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- Hacker News
- Musicians will cringe, programmers will rejoice, let them
'Intro to audio for programmers' would keep them away and let us have a party in the comments telling the author how interesting the tutorial was. Never use the word 'Music' again and you'll be safe
Kudos, every work of creation is a joy on its own, I was fascinated clicking every button
by Kuyawa - I am the creator of https://www.photopea.com (a popular photo editor).
Recently, I wrote https://www.jampea.com/learn , which is the music theory for "technical people". I believe it is the fastest way to get to understand the theory behind music (will take you 2 to 5 hours in total, 10% will be reading and 90% will be thinking about what you just read).
by IvanK_net - The most amazing thing about HN comments is watching engineers demand that their expertise be taken seriously completely disregard the expertise of people in other domains because <make up a reason>.by rynn
- > Which is a strange way to teach a system that essentially comes out of physics and arithmetic. There are twelve notes for a reason.
There is of course a lot of physics involved. But there is at least as much convention at play. So imho this is a very one sided way of looking at it.
There is a physical reason the 12 notes are those 12 notes (though the exact frequencies assigned are influenced by culture as well), but lots of different cultures use less notes, or more, or extra notes inbetween.
So 'Because that is the convention.' is imho at least a good an explanation as the physics one.
- Let us try an experiment shall we: listen to any music you like and try and match the information the article provided to the complexity of what you are hearing. How much do you see a path from A(rticle) to S(ound in your ear).
This article is trivializing music down to a few not-so-important facts and mistaking some math for anything that would help `programmers` (?) understand music.
Maybe start by rewatching "This is Spinal Tap" instead, and consider that https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/59n3pg/remembe...
by polotics - I learned to play guitar by my own when I was around 12. You don't really even need to know music theory to play guitar, as long as you understand the shapes etc.
Over time, I developed shorthands for understanding theory like i can easily look at a fretboard and know which note it is.
But what bugged me is that you seem to imply the reason why you couldn't learn a instrument was because you did not understand the why. That makes very little sense to me. I know several professional musicians who don't even know what a mode is or what formal notation is. One of them has pitch perfect ear, he can literally hear anything and tranpose that on his guitar. He has no idea how notes work and just writes tabs.
So while this is very nicely from a programmer point of view and an objective explanation of things but learning all this will not make you a better musician is the point.
Practice above all. Dont try to fit all theory into the pratice but understand what you are practicing particulalry using the theory. Otherwise you end up with all theory and no practice experience of using that theory and creativity.
As a perosn who likes code, this is interesting. As a musician who also understands music theory, this is kind of alienating in terms of how it presented. Like if someone just read this article and thought they understood music theory now, they would be pretty unsufferable to actual musicians.
by altmanaltman - I want to read it, because it’s interesting. And yet.
https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/05/the-revolt-of-the-re...
by ergonaught - This is (mostly) not music theory and what is music theory is mostly wrong or incomplete to the point of being wildly misleading. Source: have degree and postgrad in music, was a professional musician until RSI put paid to that career, wife is a professional musician and teaches to postgrad level at 2 conservertoires, most of our friends are professional musicians, have a house full of scores and music books.
If you actually want to learn music theory for the purposes of playing I strongly recommend you just follow whatever tutorials for your instrument and style and if you get to the point where feel you want to learn more and take it seriously in and of itself, buy “The Jazz Theory Book” by Mark Levine[1]. In spite of what it says, there really isn’t any such thing as Jazz theory - it’s just music theory, and this book is a great presentation with lots of good examples. If you like jazz (or the western popular music tradition including rock, pop, funk, etc) you’ll come out understanding how that music works better than most people. If you’re doing a music degree, there will be books recommended by your music programme, but honestly, Levine will cover most of what you need if you’re not doing a straight classical course in which case you’ll want to augment with a more conventional source so you understand the “rules” they want you to follow when writing pastiche counterpoint etc.
If you want to get big into composition and/or want to understand late romantic and 20th century music, get Harmonielehre and “Structural Functions of Harmony” by Schoenberg. Together they are by far the best harmony books I have ever seen and go super-deep into why the western classical tradition works the way it does. If you compose there’s a decent chance they will change your life forever as his approach is to not take anything for granted but exhibit everything with examples from masterworks of the western tradition. Amazing books both of them. Harmony is not a spectator sport though - to get full benefit you have to get the books and work through stuff on the piano. It will reward you immensely.
If you want something else that will blow your mind, read “The technique of my musical language” by Messiaen. If you read Levine first this will have the additional benefit of showing you where the “diminished” and “augmented” scales and the whole “harmonic major” thing come from.
by seanhunter