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Hack Music Theory

Hack Music Theory

By: Ray Harmony
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 Join over 250,000 YouTube subscribers learning the fast, easy & fun way to make good music without using AI, cos that's boring! Taught by multi award-winning college lecturer Ray Harmony, who works in all genres and has made music with multiplatinum Grammy-winning artists (see About page on website for details). Co-taught by Kate Harmony, Ray's wife and protégé. Download FREE Book at HackMusicTheory.com© 2025 Revolution Harmony Music
Episodes
  • You're Listening to Music Wrong.

    You're Listening to Music Wrong.
    Sep 12 2025
    You’re Listening to Music Wrong. You’re Listening to Music Wrong. I am, too. We all are. It’s tragic, but we can fix it. Over the last 20 years, music has been devalued and demoted. It used to be the hero. Now it’s the sidekick. The soundtrack for working or socialising or whatever. However, if you’re a Gen Xer like me, you’ll remember spending countless hours sitting in front of your hifi captivated by great records, which physically spun around on your player. We listened with all our attention, doing nothing else. Just listening. Back then, listening to records was considered a hobby. Listening was an activity, because it was active. That’s the key word. Active. But as our attention got stolen away from us by smart phones, listening to records became passive. Music was no longer the main attraction. No, that was reserved for looking at our phones. Without us ever consciously choosing to do so, we relegated music to soundtrack status. That’s one of countless reasons why both myself and Kate (my wife) deleted all our personal and professional social media accounts back in 2015. We’re now celebrating our 10-year anniversary of not being on social media. It’s been one of the best decisions of our lives, by far! In fact, next month I’m celebrating my 19-year anniversary of being sober, and honestly, I rank these two celebrations as equals. But despite not being on social media, Kate and I are still listening to music wrong. And it’s not because of our phones. My phone is a decade old, so most apps won’t work on it. I’m not buying another smart phone, though, so when this phone stops working, I’ll be returning to a dumb phone. I’m much happier being a luddite. For now, at least, I’m still a smart phone owner, but the only app I use is Spotify. However, Spotify alone is enough to pull my attention in too many directions, and as a result, I almost never actively listen all the way through albums anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to albums every day, but it’s while I’m working, exercising, reading, or eating. Music is never the main event, it’s the soundtrack. That’s depressing. That needs to change. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. Every night I read for two to three hours. I love books! That’s why I only ever read paper books. Focusing on a non-fiction book for hours every day has been invaluable for maintaining my attention span. And I’ve been reading like this for many years. But despite being able to focus on an academic book for three hours, when I’m finished reading for the night and I open Spotify for my dedicated two-hour listening session, my focus instantly scatters. My attention span vanishes. It’s like a magic trick! What did Spotify do to my ability to focus? I’m sure all music streaming apps are the same, but as I use Spotify, I’ll be talking specifically about that app. So I first started using Spotify the month it launched in Canada back in 2014. It was life-changing! It was a music library beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Like many Gen X teenagers in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I had a dream of one day having a whole room filled with records, floor to ceiling on every wall. Forget about that, though, now I had almost every record ever made in the palm of my hand. What sorcery was this? I loved it! I spent hours every day listening to albums that I’d always wanted to own, but buying records ain’t cheap, so my wallet had always been significantly smaller than my appetite for music. Spotify was my key to gaining access to the world’s biggest music library for a few bucks a month. It seemed too good to be true. And it kinda was, because after a few years, it all began to change. When I opened the Spotify app one day, I was suddenly confronted with all these podcasts. Podcasts!? They’re great, yes, but not in a music library. They’re a distraction from the artists and their albums. Against my better judgment, though, I tried a few podcasts. I was curious. Then the next day when I opened Spotify, I was confronted with new episodes from the podcasts I’d listened to, as well as other podcasts that were similar to the ones I’d listened to. They all looked fascinating, but how was I supposed to listen to all those podcasts and still have time for listening to albums? Then one day I opened Spotify and they’d added videos. Videos!? But I signed up for a music library! Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, Spotify then added audiobooks. For a booklover, this was (and still is) something I absolutely cannot say no to. Included in my Spotify plan, I get 15 hours of audiobook listening time every month. I have to use those hours, I can’t help myself. But that’s about half an hour a day that I used to spend listening to albums that I’m now spending listening to audiobooks. And these days when I open Spotify, I get new audiobook recommendations ...
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    14 mins
  • The 4 Types of Artist. Which Are You?

    The 4 Types of Artist. Which Are You?
    Sep 3 2025
    The 4 Types of Artist. Which Are You? Every song is born from an idea. So where do ideas come from? In other words: What or who is the cause of your imagination? Your answer to this question is tied to your worldview, and that determines what type of artist you are. The first type of artist believes that ideas come from the brain, and are a result of firing neurons. If you believe this, you’re what I call a natural artist. The second type of artist believes that ideas evolve from other ideas, and are a result of inspiration from other artists’ work. If you believe this, you’re what I call a humane artist. The third type of artist believes that ideas come from an impersonal universal mind, and are a result of connecting to this unified field. If you believe this, you’re what I call a quantum artist. The fourth type of artist believes that ideas come from a personal God (or gods), and are a gift from his spirit (or the spirits). If you believe this, you’re what I call a supernatural artist. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. Each worldview encompasses vast diversity, but artists within each type have a common belief of where their ideas come from. For example, the supernatural category includes Christians and hunter-gathers. On the surface they seem drastically different, but a deeper look reveals that both groups are living in a supernatural reality. On that note. It may come as a surprise to artists in the other three categories, but up until very recently in human history, everyone was in the supernatural group. If you’re interested in learning about this fascinating topic, I recommend the excellent book The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity by the late, great anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1930–2021). Also, I appreciate that grouping all artists into these four worldviews neglects some other beliefs. For example, maybe ideas come from people in the future who’ve invented technology that transmits them back to us. Or, perhaps ideas are beamed down to us from ancient aliens living above the firmament. Or, maybe ideas float to us on the air breathed out by an advanced race living beyond the icewall. I could go on, but you get the idea. These are all valid hypotheses, and should not be discounted unless they can be disproven. However, for the sake of brevity, I’ll limit this to the four broad worldviews: natural, humane, quantum, and supernatural. Hopefully one of these will resonate with you. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. Also, each artist type can include the worldview of the previous type(s). For instance, a humane artist can also believe what a natural artist believes. This worldview sees ideas as a result of neurons firing in the brain, but that firing was due to an interaction with other artists’ work. If you believe this, you’re still a humane artist, you’ve simply included the natural artist’s worldview. And for the record, no type is better than any other. That would be like saying the marathoner Eliud Kipchoge is a better runner than Usain Bolt, because Bolt stops after he’s run a hundred meters. That’s ridiculous! They’re two of the greatest runners of all time. They’re running different races, though, so it’s pointless to compare them as runners. Same with artists. Their worldviews do not determine how good their art is. Their ideas determine that! It’s all about ideas. And that’s exactly why typing ourselves is important. Once we know what type of artist we are, we can know how to live up to the potential of our type. This will result in better ideas, and better ideas give birth to better songs. So which type of artist are you: natural, humane, quantum, or supernatural? Now that you’ve typed yourself, here’s how to live up to your artistic potential. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. If you’re a natural artist, you need to prioritise the nurturing of your brain. You can do this by sleeping enough, exercising daily, eating healthy food, drinking plenty of filtered water, getting fresh air and sunshine, grounding and minimizing EMFs in your environment, and daydreaming in a park (with your phone turned off). If you’re a humane artist, you need to prioritise the nurturing of relationships with other artists. You can do this by meeting up with creative people face-to-face on a weekly basis and sharing ideas, or even better, collaborating. But, you can also be inspired by reading biographies of your favourite artists, both living and dead. If you’re a quantum artist, you need to prioritise the nurturing of transcendence. You can do this by cultivating a daily meditation ritual, practising yoga and/or qigong, chanting, and listening to sublime music with headphones on and your eyes closed. I recommend the breathtaking album Vivaldi: Stabat Mater by Jakub Józef Orliński. If you’re a supernatural artist, you need to prioritise the ...
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    7 mins
  • AI Is Not a Tool. Stop Calling It That.

    AI Is Not a Tool. Stop Calling It That.
    Aug 28 2025
    AI Is Not a Tool. Stop Calling It That. I’ve tattooed myself. Three times! You know what? It hurts a whole lot more when you do it to yourself. You know what else? It looks terrible, too. Why? Because a tattoo machine is a tool that an artist uses to create images in the skin. I had the tool, and I even had the imagination to come up with a creative idea for the image, but I did not have the skill. So, when I drew it, it was a mess. And when I tattooed it, it was a painful mess! It was a thoroughly fascinating experience, though, and I did it under the supervision of a world-class tattooer. But, because I had not learned the skills and spent thousands of hours practicing, there was no hope of creating a good tattoo. Throughout human history, tools were useless without the accompanying skills. And I’m going to argue here that they still are. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed how the definitions of words are changing at a rapid rate nowadays, so you need to keep your wits about you. The Oxford Dictionary defines a tool as “a thing that helps you to do your job or to achieve something.” The key word in that definition is “helps”. Whether someone uses AI to generate a whole song or only the initial idea, AI is not helping them, it’s doing the skilled work for them. A tattoo machine is a tool that helps the artist put their image in the skin. If the machine draws and tattoos the image on its own, then it’s not helping the tattooer, it’s replacing them. The skills are now in the machine, not the human. By definition, that machine is no longer a tool, it is the tattooer. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. Same with music. If a songwriter uses a digital audio workstation (DAW) on their computer to express their imagination and capture their ideas, then it’s a tool. If you use this software, you’ll know that when you open it, you’re greeted by a blank screen. Same for authors. When they open a new document in their word processor, they don’t find ideas for their next story, they find a blank screen. That’s because word processors and digital audio workstations are tools. They help. Nothing more. All the ideas and skills are exclusively in the humans. It’s a common defence from AI users that they only use it to get the initial idea, and then they write the song themselves. But, using our imagination to come up with that initial idea is probably the most difficult part of the songwriting process. So using AI to get the initial idea is cheating. And more importantly, every time a songwriter does this, they’re cheating themselves out of their own imagination. If we don’t exercise our imagination, we lose it. When a generation of people lose their imaginations, and then go on to have children who are born into a reality without imagination, it’s a very different world. Is that a world you want? Now, if someone chooses to use AI instead of their imagination, that’s up to them. But it’s a lie to say that AI is a tool that helps them come up with ideas. No, it’s not a tool. It’s a replacement for their imagination. That’s a whole lot more than a tool! Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. Also, songwriters need to have the skills (and perseverance) to develop their initial idea into a full song. There are countless skills involved in going from a blank screen to a finished song. Even just that one skill alone of knowing when a song is finished, is difficult to learn. A tool, like a digital audio workstation or a guitar, helps us express our imaginations. By definition, if it comes up with the ideas or does the skilled work for us, then it’s not a tool, it’s the songwriter. So the next time you hear a songwriter (or anyone in the creative arts) saying: “AI is just a tool”, please correct them. AI is not a tool, it’s The Great Reset of Skills & Ideas. And the more this “AI is a tool” narrative is pushed, the more vital it is that we hold on to original definitions. If we lose touch with those, we lose touch with reality. If this has inspired you to learn the skills so you can express your ideas, then I offer you my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation to start making music. And if you’re already a songwriter but you’re frustrated because your music isn’t as good as you know it can be, then I invite you to join my online apprenticeship course. You’ll learn every single skill you need to go from a blank screen to a finished song. Happy learning, and welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark*. Ray Harmony :) *I visualize Hack Music Theory as a Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last. Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat. Photo by Mart Production About. Ray ...
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    5 mins
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