#5 Don’t be afraid of music theory

This might seem like a strange statement, but: Don’t be afraid of music theory.

First, to clarify, I’m mainly talking about the old-school kind of music theory that is based on the Western tradition of art music / classical music – because that’s what I was taught and know (a bit). This was the dominant form of music theory taught by Western hemisphere music teachers for centuries.

Thankfully, in the last decades, academia has caught up with the idea that this framework is not necessarily suited to analyze and teach music from other traditions worldwide. Accordingly, there is now a developing body of theory that tries to capture the special features of music from different cultures that have their traditions, performance practices, and ways of teaching and talking about music. But the general sentiment I’m trying to express in the following remarks can be applied to any of these as well if you want to take a deep dive into those.

First of all, for musicians who don’t have any formal training: Music theory is not hard, at least the basics that would be helpful or applicable to 90% of the daily practice of composing and playing music. If you have a little bit of curiosity, pick up an introductory textbook on music theory (there are even free ones online) and read it. Most of these books start at zero pre-knowledge. It’s not rocket science. Really.

Secondly, some musicians fear that being indoctrinated by music theory will destroy their mojo, and their creativity because it’s a set of rules that are forced upon composers. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what music theory is. It’s not normative, it’s descriptive. It’s a body of historical knowledge about the ways of working of previous composers. There are no rules anybody can impose upon your music that you don’t give yourself.

But this body of knowledge is also a fountain of ideas that can inform your music-making and help make your compositions and arrangements even more interesting and colorful. Knowing what a passing tone, a neighbor tone, or suspension is won’t hurt. Having a larger vocabulary doesn’t mean you have to use those words, but you can if they help you to express yourself more clearly.

Some knowledge about theory might even lead to inspiration. For example, knowing about modes you could try to compose a piece that uses a specific mode exclusively.

An example

I don’t have very specific examples for these practices, as they are all over most of my releases. Here’s just one part that is informed by music theory and music history. The beginning of Part 2 of the Professor Pepper album is a three-part fugue, using inversion, retrograde and inverted retrograde.