Music Theory Essentials offers an antidote to music theory textbooks that are overly long and dense. Focusing on the essentials, this text provides a clear-cut guide to the key concepts of music theory. Beginning with no assumptions about music theory knowledge, the book covers the core elements of music fundamentals, diatonic and chromatic harmony, post-tonal theory, and popular music in a single concise volume. Emphasizing critical thinking skills, this book guides students through conceptualizing musical concepts and mastering analytic techniques.
Each chapter concludes with a selection of applications designed to enhance engagement:
Exercises allow students to apply and practice the skills and techniques addressed in the chapter.
Brain Teasers challenge students to expand their musical understanding by thinking outside the box.
Exploring Music offers strategies for students to apply learned concepts to the music they are currently learning or listening to.
Thinking Critically encourages students to think more deeply about music by solving problems and identifying and challenging assumptions.
A companion website provides answers to book exercises, additional downloadable exercises, and audio examples.
Straightforward and streamlined, Music Theory Essentials is a truly concise yet comprehensive introduction to music theory that is accessible to students of all backgrounds.
Part I introduces the fundamental elements of music. Chapter 1 explains the basics of pitch notation, including the staff, note names in various clefs, and accidentals. Chapter 2 examines intervals (two notes combined together) and offers strategies for their identification and spelling. The study of intervals is critical to subsequent chapters of this textbook and to musical understanding as a whole, as intervals are the building blocks of larger musical structures like scales and melodies (Chapter 3), keys (Chapter 4) and chords (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 explores various aspects of musical time, including tempo, meter, rhythm, and rhythmic notation. Chapter 7 begins to integrate elements of pitch and time and introduces important voice-leading concepts and procedures to be built upon throughout the remainder of this book.
1
Pitch and Notation
Pitch
Pitch refers to the perceived highness or lowness of a sound. Musical sound sources like vocal cords and guitar strings vibrate at various frequencies. The brain interprets frequency as pitchâthe faster the rate of vibration, the higher the perceived pitch. Pitches combine to form structures such as melodies and chords.
A musical pitch is often referred to as a note. Notes are named with the first seven letters of the alphabet: AâBâCâDâEâFâG. This series of letters repeats throughout the pitch continuum; the pitch above G is another A. The pitches A through G, without any sharps (
) or flats (
) attached to them, are the natural notes. The natural notes are the white keys of the piano.
The pitch continuum is divided into octaves. Each octave begins on C and contains the seven pitches ordered CâDâEâFâGâAâB. A numeric suffix indicates the octave designation of a pitch. Example 1.1 shows where each octave begins on the piano keyboard, extending from just below C1 to C8 (notes get higher from left to right on the keyboard). C4 is known as middle C and is located toward the center of the keyboard. The D above middle C is D4 (belonging to the same octave as C4), and the B below middle C is B3 (belonging to the octave below).
EXAMPLE 1.1 Octave and pitch locations on the keyboard.
All pitches with the same letter name sound similar because their frequencies are multiples of one another. For example, A4 vibrates at 440 Hz (hertz = cycles per second). A3 vibrates at half the frequency (220 Hz), while A5 vibrates twice as fast (880 Hz). All pitches with the same letter name belong to the same general pitch class. A3, A4, and A5 all belong to pitch-class A. However, because we hear A5 to be higher than A4, these are different specific pitches.
The Notation of Pitch
Music is notated on the musical staff. The staff contains five lines and four spaces. Pitches a...
