A crash course in harmony: or, what I SHOULD have been taught in theory class.

This is a music theory article!

I can hear the groans already. Triads, augmented fifths, leading tones, wha?? My first theory class felt like math, and I hated math. My first three theory classes, really. But then came the eureka moment....when the light bulb clicked on over my head and I GOT it. And at that moment I realized that had certain things been explained from the get-go, the whole business would have made more sense. That's what I want to talk about today: a simple principle that easily explains what music theory is, how it works, and why it's important.

Randy Halberstadt, a jazz pianist and educator from Seattle, wrote a fantastic book called "Metaphors for the Musician", which I highly recommend to anyone who already has a basic grasp of theory and wants to dig deeper. But he used a phrase as the title of one chapter that sums up the whole concept beautifully: "Harmonic Astronomy".

"Harmonic" in that we are talking about how notes played together create harmony. "Astronomy" in that notes and chords exert influence and force upon each other much like celestial bodies do. And understanding this simple concept provides a framework which is filled in by all the specific details. In short, learning theory gives you a convenient way to organize which moon revolves around what planet, and how all revolve around the sun.

Let's get into some detail. You've probably heard the word "key" used as a musical term: as in, this song is in the key of C. Now, the technical explanation of this is that the key of C uses only the white notes on the piano: in other words, out of all the notes on the keyboard we are using a subset (haha, math class, remember?) that includes only the white keys.

But what we really mean when we say we're in the key of C is that the note (or chord) C is the sun around which all the other notes revolve. In other words, when we're in the key of C the way you hear every note is filtered through the prism of its relationship to C. Change keys and gravity shifts....the same note can be heard in a completely different way.

To illustrate this, play this sequence of chords on piano or guitar: C - G - F - C - F - G...

I followed the G with those three dots for a reason....does that series of chords sound finished? Or does it sound like you've been left hanging, waiting for something to happen?

Well, you have. That G chord wants to resolve: to bring us back home to C. Now play the same sequence but end with the C chord and notice how it brings a sense of finality that was missing before.

Now play this sequence: C - G - D - G - C...

This time, the C doesn't sound quite so final. Follow up with this: C - G - D - G - C - D - G

Now G sound like home, and we have moved into the key of G.

This is the whole concept in a nutshell. Chords want to lead to other chords. Notes of a melody have an inherent need to resolve, to move one way or another. Music theory is a way to organize this set of interwoven relationships into a tool box you can use in your writing and playing. Obviously there's much more to learn here, and subsequent articles will explore this further. But listening to music with this in mind can change your whole way of hearing....and have a huge impact on your musical choices and vocabulary.

On music theory: do you REALLY need to "know the rules before you can break 'em"?

It's a statement I've heard repeated often enough to have become a cliche. Let's face it, when it comes to music, "breaking the rules" is not a conscious decision. Musical innovators develop their own language by following what they hear, and while any writer or composer is influenced by the music that moves them they don't have to have a formal grasp of the vocabulary to absorb elements of the style and sound.

On top of that, the subjective filter that we comprehend music through is different for everyone...one man's celestial harmony is another man's noise. And with the whole of human musical history a few mouse clicks away, you can go from Gregorian chant to Sonic Youth in the blink of an eye. Any combination of sounds anyone's ever made are probably on a YouTube video. There are far more sonic and tonal possibilities open to the contemporary musician than Bach or Mozart would have dreamed of. So is it still relevant, given all this, to study four hundred year old "rules" to learn how to make music in the 21st century?

Well, yes, it is. The tonal system as we use it in most popular music today still follows the same principles of tension and release that form the basis of classical harmony. A major chord is still a major chord, and ending a song on a 5 chord is sure to leave most of the room hanging. A 12-bar blues or a three-chord country song still moves forward not just on the narrative thrust of the lyric but by setting up dissonance: the diversion from 1 to 4, and the expectation and gratifying sense of release when 5 brings us back home to 1. Fundamentally, harmony is like gravity: combinations of notes and chords exert force on each other and bring about movement as a result. So music theory is simply a way to categorize and explain how and why this works. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo postulated it, and Newton's apple would have fallen whether he was there to observe it or not.

So the "rules" are not really rules at all, but explanations why some notes sound good together and some don't. The major triad is present in the overtones of a vibrating string: it's a sound that existed before someone gave it a name. And understanding of THIS aspect - music theory as an explanation of natural sonic phenomena - is a great tool and stimulus for creativity.

This is a large and complex topic, but understanding this simple fact makes the study of music theory both more relevant and more interesting. So to go back to our cliche: you really CAN'T break the rules, they just exist....and they're more flexible than you might think.