For years I've been teaching Music Theory in the college classroom. These classes use the same syllabus I've used in my college classes for years, at a fraction of the cost. I believe anyone can learn Music Theory - and cost shouldn't be a barrier.
Recently I was named as a semi-finalist for the Grammy Foundation's Music Educator of the Year award because of my in-person university classes. Now I'm taking those classes to Udemy in an online format in order to reach more students, and give them the joy of Music Theory.
This class is a Comprehensive class - it will have many parts, going through my entire annual curriculum.
This class is Part 1: Reading Music & The Symbols of Music Notation.
What will I learn in this Course?
- My approach to Music Theory
- Tools you will need to learn Music Theory quickly and efficiently
- Music software: Notation programs
- The elements of the Score
- Pitch Names
- Pitch Classes
- Octaves
- The White Keys
- The Black Keys (not the band!)
- Half-Steps and Whole-Steps
- Clefs
- Intervals
- Naming Octaves
- Identifying Notes on the Staff
- Identifying Notes on the Keyboard
- Beat and Beat Divisions
- Tempo
- Downbeats and Upbeats
- Dotted Rhythms
- Time Signatures
- Ties
- Accidentals
- Form in Music Notation
- ...and much, much more!
REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE
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Getting Started
Welcome to the class! In this lecture we will do a quick overview of the course.
Download this file so that you have some staff paper to work with.
All The Little Dots
Here we go: The names of the pitches.
We have pitch names, which we just learned. We also have pitch classes – slightly different (but important) than pitch names.
A lot of music theory comes down to intervals – the distance between notes. Our first interval that we will learn is the Octave.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
The Keyboard
We won’t be learning how to play the piano in this class. But the piano is useful to us because it gives us a really nice visual of the notes.
We’ve learned the names of the notes, so next let’s learn how to find them on the keyboard.
The black keys present a little bit of a problem. They have 2 different names, and this can be confusing. But hold tight – it will all make sense after this video.
We’ve learned about Octaves – our first interval. Now we need to learn 2 more intervals, and these are much smaller than an octave.
Up next: A little recap. We need to connect a few dots to make sense of how this all works together.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
Pitch Notation on the Staff
A new wrinkle! The Clef can show us what range of notes we are talking about. There are many clefs, and everything changes if we are on a different clef.
Let’s focus just on the treble clef for now, and get back to what we already know.
Now that we can see notes on the staff, we should try to get comfortable naming the notes and the intervals.
Sometimes we use numbers to indicate the octave, like C3, C4, C5, etc. You might see these numbers so I want you to know what they mean.
Before you dive into the first worksheet, let’s go over the Natural symbol.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
Organizing Time in Music Notation
Beats! Finding the beat, feeling the beat, and notating the beat are fairly difficult concepts. But with a little guidance, I can get it sorted out for you.
We have, mainly, two different types of meters (time) in music: Duple and Triple.
Three new terms: Tempo (speed), Downbeats, and upbeats.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
Notating Time on a Musical Staff
In order to notate rhythms, we need to be able to quantify them by their relationship to each other.
We can add a dot to any rhythm (or rest) to elongate it.
What about a rhythm that indicates a certain amount of silence? That is called a rest, and there is one for every rhythmic symbol.
So far we have looked mostly only at the time signature of 4/4. But there are many others, and things work a little differently in each one.
So far we have a whole note (4 beats long) as the longest possible rhythmic symbol. But we can make longer symbols by connecting a few together using ties.
A brief side note: I’ve been giving you a lot of terms in this class that are specific to the way we talk about music in the United States. In this lecture I’ll talk a bit about some things you should know if you are outside of the U.S.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
Score Symbols and Conventions
So far we have talked about notes on the score, and rhythms on the score. What about volume? We call volume “Dynamics” and this is how we notate them.
There is a little more to accidentals that we haven’t learned yet. Let’s tie up some loose ends about accidentals in this video.
Form is the order of events in music. It is also notated on the score using repeats, DS sections, and other tricks.
Here is a downloadable PDF worksheet for you to practice on. Page 2 of this worksheet has the answers on it so you can check your work. Practice, practice, practice!
Putting it all Together
There is a secret website that publishes thousands and thousands of scores that we can download and practice with.
Here are my tips for practicing!
Here are a bunch of files for you to practice with. This is actually a complete book of (fairly) simple music compositions to practice with.
Wrap Up
That’s it for part 1! We’ve only scratched the surface!