What is music theory, and why should you learn it?
“Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ... Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics.”
This sounds complicated and also vague, but in a practical sense, music theory deals with the aspects of music that make it work, and that help one musician convey to another how something should be played. Bach was a genius at understanding music theory, but he didn’t create the language. Music theory is a way of understanding constructs of relationships between notes and patterns that is essentially like a language.
In a practical application, learning music theory is comprised of understanding notes, scales, keys, and rhythms. There is more beyond this, but those are the basics, and all that you may want to familiarize yourself with when you are planning on becoming proficient in an instrument. But of course, one can still be a good player without understanding all of the rules. But it certainly does help to be aware of the rules when approaching most music that you want to play and people want to hear. So here are the practical basics and how they are useful to your playing:
SCALES
There are many different scales, but in Western music, they all are constructed using the same pattern of whole steps and half steps. Why would it be important to know the scales? For one, your piano teacher may want you to use them to warm up your fingers, but more importantly, it helps you get a sense of the key you are playing in and when you see a sharp or a flat, you know that the note is outside of the key of the piece. Also, once you do get a sense of the scales, you are more likely to be able to improvise melodies, as sounds that are generally pretty pleasing to the ear tend to mostly be in one key. Of course, there is a lot of beautiful tension that can be achieved with playing a note that is outside of the given key, but going beyond that starts to be in the world of chromatic music (which is a whole other thing in itself!). For most people’s purposes though, being able to understand the particular pitches that are associated with one key does really benefit one’s understanding of what they are playing.
KEY SIGNATURES
In music theory, sometimes it is tough to know which part of it to teach first. Key signatures are related to scales in that they are a specific arrangement of pitches that make up a particular key. For example, the key of G has one sharp, F#, so knowing this would also mean that the G scale has one sharp, F#. They are related, and they help identify the same thing, although the scale shows all of the different pitches that make up one key, and the key signature tells the player what key they will be playing in. That means if they see a C#, they know that the piece may be temporarily moving towards another key. Knowing a key signature for a piece means not having to guess constantly if you are hitting the right note because you won’t be relying on seeing the sharp or flat symbol by each note indicating that you are supposed to play something other than a white note.
CHORDS
Chords are so important! They are the backdrop for harmonies, which help communicate the harmonic and even the thematic trajectory of a piece of music. Without chords, we would just be left with monophonic melodies that would most likely sound lost and rambling. The structure of chords is similar to the pattern of scales in that it is consistent, no matter what note you treat as the root of the chord. For example, a Major chord (which I always tell students, sounds happy) is based on a four half steps up from the root note to the third, and then three half steps from the third to the fifth. For a minor chord, just lower that 3rd of the chord one half step and boom! You have a sad sounding chord. These are just examples of root position chords, but there is a whole world out there of inverted chords, which are more interesting, and sometimes easier to play when a series of chords are arranged in a way that notes are being shared between chords. Chords then lend themselves to the idea of chord progressions, which are truly the roadmap of music. We have all heard common chord progressions in rock and pop music, and many of us probably aren’t thinking about what is happening, we just know that it is pleasing to the ears. While there is probably a complicated science to how certain chord progressions affect our brain, the simple answer, in my opinion, is that music is all about tension and release. Chords can establish a key, create tension, and then also create release. So they are very helpful to know about!
INTERVALS
When I think about intervals, I think again about the order in which music theory concepts are taught. Intervals are simply the distance between two notes, so as I mentioned whole steps and half steps a few times above, intervals are super important in understanding as they can be applied to reading music. Instead of memorizing where the G is and where the E is in the right hand, it is much easier to see the G being a sixth below E. Our brains can understand numbers much quicker than the letters in the alphabet, so understanding intervals visually can make reading music go so much quicker and easier. Intervals are used to construct scales, chords, and even notate key signatures, so they are helpful to understand. An interval is identified by a number (2nd - 8th) and a letter symbol denoting whether it is Major, Minor or a few of them are considered Perfect, in the case of a Perfect 4th or 5th.
If you want to learn about music theory concepts in depth, you should consider taking lessons from one of our fantastic teachers!