The Benefits of Music Theory Classes

Music lessons are the technical side of learning music. With music lessons you can play chords on a guitar, you can knock out a solid drum beat, you can sing, you can play piano, but if that’s all there was to it, then everyone who ever took a few lessons would be rich and famous. What conventional music lessons can’t teach you is covered in music theory. Music theory classes focus on the broader aspects of music rather than the technical skills required to adequately perform music.

This includes perspectives on sound and how the listener relates to it. Music theory explores the science and the art behind the creation of music, how a composer might create a beautiful harmony by contrasting dissonant components, how they might use scales and rhythm to produce a catchy tune. If music lessons are about “how to,” then music theory is about “why.”

Music theory frequently addresses aspects of music that are hypothetical, intangible, or completely unexplored. We know that if you put relatable lyrics over the first eight notes of Canon in D, then you can reliably generate pop hits. But why is that? Why are people likely to respond to those eight notes more than they do any other eight notes? Music theory explores questions like these.

Music theory is an exploratory discipline. Music lessons will teach you how to play an instrument, music theory will teach you how to put your playing abilities to use in creating original works, experimenting with sound, creating textures and harmonies that nobody’s ever heard before. We only have 12 notes to play, but music theory teaches us that there are infinite possible ways to play them.

Furthermore, music theory stokes a passion for music, it teaches curiosity, it teaches that music is not a dead thing that we perform through rote memorization, but something that comes alive in our hands and in the listener’s ear. As the Lovin‘ Spoonful once put it: “The magic’s in the music.” Music lessons teach us how to play the notes, music theory teaches us how to find the magic. Contact us to get started with music theory lessons today!