A Beginner's Guide to Music Theory

I was never really taught music theory at least not in a classroom setting my music theory knowledge is completely self-taught mostly by watching videos online just like you're doing right now so while I may not possess the same knowledge as someone with a formal education I do know what it's like to be someone with no prior knowledge looking to learn and maybe just not knowing where to start so I'm here to hopefully guide some of you beginners out there as a fellow peer an attempt to teach you the basics of music theory to do this I'm gonna split this video up into four main sections where I'll cover what I believe to be the most important aspects someone with little music Theory knowledge should learn whether you're looking to write your own music play an instrument or produce your own songs I think this video may help you learn a little bit more about music theory so to begin let's talk about tempo tempo is the pace of a song is it fast or is it slow a beat is a standard unit of time of music whenever you tap your feet along to a song or whenever a metronome ticks that lands on a beat the tempo is then measured in BPM or beats per minute which determines how many you get it in general a higher BPM means more beats more frequently resulting in a faster song slower BPM makes for a slower song generally you'll work with anywhere from 40 to 250 bpm these numbers are completely arbitrary but the point is you won't ever really have a need for anything outside that range time signatures expand upon this and determine how the music is to be counted these are often written like fractions with the top number representing how many beats will lie within a bar and the bottom number determining the length of note to count the most common time signature is 4/4 this means we count four beats in a bar and the lengths of notes within this bar must add up to the equivalent of four quarter notes granted we can use any combination of notes and any combination of rests to fill up the space as long as they add up to the equivalent of four quarter notes sound confusing that's because it is if we were in the time signature 3/4 we would count three beats in a bar that are the length of three quarter notes but if we were to double both of these numbers and use 6/8 that's actually different than 3/4 because remember we're musicians and mathematicians if any of this went over your head just use for for frequencies this is a note a note is comprised of a pitch and a duration pitch is the particular frequency of a sound measured in Hertz this determines how high or low a note is someone somewhere then decided to assign arbitrary names to pleasant sounding frequency values as the first seven letters of the alphabet any frequency value that is an exact multiple of one of these notes is also considered the same pitch just played either slower or faster for example 440 Hertz corresponds to the note a but so does 880 Hertz since this is the same pitch just played twice as fast the gap between these two notes is called an octave so to distinguish between these two notes we often call them by their letter name and octave number 440 Hertz in this case is called a 4 and is often used as the reference for tuning instruments know a piano is a good way to visually represent notes which is often why a piano roll is used in electronic music software as a way to draw in your notes even if a piano isn't the instrument you are playing the lowest note on a standard 88 key piano is a zero from there every white note follows the pattern of b c d e f g and then the next octaves a repeating until the end the black keys are named according to their location compared to the key either to their left or right to handle this we use fancy terms called sharps and flats sharp means we go up to the next closest key and the flat means we go down to the next closest key the gap between each key on a piano is called either a half step or a semitone for example the black key directly to the right of C is one semitone above C and therefore called C sharp however as if this weren't confusing enough already the same exact note is also called D flat because it lies one semitone below D so now to really hit at home let's quickly recap all the notes in any given octave starting with C C sharp D d sharp E f-sharp G g-sharp a a sharp B bringing us to a grand total of 12 semitones in a single octave scales scales are a collection of notes that sounds good when played together this note may sound fine by itself but when played in succession with these other notes and not so much this is because it's not in the same scale as the other notes and therefore is considered off-key the two most common types of scales are major and minor major scales generally sound happy while minor scales sound sad a scale has a root note which is named after for example C major arguably the most popular scale is a major scale starting at C this is popular because a C major scale uses only the white keys on the piano you will recognize this as your dough Raimi's however a major scale can be placed on any root note a nifty trick to quickly write any major scale is to draw in notes on all the white keys starting from C and ending at C then drag that to your desired root note for example this is a C major scale and now this is an E major scale similarly writing a minor scale is as simple as drawing in all the notes on all the white keys starting from a and ending at a then drag that to your desired root note this is an a minor scale and now this is a G minor scale your gut may be telling you that there's no difference between these two scales since all I did was draw on the white notes so they're the exact same the crucial difference here is where I started the gaps between the white notes will be offset depending on what note I started from this process can be repeated for each root note for example drawing in all the white notes from D to D results in what's called a Dorian scale but if you're just starting off I'd recommend sticking with only major and minor scales for now chords chords are multiple notes played in harmony at the same time the most common type of chord consists of three notes and therefore is called a triad a chord is named after its root note and its quality for example this is a C major chord an easy way to remember how to make major chords is to pick your root note and draw in another note four semitones above that and then finally one more three semitones above that note or a total of seven above your root another even quicker way to remember major triads is to draw in a major scale using the trick previously described let's pretend I want to be in F major now pick any note to be the root of my chord let's say a sharp from here draw on a note at every other key in the scale moving upwards in this case we skip over C the next highest note in the F major scale draw in a note at D skip over E and draw on a note at F for this reason the major chord is referred to having the pattern of one three five since our roots is the first note and from here we use the third and fifth notes in the scale respectively we now have an a sharp major chord and just like magic it also follows the pattern we previously described where the gap between the root and the second note is four semitones and the gap between the root and the third is seven and making minor triad chords is also very similar in fact the only difference from a major triad is you drop the second note down by one semitone so to make a B minor chord for example draw on your root note at B move up by three semitones again rather than four in a major chord and then your third note four semitones above that again this is still a total of seven semitones above your root from here we have a B minor chord and yes this is still the one three five pattern if you're in a minor scale the difference between major and minor chords is small in terms of only being off by one semitone but they make a world of difference in the tone they create from here chords can be expanded upon to be spiced up a little bit for example C major triad has the notes C e G recall these are the one three and five notes in the major scale if I were to add the note B this is now a C major seventh chord since I added in the seventh note in the scale in addition to my triad from here you can use the tricks covered in this video to write chord progressions or melodies that are in key and sound good together and you'll know why I think that's the best part about music theory I used to be able to cobble something together when producing music when I didn't even know music theory but it would just take way too long and ultimately not even sound that good however once I took the time to pick up the basics of music theory my songwriting improved tenfold so hopefully this video helped you gain a little bit of knowledge in some sort of aspect if you want to catch future videos I make just like this one feel free to subscribe otherwise best of luck thanks for watching

Channel: InspirAspir

Views: 1,076,255

Rating: 4.9650526 out of 5

Keywords: Music Theory, Music Theory For beginners, Beginner's Guide to Music Theory, Music theory guitar, music theory piano, music theory 101, music theory for dummies, music theory chords, music theory scales, music theory for kids, music production, producer, how to produce music

Id: n2z02J4fJwg

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 08 2018