Basic Music Theory for Beginners - The Complete Guide – Icon - Deepstash
Managing Time Like a Pro

Learn more about personaldevelopment with this collection

How to set achievable goals

How to manage time for personal and professional life

How to avoid distractions

Managing Time Like a Pro

Discover 88 similar ideas in

It takes just

11 mins to read

Musical theory: a tool to understand music

Musical theory: a tool to understand music

Music theory will give you a better understanding of music. It is not a set of rules but a tool to help you understand, create, and communicate music.

The best is to learn music fundamentals first. The building blocks of musical compositions include:

  • Harmony - When multiple notes play at the same time to produce a harmonious new sound.
  • Melody - Notes in succession that are arranged into a musical phrase.
  • Rhythm - A recurring movement of notes and rests and a pattern of strong and weak notes.

465

3.06K reads

Harmony in music

Harmony combines chords and chord progressions. Not all harmonies sound pleasing to the ear.

  • Dissonant harmony doesn't sound pleasant when played together. It adds tension and makes the chord sound unstable.
  • Consonant harmony sounds balanced and pleasant.

Musicians combine consonant and dissonant harmonies to make music more interesting.

413

2.48K reads

The melody in music

The melody of the song is often the most recognisable part. Most compositions have multiple melodies that repeat.

Two primary elements of a melody:

  1. Pitch is how high or low a note will sound.
  2. Rhythm is the duration of each pitch.

There are two types of melodic motion that musicians combine to give melodies more variation:

  1. Conjunct motion is when notes move by whole or half steps with shorter leaps between the notes.
  2. Disjunct motion has larger leaps between the notes.

414

1.89K reads

Basic elements of rhythm in music

Rhythm is the backbone for other musical elements. Understanding rhythm can help you make great music.

  • Beat: A repeating pulse.
  • Meter: A specific pattern of strong and weak pulses.
  • Time Signature: The number of beats per measure.
  • Tempo: How fast or slow the music plays.
  • Strong and Weak Beats: The downbeats are the strong beats, and the offbeats are the weak beats.
  • Syncopation: Rhythms that accent or emphasize the offbeats.
  • Accents: Where the emphases are placed on the notes.

417

1.65K reads

The fundamentals of music theory

The fundamentals of music theory

  • The musical alphabet consists of seven letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and repeat. They are the white keys, and each note has a specific pitch.
  • There are 12 notes on the piano keyboard: A, A#/B♭, B, C, C#/D♭, D, D#/E♭, E, F, F#/G♭, G, G#/A♭. The sharps (#) and flats (♭) are often the black keys on a piano.
  • Octaves are the next highest or lowest pitch of the same note.
  • Key signatures indicate what notes in a scale are sharp (♯) or flat (♭).

422

1.6K reads

Intervals - the distance between two notes

There are five types of intervals in music: major (M), minor (m), perfect (P), augmented (A), and diminished (d). They are measured by the number of half steps and whole steps, and their position in the scale.

Intervals are the foundation of harmony (paying two or more notes together) and melody (playing single notes in sequence).

408

1.42K reads

Music scales

A music scale is a set of notes within an octave and arranged by their pitch. The notes from a scale form melodies and harmonies.

The two main types of scales are major and minor scales and can start from any note.

  • Major scales are happy sounding and follow the same interval pattern of whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half.
  • Minor scales sound dark and sad and follow the same interval pattern of whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole.

There are twelve minor scales with three variations: natural, harmonic, and melodic.

416

1.21K reads

Music modes

Musical modes are scales and are made from a parent scale. They use the same notes and interval patterns, but the scale is started on a different note.

The seven musical modes are:

  • I – Ionian: major scale
  • ii – Dorian: major scale starting on the 2nd degree
  • iii – Phrygian: major scale starting on the 3rd degree
  • IV – Lydian: major scale starting on the 4th degree
  • V – Mixolydian: major scale starting on the 5th degree
  • vi – Aeolian: natural minor scale or major scale starting on the 6th degree
  • vii – Locrian: major scale starting on the 7th degree

427

1.05K reads

Basic chords in music

Chords are the harmonious building blocks of music. Knowing how to build chords and how they interact is essential when learning music theory.

There are four basic types of chords in music:

  1. Major – It has a major third and a perfect fifth above the root
  2. Minor – It has a minor third and a perfect fifth above the root
  3. Diminished – It has a minor third and a diminished fifth above the root
  4. Augmented – It has a major third and an augmented fifth above the root.

412

925 reads

Different types of chords

  • The most basic chords are triads - a chord made of three notes.
  • The seventh chords add a note above the basic triad. For example, C major seventh has the notes C-E-G-B.
  • Major chords have a root note, a major third, and a perfect fifth, for example, a C major triad has the notes C-E-G.
  • Minor chords have a root note, a minor third and a perfect fifth, for example, a C minor triad consists of the notes C-E♭-G.
  • Diminished chords sound tense. They have a root note, minor third, and diminished fifth. For example, a C diminished triad has the notes: C-E♭-G♭.

417

950 reads

Chord extensions, inversions and progressions

  • Chord extensions add notes to the basic triad beyond the seventh. They extend into the next octave and are richer than basic triads.
  • Chord inversions are variations of the same chord. Transferring the bottom note in a chord to the next octave makes an inversion.
  • Chord progressions is an ordered series of chords and support the melody and the rhythm.

399

1.11K reads

CURATED BY

aidenm

I’ll sleep when I am dead.

stash-superman-illustration

Explore the World’s

Best Ideas

200,000+ ideas on pretty much any topic. Created by the smartest people around & well-organized so you can explore at will.

An Idea for Everything

Explore the biggest library of insights. And we've infused it with powerful filtering tools so you can easily find what you need.

Knowledge Library

Powerful Saving & Organizational Tools

Save ideas for later reading, for personalized stashes, or for remembering it later.

# Personal Growth

Take Your Ideas

Anywhere

Organize your ideas & listen on the go. And with Pro, there are no limits.

Listen on the go

Just press play and we take care of the words.

Never worry about spotty connections

No Internet access? No problem. Within the mobile app, all your ideas are available, even when offline.

Get Organized with Stashes

Ideas for your next work project? Quotes that inspire you? Put them in the right place so you never lose them.

Join

2 Million Stashers

4.8

5,740 Reviews

App Store

4.7

72,690 Reviews

Google Play

Sean Green

Great interesting short snippets of informative articles. Highly recommended to anyone who loves information and lacks patience.

samz905

Don’t look further if you love learning new things. A refreshing concept that provides quick ideas for busy thought leaders.

Shankul Varada

Best app ever! You heard it right. This app has helped me get back on my quest to get things done while equipping myself with knowledge everyday.

Ashley Anthony

This app is LOADED with RELEVANT, HELPFUL, AND EDUCATIONAL material. It is creatively intellectual, yet minimal enough to not overstimulate and create a learning block. I am exceptionally impressed with this app!

Jamyson Haug

Great for quick bits of information and interesting ideas around whatever topics you are interested in. Visually, it looks great as well.

Giovanna Scalzone

Brilliant. It feels fresh and encouraging. So many interesting pieces of information that are just enough to absorb and apply. So happy I found this.

Ghazala Begum

Even five minutes a day will improve your thinking. I've come across new ideas and learnt to improve existing ways to become more motivated, confident and happier.

Laetitia Berton

I have only been using it for a few days now, but I have found answers to questions I had never consciously formulated, or to problems I face everyday at work or at home. I wish I had found this earlier, highly recommended!

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving & library

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Personalized recommendations

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates