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description=Basic music theory lessons without the complicated jargon and confusing notation. Learn to make your own music, chord progressions, and melodies with our interactive mini-lessons.;

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basic music theory lessons lightnote premium course how music works interactive music theory lessons why learn basic music theory do you want to be able to make your own music build your own chord progressions or even improvise your own melodies do you want to skip all the jargon and complicated symbols with lightnote you ll learn basic music theory the simple way with bite sized lessons no confusing notation and no instruments required 1 sound what is it a sound is a wave every sound is created from vibrations in the air it can be louder increasing the height of the wave or amplitude or more quiet decreasing the height of the wave or amplitude it can be lower in pitch lower notes will become longer waves or higher and higher pitched notes will be more compressed there are infinitely many notes not just the ones you know like a through g but everything in between so how do we pick which notes to use 2 harmony notes that sound good together what makes this sound good play and this sound bad play a simple ratio between the notes means they sound nice together can you see the repeating pattern in the first one your ears can hear the simple ratio between these waves it turns out that when the waves line up in nice patterns it sounds good our ears like it when the ratio between the waves are simple for example three waves of note 1 for every two waves of note 2 is a 3 2 ratio now try it for yourself which of these notes do you think will sound nice together click each of the options to see the wave form wave 1 wave 2 wave 3 show answer how about these notes again which note do you think will sound good with this note hover over each of the options to see the wave form wave 1 wave 2 wave 3 show answer 3 the pentatonic scale the five note system that can do no wrong a lot of music theory is about limiting which notes to use in your song to a small set that sound good together the earliest set of such notes was called the pentatonic scale it has five notes and looks like this 1 2 3 4 5 click the circles to play the notes note 1 lets look at each of these notes and their waveforms play one of the most important things to understand is that the notes themselves aren t important you could start the pentatonic scale on any frequency in this case note 1 has a frequency of 200hz but it could be any other number as well what is important is the ratio the other notes have with note 1 lets take a look note 4 for note 4 we have a very simple ratio of 3 2 that is for every two waves of note 1 200hz there are three of note 4 300hz click play to hear how nice they sound together play note 3 the next ratio used is 5 4 note 3 has a frequency of 250hz you can see that for every four waves of note 1 there are five of the note 3 play note 5 the next ratio used is 5 3 to give us 333 3hz you can see that for every three waves of note 1 there are five of note 5 play note 2 lastly is note 2 with a ratio of 9 8 225hz you can see that for every eight of note 1 there are nine of note 2 you might have noticed that this ratio isn t as simple and therefore these two notes don t sound as nice together as some of the previous notes play octaves finally lets find a pair of notes with the simplest ratio 2 1 this is known as an octave and is not considered a new note an octave is the same note with a higher pitch in this case 400hz and 200hz play 4 the chromatic scale the pentatonic scale below that we just covered is limiting in a lot of ways the notes are not consistently spaced and there are so few of them modern music demands a more flexible system 1 3 5 8 10 thus the chromatic scale was born this system added 7 more notes to fill in the gaps while still including all the notes from the pentatonic scale click to hear the notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 almost all modern instruments are built to this system including guitars keyboards woodwinds etc for example see how the keys of the piano below match up to the 12 note system 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 naming the notes at this point we ve only been labeling the notes 1 through 12 it s time to show you their real names unfortunately i truly believe that the naming of the notes is why music theory is so difficult if i could go back in time i would not name the notes this way but since it s what we ve been using for thousands of years there s no real way around it here they are c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c let s point out some poor qualities about this we use 7 letters to describe 12 notes there are sharps each of which can also be called a flat not all the notes have sharps or flats the natural letters will play a c major scale but only when you start on c equal temperament this 12 note system has a lot of nice properties the first is equal temperament this means that the interval between any two adjacent notes is exactly the same why is this useful well it means we can start a melody on any note 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 play 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 play too many notes a downside to having all of these notes is that not all of them sound good together making this system less forgiving than the pentatonic scale lets listen to some that don t sound so nice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 play 5 chords a group of notes that sound good together here we ll take a look at three of the most common chords major minor and diminished these are all known as triads simply a chord with three notes major chord the major chord is the most common chord whenever you re asked to play a chord without specifying what type then it s a major chord for example d chord d major chord start with any note this is the first note in the chord for the second note count up four notes for the third note count up three more notes the chord is named after the first note click any note to see its major chord c major chord c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 minor chord the minor chord is similar to the major chord except that the second note is one lower start with any note this is the first note in the chord for the second note count up three notes for the third note count up four more notes the chord is named after the first note click a note to see its minor chord c minor chord c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 diminished chord the diminished chord is a less common chord where the third note is one lower than the minor chord s third note start with any note this is the first note in the chord for the second note count up three notes for the third note count up three more notes the chord is named after the first note click a note to see its diminished chord c diminished chord c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 keys a group of notes used in a song because not all of the 12 notes sound good together we must select a set of notes to use in a song this is a key when a song says that it is in the key of c major or d minor this is simply telling you which of the 12 notes are used in this song that s it major key seven notes from the chromatic scale the 1st 3rd 5th 6th 8th 10th and 12th intervals it then repeats back from 1 this is one of the most common keys in music click the notes to play them c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c remember the frequency of the starting note doesn t matter the major scale will always have these intervals minor key again seven notes from the chromatic scale the 1st 3rd 4th 6th 8th 9th and 11th intervals it then repeats back from 1 this is also a very common key c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c there are many other keys but these two are the most common we ll save the other keys for a later lesson the key tool here s a little tool to help you find the notes in any key notice how the pattern never changes instead we just shift where we begin our key pattern c major key c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c a a b c c d d e f f g g major minor 7 diatonic chords chords that fit in a particular key so far we ve learned that a key is a collection of notes used in a song a chord is a set of notes played together that sound good and we ve learned about major minor and diminished chords now since a key is a limited set of notes used in a song not all chords fit in a given key some will be major some will be minor and some will be diminished the chords that fit in a particular key are called diatonic chords which chords fit into the key of c major to do this make sure that all the notes in the chord are also in the key hover over each choice to see the included notes c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 c major chord c minor chord c diminished chord 2 d major chord d minor chord d diminished chord 3 e major chord e minor chord e diminished chord 4 f major chord f minor chord f diminished chord 5 g major chord g minor chord g diminished chord 6 a major chord a minor chord a diminished chord 7 b major chord b minor chord b diminished chord how about e major again select the chords where all of its notes are in the key hover over each choice to see the included notes c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c c d d d e e f f g g g a a a b b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 e major chord e minor chord e diminished chord 2 f major chord f minor chord f diminished chord 3 g major chord g minor chord g diminished chord 4 a major chord a minor chord a diminished chord 5 b major chord b minor chord b diminished chord 6 c major chord c minor chord c diminished chord 7 d major chord d minor chord d diminished chord seven triads in any key look at the pattern of chords above notice how they are identical for both c major and e major well it turns out that every major key has 7 triads that follow the same pattern major minor minor major major minor diminished next lesson ready for more lessons view the course lessons 1 sound waves 2 harmony 3 pentatonic scale 4 chromatic scale 5 chords 6 keys 7 diatonic chords more lightnote premium