Awesome Music Theory 
A directory of books, resources and courses for studying everything about music and sound
Where to start
- Go through Ableton's guide on music and Ableton's guide on synths
- Explore Hooktheory's TheoryTab: search for your favorite songs and anime openings. Honestly both of their books are top-notch and well worth the money
- Play around with Bartosz Ciechanowski's visualizations on the essence of sound
- Make some music with the Music Mouse 🐭
- Wander through Ishkur's evolution of electronic music
- 🍿 Listen to two-chord changes typical for movie soundtracks: LP, H, T6, S, F and N
- See how a track emerges on the OP-1 🎛️, in a studio with live instruments 🎻, on a vocal looper 🎤, in TidalCycles 💻
- Dig into the structure of Beethoven's sonata #5 movement #1, also see what we as a society know about it. Also Ravel's Bolero
- Skim through Toby W. Rush's overview to see how many moving parts does a classical theory have
- Click "Show Timeline" for patterns similar to octatonic used in jazz solos: upward, downward
- 🔙 Get back to the 1990 with The Art of Mixing 🎚️
- Press "scan" at Every Noise 🌐
- Try to sing phrases in an Arabic microtonal scale
- Watch a gamelan multitrack and try to make sense of it, maybe with a help of a larger multitrack for another piece
- Find your favourite tempo of Chopin's Funeral March ⚰️
- 🤖 Rate AI demos: Magenta, MusicLM, LakhNES, Muzic, Jazz Transformer
- Stare at visualizations: classical, jazz harmony and jazz solos
Western music languages
Music languages can be divided into a number of families. Historically, the most dominant and influencial one is Western family of languages. Its languages share some common traits:
- 12-tone temperament
- major/minor keys
- homophony
- chords in thirds
- any of the 12 notes can be a tonic
The languages are (roughly speaking):
- Rock - probably worth exploring the first, as it's the simplest and pretty popular. It makes sense to start here and expand into other Western languages later on - as they share a lot of concepts. By the way, pop music (structure-wise) it a super-genre combining bits of rock, jazz and other stuff
- Classical - the biggest chapter here, as it's the main focus of all research and teaching (despite its unpopularity according to streaming stats). Subtopics: pre-classical, advanced, Bach chorales
- Jazz. Subtopics: harmony, lego, solo
- Barbershop
- Movies
- Video games
- Other genres like R&B, country, dance electronic, gospel
- Western regional traditions (eg. Latin)
Non-Western music languages
Non-Western music languages are different families. As they were developed all over the globe, they don't share many common features.
The families are (roughly speaking):
- Maqam languages
- Southeast Asian percussive languages
- Balkan languages
- Indian music
- many other traditions
Broad overview on non-Western languages
Topics
- Research
- Composition
- Visualizations
- Maps of genres
- Listening guides - how to enjoy classical music without a deep commitment to learn theory
- Ear training
- Piano
- Pseudoscience
- Improvisation
- Neural networks
- Sociology
- Psychology
- YouTube, podcasts and lists of resources
Topics on electronic music
- Sound design
- Digital composition
- Mixing
- Microtonal music
- Notable instruments
- Institute of Sonology: One-Year Course
Contacts
Follow updates on a dedicated twitter. Feel free to suggest me other ways to stay in touch with you
Also, I post updates and other rant on music theory in telegram (in Russian)
Do you know how to enroll in a music theory program after a computer science BSc and two years of jazz college? Please, let me know: cxielamiko@gmail.com, t.me/vitalypavlenko (asking for myself)
Also, I'm happy to chat on topics of visualisation-aided music education and research popularisation
Also, I'm always looking to rent a room in a coliving outside of Schengen area :)