Music theory is an integral concept to understanding how the many aspects of music and how it works together as well as how it is translated. Music theory is a form of communication that translates the writers ideas and expressions.
Music theory expands our ability to understand musical structure. It’s a means to translate it’s context regardless of the readers native tongue. It’s similar to another form of communication, sign language, in the fact that the reader only needs to understand it’s written form to understand how it is to be interpreted. Music theory is a written language that enables us to understand the structure and meaning behind a musical composition. Music theory can be considered a short-hand of sorts when it comes to referencing important points in music.
A knowledgeable understanding of music theory makes a literate musician. It makes a musician who can not only speak the language of music, but read and write it as well.
There are two things that most performers have to constantly work at, reading music and memorizing music. A deep understanding of music theory makes both of these tasks remarkably easier.
In music, groups of notes form chords, and groups of chords form phrases. Music theory is what allows us to recognize these chords and phrases and become fluent readers. Many young musicians rely heavily on motor memory, (also known as tactile memory), which can be an unreliable form of musical memory. Have you ever witnessed a performance and a person missed a note and it alters their performance? This is a result of motor memory, the fingers only know where to go based on where they’ve been and one mistake can completely ruin the performance. Harmonic memory allows us to store large sections of music and thousands of notes in our memory under just a few common chord progressions.
There are many musicians that do not understand, know or practice music theory and by all means,
if it works for them I would always encourage them to continue doing what works for them. The
purpose of the content found on this page and in this website is to help those seeking an
understanding of what music theory is and how it is applied.