An Introduction to Music Theory

music on a blackboard

A free lesson on music theory written by Warwick Levey, of the Gryphon Music Academy. To find this lesson, and many more, check out the Gryphon Music Academy website {here}

Many of my students are, at first, intimidated by the thought of learning music theory. It’s a vast subject that literally takes years to master. There is so much information out there that even just starting out can be a daunting task. It can be confusing, but if you go slowly and ensure that you have a firm grasp of each concept before you move onto the next concept, then you’ll have the basic theory knowledge to write a song in just a few weeks!

Music is like a language. The ultimate point a musician can reach is when music becomes as comfortable to them as their home language is. And just like with any language, you must first learn the building blocks. The musical alphabet is exactly that. The first building block on your way to theory mastery.

The musical alphabet is similar to the normal alphabet, but with a few special characters in between the letters. Each one of these letters and special characters is a note in music. There is no starting point nor is there an ending point. There are however frequencies that the human ear is unable to hear

The musical alphabet is: A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#. After G# it goes back to A again, and repeats infinitely until it is beyond our scope of hearing. All the notes combine into the Chromatic Scale

 

chromatic scale/circle using sharps

  • The “#” symbol is sharp. So A# would be said as A sharp.
  • There is also the “b” symbol. That is the flat symbol, so Ab would be said as A flat.
  • Just like there are two spellings of the word colour (color / colour ) there are two spellings for many of the notes. Every sharp can be spelt as a flat. The musical term for this is Enharmonic

 

 

 

chromatic scale/circle using flats

So bearing that in mind:

  1. A# = Bb
  2. C# = Db
  3. D# = Eb
  4. F# = Gb
  5. G# = Ab

The MOST important thing to remember is that neither B nor E have a sharp
And that neither C nor F have a flat

The second piece of this lesson is on Basic Intervals. You can find the second piece of this lesson {here}