I took classical piano lessons as a child, and music never made any sense to me. Why the endless scales, etc, and what did that have to do with playing “Fairy bells”? It was only many years later that I made any kind of connection at all between the two, when I studied Jazz music theory. Much of the complexities of music were explained in a way I could finally understand. So for those of you to whom “how music is constructed” is also a complete mystery, this might help, in part, to shed some light on the subject. “Why should I bother?” is the obvious question that comes to mind, and the reason is, that understanding some music theory can help tremendously when performing a song. It helps one hear what the band is doing, even if you’re simply singing along to a karaoke track. For when you understand how everything is working together, and how the tune, i.e. your part, fits in to that whole, you’re no longer the lone voice out front, but intrinsically part of the whole thing, a necessary piece of the musical puzzle. And since most modern genre music is a distillation of the blues, which Jazz springs from, and European classical harmony, most of the songs you’ll be singing will usually be using this notation and a distillation of these harmonic ideas in one form or another.

Although music seems to be all about feeling and emotion, at its root it’s extremely mathematical and also beautifully simple. From there can spring enormous complexity, like a mathematical equation. Let’s look at a simple major piano scale to demonstrate this, C to C:

C to C

Hear The Scale C to C

A major scale is 12 notes in total, consisting of tones and semitones (or half tones). Every song you’ve ever heard (and by this I mean Western music), every piece of music ever created, springs from the notes of just one simple scale. Notes plus rhythm equal music. For within this major Scale of C, just taking the white note keys as an example, are also the scales of D, E, F, G, A and B. And if you use the black notes, you get the scales of D flat (or C sharp), E flat (or D sharp) etc, etc and so on up the scale, 12 scales in total (more of this later), 12 notes to a major scale. Already, what appears to be very simple has the potential for considerable complexity.

We calibrate scales by how many white and black notes there are. For a major scale its tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone.

A semitone is a half step, a tone is two semitones together, a whole step, for example C to D on the piano keyboard above.

Hear A Whole tone

A half tone, or semitone is, for example, C to D flat (or C sharp, notated C#, depending on the key you’re in):

A Half Tone, or Semitone

Hear A Semitone

So a scale is collection of tones and semitones. I mentioned earlier that a major scale is: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone.

The same thing applies for all of the other keys, for example D to D: tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. You count the tones and  semitones from the note on which the scale starts. However, to play a major scale in D using this system, we need to play the F# (F sharp) and C# to get the same result as a simple major C scale:

D to D

Hear A D major scale

…and so on up the keyboard, i.e. this applies to every note: C, C#, D, Eb etc.

Since music is so mathematical, it has a natural order, i.e. harmony. You can write music that’s chaotic, but we hear the chaos because it’s the opposite of the harmony we’re used to.

Chords

Going back to the scale of C, it uses all of the white notes, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, 7 in total. The harmony of music is constructed by taking certain “key” notes of the scale to make “chords”. These form the “shell” of the chord, and give it its color, and are formed most commonly by taking the 1st, 3rd, 5th and then octave of the scale (i.e. same note as the root, but 8 tones higher).

So the Major chord of C would use: The root, the basis of the harmony of the chord, C, then the third note, E then the 5th note, G and then the root again but 8 notes higher, C .

Major C Arpeggio

Hear A Major C Argpeggio

A chord played in a ‘staggered’ sequence, as in the MP3 above, creates an arpeggio (sometimes referred to as a ‘broken chord’). An arpeggio is usually constructed from the key notes of a chord, for example the arpeggio above is the root, 3rd, 5th and octave of a C major chord. Once again, the same major scale arpeggio can be constructed in all of the keys, by playing the same notes in sequence.

You make it a minor scale, thereby changing the “color” of the chord completely, by flattening the third note, i.e. playing E flat in the key of C.

A C Minor Arpeggio

Hear A C Minor Arpeggio A D Minor Arpeggio So a minor D chord, for example, would be D, F, A, D. In other words, you've flattened the 3rd, and substituted F for F# (sharp): D Minor Arpeggio

Hear A D Minor Arpeggio

Every chord has a color. And you can enrich the colors by adding variation to the chord.

A chord starts out very simply, i.e. a major chord, but can become very changed by moving one note a semitone, as in the example of the minor arpeggio above. Flattening the third gives you a minor chord. As in the example above, a chord changes its color and tone most commonly by flattening or sharpening the 3rd, 5th or 7th.

The next step in changing a chords’ color is to change the 7th note, thus creating a 7th chord. Once again as in the example above, a 7th chord can be major or minor by flattening the third or 7th notes.

Here are all of the 7th chords:

Major 7

In the key of C, the Major 7th note would be B:

C Major 7th Chord

Hear A C Major 7th Chord

The Major 7th is used extensively in pop music, i.e. a major 3rd and a major 7th (in the key of C, as in the piano keyboard above, the 3rd is an E and the 7th a B). And just within this change of a chord, we start to get complexity and a pull to the harmony, i.e. the symmetry, of the music.

Minor 7

If you play a C chord with a major feel, i.e. the E (C, E, G, and B – no need to play the C again in this case since you already have it in the chord, what they call the root note), as in the “major 7th” chord above, it sounds very different than if you play the same chord but flatten the E, making the chord a minor one. This gives the chord a very “sad” feel, the pull of the major 7th against the minor 3rd:

C Minor Major 7th

Hear A C Maj Min 7th Chord

I mentioned earlier that if you flatten the 5th of a minor 7th chord, you get the blues scale:

Hear The Blues Scale In The Key Of C

Make a sequence out of this chord, a pattern of chords that relate to each other, and you get the blues.

The Blues

Let’s take a look at a classic 12 bar blues sequence. I mentioned that music has a natural symmetry to it, and this is at work when we play a song. The chords are constructed in sequence, with everything relative to the key of the song, i.e. its root. So in the key of C, all the chords relate to the key of C:

C7 C7 C7 C7

F7 F7 C7 C7

G7 F7 C7 C7/G7

Hear A Classic Blues Sequence

Some notes sound “right” when played in sequence, and have a natural pull, i.e. harmony to them. The F7 leading out of the C7, the G7, F7, C7 progression sound “right”. This is because all the chords are related to the key of C. F is the 4th note of the scale of C and G the 5th. So why the 4th and not the 3rd, or minor 3rd, i.e. part of a major or minor arpeggio for example?

The Cycle Of 5ths

I mentioned the natural harmony within music earlier. It often sounds right when chords “resolve”, i.e. they complete an equation. You can hear this at the end of a song, when there is a chord that the song “feels right” to end on. The strongest ‘root movement’ (which is what the bass is playing) is actually either down a perfect 5th or up a 4th. When you start on the second note of a key, for example in the key of C you would play a D, and move up a 4th and then down a 5th. This is called a ’2,5,1′ progression, and it’s more commonly written using Roman numerals ‘II, V, I’:

Hear an Example of a II IV I Progression

You can hear this ’2, 5,1′ progression throughout modern genre, Classical, blues and Jazz music.

You can also play the cycle of 5ths through all of the major keys. Starting on any note, the cycle will always lead you back back to your original starting place:

The triangle sign in the diagram above means ‘major 7′.

This ‘Cycle Of Fifths’ is often depicted in a circular diagram. So, once again, wherever you start, it’ll lead you back to the same place:

Cycle-of-Fifths Diagram

Many thanks to: Theoretically Correct.com for this image

Hear The II V I Progression In all Keys

This MP3 plays the II V I chord progression sheet music shown above.

The Relative Minor Keys

A minor key is called a relative minor key because it has the same amount of sharp and flats as its counterpart, the relative major. Looking at the ‘Cycle of 5ths’ diagram above, we can see that for every major key, there’s a ‘relative minor’ key next to it.

And a minor key is called a ‘relative minor’ because it has the same amount of sharp and flats as its counterpart.

We can get an idea of this by just comparing 2 scales on a piano keyboard. The “relative minor” of C major is A.

As we saw earlier, the key of C has no sharps or flats:

C to C

However, when you play A to A instead of C to C, but use only the white notes, you get the scale of A minor:

A Minor

Since A major has three sharps, C, F, and G, flattening them (shown here in red) creates the scale of A minor.

Hear The Scales of C Major and A minor

The sequence of ‘tone, tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone’ is the same for all of the major keys, moving through all the notes on the piano: C, Db, D, Eb, E, F and so on. And the same rules apply to the minor keys (tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone: flattening the third, 6th and 7th).

Back to the blues. As I mentioned earlier, you can hear in the blues example a few paragraphs above, how the chords move and have a “rightness” to them. Chord progressions are never fixed, however. For example, the last chord of the blues progression above is a G7, a “passing chord”, which takes us back to the C7. So in the last bar there are three beats of C7 and then one of G7. However, just staying on the C7 would work just as well. Musicians often work out their own way to play certain chords and chord progressions, which are called “voicings”, i.e. how you “voice” the chords. As a singer, it helps enormously to be able to hear the chord and how the chords move within a song. You then don’t have to rigidly stick to the tune and can take more risks (check out the article “How to Ad-Lib, or Improvise” if you’d like to learn more about this).

The “colors” of chords, or chord voicing s, aren”t just limited to making them a simple major, minor or minor 7th. We saw earlier how changing just one note in a 7th chord completely changes the chord. In fact, there are 5 types of seventh chords.

7th Chords

C major 7th (1 3 5 7). Major 7th Chords have a major 3rd and a major 7th. As musical notation, this would often be written as C with a triangle after it, or C Maj7.

C Major 7

Hear A C Major 7 Chord

Dominant 7th. C7 (1, 3, 5, -7). Dominant 7th chords have a major 3rd and a minor 7th. As musical notation, this would be written as C7.

C7

Hear C 7 Chord

C minor 7 (1 , -3, 5, -7). Minor 7th chords have a minor 3rd and a minor 7th. As musical notation, this would be written as either C-7 or Cm7.

C Minor 7

Hear A C Minor 7th Chord

C-7, flat 5 or the “Half Diminished” or “Half Diminished 7th”. Half-Diminished chords have a minor 3rd a flat 5th and a minor 7th. As musical notation, this would be written as C-7 flat 5 or C with a circle and a line through it at an angle.

Cm7b5 (Half Diminished)

Hear A Half Diminished Chord

Diminished 7th (1, -3, flat 5 ,double flat 7th, i.e. the 6th). Fully Diminished 7th chords have a minor 3rd, a flat 5th and a double flat 7th, equivalent to the 6, i.e. the 6th note in the scale. As musical notation, this would be written as or C dim7 or a C with the Circle sign and then a 7.

C Diminished

You can play all of these chords in sequence, from the Major 7th to the fully diminished, and hear, just by changing one note at a time, that as the notes get crunched together, the chord sounds more complex:

Hear The 7th Chord Progressions

In sequence the chords in the sound bite above are: C, C maj 7, C 7, C min 7, C half diminished, C Diminished

Suspended 4th Chord, or Sus 4. And now we get more complex. Play the 4th and the 5th (leaving out the 3rd), get what”s called a suspended 4th, or a sus 4 chord.

C Sus 4

Hear A Suspended 4th Chord

If you play the same chord, the sus 4, then change it to a simple major chord, i.e. moving the 4th to a 3rd, you get a classic “resolving” chord, heard a lot in Classical and Church music, for example.

Hear A ‘Resolving’ Chord

Once again, one note making all the difference.

You can also sharpen the 5th, or flatten the 5th. And yet again, you can play all of these chords in sequence and hear how the harmony changes as you do so. You can keep counting up from the octave, so you get the 9th, 11th and 13th, what”s called the upper part of the chord. And each change of harmony gives the chord another name, and another color.

Modes

We’ve looked at how quickly we can reach considerable complexity from a simple scale.

We can see the possibility for even greater depth, however, when we look at “Modes”, once again used a lot in jazz. Any good musician, guitar axe heroes included, needs to have a knowledge of modes for their playing to have any real edge. In the sixties, “Modal” music became popular, when, for example, the whole tune would be written using only a few chords and a ‘modal’ approach. Often the bass player would play “the root” and the chords would change over the static base note, thus suggesting different modes, i.e. the sound of different chords played against the repeating bass note. Wayne Shorter”s “Windows” or Miles Davis”s “All Blues” or “Freddy the Freeloader” being a few examples.

Once again, we can see how simple and complex music is by just looking at the basic modes in the key of C. Some of these modes are used in modern genre music, and some, are simply, not.

By just playing the white notes in the key of C, the scale sounds very different, depending on the note we start on:

Basic Major scale: See diagram and MP3 of piano scale above.

Dorian Mode. This one is easy to remember. By playing “D to D” (i.e. just the white notes), we’re essentially flattening the F and C, making this mode akin to a simple D minor:

Hear The Dorian Mode

Phrygian Mode. This scale is E to E (again just the white notes) and sounds very sad. Composers use this scale if they want the music to sound Oriental. It’s also heard a lot in Spanish, Hebrew and Gypsy music. Once again, you’re flattening the F and G, C and D notes, the scale starting with a half-step, E to F:

Hear The Phrygian Mode

Lydian Mode. This sounds almost the same as the major scale. Starting on the F and playing up the octave, once again just the white notes. The only difference is the 4th note, which should be a Bb to make it a normal major scale. By playing a B rather than a Bb you are “raising the 4th”. This was actually the “Major scale in the middle ages”, and is the basis for Gregorian chants and the like. The major scale as we know, with a flattened 4th, came about much later.

Hear The Lydian Mode

Mixolydian Mode. This has the most intricate name, but is also the easiest to recognize. Played G to G (white notes) it has a flattened 7th, and is used across the board for Rock, Blues and Jazz.

Hear The Mixolydian Mode

Aeolian Mode. A to A, playing the white notes. We’re essentially flattening the C, F and G. It’s also called the Natural Minor Scale.

Hear The Aeolian Mode

Locrian Mode. B to B, white notes. Verrry odd to the ear, and hardly ever used.

Hear The Locrian Mode

So we can start to see the intricacies of music, everything based around a system that’s so simple it’s hard to believe such amazing complexity lies waiting to be discovered.

And now we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to move on to the next part of the puzzle: How to Read Music (link).