How to be Really Good at Music Theory
Music theory (common practice harmony) texts suck. They’re dense. And filled with a lot of trivial bullshit.
For instance, if studying a diminished seventh chord (vii0 or vii06), a text will probably briefly explain what the chord is meant to do. Then the book will spend the rest of the chapter explain “correct” ways to do the voice leading to and from the chord — how to control the dissonance, in other words.
In most cases, students get so focused on the voice leading concepts and so worried about writing “good” four part harmony, they forget that the most important idea is how the chord functions. What is it meant to do, from what other harmony does vii06 come and to where do it go. That’s the important part.
That’s how you get really good at music theory. You figure out the big concepts. You reduce the the verbose crap into one concept, then summarize the little details as generally as possible after the big concept is grasped.
Real Music?
Unfortunately studying basic harmony though “real” music is often impossible — at least when looking at piece as a whole. But looking at isolated cells is okay.
Introduce a big concept, study its application in cells of real music, then study how the little details work out.
Back to vii0
In the case of vii0, the tricky details, when writing voice leading is how the dissonance (the tritone resolves). Most books will spend pages explaining the three ways. But if a student has already studied the resolution of V7, they know how a tritone resolves: inward to at third (if written as a diminished fifth), outward to a sixth (if written as a augmented fourth), or, in some cases, the tritone can resolve by moving in parallel motion to a perfect fifth.
If they haven’t studied V7 yet, the concept of tritone resolution can be introduced as ancillary to the big concept of what vii0 does: move to tonic or, if in first inversion act as a passing chord. It a substitute for inversions of the V7 chord; that’s a concept that’s easily related to other big ideas already studied!
The big concepts matter first, the little concepts don’t make any sense with out them. Think big.
Posted on August 25, 2009 in Music Instruction