alt Hacker NewsSome subjects are hard. Music notation is mathematical notation that is optimized for ease of consumption by notation experts. It is not optimized for learning.
Same with many activities. Pedagogy and real-world use are different goals. Result is a confusing and horrible learning curve.
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stackghost • today at 12:44 AM
My background is a field most would consider "hard", so I'm no stranger to jargon or dense notation optimized for real-world use. So, I don't buy the excuse that you can't have both good pedagogy and usable notation.
Some people are okay with being told "memorize this list of arbitrary factoids" and there's nothing wrong with that, I'm just not one of those people who can pretend that that's good pedagogy.
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Indeed, in the typical progression, a music student is a fluent reader by the time they take a theory course. Reading was probably part of their entrance audition.
Maybe their needs to be a “music theory for engineers” like we have “physics for poets.”