his blog:

http://ttutheory.blogspot.com/2006/10/compositional-vs-analytical-theory.html

I was hoping somebody would make a distinction like that, Kreisler. I can therefore confidently say that, while I have difficulty seeing any personal benefit in analytical theory, I have, in fact, been inventing and using compositional theories all my life. I wouldn't normally talk about them as such or dignify them with that label, but I suppose that is essentially what they are.

An interesting conundrum then arises as to whether the ultimate compositional theory is the computer algorithm. In the case of David Cope, for instance, would his algorithms constitute "super-theories", compositional because of their function and analytical because their goal is imitation of the masters ?

My own conjecture, based on years of fiddling with these things, is that the serendipitous quality of transporting musical response - which, after all, is probably why we like music in the first place - cannot be formulated at all beyond a certain crude degree. It is also a fact, at least for me, that such compositional guidelines as I have found useful are often based on seemingly absurd principles, disparate from one another and from any conventional music sense. So what I have ended up with is this huge body of little independent constructional principles rather than a unified theory.

In the field of algorithmic composition, although it doesn't sound particularly charitable or even sensible, I preferred listening to the output of a twenty line Basic programme to the results of Cope's stupendous code. This because the former, despite producing 70% rubbish, turned up the occasional sound which surprised and delighted so much it outweighed the consistent but rather bland result of the latter.

So it is with improvisation. What I find is that when a really delightful sound turns up and I try to generalise it into a working principle its transporting power diminishes almost in proportion to the effort. It is almost as if the whole of my musical response is some sort of monstrous oxymoron whose pleasure is so specific that any attempt to generalise it into a theory is a failure by definition.

But perhaps, after all, this is the nature of art, and an important difference between art and science.