Music Theory : Lesson 3

Three lesson in one night. Now we come to key signature. In previous lesson, we talk about how to build major and minor scale using pattern. And this needs accidentals (sharp and flat). We will now put this accidentals when building the major minor scale to the left side of the staff. Example is below. The top part is where you use accidentals everywhere. Since you need to repeat it anyway, we just put that accidentals near the treble clef which looks like the bottom part.
In the above example, we can see 5 flats. It must be arranged that way.

The full arrangement that needs to be followed are below:
In the above picture, the first Cmajor/aminor has no sharp/flats. The second is Gmajor/eminor which has 1 sharp at F. At C#major/a#minor, there's 7 sharps and make sure it is written that way. Cmajor/aminor to Gmajor/eminor, the difference is 5 pitch.

Numbers of key can be summarized as below:

At the bottom of circle, 6 scales are overlap. 2 overlap scales for example are Bmajor/g#minor
overlap with Cbmajor/abminor.

Unfortunately, this need to be remember.

I hope no confusion. If there is, head here: http://www.smu.edu/totw/keys.htm

Music Theory : Lesson 2

Let me skip other theory which I think not that important (because its too boring) and come directly to scale.

Remember I said pitch is frequency? In music theory, pitch is indicate using C, D, E, F, G, A, B only. To get higher pitch, you need to repeat that again. C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B..........
Let me change that a bit for easier understanding C4, D4, E4, F4, G4, A4, B4, C5, D5, E5, F5, G5, A5, B5.... C5 is higher frequency than C4. C4 is middle C in this example.

C4 to C5 without touching the black key on the piano is called major C scale.
w indicate whole notes and h indicate half notes. whole notes means after this notes is black key. Half note means after this is white key as below:
This w w h w w w h is called major scale.

Below indicate minor scale:
So minor scale has pattern w h w w h w w.

With this formula, we can build our own major minor scale. For example, to build D Major scale, we need to start from D and have the w w h w w w h pattern and voila:
That's all for today. Hope you enjoy the lesson today.

Music Theory : Lesson 1

I will begin a series of Music Theory class. I want to make sure that this Music Theory is easy to understand and short. All my materials are reproduce from http://www.smu.edu/totw/rhythm.htm

pitch vs note vs rhythm

is actually

frequency of note vs note vs how long the note is sustained


To indicate rhythm, man create notes below to indicate how long to hold the note which whole note need to be hold 32 times longer than thirty-second note:


To indicate pitch, well, use a staff (five lines) . Put the music note higher on the staff for higher pitch (frequency) and lower part of staff for lower pitch. Example below, highest G is higher pitch than lowest C4.


Rhythm can be divided by half using dot:

Rhythm can be divided more than half using tuplets:
Tuplets are very hard to understand. Explaining it will make it worst. Anyway, I'll still try. There's number on top which specify how many notes within that tuplets. To count how long you take to play this notes, you need to minus other notes and see what you're left with. In the left part of that example, the calculation is:

4 quarter notes - (1 quarter note + 2 eighth notes + 1 quarter notes) = 1 quarter notes.

So play the three eighth notes tuplets within 1 quarter notes time frame. Understand? No? It's okay. Don't worry. Skip this and come back later and reread. Or search from googles for different explanation such as http://www.musictheory.halifax.ns.ca/19triplets.html

This is end of lesson 1.