A.I.R. — Absorb, Internalize, Reinforce

Five years ago I bought a music theory book and started reading. It got overwhelming pretty fast. Then I tried watching an online course and the instructor lost me not too far into the course. This time I’ve changed the way I approach it and I like it!

Every good system needs a cheesy name (don’t you hate that?) so I came up with this: Absorb, Internalize and Reinforce or AIR for short. Here’s what I mean…

Absorb. The more you hear the same things repeated in different ways the more you are able to grasp the essence of it and understand the concepts.

Internalize. Hearing the same things over and over again gives you a good outlook on the wide picture but whenever you start digging deeper you realize that your understanding is pretty shallow. You need to internalize the concepts you’ve learned.

Reinforce. Music theory is only good if you can apply it in practice. You can practice as you go about making music but these are two different things that interfere with one another. You need to deliberately practice what you’ve learned to make your understanding applicable on autopilot whenever you actually make music.

In this guide, I’ll cover the techniques, tools, and resources that I think work the best for each activity.

Absorb: Let the knowledge flow over you

In this day and age, the best way to absorb a ton of information is by watching videos online. YouTube is a huge repository of all kinds of videos but you have to sift through a lot of them to find some gems. Paid courses, on the other hand, are usually much better produced but they are, well, not free.

Luckily, in addition to really expensive college-style music theory courses, there are quite a lot of really affordable options.

Let’s cover both types…

Free content

If you want to learn just the basics and have only 30 minutes (or just 15 minutes at 2x speed), go no further than this video by Andrew Huang:

In conclusion

So there you have it. This method of learning seems to be working for me and I hope it will work for you. Let me know your favorite resources for learning music theory in the comments here or .