> My thought is, if you peel back the first layer of music theory, you discover a chaotic, lawless world.
That's because some people think the theory comes first, and the music is based on it. But music is just art, like any other art. The rules are soft and broken and hardly gospel. And music theory is an attempt to have some way to communicate about music using ordinary language. It isn't math, it isn't science, it's just some basic terminology and observations, none of which have much to do with the actual artistic act of making music.
When you think of songs where 'bending' a note is used, or intentionally hitting a note a little bit flat or sharp for a desired aesthetic effect (or both), this all makes a lot more sense.
Music theory gives us a way to measure & more accurately describe what we were already doing.
Absolutely. Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. It just so happens that some things that sounded pleasant to people in the past still sound pleasant to modern ears, so you sometimes get into a bit of “tail wagging the dog” when people use those descriptive academic terms and concepts when creating music today, e.g. saying “I’m gonna write a 16-bar AABA tune that’s based on a I-vi-ii-V progression and modulates to the mediant in the B section”, and therefore think these are “rules” to abide. One of the more unfortunate misconceptions when it comes to the study of music theory.
That's because some people think the theory comes first, and the music is based on it. But music is just art, like any other art. The rules are soft and broken and hardly gospel. And music theory is an attempt to have some way to communicate about music using ordinary language. It isn't math, it isn't science, it's just some basic terminology and observations, none of which have much to do with the actual artistic act of making music.