Music theory is the study of how music works.
Music is a language and like any language you must first learn to speak it at least functionally before learning to read and write it.
When you first learned to talk you weren’t shown letters and taught how to read those letters, you learned to say words and how to use them to get what you wanted.
First of all, music is simple…it’s vast but it’s simple. When we were young we learned to sing together. We didn’t think about it we just did it. It seemed to come naturally.
So let’s start with the simple part.
The foundation of music is the “Do Re Mi” scale. Practically everyone knows that scale and our music is built from it. We start with 7 notes, Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti.
The melody comes from that scale and the melody is the most important element of music. It’s the first music we learn as small children.
Notes are chosen from that scale and put into patterns. Patterns that repeat, creating more patterns. Think Frere Jacques.
Those melodic patterns are supported by a thing called a chord progression. Chords are groups of 3 or more notes played together and they come from the same scale as our melody.
So music is basically a melody supported by a chord progression.
Simple as that!
Now the vast part.
There are 2 basic anomalies that turn our simple 7 note foundation into a vast frontier of possibilities.
First, 6 of our 7 scale notes can be moved up or down in pitch and 2 of those can move in either direction.
I want you to think of a piano keyboard. The piano is a C based instrument with the white keys giving us our 7 note “Do Re Mi” scale and the 5 black keys representing those “up or down” extra notes we can choose. So now we have 12 notes to deal with but it’s important to remember that our foundation is the 7 notes of the “Do Re Mi” scale.
The second anomaly is that our “Do Re Mi" scale can start on any one of those 12 notes and that is what’s meant by the key of our music. We’ve got the key of C but we also have the key of A, or Bb, or F#, or any of those 12 notes.
Another aspect that can make music seem complicated has to do with chords. As I said, a chord is a group of 3 or more notes played together and it’s the “or more” part that can give us an almost endless palette of possibilities.
The simple structure remains the same however, a melody that is supported by a chord progression.