In this introductory lecture, J. Anthony Allen outlines his philosophy and teaching methodology for music theory. He asserts that the listener’s ear should dominate over abstract rules, positioning theory as a practical tool for composers, songwriters, and producers rather than an academic exercise. Allen describes two primary objectives: (1) analyzing existing songs to extract techniques that can be replicated or varied, and (2) learning specific note‑and‑chord combinations that reliably evoke particular emotional feelings, enabling creators to apply them directly without exhaustive analysis. He warns against rigid adherence to theory, arguing that strict rule‑following yields bland results, while intentional rule‑breaking fosters interest. Theory is presented as a diagnostic language that helps explain why a sound works or feels “dumb,” allowing creators to either avoid or deliberately employ such qualities. Throughout, he emphasizes that ear‑guided decision‑making should steer learning and composition. The segment concludes with a transition to the practical tools needed for the course.
Chapters
All right, so let's get started by first, just talking about a few words about my approach to music theory and how I think about music theory. There's one kind of big rule that I kind of live by when it comes to music theory, and that is that your ear trumps the theory. So let me explain that. I teach music theory from the perspective of the composer, the songwriter, the producer. That's the kind of theory that I get into. I don't teach the kind of music theory where we analyze things just to see how detailed we can get. What I'm most concerned with is figuring out why something sounds the way it sounds so that we can use that technique in our own music. Now, if you're not a songwriter, that's fine, because what you're going to be able to do by the end of all of this is listen to something and know how to play it better. Maybe you're a performer and you want to play it better. Maybe you're just someone who just wants to understand music better for any number of reasons. But the way I approach music theory is as a composer, as a songwriter, and I do it so that I can take the general concept, the idea, and apply it to my own music. So it's not like stealing, right? Because it might be that in a particular song, we hear these songwriters use these three chords in a row, and it generated a kind of a feel, a sound, and we're like, man, I really love that sound. That feel that he made with that, how can I replicate that? Well, what we can do is we can analyze it. We can find out what three chords they used, and then we can use those three chords. We can use variations of those three chords. And the second big goal to music theory is that maybe we skip that whole process altogether, because we're going to learn that when we use a certain combination of notes, it generates this certain feel, right? So we're just gonna be able to skip that process and just say, well, I know that when I put these notes together and then I follow them by these other notes, it generates this feel. So in a way, we could say that the other goal is to understand what music generates what feeling, so that we can put that together to generate our own music, right? To write our own music. Because that's what we want to be able to do. We want to be able to quickly think, I know that if I'm on this chord and I go to that chord, it's gonna feel happy. I know if I'm on this chord and I go to that chord, it's gonna feel sad or any number of much more complex emotions than happy and sad. Because music is capable of generating a lot of very complex emotions. So those are kind of my big two goals in the way that I approach music theory. If you've written something and you think it sounds cool or you've created something, you're like, that sounds great. And then later you find out that it doesn't make a lot of sense. With music theory, there are two things wrong with that. One is that who cares whether it makes sense in the rules of music theory? You're using music theory wrong. If it doesn't make sense in the rules of music theory, who cares if it sounds cool? It sounds cool. If it sounds the way you want it to sound, then that's just great. So that's the first thing that's wrong with that. The second thing that's wrong with that is that you're assuming your limited understanding of music theory means that it doesn't make sense. When actually if you got into some of the super advanced music theory, I'm sure you would find a way to make it make sense. Music theory goes, you know, it starts at the basics, where we're going to start, and it goes to like really complicated stuff. So. And we'll get into some of that really complicated stuff by the end of this whole sequence of classes. But because you know a little bit about music theory or not you. But I shouldn't put this in terms of you, because often people have taken a couple music theory classes, they assume that what they've done doesn't make sense in the rules of music theory, so they want to change it. And that doesn't work very well either because music theory is so big and it encapsulates so much stuff that you could be just not knowing of how to make sense of what you've written in music theory. This is a long winded way of saying, let your ear be the guide. Let your ear be your guide. And when you learn something in music theory, make sure you understand how it sounds, because that's the most important thing. We need to remember always that music theory is really just a way for us to distill things down and make sense of why they sound the way they sound. When we have something we don't like the way it sounds, we can pick it apart using music theory and we can say, ah, that sounds dumb because it's this, this and this. That's why we don't like the way that sounds. And then we know. And we can know not to do that if we don't want it to sound dumb. Or if you're writing something and you're like, I'm writing a piece of music and I intentionally want it to sound dumb, I could do blah, blah, blah, blah, because I know that's a dumb sound. That's kind of a silly example, right? I often tell students, my composition students, that if you write 100% by the rules of music theory, then you will create something that sounds perfectly fine and boring. If you break no rules, everything will sound just fine and boring. So you have to break the rules to make something interesting. So keep that all in mind. Just remember, your ear is the winner whenever it comes to analyzing something. And that's how I approach music theory. I do approach it from a composition songwriter perspective, because that's what I am. That's how I learned it, and I think it's a good way to teach it. So with that in mind, so let's press on. Next thing I want to do is talk about the tools that we're going to need for this class.
