Music Theory Comprehensive Complete! (Parts 1, 2, & 3)

I approach music theory from a composer and songwriters perspective. In this lecture I'll walk you through how I think about Music Theory and how I approach teaching (and learning) it.

I'm going to teach this class using a really cool (and FREE) software program. You don't need to get it, but I think it will help you learn more, and learn faster.

Here is the download I talked about in the previous lecture. Some nice clean staff paper. Print out a few sheets for taking notes!

There are a lot of music notation software programs (well, only 3, actually). And they can be quite expensive. I'm recommending a free one, but the others are worth talking about quickly before we dive in to the real guts of the class.

To get started, I want to just walk through a score and point out the different elements that we are seeing. We will learn what all of these mean soon.

Here we go: The names of the pitches.

We have pitch names, which we just learned. We also have pitch classes - slightly different (but important) than pitch names.

A lot of music theory comes down to intervals - the distance between notes. Our first interval that we will learn is the Octave.

Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!

We won't be learning how to play the piano in this class. But the piano is useful to us because it gives us a really nice visual of the notes.

We've learned the names of the notes, so next lets learn how to find them on the keyboard.

The black keys present a little bit of a problem. They have 2 different names, and this can be confusing. But hold tight - it will all make sense after this video.

We've learned about Octaves - our first interval. Now we need to learn 2 more intervals, and these are much smaller than an octave.

Up next: A little recap. We need to connect a few dots to make sense of how this all works together.

Lets go a little deeper on how the staff works, and how we read notes from it.

A new wrinkle! The Clef can show us what range of notes we are talking about. There are many clefs, and everything changes if we are on a different clef.

Lets focus just on the treble clef for now, and get back to what we already know.

Now that we can see notes on the staff, we should try to get comfortable naming the notes and the intervals.

Sometimes we use numbers to indicate the octave, like C3, C4, C5, etc. You might see these numbers so I want you to know what they mean.

Before we go into the next worksheet, let's talk about the Natural symbol.

In order to notate rhythms, we need to be able to quantify them by their relationship to each other.

We can add a dot to any rhythm (or rest) to elongate it.

What about a rhythm that indicates a certain amount of silence? That is called a rest, and there is one for every rhythmic symbol.

So far we have looked mostly only at the time signature of 4/4. But there are many others, and things work a little differently in each one.

So far we have a whole note (4 beats long) as the longest possible rhythmic symbol. But we can make longer symbols by connecting a few together using ties.

A brief side note: I've been giving you a lot of terms in this class that are specific to the way we talk about music in the United States. In this lecture I'll talk a bit about some things you should know if you are outside of the U.S.

So far we have talked about notes on the score, and rhythms on the score. What about volume? We call volume "Dynamics" and this is how we notate them.

There is a little more to accidentals that we haven't learned yet. Lets tie up some loose ends about accidentals in this video.

Form is the order of events in music. It is also notated on the score using repeats, DS sections, and other tricks.

There is a secret website that publishes thousands and thousands of scores that we can download and practice with. 

Here are my tips for practicing!

Here are a bunch of files for you to practice with. This is actually a complete book of (fairly) simple music compositions to practice with.

Thats it for part 1! We've only scratched the surface!

Welcome to the class! Here is a quick overview of what we will cover, and a little previous of what is to come!

I'm going to be using a program to show (and playback) notes throughout this class, and I think you should too. Its a free program, and can really help you learn.

You also can't go wrong with some good old-fashioned staff paper.

Scales are the basic building blocks for musical keys and chords.

Two important words that we need to learn ASAP: Chromatic and Diatonic.

"Ordered Pitch Class Collections" is sort of a fancy term for a scale, but its important to know.

Chromatic scales can be both the most easy to understand and the most complicated.

A major scale is little more than a pattern. If you understand the pattern, you can find any major scale.

Tonic is another word for the first note in our scale. We label each note of the scale with a number called a "scale degree."

Do - a deer, a female deer. Ray, a drop of golden sun... This is solfege, and it can be a great way to learn to hear scales.

Throughout this course I'm going to give you a bunch of worksheets. In this video I'll talk about how to use them and how to practice music theory in general.

Your first worksheet!

Major scales are only useful if we know how to use them. In this video we will start by looking at writing a melody in a major key.

Next, lets look at a familiar melody and see how it uses the major scale.

You might be confused about the difference between "scale" and "key" - lets clear that up in this video.

Here is your second practice worksheet. Please download it and use it to practice. The answers are on the last page. 

Challenge yourself! If you get something wrong, review the videos or post a question!

Time to talk about keys!

Key signatures are the quick way to tell what key we are in.

There are 2 important tricks to identifying a key signature.

Here is your third practice worksheet. Please download it and use it to practice. The answers are on the last page.

Challenge yourself! If you get something wrong, review the videos or post a question!

Chords are the building blocks that create harmony. Without chords (or harmony), we only have melodies.

Looking at a familiar song can help us to understand chords and harmony a little better.

The first type of chord we will focus in is a triad. Triads are the most basic of all chords, but all chords are based on triads.

Finding the pattern!

How do we know what kinds of triads are in a key? Another pattern tells us the answer to all of that.

Now it is time to make those triads sound a little better using inversions.

In music theory, we use roman numerals to label chords in a key.

Here is the song again, but now we know how to analyze chords. Lets do a roman numeral analysis of this song.

Here is your fourth practice worksheet. Please download it and use it to practice. The answers are on the last page.

Challenge yourself! If you get something wrong, review the videos or post a question

Time to open up these triads and see what is inside!

The title says it all: The third holds the power.

We can always count half steps to find the notes we need in a chord.

A faster way to find a fifth is to understand the two thirds that make up the full chord.

Here is your fifth practice worksheet. Please download it and use it to practice. The answers are on the last page.

Challenge yourself! If you get something wrong, review the videos or post a question!

Time to go back and look at that odd Diminished triad.

The diminished triad has a cousin, and it is called the Augmented triad.

How does adding more octaves to our triads effect their name?

Chords on the guitar behave oddly with octaves. Lets take a quick look.

Here is your sixth practice worksheet. Please download it and use it to practice. The answers are on the last page.

Challenge yourself! If you get something wrong, review the videos or post a question!