It's all theory and tonality over here!

Music theory has actually always been one of my favourite things to learn just because it's like learning a new language. I started learning to read music and notation when I was around 7 year olds, as my sister played the violin and we had a keyboard at home. Also, my grandad was a professional trombone player back in the day, so music theory has always been in my life. I started learning the trumpet during primary school, which allowed me to advance my skills and I began learning the classical guitar in year 5. So as you can see I've had a lot of time and practice with music theory. In college, we had a lesson on music theory so I was able to advance my knowledge and show the tutor what I already knew. For me, it was one of my favourite lessons because I already knew a lot about it and could use this in my assignments and practical tests. Even though as a guitarist I mostly use tabs and learning songs by ear, I still like being able to read notation and having the knowledge of music theory because you never know when you might need it one day!

As well as music theory, in college we also had to learn about tonality and harmony. There are three types of tonal harmony. These are: Diatonic Harmony, Chromatic Harmony and Atonal Harmony. Diatonic harmony means that a song relates to a key and doesn't use any notes or chords outside that key. Chromatic harmony consists of ascending and descending sequence of pitches, always by semitones. Atonal harmony has no key and has an absence of efficient harmony, so there is no clear relation to notes and chords. Learning about the different tonal harmonies was definitely interesting and something I'd never really thought about until college. I knew about the relations between keys, chords and notes but never knew there were multiple tonal harmonies. I can use all this knowledge to understand why composers' intended tonal and harmonic make up the way they did and what the effect they have on pieces of music.

Being able to learn these things in music has given me a chance to advance my knowledge and use them in the future. I believe I can use this when writing music, even listening to music because I can interpret the relations between harmonies and tonalities and how audiences might feel when listening to varies types of music.

#allthingsindsutry