The most basic answer is probably something to the effect of, “Music theory is the study of how music works”. It deals with major and minor scales and how chords are built on top of those scales. It speaks about progression and things like consonance and dissonance, intervals and modulations.
I like to think of music theory as a language. Music theory developed over the years as a way of “speaking” to each other meaningfully about the organization of the “Sound of Music”. In this theory discussion, I’m going to be speaking specifically about what is known as Western Tonal Music, or diatonic music. This is the basis for most of the music that you listen to and is what you would learn if you were attend a University to study music. Tonal music is all based around key centers. The language that describes tonal music tells stories of relationships and how motion is created by moving in and around key centers. These are the stories that I’m going to be talking about. And I’m going to be telling these stories using the language of Western music theory.
As with any language, before we can communicate with each other in complete sentences, we have to start by learning individual words. And before we can begin to learn words, we have to know the basic alphabet. So our first stop is going to be introducing the alphabet that music theory is based on. But before we get there, let’s take a fun little diversion that will sort of lay the foundation for the ideas we’ll be talking about. So I really want to begin this discussion on music theory by taking a look at “The Sound of Music”.
