> My advice for any engineer wanting to get into music is, get an instrument and learn to play it.
The most useful music theory I've ever learned was the stuff that I needed to play jazz guitar: to improvise solos and comp chords. That course of study has continued to pay dividends many years later.
The second most useful was an esoteric but extremely approachable exercise called "arch mapping", where you draw arches on graph paper to represent the form of a piece of music in terms of its subdivisions. For music with a steady tempo and constant time signature, basically anybody can try it: https://williamwieland.midcoip.net/theory/form/archmaps.htm
I also like arch mapping because it explodes the possibilities of what "music theory" is. It can be applied to literally any genre. You don't need to read music. You don't need to know western harmonic theory. You don't even need to know what a major chord is!
The most useful music theory I've ever learned was the stuff that I needed to play jazz guitar: to improvise solos and comp chords. That course of study has continued to pay dividends many years later.
The second most useful was an esoteric but extremely approachable exercise called "arch mapping", where you draw arches on graph paper to represent the form of a piece of music in terms of its subdivisions. For music with a steady tempo and constant time signature, basically anybody can try it: https://williamwieland.midcoip.net/theory/form/archmaps.htm
I also like arch mapping because it explodes the possibilities of what "music theory" is. It can be applied to literally any genre. You don't need to read music. You don't need to know western harmonic theory. You don't even need to know what a major chord is!