Music is the formation of sound. In other words, organizing sounds in a specific way is music. Broadly: music is beat, music is rhythm, music is balance, music is scale, music is Interval, music is many more, after all, in a way, music is life.
Because music can navigate the emotion, music can heal the wounds, and ultimately, music can touch the soul. Music is something that you can feel without understanding the meaning of it.
Music theory:
Since the arena of Music is limitless, we can’t limit it by any rules. But still, there are some theories which help to understand the music orderly.
Music theory is the study or formula of Music. It will show how a piece of music forms in detail. It will guide, it will interpret, and it will communicate about the music. So by understanding the Music theory, it will get easier to play Music with confidence.
In this article, I go through all the basics of Music theory, which forms as a gist or the fundamentals of overall music theory. So, Let’s get started!
Music Notes:
In music, a note is a symbol denoting a musical sound, so simply a note is sound itself.
There are seven distinct notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G
Pitch:
Each note has its unique pitch, tone, or sound. In music, the pitch of a note means how high or low the note is. In physics, it is measure in a unit called Hertz.
Example: Each note represents a frequency of sound. “A” is 440 Hz. “A” in the next octave is 880 Hz, exactly double the frequency of the previous. That’s why, despite being different frequencies, they sound the “same” and we identify both as the same note.
12 Notes of Music:
There aren’t seven notes within an octave, but twelve. How?
Because five of them as “sharps” or “flats”:
A, A#/B♭, B, C, C#/D♭, D, D#/E♭, E, F, F#/G♭, G, G#/A♭
The difference between one note to another is not to measure by tone, but by a semitone. Which is the minimum difference between two notes, for instance, A to B is a tone, whereas A to A# is a semitone.
There are white key and black key in the keyboard:
- White key: “natural” notes in a scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G)
- Black key: the “flat” and “sharp” notes in a scale (A#/B♭, C#/D♭, D#/E♭, F#/G♭, G#/A♭)
Intervals:
Simply, an interval is a distance between two notes. Now there will be many differences among all notes by their distance, and it will bring them to different intervals. So the naming convention of intervals also follows the distance and type. This distance is measured by half steps, whole steps, and their position.
- Playing two or more notes at the same time creates harmonic intervals (chords)
- Playing a single note one after the other creates melodic intervals (melodies)
Intervals are named by size(distance) and quality(type): M7 = Major 7 (here major is the quality and 7 is the size)
Quality: There are five interval qualities are major(M), minor(m), perfect(p), augmented(A/+) and diminished(dim/o). These are the prefixes that describe quality.
Size: The interval number represents the number of half-steps between two notes. For instance:
- Major Unison
- Major 2nd: Two half-steps
- Major 3rd: Four half-steps
- Major 4th: Five half-steps
- Major 5th: Seven half-steps
- Major 6th: Nine half-steps
- Major 7th: Eleven half-steps
- Major 8th: 12 half-steps (octave)
Intervals are:
- Perfect: If the top note is in the major key of the bottom note / the bottom note is in the major key of the top note.
- Major: If the top note is in the major key of the bottom note.
- Minor: If it is a half step smaller than major.
- Diminished: If it is a half step smaller than minor or perfect.
- Augmented: If it is a half step larger than major or perfect.
We will discuss intervals in more detail in other articles.
Octave:
Octave is a kind of interval, as it represents the distance between the highest or lowest pitch of the same note. More precisely, in music, an octave or perfect octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency.
Perfect Octave is also called P8, which requires 12 semitones.
In terms of physics, an octave is a distance between one note and another note that’s double its frequency.
In Western music, octaves are connected in 12 equal intervals. Each of these 12 intervals brings us to a new note.
Key Signature:
First let’s understand the Key, a Key of music is the menu of 7 different notes. In music theory, the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of music.
One more important thing for the key signature is accidental, let just know about it, a note that is not the member of the key is called accidental. They occur only occasionally in the course of a musical composition. The three main accidentals are sharps, flats, and naturals.
So finally, key signatures tell us two important things, in which key and what sharps or flats are there.
A key signature, the arrangement of sharp or flat signs on particular lines and spaces of a musical staff to indicate that the corresponding notes, in every octave, are to be consistently raised (by sharps) or lowered (by flats) from their natural pitches.
Note: The keys of C major and A minor, having no sharps or flats, have no key signature. They also help you identify the key of a song, which is the tonal center. For example, a song in the key of A minor uses notes from the A minor scale.
Most music is in a particular key. If we say that a song is “in the key of C,” this means that the pitch C sounds like the most stable “home note” (or tonic) for the song.
Scale:
Scale, in music theory, is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. In other words, a collection of notes in order from low to high. A scale is a group of pitches (scale degrees) arranged in ascending order.
It’s a subset of all available notes, chosen because of the way they relate to each other. Each type of scale has a distinct sound, and many people have particular emotional associations with particular scales.
Types of scale: According to the number of different pitch:
- Chromatic: 12 notes per octave
- Octatonic: 8 notes per octave – Jazz
- Heptatonic: 7 notes per octave – Modern Western
- Hexatonic: 6 notes per octave – Western folk
- Pentatonic: 5 notes per octave – Asian folk music
- Tetratonic: 4 notes, Tritonic: 3 notes, Ditonic: 2 notes
The two most common qualities/types of scales are major and minor.
Major
Major scales are bright, uplifting, and happy sounding. Interval pattern for major scale: W-W-H-W-W-W-H (whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half). There are twelve possible natural major scales.
Minor
Natural minor scales are dark, sad, and emotional sounding. Interval pattern for minor scale: W-H-W-W-H-W-W (whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole). There are twelve possible natural minor scales. Besides, there are three variations of the minor scale: natural, harmonic and melodic.
Small variation:
- Harmonic: W-H-W-W-H-Step_and_a_Half-H
- Melodic: W-H-W-W-W-W-H
Note: By changing the first note, and by following the above pattern, you can construct any major or minor scale. Likewise, if you know the pattern for any other scale, you can create them, too.
Scale Degrees
Scale degree is nothing, just the number of the note in a scale. It’s useful for indicating the size of intervals and chords and whether they are major or minor.
In the most general sense, the scale degree is the number given to each step of the scale, usually starting with 1 for tonic. In a more specific sense, scale degrees are given names that indicate their particular function within the scale.
Music is all about the creation and release of tension. The function of a scale degree relates to the amount of tension it creates. It also helps you decide what note(s) should follow to resolve the tension.
Each note in a scale has a name that relates to its function and a number to indicate its position on the scale. There are seven scale degrees. These names apply to all major and minor scales.
- 1st – Tonic
- 2nd – Supertonic
- 3rd – Mediant
- 4th – Subdominant
- 5th – Dominant
- 6th – Submediant
- 7th – Leading Tone
Modes:
The musical mode is a kind of scale, it derived from a parent scale. There are seven music modes. Each mode is a slight variation of a scale. They use all the same notes and interval patterns as the parent scale. The main difference is the root note used to build the scale. Starting a scale on a different note defines the tonal center, giving it distinct melodic characteristics.
It comes from the earliest forms of western music. In early music, the modes were used similarly to how we use keys now.
There are total seven music modes with starting point:
- I – Ionian (major scale)
- ii – Dorian (major scale starting with 2nd degree)
- iii – Phrygian (major scale starting with 3rd degree)
- IV – Lydian (major scale starting with 4th degree)
- V – Mixolydian (major scale starting with 5th degree)
- vi – Aeolian (natural minor or major starting with 6th degree)
- vii – Locrian (major scale starting with 7th degree)
Chords:
A chord is a combination of notes, two or more, that are played together at the same time. It can create harmony by playing a group of notes simultaneously. It works as a texture to a melody, and can even provide rhythm to a song.
The most common and frequently played chords are triads, which is the form of three notes. There is a starting note for all chords called the root note, for instance, C E G, here C is the root note. So, in general, the formation of a chord is like a root, third, and fifth.
There are four basic types of chords in music, and these are triads:
- Major – root, major 3rd, and perfect 5th
- Minor – root, minor 3rd, and perfect 5th
- Augmented – root, major 3rd, and augmented 5th
- Diminished – root, minor 3rd, and diminished 5th
Major chords are often described as brighter and happy chords. A major chord has what’s called a “natural third.” It’s the third degree of the chord’s respective major scale.
Minor chords are often described as darker and sad chords. A minor chord has what’s called either a “minor third” or a “flat third.” It’s the third degree of the chord’s respective minor scale.
Diminished: Diminished chords sound tense, dissonant, and dramatic.
Augmented: Augmented chords sound dissonant, unsettling, and mysterious.
Note: These two have different qualities to their sound, which may not sound in perfect harmony. They may sound bizarre or unbalanced, that’s why they are known as dissonant chords also. These are not usually pleasing to the ear in the traditional sense, so they are quite captivating when placed strategically in music.
Few other cords which are not use usually:
Seventh chord: A seventh chord adds a note extra to the basic triad. Seventh chords have a root note, a 3rd, a perfect 5th, and a 7th. There are also five main types of seventh chords: major, minor, dominant, diminished, and half-diminished.
- Major seventh, it is considered as a thoughtful and soft sound. It sounds jazzy, so mostly it is used in Jazz music. It consists of a root note, a major 3rd, a perfect 5th, and a major 7th.
- Minor seventh, it is considered as a moody or contemplative sound. If major chords are happy, and minor chords are sad, then minor seventh chords are somewhere in between these two. It consists of a root note, a minor third, a perfect 5th, and a minor 7th.
- Dominant seventh, it is considered as a strong and restless sound. Dominant seventh chords are commonly found in jazz and blues, as well as hip hop, R&B, and EDM. It consists of a root note, a major third, a perfect 5th, and a minor 7th.
Suspended Chords (sus2 & sus4): These chords don’t follow the formula, in general, a chord composed of a root, a third, and a fifth, but these suspended are not. These chords are essentially a chord with “something else” instead of the third, which leads to it being less stable and not defined as major or minor. This “something else” can be the second or the fourth.
- Sus2: It consists of the root, 2nd, and 5th notes of the major scale (1-2-5) = C D G. The sus2 chord replaces the third with the second note. By removing the 3rd in a chord, the chord becomes neither major or minor.
- Sus4: It consists of the root, 4th, and 5th notes of the major scale (1-4-5) = C F G. replaces the third with the fourth note.
Chord Extension:
There are chords beyond the seventh, namely 9th, 11th, and 13th chords. There are many types of extended chords, all these chords are not necessary, but let it know that chord can extend by adding notes to the basic triad.
Extended chords create a more affluent, more harmonically elaborate sound than basic major and minor triads. They also provide additional voice leading possibilities, which makes chord progressions sound more interesting.
Chord Inversions:
A chord’s inversion defines the connection of its lowest notes to the other notes in the chord. For example, a C-major triad contains the tones C, E, and G; its inversion is determined by which of these tones is the lowest note in the chord. It also the variations of the same chord, therefore the more notes a chord has the more possible inversions will there. Chord inversions add variation, excitement, and smoother transitions to chord progressions.
Chord Progression:
A chord progression, also called the harmonic progression, is an organized series of chords, which supports both the melody and the rhythm. They also provide the grounds for creating harmony and melody.
Conclusion:
I hope it would be a useful introduction to all about music theory fundamentals. Where I try to cover the most basic parts of music: notes, intervals, octave, keys, key signature, scale, scale-degree, modes, and chords. However, doing music is not only about reading theory, but also about intense practice. So if you want the best result, combine these two things you can just blast. Finally, I’m not concluding it here, I will improve if I find something important that needs to be added here. Also please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any additional insight that can make this article better. It will really be appreciated.
Stay tuned!
