Introducing music theory for songwriting

Today I’d like to start a series of videos teaching music theory specifically for people who are interested in writing their own music. Because music theory can be intimidating for people, it seems like a good place to start would be to just talk about what music theory is and why it’s important to learn about.

At its heart, the study of music theory is simply a conversation about why music sounds good. At face value, I think music theory should be one of the easiest things for people to engage because everyone loves talking about music and what makes it great!

But this isn’t the case, and I think one of the reasons why music theory has become so inaccessible is because we’ve formalized it so much that it has been completely removed from the process of music creation. And that’s really sad to me, because I think that learning how to talk about music and what makes it enjoyable to us is a really powerful and important part of being an independent music creator.

This post is really short, but I thought it was important for me to share my heart about why music theory should be more accessible. I also want you to have a place where you can ask questions about music theory — if you have questions, please leave a comment on this YouTube video or reach out to me on my Contact page. I love taking questions and yours might be the topic of a new post!

I will update this post as I slowly build my collection of videos in this series. Hope you enjoy it!

Series links

  1. Introducing music theory for songwriting (this post)

  2. Introducing the chords in a major key signature

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Introducing the chords in a major key signature

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