I'll be working on improving and learning and picking up new tricks along the way, and I'll be back.

Peace.

nickmaynard wrote:

will learning more about music help you write music? yes it will.

Just as importantly, it will let you efficiently and effectively communicate with other musicians who also know music theory.

And also, inversely, writing music will help you learn about music. I go to a conservatory-style music school pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Music Composition and I will attest to the fact that often when stuff like chromatic mediants, secondary dominants, whatever, was introduced, I'd have this "Oh okay, THAT thing" moment because I've found the gist of it years ago while recording guitar in my bedroom or something.

"Music theory doesn't prescribe music; it describes music."

While taking an intro theory course early on in my communications degree my teacher told the class this, and I immediately switched my major.

will learning more about music help you write music? yes it will.

Just as importantly, it will let you efficiently and effectively communicate with other musicians who also know music theory.

maybe you're taking the problem on a too ''global'' way.

you will not buy a book, read a book... and be good, ok, next step.

What I would advise you, at my very humble level, is ''get into a song'', start writing a melody or chords, or whatever... and search for a specific info / tutorial on the net as soon as you encounter a specific ''blocking point''

you will gradually pick up small bits of knowlegde that will eventually all link together at some point.

I mean, ''music theory'' is a huge field, you will not need everything, and anyway ''getting everything'' in one go is a silly utopia.

I'd get started with something like: ''composing music for beginners'' on google and see where it leads...

trust your hears too...

I find that too often people think of music theory as just a skill that you can put on a checklist of things that make people musicians. people can write great music without knowing the theory behind it, but what the theory does is let you recontextualize what you're doing. so instead of talking about just "sounds" you start talking about "notes" and "chords" and "rhythms." once you're able to hear the theory behind the music you listen to, it gets way easier to take those principles and apply them to your own music.

so if I were to advise you on how to go about studying it, I'd say learn about a specific thing like key signatures or whatever, and then listen to music that you like and try to deconstruct it in terms of that thing you studied. so if you studied something like inverted chords, listen to a piece of music and try to spot when you hear inverted chords. and more generally, try listening to the rhythms and listening to how certain tones are arranged against other tones, and figure out why you like or dislike a piece of music by describing it in terms of music theory, rather than describing it by referencing genre or other songs. saying that you dislike something because "it sounds bad" is way less constructive than saying you dislike it because there isn't enough harmonic variation (but it's WAY less pretentious too).

last thing: don't get caught up on notation, i.e. the way people transcribe music. stuff like grand staffs and treble clefs and bass clefs and stuff like that. a lot of people like to talk about music theory in terms of notation, but it's important to realize that a piece of music can be interpreted any number of ways, of which notation is but one. it's important to know, yes, but just know that it's just a visual representation of what is an aural experience.

Theory wont hurt but time and effort are the key factors.

besides that ive learn more just from collabing with friends and messing around

ofc it depends on what your goal is because some music is more formulaic/theory  based and other is less so