nicky flowers

who cares what a bunch of dead people thought about music, anyway. they're dead n they can't hear it

I am ADHDing my way through trying to learn music stuff (snail mode, confused) and I kind of like the music theory because my brain clings to structure when learning things. but also like every video I've watched explaining it has started with something on the lines of, "you don't need music theory to make great music! BUT IF YOU'RE A NERD LIKE ME--"

i have been doing music in live bands and production for a long time and never learned music theory but now i am getting into it partially for the ironic purpose of breaking out of old patterns

i would recommend to start with the video from Adam Neely about the white supremacist origins of classical European music theory - this is not to discourage you from learning it, but just to establish some of its limitations as a result of this biased origin

beyond that, engage your coping mechanisms for artificially inciting hyper focus whatever they might be for you

if you are comfortable with video infotainment there are a lot of channels on Nebula and YT with music theory topics like 12 Tone

It is a struggle. I take lil bits of things and slowly cobble together greater meaning. Like ok tonic, dominant, and subdominant are just the the chords in a 12-bar blues. And then ok a diminished ii chord can replace the subdominant to resolve back to the tonic.

I think the pattern here for me is like these are concepts relate to tropes in popular music, which is where most of my existing knowledge is. So that makes it easier to adapt the concepts and maintain interest for me.