Music Theory Made Easy : 4 Important Terms Explained.

Music & sound operates in four dimensions - Time, Pitch, Loudness, Timbre. That's pretty much all there is to it. When you subdivide it into these categories, it's far less confusing and easier to swallow.

Most music theory which you learn from traditional colleges will focus on the first two, Time and Pitch. As long as you start with a firm grasp of how each dimension is talked about and what it does - music theory becomes a doddle.

What is Time in Music Theory ?

Time is fairly obvious to grasp at a fundamental level, we start to sing a note and when we run out of breath we stop. It gets complicated when we do it with other singers. And the more singers we add, the more complicated it gets.

So we need systems called 'tempo' and 'time signature' so that people sing at the same speed and emphasise the phrases in the same way. That's all these systems do - make it sound nice and together. If we get it right we get a 'rhythm' or a grove or something we can dance to.

Even if you're a solo performer, your performance is easier to assimilate and remember if it fits a regular & expected pattern.

But because our music can be come predictable or boring, it's sometimes more fun to break with expectation and have tempos which speed up and slow down or use complex and ever changing time signatures.

In these circumstances, it is even more important that everyone understands what is expected, otherwise we soon produce a chaotic train crash.

And so time is probably the most fundamental of all musical elements and what distinguishes it from speech and other art forms. It is time critical and this introduces stress, mistakes, expectation and all manner of constraints. But that's what music is; it adheres to a certain timeliness,mostly.

What is Pitch in Music Theory ?

Pitch is what gives us melody, harmony, chords, keys and notes.

Pitch is often misunderstood as the most important element in music. It's fair to say that it's a close second to time.

Pitch is certainly one of the most difficult and complicated things to grasp. Here's a perfunctory brief of the five main aspects of pitch.

Melody is the main tune which carries the words. If there are no words then it will carry an emotional story or description. It may have one instrument or one voice or many. It will be hooky or catchy and is meant to hold the listeners' attention.

Harmony is a bunch of notes comprising if chords and other notes. They are nearly always in the same key as the melody. Their job is to provide emotional and often rhythmical support for the melody. There may be many voices or instruments or just one. Certain harmonies have become engrained in our social expectation. They help give songs a structure we recognise, but may be unnoticeable to a non musician.

Chords are a bunch of notes which we play at roughly the same time. When sounding they may sound good, bad, right, wrong or weird. And their job is manifold - they form the basis of harmony, in-fact you could say that a harmony is just a bunch of chords played one after the other. Chords can make people think your music is either predicable or unconventional and everywhere in between.

A key is a bunch of notes that work really well together. You can make chords and put them in a melody and providing you follow a few rules, if a note belongs to a key, you can use it. Keys are a western music tradition thing. Other parts of the world have different keys. There are lots of keys, too many to go into here. Keys are theoretical devices, you can't even play one, you might play a scale, which is all the notes of a key.

A note is single pitch. There are usually eight of them in key. What makes one note different to the next is it's frequency. Frequency is measured in hertz. Our ears and brains can recognize several frequencies at once. Mixing two notes or more makes a chord.

What is Dynamic or Loudness in Music Theory ?

Loudness or dynamic is the tiger in the musicians tank. It has the most impact when it is used well and can ruin everything if it is not. It is always under estimated at every level of musicianship. Orchestras, choirs, mixing engineers and bands, all struggle getting sound balance right.

Performers who fail to harness the power and complexity of dynamics are missing out and probably ruining their music.

All those ear plugs and huge speakers that performers use are so the musicians hear themselves in the stage cacophony and so that the audience can hear them.

This is huge and complex subject which is difficult to appreciate until you try to do it, hands on. All those 'ff' s and 'ppp' s and weird, arrow head hieroglyphs you see on all music after the 17th century is to do with loudness. The piano-forte translates as 'soft-loud.' That's how important it is.

What is Timbre in Music Theory ?

Timbre is the colour of the sound mix. Even a flute has subtle overtones and undertones which tell our brains. 'That's a flute.' As soon as we add more instruments playing at different pitches, the timbre changes and produces a new emotional effect on our listeners. The art of adding instruments and voices in the right proportions is call instrumentation or orchestration.

These are more applicable to large groups of musicians but even a solo performer needs to consider if their instrument is right for their voice. Instruments should always compliment each other, not fight each other.

It's very easy to put too much sound in one octave and end up with poor separation of instruments especially in the bass sections.

Summary.

When ever you approach music theory, ask yourself which dimension, or which branch of music theory are we talking about; Time, Pitch, Loudness orTimbe ? That way, it's far easier to stay focused on that one thing and not get dragged off into the bushes of confusion.