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The Complete Guide to Music Theory for Beginning Piano Students

by Official LessonsOnTheWeb

This lesson is going to introduce you as a beginning piano student to the amazing world of Music Theory.

Music Theory explains how notes relate to each other in our piano music. Even though we read just one note at a
time when we're playing our piano pieces, what we learn through Music Theory is how each of those individual
notes actually fit in with all of the other notes to create the bigger picture which is the piece as a whole.

There are four main ways that notes connect or relate to one another.

1. Intervals
2. Harmony
3. Melody
4. Rhythm

Let's break each of these down, see what they are, and learn how they connect notes together in our music.

The Complete Guide to Music Theory for Beginning Piano Students: Page 1
Step 1: Intervals

Intervals are the distance between pitches. The notes better.

can be played one at a time or together at the same
time.
Intervals can be read from left to right. (see the blue
arrow in image #2) Usually, the melody line is the
very top line and is what we tend to hear the most.
Think about the song "Jingle Bells"...I use this as an
example in the video at the end of this lesson. That
familiar tune to this song that most of us know is what
we call the Melodic Line of the song and by studying
the intervals between these melodic line notes, we
understand how each note connects to the others
We can have intervals from unisons up in order
through 8ths. I have circled several interval examples
in image #2 so you can see what they look like. I go
over them with you at the piano in the final step if you
have any questions at this point.
Next, let's look at Harmony and see how notes
connect to each other in a different way from our
Melodic intervals.

Step 2: Harmony

Remember how we read our notes from left to right to
find the Melodic Line & Intervals?
Harmony - or harmonic notes are read from the
bottom to the top (or top to bottom)...completely
opposite. Harmony always involves more than two
notes and we call these notes that are played
together - chords.
In the image above you can see a simple example of Melody connects notes together to form those tunes
2 notes that are played together at the same time.
Usually, chords have more than 2 notes, but
sometimes, as in this case, there are just 2 notes. We
still consider these 2-note groups of notes as chords.
The main point to remember at this time about
Harmony is that we read and play the notes from the
bottom to the top, which is different from Melodic
Melody notes that are read and played from left to
right.
Speaking of Melodic Lines, let's take a look at how
that can remember much easier than Harmonic Lines.

The Complete Guide to Music Theory for Beginning Piano Students: Page 2
Step 3: Melody

As we mentioned before, the Melody line of a piece is
usually found in the very top line and we read those
notes from left to right.
If you are asked to identify the Melodic and Harmonic
lines of a piece, you would look at the top line for the
Melody and the bottom lines for the Harmony.
The image above shows the melodic line in this
music example. In piano music, much of the melodic
line will be in the Treble Clef - right hand, and the
harmonic line will be found in the Bass Clef - left
hand.
It's interesting to note, that melody flows in one
direction and harmony flows in another direction.
Harmony plays a "supporting role" to melody and the
way it is written in the music almost demonstrates
that; as we see chords seemingly hold up the melody
line to give it support, texture, and strength.
Now we need to understand how we know what
notes to play in these melodic and harmonic music
lines. We do this through Key Signatures. Let's see
what they are.

Step 4: Keys and Key Signatures

In music, a Key is what tells us what notes we are play sharp or flat throughout the piece. All of our
going to play in a given piano piece. Have you ever melodic and harmonic lines will be built using the Key
noticed how all music doesn't sound the same? In indicated by the Key Signature.
part, this is because music can be written in many
different keys, which has different notes from each There will never be a Key Signature that contains
other when we're playing in a certain Key. both sharps and flats together, but...you may see the
Key Signature change sometimes throughout the
The way we can know what Key we're playing in is by piece from the original one..so make sure you look
looking at the Key Signature at the beginning of every out for that in your music.
piece, and at the beginning of every line of music in
that piece. It's always on the left...see in the image The best way to learn your Key Signatures is by
above? playing Scales. Let's look at scales and learn what
we call some of the tones/notes in scales.
The Key Signature will tell us what notes we are to

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Step 5: Scales
Scales are made up of all the notes in between the
first and last note of the scale.
For example, a C Major scale starts on C and ends
on C. C Major has no sharps or flats in it. (As you
learn each Key Signature you'll know what notes to
play for each major and minor scale.) The notes in
between are included in the scale and the notes must
be the same as the key signature of C...which is no
sharps or flats.
As we play through an entire scale we can see how
each note connects to each other by counting the
intervals between the notes that we're playing.
One of the first things that you will begin working on
in your piano playing as a beginner is scales. We
The Complete Guide to Music Theory for Beginning Piano Students: Page 4
usually start with C Major and then progress through
what we call the Circle of Fifths to learn all the rest of
our scales.
Learning our scales makes learning our piano pieces
much easier! If you know how to play the E Major
scale, you'll be able to learn a piece in that same key
a lot faster; especially if you practice on that scale
before you start working on your piece each day in
your practicing.
Scales are the building blocks for the chords that we
play - which remember are a part of the Harmonic
Line in music theory. Let's look at how we can build
Chords out of our scales.
Step 6: Chords
Chords are different from melody lines. Chords are
notes that are played together, at the same time. In
our music, they are stacked on top of each other...you
can see this in the images.
Chords can be made up of any combination of two or
more notes. What's neat, is that we have a different
name for each type of chord that we build.
Triads are made up of 3 notes and are one of the
most common chords that we learn at the beginning
of our music theory studies. There are in fact many
different types of Triads made up from adding in
around on the keyboard in more complicated pieces
of music and in different styles of music; such as Jazz
The Complete Guide to Music Theory for Beginning Piano Students: Page 5
some notes or even taking away some notes. The
possibilities are actually numerous in terms of how
you can change notes around to make up different
Triads.
Chords serve to define or describe the type of
harmony that we have in a piece. Everything in music
theory is really about defining what is happening with
the notes that we see and play.
The final part of our lesson today will deal with how
we can create patterns from the chords that we play.
Chord Progressions teach us how to really move
or Rock & Roll.
Step 7: Chord Progressions
Building Chords on a Scale is what we do when we
play Chord Progressions.
Let's go back to scales for just a minute.
Each note of a scale can be turned into a Triad by
stacking 2 notes on top of it. See image #2 - see how
there are 3 note chords all the way up the scale? This
example is in the key of C Major.
Once we build triads on each tone of the scale, we
then number each tone/chord of the scale starting
with 1 and ending with 8; except we call the "8"
chord, the 1 chord again. Usually, the numbers for
each chord are written with Roman Numerals in our
music.
Now what we have are seven different chords that we
Step 8: Come Practice With Me!
This video will take you through examples at the
piano to show you how we read and play intervals,
harmony, melody, and rhythm in real time.
It might be best to take one step per day to really take Music Theory will help you understand the bigger
the time needed to grasp each concept thoroughly.
Read the step and then watch that part of the video
so you can fully understand how each part works.
Then try taking a new piece of music that you've
never played before and then identify the melodic and
harmonic lines, the chords and even chord
progressions that you find.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOnVfYnVVL0
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can use. Out of those seven chords, the most
commonly used ones are the 1, 4, & 5 chords. These
are called Primary Chords. These are the chords
circled in image #2.
To play this chord progression on your piano, simply
take out the other chords and start from the beginning
and play each one right after the other. Play the 1, 4,
5 & 1 chord again on the top octave.
You can do this with each new key you learn and it
will help to reinforce your knowledge of that key and
the scale that goes with it.
OK...this is a lot of information so let's now go to the
piano together to see examples of each of these
steps.
Can you play the scale that the piece is in?
Remember to do that with each new Key Signature
and piece you learn.
picture of what you are playing on the piano. You'll
come to understand how notes connect to each other
through many different ways and it will even help you
create your own music one day if that is one of your
goals!
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