Why are people so afraid of Music Theory?

[Mike $]

I bet if you called it something like Practical Music Knowledge, people might enjoy it. I think the fear of Music Theory is much like the fear of the dentist, because no one really knows what's happening when the dentist is poking around in your mouth or when music theorists start blabbering on about Aeolian Cadences or Atonality.
Even beginners should be able to learn how to figure out chords, keys, basic scales or know why the Circle of Fifths is used and how helpful it really is, and not just an alcoholics dream shape. But most people are either too afraid to learn it, or too proud that they play without knowing why they are doing what they are doing. That's another question. Why are people so smugly proud of not knowing things? Only in music.

 

[SweetWaterBlue]

I'm not afraid of music theory. I just find it boring. I probably know about half of it already (estimate derived from reading several books on the subject) from playing the trumpet as a kid and what I have picked up playing guitar and ukulele over the years.

 

[ploverwing]

I don't know that I'm afraid of it, but I do gloss over when I try to understand anything more complex. I took theory as a kid and hit a wall at pretty early stages, and that's probably impacting my enthusiasm for it. I have some pretty basic theory, but it's like taxes and stuff to do with money, I zone out pretty quickly if it gets much more detailed. Not from lack of trying, and I do keep trying.

 

[LorenFL]

^^^ What they said. No fear. Just no interest in getting deep into it.

I could relate it to a lot of things.

I enjoy reading about history, but I don't want to REMEMBER all of it.

I can read about how air conditioning systems work, and understand it... but, give me a couple hours and I'll forget it again.

Ditto transmissions... I can understand them if I look at diagrams and information long enough. But, I just don't care to really get into it.

I learn as much music theory as I need to, and I DO read a lot about it. But, the simple fact is that I have no desire to be a COMPOSER, I just want to create sounds to amuse myself... mostly based off of chord sheets. It works for me. That's not to say that I might not turn a corner someday, suddenly have an epiphany and change my outlook. But, that's how I feel about it so far.

 

[rainbow21]

I bet if you called it something like Practical Music Knowledge, people might enjoy it. I think the fear of Music Theory is much like the fear of the dentist, because no one really knows what's happening when the dentist is poking around in your mouth or when music theorists start blabbering on about Aeolian Cadences or Atonality.
Even beginners should be able to learn how to figure out chords, keys, basic scales or know why the Circle of Fifths is used and how helpful it really is, and not just an alcoholics dream shape. But most people are either too afraid to learn it, or too proud that they play without knowing why they are doing what they are doing. That's another question. Why are people so smugly proud of not knowing things? Only in music.

I disagree with a number of your premises, maybe all of them. Even the dentist analogy is flawed. I have a fear of the dentist when I know it will hurt, not because he is poking around. I do agree that I would not know what's happening IF I ever heard a theorist blabber about Aeolian Cadences or Atonality...

Some adults will and do have a difficult time with music theory. I have been working with someone who has difficulty with 4/4 time counting even though he is a ballroom dancer (!). Notes on a fretboard are tough to learn. Reading standard notation? Chromatic scale? Intervals? Different keys? Quarter and eighth notes? First, third, and fifth intervals? Major and minor keys? Diminished and suspended chords?

So just passing off "beginners should be able to learn... chords, keys, basic scales ... Circle of Fifths" is not just a matter of fear, pride, or effort. Rather, it is a language until itself. Reading needs the ABCs and mathematics the 123s and these are done for 180 school days a year for years before even basic competency might be achieved by some. Not "only in music".

Ukulele is a hobby and should/needs to be fun for someone to begin and continue it. The way most people do it is completely logical: someone shows you a few chords and away you go playing and singing songs. Many are happy to strum and sing forever with a group and no criticism of this is warranted. Others have a curiosity and want to acquire more understanding and good for them, too. They are all excited, hopefully proud, for what they can do. They are neither smug nor proud of what they do not accomplish or learn. Why should they be? Or why do you think they are?

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

The issue is not fear. It’s the lack of a compelling, practical explanation of why and how music theory can/ will benefit me. As a high school student, I unknowingly needed precisely the same in regard to history. I’ve since learned the value of studying history on my own. As a result, I now thoroughly enjoy history.

 

[captain-janeway]

I disagree with a number of your premises, maybe all of them. Even the dentist analogy is flawed. I have a fear of the dentist when I know it will hurt, not because he is poking around. I do agree that I would not know what's happening IF I ever heard a theorists blabber about Aeolian Cadences or Atonality...

Some adults will and do have a difficult time with music theory. I have been working with someone who has difficulty with 4/4 time counting even though he is a ballroom dancer (!). Notes on a fretboard are tough to learn. Reading standard notation? Chromatic scale? Intervals? Different keys? Quarter and eighth notes? First, third, and fifth intervals? Major and minor keys? Diminished and suspended chords?

So just passing off "beginners should be able to learn... chords, keys, basic scales ... Circle of Fifths" is not just a matter of fear, pride, or effort. Rather, it is a language until itself. Reading needs the ABCs and mathematics the 123s and these are done for 180 school days a year for years before even basic competency might be achieved by some. Not "only in music".

Ukulele is a hobby and should/needs to be fun for someone to begin and continue it. The way most people do it is completely logical: someone shows you a few chords and away you go playing and singing songs. Many are happy to strum and sing forever with a group and no criticism of this is warranted. Others have a curiosity and want to acquire more understanding and good for them, too. They are all excited, hopefully proud, for what they can do. They are neither smug nor proud of what they do not accomplish or learn. Why should they be? Or why do you think they are?

This. I'm trying to make sure I learn the fretboard and I'm trying to listen bear and play by number to get better at transposing keys. Beth that I don't want to study a whole bunch of scales and try to read the tiny print on sheet music. I want to play the uke not have homework after my job

 

[ailevin]

Lots to unpack in the original post. And as I was writing the previous sentence, @rainbow21 started unpacking quite a bit of it. I am often surprised by where people find pride and shame and also where they project it. When I was in school, several friends were music majors, and the freshman theory courses for music majors were called Harmony and Musicianship. I wouldn't call it fear, but there was a degree of anxiety around those courses, and one friend in particular compared it to her math anxiety.

For me, ukulele has been a welcome entry point to music theory. I spent most of my life studying, playing, and listening to music, and in that time I believe I developed a great deal of practical knowledge. But I never took a music theory course. I read music (treble clef only), understood keys and time signatures, did scales and arpeggios in major, and relative melodic and harmonic minor, learned a bit about modes from peforming early classical music, etc. But until recently, I never understood circle of fifths, chords or chord progressions, Nashville numbers, inversions, and so forth. I have found it kind of exciting to learn about these things and discover all sorts of new relationships. Heck, until a few months ago, I never understood why middle C was called middle C.

What I've learned helps my ukulele playing and I am now even doing a bit of arranging. Most important, it is part of the fun. For my wife, not so much. She kind of glazes over when I talk about an arrangement, but has a good ear and knows what works and what doesn't. She appreciates the arrangements, and knows I enjoy it, so she is supportive, but she really doesn't want to talk about sus4 chords.

 

[Patty]

I do think @Mike $ has a point. The problem is the nomenclature. The word “theory” makes my eyes glaze over and dulls up what is actually pretty fascinating: how and why music works, and what makes certain sounds and rhythms pleasing to the ear.

But get a bunch of gasbags and blowhards in a room, fulminating on the subject of “Music Theory,” and I’m outta there.

 

[ploverwing]

But get a bunch of gasbags and blowhards in a room, fulminating on the subject of “Music Theory,” and I’m outta there.

Hah! True. It is actually very fascinating, I just don't grok a lot of it. Like entanglement (quantum physics). I like it, it's interesting, but I can't quite wrap my brain around all of it.

 

[SeemingMusic]

I actually thought about this topic before. Would you say guitarists and ukulelists(? wait is that the term?) are worse in music theory as we are more self-taught, and can read off tabs instead of standard music notation? We refer to things as the 5th fret on the 3rd string rather than play a "F". Granted it's our culture to be encouraging and inclusive and getting started right away.

I think most then will think why commit time to learn something that may not be interesting when we are already producing music? As others mentioned, things like pride, or fear or the fact it's a daunting task again may hold others back.

I agree with @rainbow21, it's a language, it must be practiced and used. If we use it as we are learning the instrument, we wouldn't decouple music theory to playing the ukulele as two things. It becomes less of a "studying music" endeavor. I wonder how we can positively influence each other to learn more naturally, especially beginners. Should we call things a (C,E,C,G) chord rather than a C chord? Or instead of denoting rhythm as "a strumming pattern of DUDUDUDU", tell them it's 8x eighth notes?

For example reading multiple music scores of songs, we may see see one B flat on the key signature all the time without knowing it's F major... Without knowing circle of fifths, we may notice it's always F# first followed by C# in pieces we see. We begin to develop a music sense. It wouldn't be F# and a B flat in a piece. How deep you go is then dependent on how involved you want to dive into compositions/collab. With the language analogy, it's like able to comprehend when a foreigner greet you but you may not be adept at composing a poem in such foreign language.

If I think of players of more traditional instruments, like a piano player, trombone player or violinist, they seem to have better idea of some theory or be able to read music as it's integral in playing/learning as well. It's impractical to say play the 75th key then 72nd key on the piano or no references to frets on a violin (coupled with ear training to see if you're on pitch), or it's a Down down down bow without learning how to read time. Trade off is that the learning curve is slightly slower, but if we can break it down so kids can understand, I'm sure everyone will be fine.

 

[John Colter]

We are all different. Our minds work in different ways. We have different approaches to doing things. The OP is really saying, "Why can't other people be more like me".

 

[TBB]

I’m not afraid of music theory but I do find it very similar to maths, another subject I struggle with. And in my experience people who find maths and music theory easy tend to find it hard to grasp the idea that for others it’s actually very difficult to understand.

The relative dryness of the subject and the way it’s taught certainly doesn’t help. I had formal lessons in piano and cello all the way through school, I always loved playing but I had problems with anything beyond the most basic theory. I also took music O’Level (don’t know what the US equivalent is), BIG mistake. The classes were taught by the head of maths who was as unable to comprehend my struggle with theory as he had been my struggle with algebra, he nearly put me off for life.

IMO the “why can’t everyone just learn theory?” attitude that pops up from time to time on here is pretty unhelpful, it’s exactly the same attitude I encountered at school. It assumes that everybody’s brain works the same way and leaves people with the impression that they must be either lazy or stupid if they can’t grasp music theory.

As an adult I’d love to understand more of it and I feel like the ukulele ought to be a perfect gateway into it; I’ve bought numerous books on the subject, watched YouTube videos and diligently read the music theory threads until my eyes glazed over, but ultimately my brain just goes “nope, nope, NOPE!”

 

[jimavery]

I'm not afraid; I'd rather just play my ukulele.

 

[Yukio]

I’m not afraid of music theory but I do find it very similar to maths, another subject I struggle with. And in my experience people who find maths and music theory easy tend to find it hard to grasp the idea that for others it’s actually very difficult to understand.

The relative dryness of the subject and the way it’s taught certainly doesn’t help. I had formal lessons in piano and cello all the way through school, I always loved playing but I had problems with anything beyond the most basic theory. I also took music O’Level (don’t know what the US equivalent is), BIG mistake. The classes were taught by the head of maths who was as unable to comprehend my struggle with theory as he had been my struggle with algebra, he nearly put me off for life.

IMO the “why can’t everyone just learn theory?” attitude that pops up from time to time on here is pretty unhelpful, it’s exactly the same attitude I encountered at school. It assumes that everybody’s brain works the same way and leaves people with the impression that they must be either lazy or stupid if they can’t grasp music theory.

As an adult I’d love to understand more of it and I feel like the ukulele ought to be a perfect gateway into it; I’ve bought numerous books on the subject, watched YouTube videos and diligently read the music theory threads until my eyes glazed over, but ultimately my brain just goes “nope, nope, NOPE!”

I can see the connection that TBB is making to the study of mathematics, but yesterday I was thinking more along the lines of the connection to grammar. We learn to speak and use language first and then later (in grammar school) we start to learn about the structure of the language we have been happily using up to that time. We can speak sentences in our language with fluent ease, but to diagram those same sentences might prove to be a daunting challenge to many.

In both language and music, the speaking and the playing come first. Analysis of the grammar and music theory can enhance further understanding of accepted conventions, but to put primary focus on this kind of analysis is like putting the cart before the horse.

Just yesterday, as part of a thread elsewhere in the forum, I was pondering line clichés, those lovely little musical figures where a line of notes descends (or ascends) against the background of a single stationary chord. This is a very natural and intuitive movement, but when one tries to describe it, even in just chord names on a chord chart, the naming conventions get rather complex. I think a number of the more complex chord names like CmMaj7 came into being just to describe musically pleasing movements, such as in a line cliché. Nobody writing music is sprinkling Bb13#9 about the page for no other reason than to be cheeky, it just comes out sounding complicated when you try to write it out using the standard conventions of music theory.

When a neophyte player encounters a line of complex sounding chord names coming in rather quick succession, they may shy away from trying to play the piece. At least in the case of a line cliché, "it looks hard, but it is a deceptively simple idea."

 

[cdkrugjr]

The chief problem with music theory is that it’s Mostly taught by people who don’t really love the topic, but teach it because they’re “supposed to. Consequently it’s boring and had no applicability to the music that’s going on.

They teach it this way because they were taught it that way, by someone who dreamed of a concert career but is now teaching first-year students a topic that bored Them.

If you pause for a moment, there’s a good chance you’ll realize you know quite a bit of theory as it applies to playing the repertoire you enjoy playing, and likely could reverse engineer quite a bit more, even if you don’t necessarily know the formal names for things.

Some unfortunate youtuber did an hour-long video talking about how “theory doesn’t apply” to certain types of pop music and then demonstrated that the only theory he knew was the tiny bit that describes Mozart. He can’t even get out of the 18th C, yet he’s discounting the 21st. You can’t even describe Debussy or Scriabin with that, let along Cage or Rick Rubin.

If I wanted to narrow things down to what’s immediately useful, I’d say scales, chords, and scale-tone chords. If I know how scale-tone chords work, I can transpose any song on-the-fly, which is an Incredibly useful thing to be able to do.

But if you just know the chords for the songs you want to play, that’s seriously Good Enough for most of us.

 

[TBB]

I can see the connection that TBB is making to the study of mathematics, but yesterday I was thinking more along the lines of the connection to grammar. We learn to speak and use language first and then later (in grammar school) we start to learn about the structure of the language we have been happily using up to that time. We can speak sentences in our language with fluent ease, but to diagram those same sentences might prove to be a daunting challenge to most of us.

In both language and music, the speaking and the playing come first. Analysis of the grammar and music theory can enhance further understanding of accepted conventions, but to put primary focus on this kind of analysis is like putting the cart before the horse.

Just yesterday, as part of a thread elsewhere in the forum, I was pondering line clichés, those lovely little musical figures where a line of notes descends (or ascends) against the background of a single stationary chord. This is a very natural and intuitive movement, but when one tries to describe it, even in just chord names on a chord chart, the naming conventions get rather complex. I think a number of the more complex chord names like CmMaj7 came into being just to describe musically pleasing movements, such as in a line cliché. Nobody writing music is sprinkling Bb13#9 about the page for no other reason than to be cheeky, it just comes out sounding complicated when you try to write it out using the standard conventions of music theory.

When a neophyte player encounters a line of complex sounding chord names coming in rather quick succession, they may shy away from trying to play the piece. At least in the case of a line cliché, "it looks hard, but it is a deceptively simple idea."

I really like this comparison, because as with grammar it’s entirely possible to be making music that you know sounds right without necessarily understanding how, let alone being able to explain it.

The nitty gritty of music theory still seems to me to be strongly connected to maths, but the analogy with grammar is a much better example of how learning theory (or not, as the case may be) fits into everyday life.

 

[SweetWaterBlue]

The chief problem with music theory is that it’s Mostly taught by people who don’t really love the topic, but teach it because they’re “supposed to. Consequently it’s boring and had no applicability to the music that’s going on.

They teach it this way because they were taught it that way, by someone who dreamed of a concert career but is now teaching first-year students a topic that bored Them.
...

I think it is often also full of texts and teachers that have no idea how to teach and dont really understand the subject. It was one of my pet peeves on all subjects in College and continues to this day. I had a few good professors who could really teach and it made the courses much easier. Most of them had written the text we used. I think writing a textbook for the material should be mandatory for professors. Then, the whole world can see if they know their stuff, and how to present it.

I had one prof in Electrical Engineering Circuit Theory. This course was considered a ball-buster by many engineering students. One of those used to separate the wheat from the chaff. On the first day of class he announced that he would try not to throw in material in his lectures not covered in his text, unless someone asked a question about it. He said we therefore didn't need to come to class unless we just wanted to. We would have a test every week. If you made a B or higher on all the tests you didn't need to take the midterm or the final. I was skeptical at first, so I attended for a couple of weeks. I got an A on the first two tests and he seemed to be true to his word. After that, I just studied his superb textbook, did the homework and showed up for the weekly tests. What a breath of fresh air this was. I ended up getting an A in the course and never took the midterm or the final. To me this was the difference between someone who knew how to write and teach and those who didn't.

I find most textbooks on any subject to be the same. A few are superb, most are quite boring and therefore difficult. I absolutely loathe most lectures. I am usually lost or bored out of my mind within the first 5 minutes. I don't know who said it, but someone said once that people who really know a subject can teach it and make it seem easy (and interesting). The rest are simply plodding along, not really sure what is important, but teaching it how they were forced to sort of learn it.

OK. Someone help me down off this soapbox.

 

[DuckyI]

Lots of good points.

Yes, people learn in different ways and this explains why some take to theory and others cannot see the value immediately. In education studies, this captured under the heading of 'learning styles'. Some need to start abstract and then apply things practically, others need to start from practical application to understand the deeper mechanics.

Yes, music theory is often taught in de-contextualised ways that make the application or relevance difficult to see. I think jazz education has become much better at teaching theory than the accepted classical methods.

But also yes, I think there is a persistent strain of defiant amateurishness among some that pushes back at lifelong musical learning. Hey, it doesn't affect me so I let them crack on, but they don't know what they're missing.

 

[Patty]

If you pause for a moment, there’s a good chance you’ll realize you know quite a bit of theory as it applies to playing the repertoire you enjoy playing, and likely could reverse engineer quite a bit more, even if you don’t necessarily know the formal names for things.

This is it exactly. And grammar works the same way. It in fact is an attempt to describe and rationalize what the (more or less educated) ear already knows intuitively.