Published 3rd February 2022

The term ‘music theory’ is known to strike fear in the hearts of computer musicians, conjuring up images of stuffy classrooms, clusters of confusing musical notes and incomprehensible languages. However, with all this music-making power sitting on your hard drive, there’s no excuse not to fully grasp the fundamental building blocks of music. Yes, you can get by without any theory skills… but how much better would your tracks be if you could program those MIDI notes with gusto and tickle those ivories with purpose? So if words like ‘chords’, ‘scales’, ‘modes’ and ‘inversions’ fill you with dread, fear not. We’ve cherry-picked the finest tutorial features from the pages of Computer Music and Future Music – each guide created specifically for the computer-based producer – to bring you this mega-compendium of music theory knowledge.