The theory of music is a description of the way we think about, or believe we should think about, music and about its notation, structure and performance. You do not need to know anything about music theory to enjoy listening to music but it is essential should you decide to take a more practical interest in the subject, for example, by learning to play a musical instrument, for, as Leonardo da Vinci, himself a fine performer on the lyra da braccio, said about painting, "You must not only believe what you see, you must also understand what you see", so it is with music: to listen properly, we must understand what we hear.

Of course music is more than just music theory. Some features of Western music are transmitted 'orally' from generation to generation. For example, what tone colours are acceptable on a particular musical instrument? No text book can tell you that!

All music teachers have their own way of teaching theory. We present but one way of making the subject approachable and, we hope, useful. Those taking public examinations should refer to the published syllabus before relying solely on these lessons. We probably cover all the topics you need to know but, in some cases, we may not do so to the required depth, or, in others, we may take the topic much further than is strictly necessary to satisfy the requirements of your examination board.

We make no apology for treating some topics at considerable length - these are topics we find particularly interesting or which we believe will enhance your enjoyment of music. For example, musical harmony is the essence of western music, but too few theory methods consider alternative harmonic languages and non-traditional musical forms. Yet, whether jazz or blues, modal or diatonic, there is always something within each tradition to arrest the perceptive ear and to stimulate the receptive mind.

Some topics we have chosen not to cover ourselves. In these cases, we provide links to web sites that do consider these topics fully. By embedding these resources from the web, we believe the method becomes much richer. You may call upon the skills of thousands of professional teachers and musicians rather than just those of a single author.

The music theory resource includes a comprehensive music dictionary to which we add on a daily basis. As a companion we are also, more slowly, building a dictionary of composers biographical information.

We are working to complete our topic-centered history of music. In the meantime, the video below might amuse.

History of Music in 7 minutes

If you would like us to include other topics, please send us an e-mail, and, where we can, we will add them. On some pages we have included contributions from teachers and musicians who have sent us interesting comments after the main pages were published. We always included them where they add value to the pages and, with permission, we try to give the name and contact details for each contributor. Of course, where we have erred please tell us so that we can correct the material.

We would like to thank the many thousands of people who have sent us e-mails telling us how useful these pages have been and also those who, by asking searching questions, have shown us ways to clarify and extend this guide and to make it even more useful to all our readers. Of course, we also thank our contributors.

Alternative Terms in Different Countries

For a detailed list please visit British vs. American Musical Terms by Nina Gilbert.

• Stave/Staff
  • In Britain, the word "staff" for the five lines on which music is written is considered old-fashioned and is hardly ever seen now, except in old books. In its place the British use the word "stave".
  • "Staff" is still used in some countries, including the USA, with "staves" as the plural.

• Bar/Measure
  • A "measure" is now quite often used as the word for a bar of music; in the USA this is standard usage.
  • "Bar" then sometimes refers to the actual bar line, especially as in "double bar" for "double bar line".

• Semibreve/Whole note etc.

  There are three completely different naming methods for the names of notes which govern their length. Two are used in English, and these are summarized below and also described in the page on note lengths:
  whole note	semibreve
  half note	minim
  quarter note	crotchet
  8th note	quaver
  16th note	semiquaver
  32nd note	demisemiquaver
  64th note	hemidemisemiquaver

  • English names and Italian names are based on original Latin names from the Middle Ages. American and German names are based upon the relative lengths of notes. French names are based on the appearance of the notes.

• Note/Tone
  • In Britain, the word note can mean a written symbol as well as a sound. Americans separate these meanings and use the word "note" for a written note, and "tone" for the sound.
  • We do sometimes use this meaning for the word "tone", for example in the phrases "resultant tone" and "tone deaf".
  • "Tone" can also mean the quality of a sound, for example, its brightness or its dullness (as in the tone control on a tape player or radio).
  • In Britain, the word "tone" has an additional different and specific meaning (see Tone/Whole-step below).

• Tone/Whole-step, Semitone/Half-step
  • In Britain, "a tone" (in musical usage) is defined as an interval of a major second. Americans refer to this as a "whole-step".
  • A semitone is half a tone, the interval of a minor second, one-twelfth of an octave, the smallest interval between two notes on a piano. Americans call this a "half-step".
  • A major scale consists of the intervals TTSTTTS where T=tone and S=semitone.
  • Confusingly, a scale made up of six intervals of major second (tones), as used by some 20th Century composers, is called a "whole-tone scale".

• Do-re-me/Ut-re-me
  • See Tonic sol fa

• B/H
  • In Germany our note B is called H, and our B flat is called B

Copyright

Dr. Brian Blood identifies himself as the author of the contents of Music Theory Online except for those elements where another author or group of authors has been clearly identified. If material from this site is downloaded to another computer or hard-copied in anyway it should be remembered that copyright remains with the author(s).

However, any user or group of users may make a single or multiple copies of extracts from this method or of the method as a whole, except that it must not be incorporated into any commercial product the effect of which would be to restrict its future availability as a free resource.