Learning formal music theory helped me a lot when I was a teenager playing guitar and piano, and having absorbed all that theory more than fifty years ago helps me to continue enjoy playing and improvising music now.

But over the years I realized that there were gaps in the Western classical theory I studied.

A relatively small one is that I never systematically studied jazz harmony, and I still don’t have a good sense for it. I can’t make my improvisations sound like jazz even if I try.

Another, bigger gap is rhythm: I have listened over the years to music from all over the world with interesting and complex rhythms, but I cannot explain those rhythms or reproduce them. The classical notation and theory I learned is not up to that task, either.

The biggest gap, in my mind, is my lack of exposure to any formal theory of melody. I like good melodies, I think I have a sense of some features that separate good melodies from drab ones, I think I am able to create pretty good melodies, but that all came from listening and experimentation and playing. I once (again, more than fifty years ago) looked through some music theory books in my college library that covered melody, but I didn’t get anything useful out of them.

The videos on music theory that crop up on my YouTube feed all seem to be about chords and scales. Maybe some music influencers should start producing in-depth content on rhythm and melody, too.