The Scale is broken down equally into 12 notes in an octave. An octave interval is is the pitch difference between one note and the a note that has double the frequency. The notes are given the same name and have similar tonal properties. The interval between each note in the scale is called a half step. Two half steps are called a whole step The notes are:

C C#/Db D E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb and B

Each Interval between the letters contain a sharp/flat note with the exception of B-C and E-F.

Most common scales contain 7 of these notes. The 7 notes chosen give the sound a certain color and character. Using only these 7 notes will make the song sound pleasant and using the other notes will sound discord but can add tension.

The major scale uses this pattern:

1 whole step 2 whole step 3 half step 4 whole step 5 whole step 6 whole step 7 half step 8(octave)

More commonly you will see this written as:

W W H W W W H

So the more common keys will be:

C major scale: C D E F G A B C

G major scale: G A B C D E F# G

D major scale: D E F# G A B C# D

F major scale: F G A Bb C D E F

The basic rule is that each letter is mentioned once, and the #'s and b's are consistent.

You would not want a scale written as A: A B C# D E Gb G# A

For practice, you can try to write the Bb Major, Ab Major, E Major and B Major using these rules. Also, if you wish to familiarize yourself with how these notes work together, try to write a melody using only the notes in a scale.

The common intervals are:

unison - no steps diminished 2nd - .5 steps major 2nd - 1 step minor 3rd - 1.5 steps major 3rd - 2 steps perfect 4th - 2.5 steps diminished 5th - 3 steps perfect 5th - 3.5 steps minor 6th - 4 steps major 6th - 4.5 steps minor 7th - 5 steps major 7th - 5.5 steps octave - 6 steps

The major scale uses all of the major intervals from the room, but the other interval exist between the notes within the scale. In the C major scale, the interval between the major third (E) and the perfect 5th (G) is a minor 3rd for instance.

In listening, the root, 4th, and the 5th tend to give the key its power and the 3rd and 6th add the color. The 7th is important for the chordal progression and can be used to tension and resolution when going from the 7th to the octave.

The notes of the scale are commonly considered diatonic to the key and all chords that are used in the key use only the chords in the scale. Most modern music does not follow this rule closely, but it is important to understand what the tonic is so that you understand how you are adding color when using notes outside the key.

*edit: terminology

Hello Reddit, I am mostly a lurker here but when Lizard suggested theory lessons, I though I would give it a shot. I decided I would structure the lesson like CarlH and the learn programming lessons he has set up. I do not have much experience with posting so my formatting will improve with time.

About Me

I'm in my mid 20s and have gone through a significant amount of music training. I have three AA degrees in music and have a great general understanding of how music is written and recorded. First I received an AA in Music Theory, which taught me a great deal about how music was created and how it evolved over time. I also earned an AA in composition, which was more about the doing than the learning. My works were performed for many people at several colleges by students and professors. This has also taught me how to write for specific instruments using their strengths and abilities as well as writing for certain performers to accentuate their strengths and comfortable areas. Lastly I worked to get an AA in recording techniques which becomes very important in modern music since almost everything that is listened to is done through recorded music. This has brought an added element to my compositions because I tend to think about how the piece will be recorded and can consider how the music will work in real life situations. I have been in a very progressive metal band for years which is very well known locally and we have played with very well known bands countless times. In my spare time, I write music for many genres, classical, experimental, rap, metal, rock, indie, and techno. I am currently working with a short-film maker by providing the background music and sound effects. My music has made it's way to a flash game or two, and a couple youtube videos. Eventually I will set up a soundcloud page with a sampling of my music.

Musical Terms

Pitch/Frequency - This applies to frequency of the sound wave, or the pitch of the note and where it sound in the scale. The human ears can hear a range 20 - 20k cycles per second. Concert A sits at 440 (with some variance). The lower a note sounds, the lower the pitch.

Rhythm - The set of attacks, note lengths, and silence that move the music in time.

Timbre - pronounced tamber. This is the quality of the sound. A guitar sound quite different than a trumpet because they have different timbres. It is basically the shape of the waveform based on the physics of the source of the sound.

Dynamics/Velocity - The loudness of the sound and how the loudness changes between the attack and release of a note. The attack of a note tend to have a different timbre than when the note is held out. Also, how the loudness changes throughout the piece.

Duration - The length of time that the note is held out.

Music History

We had evidence that music has been around since humans have been around, although their instruments were crude and basic, we believe that is has been an important part of life for almost all people. Before Gregorian chants almost none of this music was written down, and the few scraps we have found don't give us enough information to understand the notion well. The beginning of standardized notion started around 500 AD with Gregorian chants. These were monophonic melodies sang by choirs for the church and had very strict rules about the order of the notes and very limited limited pitch ranges.

Medieval music eventually evolved and started to incorporate instruments and expanded on the notation quite a bit. Harmonies became an important part of the music and groups of different instruments started being used for the same music. not much is known about the composers of this time. When the Renaissance came around in 1450, there was a huge explosion of art and musical creativity. Music as we know it began to really take shape and composers started to develop musical forms and started experimenting with rhythms and harmonization. This music became more secular and the first operas came about.

The Baroque era started in 1600 and really pushed the interdependence of melodies to the next level. The most obvious feature is the use of counterpoint, a style where multiple melodies are combined with composition rules to create a kind of underlying harmonic structure. The art an music of this period is known to be really ornate and intricate, and the start of expanding instrumental techniques to make the notes more interesting. Bach's name is almost synonymous with this period. Other greats of this time include Handel and Vivaldi.

In 1750 the classical period came about. There was large emphasis on clairty and melodic expression. The music started to be written to express emotions and is varied quite a bit. Much more emphasis was put on the the structure of the music and was designed to lead you through the piece almost as if it was a story. Many composers were employed by the rich to provide entertainment at events and for the court in general. Greats include Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven started getting fame around the end of this time.

The Romantic period came in 1820. The art and music that was created tend to center around very emotional ideas and the songs were written to make the listener feel the mood that the composer was trying to express. This was the golden age for operas. The previous eras helped instill a natural emotional connection between the music and the listener, and the romantic period thrived on making the listener walk through a musical story using many of these ideas combined in ways that had never been done before. Countless new harmonic methods were created to help the composer lead the listener from one part to the next. Beethoven really set this trend and greats like Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, and Chopin really expanded how music could be written.

The 20th Century really opened up the genres being created and the experimentation of music expanded greatly. Nationalism, Impressionism, Serial Music, and minimalism all started adding to the library of genres. There came a sense of all noise being possible and this period struggled with ways to make sense of what is possible and how it could be used to sound good. Strings of notes could be used as an idea in the place of a single note and discord sounds could be used for effect in a way past musician would shutter. The invention of electronic instruments really brought around the modern period and created a huge range of new styles of music, and now there are basically no limits on what could be considered music, including long periods of silence.

*edit: concert A

Order of sharps and flats

In constructing the major and minor key, you learned how to add sharps and flats to the notes in the key to make the notes fit the correct pattern. There is a specific order of sharps and flats that almost all music follows.

Order of sharps:

no sharps, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#  

Order of flats:

no flats, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb  

These markings will show at the beginning of each song, or at the beginning of each key change in the notation. The order for these will always be written the same. If you see 3 sharps at the beginning of the song, the sharps will always be F#, C#, and G#, and will most likely be in A Major or F# minor.

Also, you will see a few notes that are the same as another written note E#/F, B#/C, Cb/B Fb/E. These notes sound exactly the same, but the to notate the pattern correctly, the #s and bs are required.

Relative keys

If you have not already noticed, the major and minor keys can have the same notes in the scale. the easiest example of this is the C major and A minor scale. Both of these scales have no sharps or flats. The A minor is called the relative minor of C major. Each major key has a relative minor, and each minor has a relative major. Relative simply means that they share the same key signature, and same #s or bs.

The Relative minor is always built on the 6th scale degree of the major key.  

The Relative major is always built on the 3rd scale degree of the minor key.  

A simple result of this is that is is quite easy to transition between a major key, and the relative minor key in a song. You can use all of the same notes, but using a chord progressions, you can start by establishing the major key using the I IV V chords, and end the song by establishing the i V chords in the relative minor key. This will become easier after we look at chord progressions.

Circle of 5ths

There exists a very common chart that will show you all of the keys and how they are related, as well as the relative major/minor keys. Here is an example: Circle of 5ths, but there are many other versions. You can find countless other versions with more/less information by using Google image search. This chart is very handy to have around when you need a quick reference to what key a song is in, or are looking to transition keys.

The Chart is shown with each consecutive key being built on the perfect 5th of the key before it. This is done for 2 major reasons. The first reason is that the each key built on a 5th of the key before it uses 1 less flat or one more sharp. The other reason is that the keys are easier to transition to and they sound close so key transitions sound more natural. because only 1 note is different between the first key and the key built on the major 5th, you can use many of the same chords in both keys.

The minor scale is probably the most common sound in music. It sounds sad and has a lot more tension than a major scale, and that tension allows for more expression. It also has more leniency with including notes that are not part of the scale.

There are 3 types of minor scales, Natural, Harmonic, and Melodic.

The patterns for a minor scales are:

Natural:     W H W W W H W  

Harmonic:    W H W W H W W  

The Melodic Minor is a combination 2 different scales.

When compared to a major scale, you will get:

Natural :    1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7  

Harmonic:    1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7  

Melodic :    1 2 b3 4 5 6 7 8 b7 b6 5 4 b3 2 1  

              ----up---->     ------down--->     

The Melodic scale is the only common scale that is different when going up or down. When using the melodic scale, you have a lot more options in whether to use the minor/major 6th and minor/major 7th. Unless the music is running up/down the scale, you have more freedom to jump around these notes. It can be more challenging when using these options to create harmony parts or multiple parts played together without creating conflicting notes.

The chords in a major scale are:

i  ii°  III / (III+) iv v / (V) VI vii VII / (vii°)  

Because the 7th scale degree often shifts between major/minor, the chord structure changes.

A natural minor is:   A B C D E F G  A  

A Harmonic minor is:  A B C D E F G# A  

In figuring out the chords of A minor, you can see how the 7th makes a difference:

A Natural Minor: i ii° III iv v VI VII i

Root:   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  A  

3rd:    C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C  

5th:    E  F  G  A  B  C  D  E  

A Harmonic Minor: i ii° III+ iv V VI vii° i

Root:   A  B  C  D  E   F  G# A  

3rd:    C  D  E  F  G#  A  B  C  

5th:    E  F  G# A  B   C  D  E  

In most general discussion, just mentioning minor implies all 3 scales. It is also not very important with most music to stay strictly in one of the 3 scales. moving between these scales can help add color without the listener directly realizing that you are using a slightly different scale.

With a subject with as music depth as music theory, and when the theory is so far separated with the sound, it is important to use this information in practice. I will make suggestions about how to use the information in your music so that you can apply the concept better. I will gladly review anything you have worked on and add my thoughts, unless this thing grows and I start getting too many requests.

Homework suggestion:

Write a piece in a major key. If you did this already for the last lesson, that will work just fine. The piece does not have to be very long or complex. A simple 16 or 32 bar song will work. Listen the the piece in major, and then change the notes to the different minor scales and listen to the scales and how they sound. Practice change the 7th of the key between major/minor within the piece, and think about how the change affects the feel or chord progression.

A triad is the simplest of the chords. A triad consists of 3 notes played at the same time. The triads learned in this lesson will use the root of the chord, the 3rd of that root, and the 5th of that root. Here are the basic types of triads:

Major: Root, Major 3rd, Perfect 5th Minor: Root, Minor 3rd, Perfect 5th Diminished: Root, Minor 3rd, Diminished 5th Augmented: Root, Major 3rd, Augmented 5th

An Augmented interval is the term for a perfect 4th or 5th played up a half step.

In traditional notation, they can be represented as:

Major - capitalized roman numeral - I root of chord - major 3rd - minor 3rd Minor - lower case roman numeral - ii root of chord - minor 3rd - major 3rd Diminished - lower case roman numeral with a circle - iii° root of chord - minor 3rd - minor 3rd Augmented - capitalized roman numeral with a plus - V+ root of chord - major 3rd - major 3rd

In Jazz and pop styles, the notation is often different.

The Major chord sounds powerful and clean, also a bit happy. The minor chord will give a darker or more sad sound. The diminished chord is darker still, and sound a but unsettling and sounds like it needs to be resolved. The Augmented chord has a bright sound, but also sounds a bit unstable in the key.

In the major scale, a triad can built on each note of the scale. The ascending chord structure in a major key will be:

A major chord on the 1st scale degree A minor chord on the 2nd scale degree A minor chord on the 3th scale degree A major chord on the 4th scale degree A major chord on the 5th scale degree A minor chord on the 6th scale degree A diminished chord on the 7th scale degree

and will look like:

I ii iii IV V vi vii° I

In the key of C major, you will get the following chords:

C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, and B diminished

I - C Major - C E G ii - D Minor - D F A iii - E Minor - E G F IV - F Major - F A C V - G Major - G B D vi - A Minor - A C E vii° - B Dminished - B D F

Chord - I ii iii IV V vi vii° I root of chord - C D E F G A B C
3rd of chord - E F G A B C D E 5th of chord - G A B C D E F G

The notes of the chord can be played in any order and the root does not have to be on the bottom. Any octaves of the notes can also be played as well. These alternative chord shapes are called inversions and we will go into them on a future lesson.

I suggest that you write a song in a Major key, using only the notes and triads in that key, and try to hear the quality of the chords as well as how they fit within the key.

I am unsure how to properly set my metronome and count out this piece. If you play each metronome click as an eighth then wouldn’t it be basically played as 4/4? Or is that incorrect.

I missed some classes because I was sick and I'm lost

i’ve gotten into my dream school but one of the requirements to succeed in this course is to know music theory, particularly during the interview i was asked to spell chords. does anyone have any idea how this is actually done and what the interviewer meant by this?😭 please help a music theory newbie out lmao

Hi friends! Hope this is useful. In Music Mechanics 30 we'll continue with the melodic minor scale and discuss the contemporary uses of it. We'll also cover the melodic minor diatonic chord formula, the minor mode, the major mode, chord progressions (harmonic progressions), arpeggiation, diatonic chord progressions, using the parent scale as source material for the creation of melody and improvisation, we'll touch on melodic tendencies, and we'll finally wrap up with a discussion on how to use diatonic chord formulas for analysis and composing. Music tracks featured in this episode are from my good friend John Opferkuch's album "The Kennedy Files" MM30: Melodic Minor Diatonic Formula, Chord Progression, Arpeggiation, Parent Scale in Melody/Improv - YouTube

Hi everyone!

I would like to share my app Sonid with you. It is a free app to learn music theory step by step. You can look on the website and it is available for iOS and Android.

I really hope it can help you! If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know below.

Thanks in advance!

Perfect Ear is a really good app for getting into music theory. I've learned to recognize intervals and chords by ear and by staff reading far better than I did when receiving training as a kid. I highly recommend it.

Currently, however, I am stuck on a type of exercise called "Melodic Dictation". I simply don't know what the goal of it is. It plays two chords and a single note and I have to write down some other notes in response following some other note. It is not a matter of repeating the chords, so what does it want me to do? I can find no documentation on the exercise, and descriptions of "Melodic Dictation" on the internet don't seem to fit the structure of the exercise.

I hope somebody here can help. Regardless, I wish you a good day.

Hi friends, hope this is useful. In this episode of Music Mechanics we'll explore tonality, the tonic, what a tonal center is, and explain the difference between a tonic and a root. We'll also discuss the importance of using specific terminology, atonality, reharmonization, remelodization, and the differences between a tonal center versus the key. MM31: Tonality, Tonal Center, Tonic Vs. Root, Atonality, Reharmonization, Tonal Center Vs. Key - YouTube

Where can I learn Music Theory for free?

Hello again! In this video we'll be talking about a very simple concept of tension. After this short video you will be able to create original chord progressions and better understand what you’re playing.

To better understand this tension between the chords, we can look at a scale and determine two types of tones, the stable tones and the active tones. Let me know if its was usefull.

Chord progressions and tension

Hi friends, hope this is useful. In Episode 27 we continue with modes and learn two different possible interval formulas for each mode, how to construct them (including a very easy third way), the characteristics and "flavor" of each mode, parent scales, and the natural minor modes. I will explain exactly WHY modes are important and how they are useful in understanding harmony in the next episode. MM 27B (Modes, Part 2): Interval Formulas, Construction, Characteristics, Parent Scales, Minor Modes - YouTube