A Layman’s Intro to Western Classical Music

I&#x27;m working on an IDE for music. IDE: Windows notepad = my thing : normal DAWs. Sign up here if you want to be notified when it&#x27;s ready<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1-aQzVbkbGwv2BMQsvuoneOUPgyrc6HRl-DjVwHZxKvo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1-aQzVbkbGwv2BMQsvuoneOUPgyr...</a><p>It uses novel models of tonality that will make you productive. Write 10 albums in the time of 1. It doesn’t dumb anything down, it actually let’s you explore the entirety of the musical space. (Goes beyond tonality).<p>Right now writing music in a DAW is surprisingly time consuming. Too much clicking, not enought exploring. I’m trying to change that.

In case this interests you, then this is also neat:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Gt2zubHcER4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Gt2zubHcER4</a><p>Bernstein, The greatest 5 min. in music education

An excellent introduction to this topic is a lecture series called “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” by Robert Greenberg.<p>It’s very rich in detail but Greenberg also makes it accessible and fun.<p>It’s available for cheap on audible and from “the great courses”.

I tried getting into western classical music several times, but always aborted. I find it really difficult, as it is so diverse and complex, yet beautiful and satisfying at the same time.<p>Its vastness is astonishing and is the main reason why I always stopped. Where to start? Why? How does it all connect? There are so many more angles to western classical music than one would think.<p>So thank you for this! I will try again.

Start with Mozart, move to Beethoven. Wrapping your head around classical styles is easier when you directly compare the Classical and Romantic styles since they are quite different. That gives you a foundation to understand other forms.

I discovered this website <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;classicalmusiconly.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;classicalmusiconly.com&#x2F;</a> on a SHOW HN post several months ago. Really nice for anybody who&#x27;s interested in classical music

The podcast Meet The Composer is also excellent. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;528124256&#x2F;meet-the-composer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;528124256&#x2F;meet-the-composer</a>

One thing I never quite understood was - are today&#x27;s rock &#x2F; pop music in any way related to the development of classical music or branched off from it? It seems like classical music keeps developing into the post modern era and is still being experimented and toyed with but without many new instruments added, while the other type of music can be lumped into &quot;non-classical&quot; and has their own separate branches of development. It&#x27;s surprising to me that some form of music similar to art rock or pop was not developed in the 1400s, was it because the technologies to create some of the instruments weren&#x27;t available?

The most interesting thing so far about this for me is the bizarre twitter and Facebook sharing buttons that dance around the page, following some strange beat. Wtf.

See also: Joining the dots (Steve Hobson) and Inside Music (Karl Haas).<p>The latter also has&#x2F;had a great radio program “Adventures in good music” introducing different aspect of classical music. You can find some of the episodes at the internet archives:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;search.php?query=Adventures%20in%20good%20music" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;search.php?query=Adventures%20in%20good%...</a>

This intro seems to be very close to the Yale coursera course on Western Classical Music, which is the most amazing Coursera course I ever took. For anyone without musical culture, this is the place to start: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coursera.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;introclassicalmusic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coursera.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;introclassicalmusic</a>

It&#x27;s a bit silly to say that people only started moving on to new chords &#x2F;after&#x2F; Wagner.

music from the middleages is a pretty hardcore way to start.<p>I grew up on tallis, byrd et al, with a huge amount of baroque (Purcel), but it wouldn&#x27;t be my place to start.<p>Bach, Beethoven, holst, bernstein, Vaughan Williams are much better places to start

Schönberg was Austrian.

Can anyone recommend a good classical playlist on Spotify?