An Incomplete Crash Course in Contemporary Music Theory: The Fundamentals

AN INCOMPLETE CRASH COURSE IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC THEORY: THE FUNDAMENTALS

Copyright © 2023 Jeff Bratz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

To request permission, contact the publisher at [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-961735-02-6 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-961735-03-3 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912781

First paperback edition December 2023

Printed in the United States of America

HarmonyTabs Music

HarmonyTabsMusic.com

What's In This Book?

Preface

Cheat Sheet

ePaper Piano

Intro

1.Staff Basics

2.Rhythm and The Beat

3.Notes and Durations

Beaming

Counting

Ties and Dots

4.Tuplets

Triplet

Other Tuplets

5.The Imaginary Bar Line

Generally Accepted Exceptions

Generally Followed Rules

6.Rests

Rest Placement

7.Time Signatures

Simple Time

Compound Time

Irregular Time

8.More About Staffs

Clefs

The Grand Staff

Bar Lines

9.Notes

The Musical Alphabet

Lines and Spaces

Treble Staff Notes

Bass Staff Notes

Ledger Lines

Grand Staff Notes

Accidentals

Enharmonic Equivalents

10.Scales

The Piano Keys

Half-Steps & Whole-Steps

Major Scale

Scale Degrees

Natural Minor Scale

Other Minor Scales

Chromatic Scale

Whole-Tone Scales

11.Intervals

Harmonic vs Melodic

Perfect and Major Intervals

Minor Intervals

Diminished and Augmented Intervals

Compound Intervals

12.Even More Staff

Key Signatures

The Circle of Fifths

Final Words

Final Final Words

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Also Available From HarmonyTabs

Preface

Why an incomplete crash course?

I want to give you enough info to get you up and running without discouraging you. Each of the topics discussed, even in this book of fundamentals, could easily become a book on their own. But what you’ll find in these pages is plenty to jumpstart your musical journey.

Why contemporary music theory?

The hard and fast rules of classical theory are important to learn, but many of those rules are negotiable today. Since most of us live today and not centuries ago, contemporary music theory is probably more useful to you right now.

Anything else I should know?

As you've probably already figured out, due to the nature of this eBook I highly recommend setting your eBook reader to a continuous scroll reading style. It will look like a bit of a mess otherwise.

The next couple pages have a cheat sheet of what you’ll learn in this book and an ePaper piano. I recommend making copies of these so you can refer to them as you go.

There’s a link at the bottom of this page which takes you to audio/video examples found throughout this book. Use them to further your understanding of the concepts. You can also click the numbered examples throughout this book as you get to them.

I think you now know everything you need to get going!

Audio/Video Examples

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Intro

Jeff. You’re never going to be good. You’ll only ever be just better than bad.

This is what P.M., the guy that ran my music school, said to me shortly before he dropped me from the top vocal jazz group on campus. I like to imagine there was some philosophical lesson to be learned from these inspired words, but I have yet to figure them out.

When I showed up to music school, I was pretty sure I was gonna breeze through… because I was top of my singing game back in high school. It started out that way when I secured a spot in the coveted I.V. run by P.M. himself. I got ousted about a month into school and dropped down to another group.

I didn’t lose my spot because I couldn’t sing the material. I lost my spot because I didn’t understand theory, how the chords worked, or which notes I was supposed to be painstakingly plunking out at the piano. I couldn’t keep up!

That’s when I realized I really needed to level-up if I was ever going to be a professional musician. So, I did!

But it didn’t happen overnight. I started by learning what the notes on the page are and how they all fit together to create music. That’s where everyone has to start. The fundamentals.

By the time you make it through this book, you’ll probably have more questions