Music is obviously an art. It’s a diverse and varied form of expression, with so many different shapes depending on a person’s culture, background, personal taste, and more. It’s soulful, emotional, and arguably straight from the heart.
So why does this universally enjoyed artform have an entire theory behind it? You may have heard the term music theory and been curious about its meaning. What exactly does music theory “theorize” about music, and why is it so complicated?
We’re going to break all that down shortly! Make sure to keep reading.
The Basics
Music theory ultimately lets us understand how music works: allowing us to peek behind the curtain, if you will. It’s the lens through which we understand how musicians and composers make music. Every form and culture of music has a theory associated with it that encapsulates the methods and techniques of making it. For some forms, this theory is oral and passed down through generations; for some forms, researchers and historians even analyze ancient instruments to determine their music theory!
However, the most well-known version of music theory refers to the organization of Western tonal music, which is just an academic way of saying classical European music.
But What’s The Point?
So music theory seems like a complicated academic subject picking apart the details of music. Depending on your musical goals, you might feel like you don’t need to learn music theory. But that’s not necessarily true!
Learning music theory gives you a much greater understanding of how to effectively and intuitively make music. By being able to analyze the building blocks of a musical piece or song, you can use those building blocks for your own compositions!
Communication of Music
One of the greatest purposes of music theory is the ability to communicate musical ideas. It’s obviously much more difficult to convey every detail of a musical vision orally, or even on paper with just words. That’s why a huge part of learning music theory is the basics and rudiments of music notation!
Let’s take a closer look. There are three main parts of music we want to communicate in some way, and these can be described as:
Melody
Melody refers to the sequence of musical tones, specifically their pitches and rhythms. The melody is generally a piece’s primary succession of notes; in fact, when you’re singing or humming along to a popular song, you are singing its melody!
Harmony
Meanwhile, harmony is a bit more difficult to describe. In a nutshell, harmony refers to multiple sounds that overlay over one another to support the melody. They generally never overpower the actual melody, but provide a background accompaniment to support it, and give it tonal color and life.
Examples of harmony usually include chords, which are a set of multiple notes/pitches that are heard simultaneously. Usually, chords include three notes, but can often include more.
Rhythm
Lastly, rhythm is the actual pattern of movement and time organization of sound. It’s arranged in units called beats, which are split into strong and weak elements. It encompasses a variety of aspects about music you might recognize, like how fast or slow it is – or even how the melody sounds, since rhythm is a part of melody!
More Fundamentals
Melody, harmony, and rhythm are the core building blocks of music theory, but there are many more music theory fundamentals that are important to know in analyzing or composing music. Here are some of these fundamentals:
Scales and modes refer to the arrangement of notes in a pattern of intervals, specifically whole steps and half steps. Some common examples of scales in Western music include the major scale, the minor scale, and the chromatic scale.
Timbre is the “color” or “tone” of the music. It’s basically the quality of sound that lets us identify and distinguish different instruments and voices. In music theory, timbre encapsulates two main things: dynamics and articulation. Dynamics refers to how loudly or intensely that sound is played, while articulation describes the more stylistic properties of how that sound is produced.
The list can go on, including concepts like form and structure, expression and phrasing, texture, and more.
To Learn More
To learn more about everything we’ve discussed so far, make sure to check out our course, Introduction to Music Theory: The Fundamentals. We’ll take a deep dive into the rudiments of music theory, and explore these concepts from the ground down. You’ll get a comprehensive overview of the building blocks of music theory, all the way to being able to analyze music scores and even identifying patterns and techniques from sounds!
In our course, we’ll start with the very basics, and delve into the world of sound and musicianship. You’ll learn all that you need to know to become a thinking musician, and realize the connection between hearing, seeing, notating, and playing music!
Conclusion
In conclusion, music theory is clearly a portal to the world of music-making. It arms you with the tools to understand music fully, down to its building blocks and structure. With these tools, you can, in turn, make even better music than you did before – by knowing what knobs to tweak, blocks to fill in, and elements to add!
Thanks for reading! Make sure to leave a comment below if you learned something, or have any thoughts to share 🎵.
