Daniel Porter Weber on the Significance of Music Theory

(Newswire.net — July 19, 2016) Huntington Beach, CA –Daniel Porter Weber discusses the significance of music theory and how a good grounding in the different theories can help a player improve their performance. Daniel says that according to Henning Kraggerud, music theory does not constrict a musician’s response to a new piece, but rather, it helps them figure out the different possibilities for playing it.

Daniel is an aspiring guitarist and well-versed scholar based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He studies music theory to further improve his guitar playing and find new styles and ways to play guitar. He is also the lead consultant for a property management company.

According to Daniel, students and musicians alike often complain about how academic music disciplines are just a waste of time. They do not understand the significance of music theory, and most of the time, it is because its relevance is not sufficiently made clear to them. Since they do not understand its importance, it is only natural that they think theory is boring or irrelevant. However, this could be changed by changing the way it is currently taught, since the present ways of teaching it has continuously failed to make it relevant. Discover more about Weber at: https://danielporterweber.wordpress.com/

Apart from the lack of a better way to teach theory, the battle between playing music between the head and the heart also plays a major role in the unpopularity of music theory. For an instance, musicians sometimes say they want to play from their heart, noting that they do not want to ruin their musicality with a dry academic approach. While Daniel understands this point of view, he also says that being able to play from the heart is an innate gift that just pops up from their subconscious while playing. He adds that for this gift to be natural enough that it will let musicians play from the heart, it has to first be nurtured through knowledge and experience. Music theory is not formulated until after its principles are put to use by composers.

A good practical example is how the chord the orchestra is playing is not often apparent when practicing a violin concerto starting from the violin part. In the last movement of Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, the 5th bar of the solo part looks like a D major when seen from the solo violin part. However, it is actually a B minor chord when you look at the score or piano reduction. This has a direct influence on how to play it. These details can be absorbed after practicing with a pianist for a long time, but the process can be sped up using a wide variety of music theories that can help one understand a piece before hearing or playing it.

Daniel strongly advises string players to sit down at the piano without their instrument the next time they want to learn a sonata or concerto, and investigate everything there is to uncover about the structure or harmony of the piece. He also recommends reading about the work’s composer and the period it was written, as well as listening to other works of that same composer, to find a better approach to learning the new piece. To learn more about Dan, visit https://vimeo.com/danielporterweber.