Basic Music Theory

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:02]hey this is Mr Michael and I'm going to talk to you about music theory and what you need to know of music theory for the learning group of music classes so let's take a look here now first of all we're in the music basic music theory section of your training on the tlg teacher website and you'll see that only a basic knowledge of Music Theory is necessary to achieve the objectives of the learning group music classes you don't need to be a virtuoso musician you don't even really have to play an instrument although it definitely helps a lot to be able to play one but there are some very basic things that you need to know and we're going to guide you through it right here so the main things you're going to need to do are to find the correct starting notes of a song you're going to need to sing in key so you got to be able to sing well enough to stay in key you got to keep a steady beat and you have to emphasize the tonic notes of each song at the end of the song so let's look in more detail so what is a tonic note the tonic also called the resting tone or root note or also the one of a song scale or key in a in a C major key or scale the tonic is the C note C is also the tonic for C minor or other C modes in the key of D major or minor D is the tonic e is the tonic for E major or minor and so on so basically the letter that you're using for a chord uh and the for the main chord of a song is the tonic so let's take a look here I have Garage Band open and we're going to play our little virtual keyboard so let's say we're in the e of C on the keyboard let's say I see the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round the wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town that's the tonic right there and the reason you need to know that for our classes is because at the end of each song You're gonna say Tada at the very end and you're gonna have the whole class do that with you it's a lot of fun and the kids enjoy it too um and in class what I say is that not only is Tada a way to congratulate ourselves on a song well sung but it is emphasizing the root note or the tonic of every song so educationally the kids are starting to get this into their brains and that's why you need to know the tonic so now if I decided to do this in D Major instead which is actually the key of the song on our CD there's d so the wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town tied up see so it's a little bit higher if we're in the key of D you could also do the wheels on the bus in the key of f the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round the wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town see so this the note that you start on and the key that you're in can change although for the learning group we want to try to do each song in the same key as it is on the recordings of the CDs and there are a few advantages of this um let's actually talk about that right now what the heck uh the reason that you need to know the tonic and you need to find the right starting notes for each song is because there are a few advantages for singing in the keys that we put the songs in on the CD one of those is that we very carefully chose the recordings to be in the key in a singable range that's the easiest range for young children to sing and also a compatible range for female adults male adults and children all to sing Comfortably so you want your class to be able to sing Comfortably if a song is too high or too low then you're going to have less of your parents singing along in class and you're also going to have less children singing along so that's one reason why you want to start on the right key another reason Which is less um I don't know less what not less important but uh another reason is that children who are have the capability of developing Perfect Pitch which is all children really if you sing the song in the same key every time they'll start to recognize that and they're more able to develop perfect pitch than if you sing the song in different Keys every day so those are the two main reasons why we sing in the same key every day um all right let's take a look back here again so we just talked about the tonic or the one of each song okay now we're going to explore something called an interval the interval is the distance between two notes so let's take a look there are several different types of intervals the smallest distance between two notes is a half step or a semitone this those are synonyms for each other so for instance from C to C sharp or from C sharp to D let's take a look at our keyboard so from C to C sharp that's a semitone or a half step you can't find any notes in between those two it's the smallest distance from C sharp to D that's also a semitone so any two notes that are right next to each other or a semitone okay or a half step now next oh and just as a funny uh analogy or example rather if you're familiar with the movie Jaws then that gets really low now let's go the octave lower here that's a semitone here comes the shark anyway that's uh a helpful tool for identifying a semitone all right a whole step or a tone now the synonym is the distance of two half steps so for instance from a c to a d or a C sharp to a D sharp so this is twice the distance of a half step so from C that's a whole step right there or from D to eh now it wouldn't be from here to here but that's a half step because there's no black key in between that's a half step that's a whole step see the difference okay so that's the whole step uh and then the next one up well actually the next one is a minor third and then a major third but I went out of order here because a major third is more common in children's music so the third is the third note in a scale key or chord the major third is characterized by being four half steps from the tonic let's take a look so for example e is the major third of a c chord or scale here's a c if we go four semitones or half steps one two three four that's a major third from a c to an E and uh you can also think of it like this the one the two the three one two three BC goes one two three four half steps away and that's a major third a minor third is characterized by being three half steps from the tonic so for instance E flat is the minor third of the C quarter scale so if we go here's our C here we go one two three that's a minor third and here's a major third again minor third major third now a lot of times the minor third is thought of as being a little bit sadder if you will it's not always the case but it's just a rough generalization of the character of a minor third versus a major third minor third sounds tend to sound a little sadder and major thirds a little happier so a little bit happier and moving on to the perfect fifth which we are skipping a few of the intervals in the scale but this these are the most important ones that you'll need to know the perfect fifth is the fifth note in the scale key or chord is characterized by being seven half steps from the tonic example G is the perfect fifth of a c chord or scale so here's our C again and we're gonna go seven one two three four five six seven so a good example that is Twinkle Twinkle is a good way to remember your uh perfect fifth okay so once again we have the third perfect fifth there's some old 80s song or uh yeah that's a good example anyway so that's the perfect fifth and I went ahead and spelled out here all of the most common intervals in order now this is not as important for you to know or memorize but it just might help you understand it better so that you don't have to do as much memorization and you can kind of get it more into your uh knowledge so that you really understand it so uh now in this chart we see the number of semitones zero going all the way up to 12 okay so if you're zero distance away from a note then it's the same note so it's called a perfect Unison which is a little bit of a redundant term but it does exist and down here in our musical staff we'll see that the note is the note so looking here we got C that's our one that's a perfect Unison minor second which we didn't talk about before but that's the next one up it's one semitone away major second is two semitones away whole step minor third is three semitones major third is four-way perfect four this is called augmented 4 or diminished fifth it's also called the tritone in uh ancient times it was also called The Devil's interval Jimi Hendrix song anyway what song is that I can't remember right now but that's a tritone here's a perfect fifth minor sixth major six minor seven whoops major seven and a perfect octave now just to recap you don't need to memorize all of these intervals it just helps you in general what you should retain from this little lesson is that you basically count in a scale from one to eight one two three four five six seven eight if you're in a major key and there's the notes in between the the flavors of these or just have descriptive names such as the one one the minor two the major two the minor three the major three the perfect four augmented four diminished five perfect five minor six major six minus seven major seven octave or perfect eight and one thing to know about the octave is an octave is very common a lot it's very common for songs to be sung in octaves for instance females have you often sing an octave above the male range so if I were to go the wheels on the bus go round and round then a female might feel more comfortable singing up here still counts as being the same Melody all right so that was a quick description of intervals and the only reason you need to know intervals is because as you do your tonal patterns uh which your tonal patterns in class with the children you're going to need to just know how to do certain patterns and these intervals will help you and we'll look at that soon so we're laying a foundation here for you the next section of our music theory section is called Triads now a Triad is basically another word for chord although there are many chords that can have more or less than three notes in them so a Triad is basically a chord based on three notes and a mate there's two kinds of Triads that we're going to focus on there are other types but for this we're going to focus on the major Triad and the Minor triad now most children songs most children's songs are in a major key and they have major chords in them a major chord is made up of the one or the tonic the major third and the perfect fifth and the scale so let's take a look and it's usually thought of as a happy sound I'm going to switch to this so I can play it all together so here's our one three five and play it all together that is a major Triad one major three perfect five Triad now the next type of Triad we're going to look at is the Minor triad in which the notes are the one the minor three and also the perfect fifth and it's often characterized by a sadder sound so minor three five and together the Triad would sound like this it's a major Triad your Triad so you can see the difference there all right uh so those are Triads now the main reason you're gonna need to know those are for tonal patterns you're often going to use an arpeggio of the Triad arpeggio is just a fancy name for doing one note at a time in a chord so here's the one three five a lot of times we'll say like repeat then we go down the scale okay so that's the reason we're gonna need to know those and if we're in a song that is a minor key then we'll want to use the same thing in minor as you can see it has this slightly sadder sound and we want to make sure we expose the children to the minor sounds as well so we've talked a lot about musical notes and now we're going to look at rhythm and after we do that we're going to focus back in on the things that you need to do for your tonal patterns and your Rhythm patterns so once again we're laying a foundation for you now in Rhythm there's a few terms that we're going to go over that will be applicable to your use in class one is the macro beat that is the main pulse of a rhythm when you clap your hands to a song you're usually demonstrating the macro beat often this is a series of quarter notes so we'll stick with our Wheels on the Bus as our example so the wheels on yeah one two three four yes well in this case I think we go like this sort of like that the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round the wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town the macro beat is a as a general term and microbead is also a general term microbead is basically half of that beat so we're gonna instead of just uh for every beat you would do two beats so we go the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round the wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town so we got microbeat macrobeat microbeat macro Beats okay it's pretty straightforward uh and the next term on our list is meter meter is the measurement of a musical line into measures of stressed and unstressed beats indicated in western music notation by a symbol called a time signature so let's come over here to this fun week of Wikipedia if you have any familiarity with musical notation this is 4 4. this is a time signature of 4 4 which is the most common meter and you know our our favorite saw in the wheels on the bus is in that meter as well so you got one two three four one two three four one two three four one and if you notice it has stressed and unstressed beat you got stress unstressed stress not stress stress not stress the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round that's in four four because you're going one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four okay so meter is that measurement and we have a couple of types of meter that we're going to talk about duple meter is a very is the most common type of meter and that's when the macrobeat can be divided into two microbeads so just like we just did if you go uh the macro bead on the wheels on the buses one two three four but when we did the micro upbeat we did one and two and three and four the wheels on the bus go round and round now that's because it was each Macro bead was divided into two micro beats now sometimes a macro beat can be divided into three micro beats which is called triple meter and this Wallace is a very common example of this so let's take a look at for instance the Blue Danube waltz we do our version of that which we call beep beep so they say I'm driving my car beep beep beep beep so our macro beat is this I'm driving my car to three beep beep beep beep beep beep I have a loud horn beep beep beep beep if you're in my way notice I'm going one two three one two three it's not divided into two it's divided into three so if we were to do the micro bead on that this isn't triple meter it would go one two three one two three one two three one two three so all you need to take away from this Rhythm Section as a summary is that beats can you can have the macro beat and the micro beat and some beats are divided into two and some beats are divided into three the ones that are divided into two make up the majority of Music especially children's music and the ones that are divided into three are usually waltzes there are other types of Divisions but we won't get into those types of details for this lesson so I hope you understand all that and when we do our Rhythm patterns in class you're gonna do uh you're gonna need to know this and we'll look at that in detail in the next video in the next section of Music Theory we're going to look at tonal patterns and Rhythm patterns now for right now we're just going to briefly brush over the idea behind them and we'll have a separate video in another section of this website that goes into more detail about tonal and Rhythm patterns so let's read this section in language sentences can be broken into sentence structures including nouns verbs adjectives Etc and words can be broken into syllables music can also be broken down into parts and patterns one of our objectives in the learning Groove is to stimulate children with non-verbal melodic and rhythmic patterns by isolating the tonal and Rhythm and Rhythm patterns that constitute a musical work teachers help students comprehend how musical parts fit together to form musical holes in each class teachers lead column response melodic and rhythmic patterns that are not associated with words at the end of a song a teacher will lead directly into group patterns and then individual patterns with each child so let's talk about that for a second so the reason that we're doing tonal and Rhythm patterns is because although children learn a lot just by singing these songs which is incredibly powerful and even just by listening to the CDs they're making all kinds of brain connections that help them understand the subtle rhythmic patterns and melodic patterns that happen in the songs that we choose but it's very helpful as well to isolate those patterns and to take them away from the words so some children might be focused on just the words of the song like they might know the words for the wheels on the bus go round and round but they might not be paying attention to the melody or the Rhythm as much and they might be focused on the words and there's certainly nothing wrong with that because you know as you listen to music you can there's plenty of things you can focus on within a song but the reason we do these patterns is to kind of make sure that they're also focusing on just the music so if uh for instance if I was going la la la la la la la la la la la la la la not all children are going to recognize that as the wheels in the bus without the words but we want them to be able to so one of the tools that we use are tonal and Rhythm patterns now uh for right now we're gonna skip ahead to what you need to do in class and you can learn more about tonal and Rhythm patterns in the next video in the next section under uh onto this website okay so let's move on ahead to what teachers need to be able to do this is the most important thing for you this is to sum it all up how you use the information that I just gave to you so number one to find the correct starting notes on a piano guitar pitch pipe smartphone app Etc and sing a song in the proper key okay let's take a look at that so I'm going to flip over here to an example syllabus here is the outrages are in syllabus for week one now if you notice we have the song Twinkle Twinkle the activity we have the key whoops computer Sliding Away and we also have the first notes written out for you so if you need to know how to sing Twinkle Twinkle in the right key first of all you have your syllabus printed out and if you have a keyboard in class you can come over here you see ccg AAG let's check that out here there you go that's how you'd find your nose using Twinkle Twinkle Little Star it might be easier to recognize this way foreign with you now if you don't you might have a smartphone app let's say all you can do is find the starting note here's a guitar tuner app that I have for my Android and you can sound C elsius now you have to practice this a little bit to get the right notes there's also plenty of smartphone apps that have little mini pianos so this is C that'll help you find the notes too or you can use what's called a pitch pipe which is a circular device usually that has a whole bunch of notes around it you just blow into it to get the pitches that you need whatever option you choose you need to have a nice easy way to get the notes I personally use my guitar because I have my guitar in class with me but it's something like a smartphone app is nice because you can keep it with you in your pocket and if you're about to lead a song you don't want to have to initially always go back to your station it's nice to have this with you but there are many ways you can do that so for instance if we wanted to do inchworm that also happens to be in C says cease I'll go like this c c d e c that's uh and hopefully you would learn the song from the CD and ahead of time so you go one little inch worm c c d e c and now you found your right pitch so that's how you're gonna find your starting pitch uh number two you need to be able to find the tonic note after a song for Tada with or without help from a keyboard so once again let's say it was inchworm one little inchworm climbing up a tree and I'll skip ahead then we're on our way ta-da you need to be able to find that note if we are in doing twinkle twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are tada you'll have to practice that a little bit but that's the second thing you need to be able to do and as I said before this helps the children start to learn to identify the most important note of every song there's one root note or tonic in every song and we're just helping them associate that tonic note with the song the third thing you need to be able to do is to find the one the three and the five whether it's a major or minor um for of a song for tonal patterns and you can do this with or without help from a keyboard or pitch pipe or guitar um so for instance if I go twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are and let's say I went into tonal patterns after that it's very common to go to the one three which is one three five and then you have the class repeat which is five three one and we'll look more at that in tonal patterns and Rhythm pattern video and number four is to improvise or memorize tonal and Rhythm patterns to lead so those are the things that you need to be able to do with this lesson on music theory so now a quick summary of everything we just learned and how you'll use it the tonic you will need to know the tonic so you can say the ta-da at the end of a song intervals intervals were basically the building blocks of major third and minor third Triads you needed to know intervals so that you could know how to say which outline the Triads the major Triad is a Minor triad is a slightly different note so you needed to know how to outline those and that's what these are the building blocks for with rhythm you just need to know the macro beat the micro beat and whether the micro bead is split into two as a duple meter or in three is in triple meter so if you're singing the wheels on the bus wheels on the bus go round and round that we can say class repeats that's in duple or in triple meter I'm driving my car beep beep beep beep two three one two three and that's how you're going to do triple meter Rhythm patterns and that's pretty much it so stay tuned for the next section of the training website which talks more in detail about how you can use your tonal and Rhythm patterns and happy teaching