Introduction
really help if you’re singing background or accompanying someone on piano or
guitar. You’ll even be able to arrange music for your choir or band, or to create
your own compositions.
And here’s the neat part: Music theory isn’t hard. Once you learn the basic notes
and scales, the rest falls together fairly easily. After all, a chord is just three
notes put together. That’s all—just three notes. And a song is nothing more
than a few chords strung together in a series, along with a melody—which is
just a series of notes all in a row. Figuring out what goes where (and which
notes sound good together) is what theory is all about.
Music Theory Is for Nonmusicians
Music theory isn’t just for musicians, either. There are a lot of listeners out
there who are curious about how music is created. Just what makes a particular
song so special? Why does some music sound uplifting, and other music sound
sad? And just what are your musician friends talking about when they say things
like “cool changes” or “take this up a third”?
You don’t have to be a music student to be interested in how music works—just
as you don’t have to have a literature degree to be interested in how words and
sentences fit together. Basic music theory is for anyone who is interested in music;
the more you know, the more you can appreciate the music that you listen to.
Music Theory and Me
There are many different ways to learn music theory. Your school might have
music theory classes you can take. Your music teacher also might teach a little
theory, or know a private teacher you can study with. Or you can learn theory
the way I did: by yourself, from a book.
I taught myself music theory back when I was in eighth grade. My junior high
school had the usual general music classes, as well as choir and band, but didn’t
have any theory classes. So, because I wanted to arrange some tunes for a band
I was in, I had to teach myself the theory behind the arranging.
My theory education came from a lot of trial and error, and from two books:
Dick Grove’s Arranging Concepts: A Guide to Writing Arrangements for Stage Band
Ensembles(1972) and David Baker’s Arranging & Composing for the Small Ensemble
(1970). Both of these books are still in print today, and still as valuable as they
were back then. I recommend you check them out.
Now, if you look at the titles of those books, you’ll see that they really don’t
have anything to do with basic music theory. There’s theory in the books, of
course, but you really have to read between the lines (so to speak) to pull it out.
I would have given my right arm back then for a book that focused on beginning-
level theory, written at a level that I could comprehend.
Well, 30 years later, I wrote that book.
It’s interesting. I was a fairly serious musician throughout my junior high and
high school years, and went on to attend the prestigious Indiana University
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