Music Theory

Like an actor's script, a sheet of music instructs a musician on what to play (the pitch) and when to play it (the rhythm). Sheet music may look complicated, but once you've gotten the hang of a few simple elements like notes, bars and clefs, you're ready...

Perfect Pitch is the ability to recognize and produce notes by name on command. You probably can't develop perfect pitch if you don't already have it, but you can get pretty close with relative pitch and pitch memorization.

How does music work? What did an Ancient Greek philosopher have to do with it? Why did he keep drowning people?

The circle of fifths is a unique pattern of the 12 pitches in western classical music theory which is commonly paired with information about key signatures but also gives many insights into harmony, intervals, transposition, and chord structure.

One of the most important skills in learning to read and write music is note naming. It’s not unlike when you were learning to read and write. You had to learn the alphabet. The musical alphabet is a bit simpler because it’s only 7 letters long. This vide...

Minor scales are directly related to major scales, with a few extra rules. Like a lot of things, they're easy when you know how. You're going to need to know major scales and key signatures to understand minor scales. Check out the links below the video...

Key signatures are easy...when you know how they work. This video explains what they are, how they work, and some patterns that emerge when you look at all of them. It also includes a brilliant trick to remember all 15 major key signatures!

Learning to write major scales can be tricky at first. But, all major scales are built using just few simple rules. Learn them all, as well as how to avoid a few common mistakes, with this quick visual explanation.

In this video Rick explains his method for understanding the basics of music theory and ear training in 30 minutes.