How necessary is understanding music theory when composing?
By ulalume
@ulalume (713)
United States
January 14, 2009 9:35pm CST
I do some composing for my own "band", fairly frequently (at least tampering around with new ideas). I am wondering how you feel about a musician understanding music theory and its relation to compositions? I do not understand very much myself, and find many of my compositions to be fairly basic (which is not, necessarily, a bad thing) due to it. Do you compose music? When I say compose, this doesn't just mean classical masterpieces; but any type of song. Do you use a lot of theory or do you find you just get "lucky"?
3 responses
@joyfulpraise (46)
• United States
15 Jan 09
I am no expert but my son plays his music by ear which a lot of people do, but if he wanted to record his music to allow someone else to play I think having the knowledge of some theory will help a lot in that condition.
@reichiru (748)
• Canada
15 Jan 09
I don't think it's absolutely necessary to understand music theory to compose songs. It will definitely help, but it's not needed. Lots of people don't know anything and can still compose wonderful pieces. Music theory would help when knowing keys and transposing and stuff like that, but that's just extra stuff. I don't really compose much music myself, but I have taken classical music theory and I feel kind of restricted in my compositions because I only learned classical music and nothing else.
@jambi462 (4576)
• United States
15 Jan 09
I'm a musician myself and I remember taking lessons for the guitar and I remember that my teacher told me that after you learn everything about the guitar you have to throw it all out and just create really. You can't forget that music is only sounds and vibrations so why don't we all just make some noise.
