Should I think about music theory when writing music?

Hey I need your help with something – I was just sitting writing this here piece of music and my ear just totally lost the thread and I can’t figure out what I want to do next.

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever been writing music and everything’s going great – then suddenly you just lose it?

No prob you know a little theory, even just some basics, so you try to use some of that only to come up with boring and grossly generic sounding music. So that got me thinking: Should I even think about music theory when writing music?

No, Unless Trying to Solve A Problem

Theory isn’t what creates music, it’s simply a means to explain what already happens in it.

Lots of us get this bit backwards, and that’s ok.

It’s easy to get bogged down in definitions and formulas and forget something super important: If it sounds good, it is good; being dogmatic about theory is how we get that boring and generic result.

We don’t need music theory to tell us what music we write, because that’s not where music comes from.

Our inner ear is the real origin of the music we write. We literally dictate it from our head to the real world.

Part of the process of getting better at writing music is refining your inner ear.

This means getting better at listening and understanding what it’s telling you.

Music theory is helpful here since it gives words to music phenomena, allowing us to create a word association with a particular sound, concept, or feeling.

However, when our inner ear loses the thread, that’s when we can turn to theory to help reignite it.

In my mind, this is the best place to bring in some analysis to understand what’s going on in what we’ve already written.

Then we can use our theory knowledge for some educated options on what to do next; the end goal always being to get our ear to catch the thread again.

So that’s it. Don’t just blindly theory when writing, instead follow your inner ear. And when your inner ear loses its way, pull out some analysis and use theory for educated guesses to help get your ear to catch on again.

If you want to upgrade your melody game and learn how to write melodies like your favorite artists, check out my free 30 minute video training where I give you 7 powerful tools to help you write a more effective melody.

 Sometimes it can be a huge push even to just get ourselves writing music in the first place. If you’re struggling with that, like I have in the past plenty of times, click on the video popping up on your screen where I’ll reveal why you can’t write music.