I'm looking for an understanding of music. I have some interest in composing, but I think my main interest lies in being able to hear, talk about, and think about music.
I've had trouble finding resources online. In particular, the phrase "learn music" seems to be synonymous with "learn to play an instrument". I respect the desire to be able to play music, but that's not what I'm really interested in. And while I'm sure playing an instrument offers unique insights into music, I imagine that there are approaches that are more time and energy efficient to gaining a better overall understanding than working towards mastering a specific instrument.
Being kind of a math and science guy in general, I decided to take the approach I usually do when I want to learn something new, which is download a textbook. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, so I ended up finding a music theory textbook and reading through it. I learned a bit from it, but felt no closer to having an overall understanding of the subject, and left the book feeling like I didn't even get as much as I could have out of it. Maybe it was just a badly written book, but it felt like a mixture of "day 1 of 3rd grade music class" and stuff I could barely understand after an hour of wikipedia diving. I had no idea where to go from there; it felt like I had hit a dead end.
I figured that there was only so much understanding that text could give me, so I also started some ear training exercises. But I ran into walls there too, and the tips I found surfing the internet required stuff from past my dead end in theory, too.
So, after my homebrew approach completely failed, I came here to look for advice. What exactly should I be doing?
Submitted January 10, 2019 at 04:47AM by screeyonk20 https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/aegwbw/whats_the_right_approach_for_me_to_take_to/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Thursday, January 10, 2019