A Brief Introduction to Music Theory - Notes

While I've been helping you guys alot with tabbing, I think its time to help develop your musicianship (and also to rest my hand, which is getting really tired from having over 15 hours of rehearsals for Christmas & New Year services), beginning with some brief notes on notes, keys, and chords from a workshop I conducted in my church half a year ago.

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Although theory is not essential, it helps to understand how the music you play works at an intuitive level. Without going into anything too complex, this post, the first in a series on music theory, outlines the basics on notes, followed by keys and chords (in subsequent posts) – the main components in music.

1) What Are Notes?
Notes are the individual pitches that you hear when you pluck a single guitar string, and are the smallest units in music. Music therefore comprises of sequences of notes played simultaneously at a certain speed. There are altogether 12 distinct notes in music. These notes have names. Not names like Bill and Sam, but the following:

C#/Db

D

D#/Eb

E

F

F#/Gb

G

G#/Ab

A

A#/Bb

B

Because the above series may be confusing, it helps to look at them on a piano:

The black notes are referred to by the white notes around them

Instead of having 12 names to remember we only have to remember the white notes – 7 notes. All 12 notes repeat over and over again, at higher or lower pitches, in the same sequence. Therefore, after the last B of the sequence comes another C but at a higher pitch than the previous C. Then comes a C#, D, D# and so on. The difference between a normal C and the next higher C is called an octave.