Dizzy PANIC? Stressed out after ages of struggling with confusing, crazy, contradictory “methods”?
Feel like you’re in flight mode AND fogbound?
Imagine an alien planning to learn “earthling” while traveling around our world, but coming from a planet so boring it only has one spoken language! On the creature’s first stop, it confidently picks up a few basic words and phrases to get started with, then tries them out in a different country only to be met with blank stares. This pattern repeats. If it keeps assuming that all humans share a common language, the alien quickly ends up stumped, overwhelmed, probably to the point of giving up, rushing back to its “safe space” saucer and zooming home.
It will only stick around if it somehow groks that there are many thousands of official languages on Earth, each with its own distinct, ever-evolving “dialects”, local variants and slang words. In this case, our visitor may still realize that the initial “universal earthling” quest is impossible, but begin to find that absorbing new languages can be an enjoyable, enriching, exciting adventure, their wild contrasts and contradictions like the myriad colors and fragrances of flowers.
Musical languages and their associated “theories”, ancient and modern, are no different. None is universal. The search for a personal Unified Music Theory can be your own ongoing Hero’s Journey, insofar as it gives you a coherent and esthetically satisfying system with which to generate and explore new ideas, but be wary of applying it to judge any other culture’s (or fellow musician’s) “thing”. Rather, study their theories and observations with open curiosity and gather in your bouquet whatever you find beautiful. Whatever stimulates your senses, whatever “makes sense” to you.
My impression is that adventurous musicians, from Gesualdo, Beethoven and Liszt to Monk, Miles and Sly, have rarely taken “received” music theory too seriously. It often seems to strike their type as a series of attempts, some brilliant and some clumsy, at reverse engineering musical pieces and styles on the part of obsessed hacker “theorists” eager to discover a secret set of design rules. And that’s what most music theory is. BUT, as long as it’s fun and leads to insights inspiring new music, those musicians join in, too, sometimes with gusto.
And so should you. Learn as much as you can about the music(s) you love as well as the music(s) you like less, use critical thinking when evaluating the theories, don’t get hung up if at first you can’t quite grasp some of them (bear in mind that, in some cases, there may be little of value to grasp except for fans and historians), and try to build and continuously update your own conceptual and methodical approach with whatever you deem the most convincing info available, no matter whence it comes.
Take doing THAT seriously. BUT HAVE FUN; it should always energize you. Treat it as a challenging game, not a stressful exercise. As John Coltrane once said: “Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.” And, above all, keep PLAYING and LISTENING. Let your ears guide your choices.
A planet with only one kind of music and music theory would be even worse than one with only one language, don’t you think?
Hope this helps, let me know. 🙂