Music Theory Expert Answers Most Searched Questions
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Today I'm answering all of Google's autocomplete question about music theory!
My Music Theory Iceberg video: • The Music Theory Icebe...
2nd channel video of me doing Music Theory AP: • I take my first ever A...
My HD Piano course:
hdpiano.com/lesson/david-benn...
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0:00 is music theory hard?
0:33 is music theory necessary?
1:15 is music theory important?
2:01 is music theory the same for all instruments?
2:30 is music theory important for guitar?
3:20 is music theory necessary for songwriting?
4:34 is music theory math?
6:15 Hooktheory
7:04 is music theory AP hard?
7:30 is music theory universal?
8:28 my course?
8:50 my age?
9:02 married?
9:08 wikipedia?
9:40 modes?
10:40 intervals?
11:01 my band?
11:35 Patreon?
Thanks for helping with these answers
Wtf is this actual google
What the hell
Not the place you'd expect to find google
google didn't even know
@@DingusMcBrideDon’t say wt-.
I think that a big clue to your mysterious age will be discovering whether you were named after the piano or whether it was named after you.
So his last name is really Piano? 😅😅🤣🤣😂😂
I'm pretty sure he's 30 (give or take a few months)
well, he's definitely not more than 150 years old. Pretty sure.
He comes from a long line of Piano's.
His parents’ parents are Grand Pianos 😅
02:47 love how you stealth put the tab for Stairway in!
Probably 1st song on the list to pull
your feelings are irrational
2:44 - Stairway To Heaven!
Except it’s not quite right. The base in bar 4 should be G->A.
@@martinedwards2004 It looks and sounds right to me. I know you could play G-A in the bass as you're saying, but the way it's written in that tab sounds much better to me - and I've just listened to the recording and I'm pretty sure he is playing a B in the bass - basically functioning as a first inversion G chord, but without the 5th. I mean, I could be wrong, but what I'm hearing on the recording, and what I think sounds best, matches that tab.
@@martinedwards2004It makes more sense with the line cliché that it should be the B instead, and like the other guy said, it still works as a G chord.
I'm Japanese. Your video is easy to understand!
Can't believe he "Stairwayed" us
Regarding the question of music theory being related to mathematics, when I was in university I attended a seminar given by a math professor who also was the concert master of the university orchestra. It was brilliant. Pitches were a modulo 12 group and I think most of the rest was function spaces over it.
It only scary if you don't understand it, knowledge is the power to understand. Arps in electronic music reminds me of geometry.
Fully agree. It’s your best friend once you get a hand on it. It makes playing, memorizing and improvising much easier by giving a different understanding to a song.
I owe so much of my music theory knowledge to you, David. I’d not be where I am today without your videos.
I love your channel! Don't ever stop posting!
Thank you! Will do!
My question would be "Is music theory a theory?" (I follow a lot of counter-apologist channels that frequently have to address the "just a 'theory'" rubbish.) In the sense that scientists use the word, I would say that Western Music Theory is just as much a theory as Cell Theory, Germ Theory, the Theory of Evolution, and Quantum Field Theory are. Western Music Theory is a descriptive model of Western music that provides explanations for and reliable predictions of how musical melodies and harmonies work. Beethoven wrote some of his most cherished works when he was _stone deaf_ based on his understanding of music. Not sure how well it applies to music that arose in other cultures though; indigenous folk music tends to be as distinct from Western music as indigenous flood myths are from the Mesopotamian flood that inspired the Noahic flood myth, so I'd argue that music theory isn't entirely universal.
To me, music theory is to music as math is to the natural world. You can enjoy a hike in the forest without needing to know math, but if you want to model how branches are formed on a tree, and communicate that model to someone in a reproducible manner, math is the best tool we have.
how would you explain the branches through math?
@@khplaylistyt9729 I don't know. Not really my field. It was just an example, but math is how we model everything in the natural world, outside supernatural forces. There are probably 100's of methods. A quick Google search returned Leonardo's rule. Seems like an interesting model. Just like music notation, there are many systems, and all of them are incomplete. You have to make choices about what's not going to be covered and what level of fidelity you want.
Thank you for “showing theory in practice” I have always appreciated a teacher who had a love and passion for what they’re teaching.
1. 🎶there's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold and she's buying… 2. yes, I stopped to read it.
Great. And the iceberg video hint is gold.
Merci for the theory talk. There is a band you might have heard of called the Beatles and everyone says they didn't have musical training. But Paul McCartney was the son of a jazz musician and sang in a church choir. In Napoli they used to train orphans to become maestros and they would start them off with singing. So Paul had a musical upbringing, way more than I did.
I don’t think David has heard of the Beatles before, because he’s never mentioned them!
@@lljf i know, its honestly surprising that he talks about so many artists in his videos and always leaves the beatles out :(
@@aa23music He must hate Radiohead too. Never heard a word about them here.
I thinks its a lot like learning another language. So if you're around it a lot as a kid, you absorb a lot of information probably even subconsciously. That and I think the biggest thing is that even though they weren't really formally schooled, they learned and played an insane amount of songs by other artists (Get Back just shows how god damn many songs they knew and could play) so they learned a lot by that as well.
Yes, it was Paul's upbringing, as an orphan in Naples, that allowed him to get really creative singing all those negative harmony chords for Radiohead.
I’ve learned so much from your channel. You’re one the best music theory teachers that I’ve found on KZhead. Thank you so very much ❤
Excellent video by an excellent teacher ❤
Your videos are always a real treat to watch, even as a total hobbyist musician I feel forever indebted that I'm able to access this wealth of knowledge for free 🎼🎹
I really enjoyed this one,thanks hugely :) :) And that Iceberg video from the summer before the last was outstanding, gonna watch it again!
Thanks!!!
I used to work in a New York City conservatory, and here's the advice I would give to students when it came to theory. No, music theory doesn't actually get harder and harder, it just constantly builds upon what you already know. There's no reason a Ger 6/5 chord is "hard" to learn, but you do need to understand what key you are in, what an augmented 6th is, voice leading rules, and so on. As you are learning theory, if you miss anything or don't understand a concept along the way, yes, theory is going to become more and more challenging. But if you take the time to understand theory as it is taught to you, you should do okay.
Once again, it's kinda like how math works too right?
what should a beginner learn first?
@@mateussilva635 it's true to everything that requires time to learn tho
@@khplaylistyt9729 LOTS of possible answers to this. First, I think learning some rudimentary piano is a good start. No, you don't need to become a very good pianist, but it makes everything you see written on the page (sheet music) or hear out loud much more tangible. For example, if you learn that "a minor third is made up of a root pitch and the note that is three semitones above it" that sounds like gibberish. But if you can find an F# on the piano and literally count those 3 semitones up to A, it's no longer an abstract definition but a real, true interval. Second, if you plan to be serious about music theory, learn the triads. There are only 6 of them, and you could sit at the piano and learn them easily by plucking them out up the keyboard as you recite, "CEG, DFA, EGB, FAC, GBD, ACE, BDF." Take that last triad for instance; if you are told to make a triad on Bb, you'll instantly think "BDF" and know the other two notes are a D and an F. If you are told to build a triad on C#, you'll instantly know the other two pitches are an E and a G. Later, you'll learn about the "quality" of a triad, meaning if the triad is major, minor, diminished, or augmented. But no matter if it's major/minor or whatever, a triad's three notes will always be grouped with each other. If you get into Roman numeral analysis or chorale writing exercises, having instant recall of your triads will help you immensely. Also it helps with your intervals: What's a 5th above C? Your triad recall says, "CEG" and you'll know the G is the 5th above C. What's a 5th above F? The answer is C, which you know because you instantly think FAC. Lastly, knowing your triads will help you with chord inversions. (That's when a CEG triad (for example) has an E or a G in the bass, instead of a C.) So...get some piano under your belt, and learn your triads!
Thanks for this. Your "iceberg" video is pure gold.
Hey David, have you thought about doing a video on the Minsky pickup? I feel like it’ll be a fun video idea to tackle. also, great work as usual! I love how easily you explain things.
Might be interesting to do another video on voice leading, perhaps including You Won't See Me, which has a sequence of chords where one of the voices stays the same and another voice goes down by semitones for several chords in a row, and it still works.
Yep I was a bit scared of it too, but making music is so much fun, watching videos and following along on the keyboard or in Garageband it started to make sense ! That first epic, big fat chunky chord is enough to make you keep going!
Thank you David. I Enjoy your content very much. You make music theory fun!.
Thank you!
very cool, thanks. your vids are always interesting.
Love theory, I find it quite clear and easy. Couldn't do without
Great vid Mr. Piano.
I learned a bit of music theory when I played guitar from age 13 to about 1ge 30. I pretty much stopped playing and stopped learning / knowing music theory. The weird thing about this is that I started to forget how music is made, and that actually made me enjoy the music MORE. I liken it to watching a movie when you know how they made all the special effects vs. watching a movie when you have no idea how they did that (and aren't focusing on how they did that). It just made me take the sounds more at face value, as art, rather than picking apart the pieces consciously or subconsciously. It's only in the last year or so I started watching Beato, this channel, etc. and getting a little more into how it's made again.
needed this bc i do googñe music theory concepts and stuff
love your videos!
2:44 is that stairway to heaven???? (I don’t know the tabes for that songs i’m just guessing)
The question of whether music theory is universal is an interesting one. Yes, most cultures end up with scales that are related to the harmonic series, but the deeper you get into it, the more complicated things get. As important and fascinating as Fourier’s theorem is, it only applies as a theoretical solution to simplified versions of real-world physics, such as an infinitely thin string. Real strings are three-dimensional object, and while the harmonic series works well enough to describe a guitar string or higher pitched piano strings, the lower strings on a piano are thick and stiff enough to be better modelled as a metal bar, and the inharmonic partials are very audible. Taken to extremes, some instruments have no clean harmonics (such as a cymbal), while bells and gongs have richly complex harmonics that don’t fit any western scale. I think that’s one reason why gamelan music, for instance, uses very different scales. Even within western music, the intervals aren’t completely given by the mathematics of harmonics: it took a long time for 12TET to become the default, and there’s a lot of very complex mathematics and fierce controversies in how you get from pure integer intervals to various intonations and temperaments! But it’s true that the fact that intervals based on the harmonic series is so widespread (if not exactly universal) reveals something fundamental (pun intended) about music.
I think a smattering of theory is useful...knowing about interval relationships will make understanding scales, chords, modes and transposing to different keys so much easier, for example.
It very much depends upon where you go with your music. For many people, a smattering will be fine. But if you really want to expand your harmonic palette when composing or improvising, or learn to appreciate a wider range of music, then it helps to dive much deeper into theory. I can appreciate jazz a lot more now that I know to look for 2-5-1s, tritone substitutions, chord extensions, quartile harmony and the like. I’ve avoided strongly functional harmony for a long time, but by understanding it better I’ve come to understand why, and to better understand some alternatives. David’s channel has been a big part in my journey to expand my musical understanding by getting deeper into theory.
Regarding songwriting music theory is especially helpful to break your own boundaries when you got stuck with your creativity.
I love your show. And the world of music
Hey David, I love your channel and I have one thing to add why theory helps me… I am 85% deaf so sometimes when I hear a song I’m not sure if a minor or a major or a six I hear it in my head but I’m not exactly sure … then I realize what works and don’t even if I have a borrowed chord….
What a shame that your pc crashed before you could reveal your age😂😂 Fantastic video as always 👏
I love your videos❤
David please do a DEFTONES analysis 🙏🙏
Sacramento in the house
Why Deftones? There is thousands of better musicians and bands than them. Davids channel is focused on piano, music theory and beatles in case you havent noticed
@@dvrds that sounds so bitter lol, did a deftones fan stole your girl?
I love seeing musicians doing this in their own adalah way. Ive seen tanger and you doing this and i love it. I guess wired's video format is the thing nowadays. Dont get me wrong, its entertaining af
Being able to move a song to a different base note is in invaluable skill on any instrument. Good luck doing that without at least a bit of theory.
Do you think you could explain bass/guitar/ukulele tablature in a small video someday? It just baffles me -- I've dabbled in many instruments but guitars have always felt like another planet to me.
Music theory is one type of map of the territory. If you have a good map, you don't have to follow the well-worn trails or blunder your way around until you hit on something you think is good.
I was laughing at the Stairway reference before I even saw the note at the bottom that brought me to the comments 🤣 was the first song I learned as a device/exercise to learn how to finger-pick on guitar
For songwriting, theory gives you ideas to try (or twist or modify), perhaps speeding the process of discovery compared to just playing around by ear. And even if you don't learn theory formally, as soon as you start developing your own style, well, that's theory right there, just theory you've developed yourself. Because theory is a way to describe what has worked in the past and figure out what might work in the future, and that field is always expanding. Theory is an open field, ripe for exploration, not a prison.
Nice segue to your second channel. :)
I want to really learn music theory and I hope this video is really important
I don't know why the song you chose to illustrate guitar tab made me laugh, but it did make me laugh!
I really resonate with what you said about modes because like you said I was taught modes are just the major scale but you start at a different point and i hate that explanation because it doesnt show all the best things about modes the way i like to describe it to people is that you commonly get told major is happy and minor is sad but modes are a whole spectrum of brightness and darkness
I’ve often thought that the more I learn the worse my music becomes. It’s also a thing with music gear. I’m a music tech guy, I have a room full of synths and drum machines and sequencers, and often feel that the best stuff I make with a piece of gear happens when I first get it, before I know too much about it. One can often feel some pressure to apply the things you know, when it might not be the best thing for your song. Feeling like I must include this tritone substitution or use that 6-2-5-1 because I know about it, when I wrote really good songs as a teenager with no more knowledge than the chords I was playing, what a relative minor chord was and how to form sus2 and sus4 chords.
It's not knowledge that ruins creativity... it's becoming set in one's ways, and no longer being open to new ideas, and flexible enough to experiment, that ruins people. When folks age, we often look for comfort over exploring new neural connections. It's definitely not knowledge that causes this. It's more like, existence tends to become more and more habitual and on auto-pilot, as you age. But all it takes is 1 counter-example to show that it doesn't have to be that way... and we have many of those examples.
Please may you do a harmonic analysis on Todd Rundgren, preferably his back catalogue? He is an absolute MASTER of harmony and melody and yet almost no one on KZhead dares to dissect his work
Being a punk, my approach to music theory has been how can you break the rules when you don't know what they are? If you don't know the I IV V, you could be writing all your songs using that chord progression, not realizing how common it is. Don't need to be advanced with theory, but knowing where the path is, so if you want to go off course, you can.
You posted the tab to the forbidden tune David.
I think music theory is fun! But then, I was a math(s) nerd in school.... Thanks for explaining it so well!
LOL Using Stairway as your example for Guitar Tab...epic
9:01 alr keep ur secrets 😂
I've learned the basics of music theory with ABRSM books and the educator Roine Jansson's books.
As a song writer, I think I lost my originality after learning music theory. However, it's mostly because I learned basic music theory and stayed with it. It may even help! I think for composing, all you need is humming your composition. Music theory will just explain why it works.
Step 1 is learning "the rules". Step 2 is learning how to break them; that's where originality comes from. When you don't know the theory you aren't trying to stay within the lines.
The opposite for me, a life changer. But I dont think about theory when I compose, sometimes I just throw whatever random chord and it actually works. Then I use theory to (if I can) explain what happened.
It always cracks me up in handbell choir when half the choir says “Oh, this is a three sharp piece: Father Charles Goes.” and the other half says “Oh, it’s in A.” You can really tell who’s who. But it doesn’t affect their ability to ring at all.
Is it necessary? No. Is it useful? Absolutely. And the more you know and understand, the more helpful it can be. But at music's core, like almost everything else, doing is what matters. Theory comes from music, not the other way around. Btw, I've made a wikipedia page, and it's not easy. The main problem is you need sources, which means internet articles about the subject, to reference for the facts. Maybe yt should have a database where creators can post whatever bio info they want to reveal, but I doubt they'd know how to manage that.
Great Video Great Channel.
Thank you very much!
Music to find
Seals & Crofts is unexplored music analysis waiting to be done in my estimation
You know Davis, bless your cotton socks and, have you ever though about collaborating with Declan McKenna?
In regard of "is music maths" I'd like to add that I had a programmer colleague who had the idea that music is maths but struggled to grasp the most basic concepts of music theory. I think he was trying very hard to find the mathematical processes in the construction of chords or scales, but no explanation could ever satisfy his primary question: why does it sound good? Because it doesn't sound good merely because it's mathematically logical, or else we would only find an intellectual beauty but never an aesthetic one. In other words: only people who understood its logic would enjoy music. But that is not the case. Plus, musical taste varies, hence it goes beyond the realms of logic and computation. As a hobbist musician only, but a professional visual artist, I have not found great relations between sciences and arts when we look at them substantially. Saying that music is maths is like saying that painting is chemistry or physics, because of the way pigments are made or the color spectrum is perceived by the retina. Ultimately science doesn't matter when creating music or painting. It is about art and the eternally fascinating mystery of creativity.
What do you mean you look a little bit younger than you actually are? In my head you've been like 22 for the past four years 😭
Yo i be fucking with his videos shit is so entertaining
Is music theory math ?.. As a professional engineer (in applied mathematics) and a musician, I would say that there is a mutual interaction. I both feel and understand music. As well as in my job. I understand it, but I feel it also. I created new computation technics and algorithms (to include conductive aspects in thermal situations driven by radiation - in the space industry). I found a new technic because the process and the results were "pretty". This amazing beautifulness could not be just be the result of a human thought. It had to be the reflect of something deeper. Then I demonstrated the theory so to prove why we were getting such results. You might not hear this kind of example very often, so I'm sharing it. As a musician, so with an artistic feeling, I made up a mathematical theory, proved it (and was then re-used in a few doctor thesis) because in the first place I've seen the beauty of it. So music is math, definitely. But in a way, math is music and best scientists are artists in their way.
Learning music theory is a must. it makes music so much easier when you learn it. In my humble opinion.
Tell that to Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, Clapton, Presley, Jackson, Van Halen, Grohl, Townshend, and scads more of the greatest musicians who ever lived.
@@relicofgold Well, I can't vouch for the rest of the people on your list, but David has an excellent video on how the Beatles actually had a great understanding of music theory. The only thing they lacked was the formal education on it, and the "proper" language to communicate their ideas, but they did have a ton of knowledge on it.
@@relicofgold Are you serious? do you think those people didnt know any music theory? if so, what makes you think knowing music theory wouldnt had put them in a whole new level of awesomeness?
They had instinctual knowledge of theory, yes. And they milked it for all it was worth. We agree.@@Alfonso162008
Easy Bucko. Their knowledge of music theory was huge and instinctual. Had they had formal education in theory.......they wouldn't have been in Hamburg at HAMBURG MUSIC UNIVERSITY in the red light district getting that education which made them the greats they became. They would've been in a classroom or with a traditional music teacher and not part of The Beatles. The same goes for the rest of the artists. @@Paulnap
Modes? Literally Greek. So relatable for English speakers.
Isn't music theory a bit like maths? When applied properly both can describe and abstract what one sees or feels. On their own they can be daunting for some and intriguing for others. Are they necessary? Not to perceive but to understand and communicate.
Most instruments are limited aside from the piano and the guitar of late, Theory as far as I know only applies to the piano and similar instruments. Piano is a superior instrument to deconstruct all things musical. It is a visual representation of all things, math and patterns However invention and melody is gleened from other instruments and different sources, even dreams. Still the piano (a real one) is the shortest route to making sense out of what you imagine. No one is obligated to be brilliant at it
Nice❤❤
I'm waiting for songs that use the I-iii-vi-IV or C, Em, Am, F
stairway to heaven intro lol, the guitar shop owners' crux
Many musicians assume that music theory is by definition useless. And anything that IS in fact useful, like names of chords, or names about the structure of songs, they will NOT consider to be theory. This same mechanism is active in every field of human activity 😂
2:46 is it sad that it took me only 3 notes to realise that’s stairway to heaven
Is that tab Stairway to Heaven
think so
❤
you're a good teacher. despite you looking 16.
pretty sure he's in his 30s
@@MostlyLoveOfMusic That's my guess as well. He could easily pass for mid 20's, but I'm going to guess he's more in the 32-36 range.
I feel like you get this a lot, but dang, you look pretty young for your age (in a good way)! I remember in a recent video of yours, you showed a picture of you and PewDiePie taken about 10 years ago, and it looks like you've barely aged at all since then 💖
Thank you! It’s something that I used to get annoyed by but as I get older I really don’t mind anymore 😂
For info: your AP video on the second channel is set to private :)
2:47 stairway to heaven
Stairway!
when did David Bennet Piano get his David Bennet's piano? 🤔
you are 30? wow, you look around 20, mate. I think your good taste in music is what's keeping you young
David was born in 1993. He is OLD compared to a fly. He is very young compared to a mountain. For a human, he's just about right.
Stop thinking of it as “Music Theory”, think of it as “Music Words”
"Is music theory necessary?" Schoenberg:
It was joked about when I attended music theory courses that 'those who can't do, teach'.
David Bennet Wikipedia: Ideally you should never create a wiki-page about yourself. If you are not big enough to be referenced then you are still not ready for your own wiki-page. It is debatable wether it is OK to edit your own page though. Remember that factual information should be referenced to sources outside of Wikipedia.
congrats on being married!!!
Video on 2nd channel is private.
"Is music theory fake" has gotta be one of the dumbest questions I've ever heard of
the second channel video is still private just a heads up
In relation to Wikipedia you are not allowed to create or edit articles which are about you or any business or organisation related to you. Basically, if you are related to it you are not allowed to have anything to do with it on Wikipedia. Additionally they don't allow content to be made about every man and his dog, they need to be someone with some reason to be on there. So basically by both those rules I cant go on there and make an article about myself and how I'm famous for posting Wikipedia tips on KZhead comments 😉 That's not to say you don't deserve to be on there, but we need someone on here to do the writing for you of their own accord and submit it. Best also that it is done with enough of your achievements and history to show why you deserve to be on there too. 😁👍
Does anyone else find the intro of I Wish by stevie wonder confusing to figure out when the drums come in
If you don’t study music theory and play by ear instead, are you technically using music hypothesis?