Music Theory for Beginners: Where to Start

Music theory scares people because it’s usually taught backward: rules first, music later. We’re going to do the opposite. Everything you play can be organized around four ideas, and if you understand them in this order, the rest falls into place.

1. Notes

Western music uses twelve different pitches that repeat at different heights: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, and B. After B, C comes around again, one octave higher. That’s the raw material behind almost all the music you listen to.

2. Intervals

An interval is the distance between two notes. The smallest one is the half step, also called a semitone (one fret on the guitar, or from one key to the very next on the piano). Two half steps make a whole step, also called a tone. Intervals are the key to everything: a melody is a series of intervals, and a chord is a set of intervals sounding together.

3. Scales

A scale is a set of notes chosen with a fixed pattern of whole and half steps. The major scale follows the pattern whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half (W – W – H – W – W – W – H). Start on C, follow that pattern, and you get C, D, E, F, G, A, B: the white keys on the piano.

4. Chords

Take a note from the scale, skip one, take the next, skip another, and take one more: that’s a triad. Do that starting on each note of the major scale and you get seven chords that live in the same key. That’s why certain progressions sound good: their chords all come from the same scale.

Where to go from here

Don’t try to memorize everything at once. Pick a song you already play, figure out what key it’s in, and work out which scale degrees its chords are built on. Do that with ten songs and you’ll learn more than from a hundred pages of rules.