Articles about Music Theory

Have you ever been scanning through a chord chart, only to come across two chords separated by the forward slash (/) symbol?

Whether you’re a self-taught beginner or a classically trained performer, you’re bound to run into these funny looking chords from time to time. And depending on your experience with them, a few questions might spring to mind …

There are reasons that learning scales has traditionally been a part of learning to make music. With any instrument, practicing them regularly will increase fluidity of motion and connection with the instrument. Being able to move through different scales with little effort makes it much easier to pick up musical material in any key and play it. Understanding the idea of keys and how they are built makes it easier to transpose music, and allows an artist a sense of useful structure when trying to compose music.

Many piano students question the wisdom of practising scales and arpeggios. Practice sessions begin with what seems to be a frustrating waste of time, a reluctant run through mechanical, repetitive and frankly boring exercises which appear to be designed to stop them getting to the interesting part of practice - the repertoire. However, scales can offer the pianist so much more. Intelligent and focused practice of scales can have an impressive impact on performance, technique and overall musicianship.

One of the most difficult elements of both sight reading and ear training in music is the mastery of intervals. Once you know your intervals, almost no piece of music is out of your ability, and you will soon be able to sight read or transcribe any piece you hear. The best way to learn your intervals is to think of them in the context of songs that you already know. Once you associate a Perfect 4th, for instance, with the first interval in “Here Comes the Bride,” you’ll never forget it. Here are a few mnemonic devices you can use to ...

Here are some tips that will help you to begin playing acoustic guitar using a plectrum. This guide is for the novice guitar player who wants to achieve both emotional fluency and technical precision.

Learn the scale and chord patterns for harmonizing 7th chords over the major scale and melodic, harmonic and natural minor scales.

If you need to remember what chord harmonization is visit our page on harmonizing chords over major scales. Although there is only one Natural Minor scale, there are two other Minor scales that are also widely used: The Harmonic Minor scale and the Melodic Minor scale. These scales exist for historical reasons and we will leave its explanation for another time. For now you need to know is how to construct these scales.

Chord harmonization over a scale is a fundamental tool to understand the correct use of harmony in a theme. It is a concept that many hobbyists do not know, but they are doing it unconsciously when they are "searching" for a chord that "sounds good" over a certain progression. So we can say that "harmonizing" a scale of chords is the process of identifying what are the chords that "sound good" over a particular scale.

Despite the inroads made by the electric guitar into every area of modern music, acoustic blues guitar playing still has the power to stimulate the interest of audiences all over the world. The origins of this style of music lie in church gatherings of rural America in the early 1900’s. From these modest beginnings, Reverend Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy and other self-taught masters improvised their way into the hearts and minds of blues fans all over the world.

The pentatonic scales are the most important scales to learn for evolving guitar steps. The pentatonic scales are used in all styles of music, especially pop & rock. They serve particularly as a special gift for amateur guitarists with less experience. They are very easy to remember and apply to almost any music style with a little time to practice.

This article gives some tips on how to memorize them and use them.