The human's Guide To Beginner's Thoery

thehuman's guide to beginner's music theory (part 1)

let's get some definitions out of the way first.

major and minor are the two basic labels for music. major is basically music with a happy feel, and minor is basically music with a sad feel. major is noted with a capital M, and minor with a lowercase m.

therefore, GM would be g major, and Am would a minor.

a root note is the note the scale is named after, and the first note of the scale. i.e. A minor's root note is A, and D major's is D.

harmony is when two or more notes are played together. it's hard to explain how it differs from a chord, but generally two instruments make harmony, and one makes a chord.

movement from note to note is reffered to as a step. a half-step is from one note to the next (one fret on a guitar, or one key on a piano), a whole step skips a note (two frets or two keys).

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all music is made up of 12 notes: 7 naturals, 5 accidentals (sharps & flats).
on a piano, the naturals are white, and the accidentals are black.

an octave is the span from one note to the next note of the same name. i.e. from c4 to c5 is one octave. there are 12 notes in an octave. however,
most of the time, you are only using certain notes within the octave. this is called a scale.

the scales can get very complicated, but we will only be dealing with the 2 most basic: major and minor.

the major and minor scales are very similar to each, and you could create endless tunes knowing only these two scales, and they are by far the most often used. to begin with, we are going to look at the starting point of all music theory: the c major scale.

one octave of the c major scale looks like this: c, d, e, f, g, a, b, ©
notice there are no sharps or flats (# or b )? this is because the c major scale is the only one with all natural notes. this means that you can sit at a piano, hit only white notes, and still be playing somewhat "in key". (that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to sound good, though.)

there are eight steps to the major and minor scales, the eighth being the start of the next octave. when written, they are described with roman numerals. so, the c major scale would look like this:

C D E F G A B ©
I ii iii IV V vi vii I (octave starts over)

each step of the scale is reffered to by its number in relation to the root note. i.e. in a C major scale, D is a 2nd, and A is a sixth.

the ones in caps, the 4th and 5th, are known as perfect steps. perfect 4th, perfect 5th. they will ALWAYS harmonize and sound good. it doesn't matter if you're playing in major or minor-the 4th and 5th are always the same (the other notes change as we'll see in a moment). if you ever get stuck on a melody or chord progression, find the 4th or 5th (which we will also get to), and it will be a good starting place.

now we get into chord progressions. ever seen something like I-IV-V and wondered what the hell it meant? does it make a little more sense now? it's just that the steps of the scale make up chords. let's use g major.

G A B C D E F# G
I ii iii IV V vi vii I

I-IV-V is the most commonly used progression ever. by far. (wild thing, louie, louie, almost every green day song, lots of pink floyd, the list goes on and on) and it's for the exact reason I mentioned above- it will always sounds good. look at the g major. I-IV-V would be G, C, D. THE most common chord progression. if you're ever stuck, turn to the I-IV-V.

now, as far as learning the scales, that's up to you. I'm not going to put those up, but you'll probably need to know them if you're really going to get anything out of this. I apologize, but I'm quite sick of typing at this point, and I know I haven't finished explaining. hope this helps. if not, leave your questions below (because I know I left things out-it's hard to write a tutorial in this little box), and I'll try to answer them in installment 2.

music theory is very confusing. read this through a few times before you decide it is worthless. if you still find it worthless after that, f**k, I don't know, write your own. just kidding. all I'm saying is, it IS going to confuse you if you're new to it. I will get installment 2 some time, though. it will explain more.
Thehuman's Guide To Beginner's Thoery