INTRO TO HARMONY AND THEORY
Harmony and Theory courses for the beginner (or any level) are essential to aid in your understanding and assimilation of the language of music. Lets take a look at some of the basics.
You will notice that this page and the intro to reading page are quite similar. The reason being is that the basics for learning harmony and theory and reading are the same. Later, when you progress past the basics you will learn about such topics as:
Interval Recognition
Inversions of Intervals
Chord Construction
Inversions of Chords
Chord Voicings
Non-chord Tones
Scales / Modes
and lots more…
Staff – Clefs – Leger Lines
The foundation of our notational system is called the staff (or stave). Staves is usually used as the plural. It is a grid system comprised of five lines and the spaces between them.
The position of the notes placed on the staff visually represents the relative “highness” or “lowness” of the pitches.
Each of the lines and spaces are assigned a letter name. The letter names are arranged alphabetically in ascending order: A B C D E F G. The location of the letter names is determined by a clef placed at the beginning of the staff. The following example uses the F clef. The F clef (or sometimes called the bass clef) locates the F below middle C on the fourth line of the staff.
The following picture shows the G clef. The G clef (or treble clef) locates the G above middle C on the second line of the staff.
Small lines called ledger lines can be added to the staff to extend its range higher or lower.
To summarize, it is essential that the student be fluent in recognizing notes in both of the clefs (treble and bass). I cover all of this and much more in our lessons.
Accidentals
Examining the piano or keyboard will show that there are notes between most of the white keys. These are the black keys on the piano. These pitches are half steps between the adjacent white keys. A sharp (#) is the symbol used to indicate the pitch is a half step higher.
A flat (b) is the symbol used to indicate the pitch is a half step lower.
By examining the keyboard, while most sharps or flats will be the black keys, some may be another white key directly beneath or above another white key. This applies to the pairs of white keys which do not share a black key in between.
Come find out more in a private lesson.
Scales
A scale is a series of ascending or descending notes in a step-wise pattern. This is a chromatic scale. It uses all of the notes between the F’s and all of the pitches move by half step (Chromatic = “half step”).
The following sales use all the natural notes (the white keys) in the order of notes.
