Originally Posted By: Planobilly


There is no absolute need to understand any of this. At the end of the day, music is about sound. If it sounds good to you, that is all that really matters. Music theory is just a way that has been developed to be able to communicate musical ideas in a somewhat standard way. Any chord progression can be used but not all chord progressions will sound good to you.



Bingo.

Music theory is a description, not a prescription.

It is not a set of "rules" that one must "obey" in order to write "proper" music. It is a way do explain how the composer put together a piece of music.

Rather than jumping in to theory right away, it is a much better idea to pick up an instrument and start learning to play some music. Learn a few easy songs.

Once you learn a few songs and start making the connection between your hands and your ears, then you can start learning the theory. Music theory is useless without a context.

Many, many rock and folk songs, for instance, are built on a bVI - bVII - i progression, but that is absolutely meaningless until you have that sound in your ears. Once you learn several of those tunes and are familiar with that sound, when someone explains what bVI - bVII - i means the light bulb comes on!

Byron Dickens

BIAB. CbB. Mixbus 32C 8 HP Envy. Intel core i7. 16GB RAM W10. Focusrite Scarlett 18i 20. Various instruments played with varying degrees of proficiency.

https://soundcloud.com/athanorsoundlabs