something important to note about music theory is that it doesn't automatically make you "better" at music -- music theory is a method of deconstructing music to figure out what makes things sound the way they do. it isn't something you necessarily learn in order to make music; rather, it's something that helps you talk about music in a language other than "it sounds happy" or "it sounds like sabrepulse."
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.
Last edited by spacetownsavior (Dec 18, 2013 11:36 pm)
