J. Anthony Allen: The development of 'Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers'

J. Anthony Allen has taken on a pretty interesting challenge: teaching music theory to people whose entire musical experience is within a DAW. Most music theory writing makes extensive use of standard notation, classical music examples and a traditional musical glossary. Dr. Allen breaks from this and focuses on modern software and the ubiquitous piano roll interface. In this interview, we talk to J. about his experience creating this book, and some of the specific challenges he faced in presenting the material.

You've just released a book called "Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers". What's the concept behind the book?

I teach at two different places right now: A university and at Slam Academy. Slam focuses mostly on the “producer” type of person, but even at the university I’ve been getting more and more students coming to me for composition lessons that have no background in “traditional” music. They are really good at making music on their computer, and they are extremely comfortable with all the technical aspects of music production and even sound design. But when they approach the MIDI grid, they are totally lost. (Of course this isn’t true of all of these students, but it is a pattern that I was seeing regularly).

Like a lot of people in my position, my early reaction to this centered around getting them into a music theory class. But I came to realize that the way we teach music theory (at least at the university-level) is extremely classical-centric. Reading music is a huge hurdle, as are the analysis projects. It is hard to engage these students by making them analyze Moonlight Sonata. So I started tinkering with a curriculum that would put music theory in their terms - the language of music production, rather than the traditional way, the language of classical music.

You decided to steer away from standard music notation, instead relying on the piano roll display of Ableton Live. How does this help a discussion about music theory? And how might it get in the way?

When I first committed to the book having no traditional notation at all, it was really daunting. It was hard to imagine how I would teach something like modes without using notation. But once I got down to actually doing it, it wasn’t that hard. It turns out that the piano grid is itself a very fine analogy for music notation (or I suppose one might argue that notation is an analogy for the piano grid).

There are a few drawbacks. Root-position triads are harder to spot quickly on a piano grid than in traditional notation. I still hate reading rhythms on the piano grid. But both of those problems come from my still-somewhat-classically-centered-thinking about music theory. Someone who doesn’t read traditional notation at all can learn to spot a triad on a piano grid as quickly as I can with notation. And rhythms are actually much easier to interpret on the piano grid: the way we notate rhythms in traditional notation is actually kind of abstract.

Do you think there is a way to help students transition to standard notation, or would you rather see them focus on other things? If you are going to move them toward standard notation, what affordances would it bring? If not, would do you think is a more appropriate area of expanded knowledge?

You know, I struggle with this a little bit. But my current thinking is that no, they shouldn’t need to transition to traditional notation.

There are two main reasons: The first is that I think forcing these students to use “classical language” for their ideas is egocentric of us, as educators. I haven’t found an important concept that you can’t teach using the piano grid, so it just makes sense to use that as the way to learn music theory because it is a system they already know. The second reason is that music notation, and notes in general, are less relevant to these styles of music. For example: In a string quartet (most of them), you can notate every single sound made with notation, but in a piece of dance music a lot of the sounds are the result of sound design which our notation doesn’t account for very well anyway.

Look at an example like Kendrick Lamar’s Damn. It won a pulitzer prize for composition. I don’t know if Lamar can read music or not, but I don’t think it matters very much in that genre.

To answer the second part of your question - what do you think is a more appropriate area to expand - I think there are two things:

1) More theory - This book is fairly basic, and there is a lot yet to be covered. I would like to see this series go through all of the US college-level music theory sequence.

2) Sound Design - I’ve toyed with writing a sound design book that is positioned as an orchestration text book gone electronic, which is really want sound design is, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe someday.

You help run a music academy called "Slam Academy". How much of this approach was based on your experiences teaching in that environment?

A lot.

When we started Slam Academy, we had this really “do it” attitude about all of our classes. Unlike a university, we were going to make classes that someone could come into as a novice, and leave the first day of class making music. There would be no “eat your vegetables” kind of classes - those general classes that all musicians have to take. Just classes on how to making bangin’ music.

But as things progressed, we got bigger, and we got more students, we started to hear that our students wanted a music theory class. They were really asking for it, because they knew that it was a weakness in their production workflow. That’s when I started experimenting with this curriculum. In fact, the first line in the book is, “Music Theory is the green vegetable of electronic music.” That’s where that comes from.

It currently runs as an online class through Slam Academy. You can register for it and you get a ton of videos that walk you through the content, as well as twice weekly live sessions with me, to answer any questions, do some analysis, give you feedback on your projects. It’s been a very popular class for us. The book very naturally grew out of that class.

You have also recently taken on a faculty position at Augsburg University. How do you think this will differ from your work with electronic productions students - or do you plan on bringing that concept to Augsburg?

Yes - currently I’m teaching at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. But next year I’ll be jumping across the river to start a position at Augsburg University.

I’m excited to see how these ideas play out at Augsburg. For one, they have a very progressive attitude towards the “Traditional” curriculum, and I’m being encouraged to not be afraid to do some experimental things, if I think it will lead to better student learning and engagement. I won’t be teaching music theory in that position, but I’ve already had conversations with the theory faculty, who have shown a lot of interest in the book (and the ideas in general.)

Aside from that, one of the really attractive things about Augsburg University is that it is very much a “people's school” - I’m being encouraged to engage with people outside of the school, be in the community, and be academically inclusive in all areas - including genre. I’m not sure if I will have a ton of students who come to me looking to make dance music, but with this community-focused mandate, I have the whole twin cities to engage in various ways, so I’m excited about that.

Not to mention that I won’t be slowing down with my work at Slam Academy - so I’ll have plenty of outlets.

Now that you've tackled your music theory book project, what's the next thing to tackle?

Well I’m a planner. So my next 5 big projects are all planned and scheduled. I’m a super nerd about planning. My next few projects are making music, which is refreshing after writing a book. I would like to at some point write a “Volume 2” of this book, and go into some more advanced techniques, but that is probably a year or two away. It’s not in my schedule yet, anyway.

J. Anthony Allen's book "Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The producers guide to harmony, chord progressions, and song structure in the MIDI grid" is available in paperback and on Kindle from Amazon.