Educate Me !!

[Tiggi]

I'm a complete musical illiterate, but don't feel I'm likely to learn. This doesn't stop me being interested in musical theory in a complete-lack-of-commitment type way.

So, all you musical savants...

tell me something interesting or important about musical theory !!

[trbc08]

A chromatic scale is a scale that contains all of the notes in an octave (twelve semitones). Arnold Schoenberg, a 20th century composer, used this little bit of theory to create a technique called "dodecaphony" or the twelve-tone technique. He'd essentially create a musical piece in which each note of a chromatic scale was used the same number of times as every other note and no note had more emphasis than the others (the idea of the piece of music being in any key is erased). This concept is paramount to the work of a lot of 20th century composers. I believe his work was also dubbed "degenerate" by Nazis during WWII.

[trbc08]

It might also help to know that tones, in this sense, are the intervals between the pitch of notes. A semitone is the space between two notes... So A to B is a semitone. The space between three notes is a whole tone. So D to E is a whole tone (one might say "But D and E are only one semitone apart" due to their positions in the alphabet, but you can't forget that Dsharp/Eflat is between D and E). I'm sure this is confusing, the way I explain it. It'd probably be best to further research it on wikipedia.

[Tiggi]

Not sure I'm any the wiser, but I have decided to put Schoenburg on the buy list...

Cheers, Alex.

[trbc08]

Well, hey, that amounts to something!

[bryce]

I'm not sure that these older threads will give me a reply off my reply but.....

there are alot of really cool things in music theory that make the music work. some terms that might help you are syncopation, layering, tension and release tension notes, modes of scales, scales in general, key, bpm(beats per minute), etc. this list is endless but if you look up some of these things in music they could greatly improve your music theory knowledge. also see styles of music- everyone knows what a rock peice sounds like but do you know why it sounds like that??

[Tiggi]

It seems I owe it to myself to do a bit of research. Unfortunately I'd always prefer to simply listen...

[Mark William]

email me and I will send you the first of the theory basics. I have been teaching music theory for 25 years now. I have actually written a book on it.
For me it is actually easier than learning to play any instrument.