Difference between revisions of "Understanding musical theory"
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Welcome to kamatsu's article on Understanding Musical Theory. | Welcome to kamatsu's article on Understanding Musical Theory. | ||
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The purpose of this article is to teach you: | The purpose of this article is to teach you: | ||
Revision as of 19:36, 6 April 2013
Welcome to kamatsu's article on Understanding Musical Theory.
The purpose of this article is to teach you:
- Basic Musical Notation
- Scales, Modes and Intervals
- Timing and Rhythmic Techniques
- Basic Harmony and Dissonance
- Chord Progressions
Contents
Scales, Keys, and Modes
The C Major Scale
Music is made up of notes. Notes are sounds of a particular frequency (measured in hertz). Different frequencies produce different pitches. For the purposes of musical composition, we have culturally assigned particular names to different frequencies as we hear them, usually letters. C, for example, is the note produced when you play the white key before a group of two black keys on a keyboard.
Note: You will notice that C occurs every 8 notes on the keyboard. Why is this? The notes are separated by a specific distance of frequencies called an octave, and, for those that know the physics, the frequencies are logarithmically compatible, so that playing them together will sound like the one note. This means that for almost all purposes they can be treated as effectively the same note. Try it, if you have access to a keyboard. You will hear that they sound the same, just with different stylised pitch.
On a Musical score (with a treble clef), we see C as one of these two notes (usually):
From this point, one can easily deduce the names of the other white key notes:
If you play the white keys on the keyboard, starting at C (C, D, E, F..) you will hear a distinctive sequence of notes that most people recognize as the major scale (Do, Re, Mi, Fa...). If you have no idea what a major scale sounds like, here's a recording:
( link "Link Here" formerly at http://kamatsu.spheredev.org/majorscale.ogg : OGG of C major scale )
This is a major scale in the key of C. That means, Do, or the tonic, is C. Later on, we'll learn how to change the tonic. Here's what a full C Major scale looks like in Musical Notation (with a treble clef):
Extra Info: Think of a melody, say, your national anthem. Then, change the note at which you start the melody. Can you still sing/play it? You should quickly realize that it doesn't actually matter what note you start on, or what note Do is, for a melody to be recognizable to the human ear. Most humans think of notes relative to each other, not relative to specific frequencies. So, you could sing the Major scale at any pitch, from A through G#, and it would still be a major scale. But, if you start playing a piano from D, and play all the white notes up to the next D, it doesn't sound like a major scale (it's actually a dorian scale). So, obviously, simply shifting all the notes up a line or space in the Notation isn't going to achieve a D Major scale. How do you achieve this? Well, first, we need to learn about semitones, and then keys.
Mnemonics for Treble Clef: Suppose you want to be able to immediately identify a note name from looking at a staff (a useful skill). Having a mnemonic or verse to help you remember what each line and spaces stands for is quite useful. Here's the mnemonics for the treble clef.
- For lines (starting at the bottom and going up) - Every Good Bolshevik Deserves Freedom. Or, less politically, Every Green Bus Drives Fast. Your choice.
- For Spaces (Starting at the bottom space and going up) - F A C E - It spells "FACE", or, alternatively, you can use: Free Alcohol Can Entice. Once again, your choice.
