So I've been finding it hard to get my head around the fundamentals - even a dry boarded the concepts. I think the reason is when at school the music was taught by simply waving the chalk at staves, mumbling the term scales and key (not sure we got to key), followed by learning ad-hoc randomly with tab and listening means I had to unlearn 'things'. The mental point things all revolved around the key being a scale in my head really caused issues and rather than a single definition of a 'thing' the same term gets used across a number of things. This leads to confusion and circular confusion that never starts or ends anywhere - a bit like teaching you a language by never starting with the basics and just yelling the language louder - I found BBC Bitesize music theory a bit like this. It doesn't help I'm a
visually orientated learner (to the point a maths prof commented in the geometric way I solve problems).
So.. how have started tackling this and what it seems I should learn at each stage without making a circular confusion - please correct me if anyone knows better to my beginner's rambling.
Beato's book covers the first initial points of this rapidly (in a very very short space of time of one page) which makes it difficult to pin a starting point mentally as each sentence is a new concept. So I've combined with a number of additional sources to try to build a pre-ramp into that.
0. Forget attempting to reference what you will learn against anything you think you know - key, scale, note etc. It will hinder you mentally picking this up. It's surprisingly difficult to let go.
1. The musical theory starts with Intervals - the distances between two note pitches. Forget keys, scales etc this is the fundamental building block.
The interval has its own terminology - this removes a large percentage of confusion.
For detail once you know more, a good free reference is this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music) when I mean reference it's dense and explains why -- for example why 1/2 an octave interval isn't 1/2 distance as you'd expect.
2. Next learn about interval number and
quantity as this starts building on the terminology.
Again a dense point in the wikipedia link above.
3. Learn about interval
quality as this has its additional terminology over the quantity above. If you ignore cords at this point and just look at two notes it makes it easier.
* Study Major and Minor
Intervals
* Ignore inversion from the wiki link - cover that later
* Study Classification
* Enharmonic (this is page 2 in the beato book theory section - so you can see the mental jump you have to make)
4. Now add triads and chords into the above. Specifically the inner and outer spanning of intervals - you may start learning about keys at this point ahead of step 5..
The wiki page will introduce this as Intervals in Chords at this point.
Triads are easy - just Root, 3rd and 5th - which on a guitar is a three not power chord that you move around in standard guitar tuning.
Inversions are simply taking the bottom note and moving it an octave up IIRC - chord inversions on the guitar sound like jazz chords as they're used a lot in jazz.
We're starting to accelerate now..
5. What is a scale - start with diatonic, then major and minor
scale. This is the confusing bit - major and minor get used for interval, chord, scale, or key..
At this point you will find it looping back a little as it will recap on Intervals difference between the scales. It then means you're looking at chords and Keys.
A dense source of additional info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_and_minor#Intervals
The Diatonic, Major and minor (and scales themselves) are really a defined pattern of intervals - such as 1 step, 1 step,.., 1/2 step, 1 step,.. etc.
The key is simply the root stating point (note/tonic/key note) that the rest of the scale sits on (see the point about spacing pattern).
6. Circle of fifths. At this point you should have enough to understand what the circle of fifths represent. This will build out into key signatures.
7. Modes - these are really as easy as shifting right on a keyboard. Imagine taking your notes in a scale, the just moving one 1/2 step left for each on the keyboard.
There is a wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(music) but it's not really as clear as it could be.
The shift left you can see down the page - each mode is shown but you'll note it simply moves up the scale (ie shift up in pitch) by one semi-tone (1/2 step).
At this point.. a basis exists and the points Beato makes and others starts making more sense.
So with that rough framework I'm going to try again...
EDIT: minor updates, additions and correction of mode direction (left not right!)
