One of my favorite electronic artist Chrome Sparks take on the theory debate. I think he answers it pretty well.

But which something new? Making electronic music means wearing a whole lot of hats:

  • How to play keys in all major and minor scales
  • Functional harmony
  • Extensions and inversions
  • Voice leading
  • Jazz improvisation
  • Melody and counterpoint
  • How to play covers of a bunch of songs you like
  • How to analyze a bunch of songs you like
  • How ADSRs, LFOs, filters, and mod matrices work in subtractive synthesis
  • How FM synthesis creates timbre using audio rate modulation
  • All of the UI of a DAW and its built in instruments and effects
  • How to record to a hardware multitrack recorder
  • How to sequence using a groovebox or hardware sequencer
  • All of the knobs, buttons, and features of one or more hardware synths
  • A range of guitar pedals and how each one specifically effects the sound
  • Gain staging, non-linear versus linear effects, saturation, overdrive, and distortion
  • Mixing, EQ, stereo positioning, and using reverb and delay to control the soundstage
  • Selecting, recording, chopping, and flipping samples
  • Compression, automation, limiting, and mastering
  • Monitoring and acoustic treatment
  • Singing and lyric writing
  • Drum patterns and drum sounds for various genres
  • Groove, shuffle, microtiming, and percussion
  • Arrangement, verses, chorses, bridges, drops, intros, and outros
  • Risers, fallers, effects, atmospherics, and sound design

This is just stuff off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm missing lots of stuff that I don't even know I don't know. And this is just making the music. Performing it and building an audience is a whole other set of hats.

If I spend the time learning everything I'm "supposed" to learn first, I'll never make music. Like most of us, I'm just an amateur doing this in my limited free time, fighting with my inner critic who's constantly telling me I'm not good enough. The last thing I need is to give that inner critic more ammo.

I do know a pretty good amount of theory for the genres I'm interested in because I find it interesting. But I disagree with anyone who proclaims what someone else needs to learn before they make music. If someone feels like their chord progressions suck and it's holding them back, then it's great to teach them some harmony. But if they're making techno and the bass line is sitting on the root note and the melody is just a four note chromatic riff and they love it, I'm not going to piss on their parade by shaming them for not learning something that may not matter to them.

Of course people work hard to convince themselves they don't need to learn something. Many of them are battling insecurity while trying to make something personally meaningful and present it to the world. That's hard enough as it is without letting other people gatekeep them.

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