Music Theory - Piano and the Fundamentals
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Inspired by Yaboralski to discuss things related to music, specifically the under-appreciated piano!
Brought upon by the Classical and Romantic Era, the first official appearance of traditional music we have come to know has influenced our ways of creativity, especially within the amazing potential on how we can express ourselves through this concept of music. Extraordinary classical composers like Franz Liszt, Frederic Chopin, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and so on, have defined the amazing wonders and fabrics of classical repertoire, most notably the piano repertoire, establishing new meaning, ultimately bringing forth the incredible aspects that we composers, arrangers and musicians admire to the fullest.
Before I get into the realms of some individual composers, I’d like to introduce to you the fundamentals of music itself. The importance of knowing how to notate, read and perform music attains much to the long-lasting ability of understanding how music theory works - music truly is its own language :)
Different types of notes
There are 5 common types of notes in which one has to be familiar with:
- Whole notes
- Half notes
- Quarter notes
- Eighth notes
- Sixteenth notes
These are named accordingly in respect to how long each one lasts per measure.
For example, a whole note lasts the entire measure, while a half note lasts half as long, then a quarter note lasts one fourth of the measure and so on.
When I say ‘measure’, that purely means the space that one whole note takes up, depending on what are called time signatures which I will get into later on.
Theoretically the limit to what type of note you want possible is infinite, but more or less it tends to just stop when you get to 64th notes, due to the uselessness of going smaller, thus making each individual note faster. I won’t get too deep into these reasons, but all in all there are limits to certain things.Treble and Bass clefs
Still thinking about the forms of the different notes, in relation to that there are the two different clefs in accordance with how you perform a piece, as written on sheet music. Pianists will commonly relate to the purpose of these clefs.
The Treble clef, or right hand, is symbolized to look like a cursive script “G”, whilst the Bass clef is notated to symbolize an “F” looking character.
There is a reason for why these clefs look how they look - to put it simply, the ways in which the symbols intertwine/curve around specific lines on the clef indicate the notes G and F.
To further explain what lines and spaces refer to what notes, you can see that each section is dedicated to a specific note - focusing on the red-highlited ‘A’, if a note is placed there, that note would become an A note.
Many more clefs exist along with their corresponding instruments, but staying piano-related, these are the two important standing points of ‘left’ and ‘right’.Time signatures
Right beside a clef symbol, you may see two numbers right before the notation. These are called time signatures. A time signature establishes the required beat of a song. There are a whole variety of them. But to remain straightforward, there are 4 main time signatures to know:
- 4/4
- 2/4
- 3/4
- 6/8
Starting with the most common one, 4/4, what this symbol means is that there are four quarter notes per measure. Remember how there are different types of notes? The bottom number refers to the type of note, and the top number addresses the amount of that given note.
3/4, or what is considered a Waltz, are when three quarter notes are played per measure. If you’ve ever counted the number of beats when hearing a Waltz of some sort, you may have noticed the iconic ‘1 2 3’ beat.
Getting a little smaller, 2/4 means that there are two quarter notes per measure - basically half of 4/4.
Now, onto the time signature 6/8, this means that there are six eighth notes per measure. This is also a Waltz, given that when you simplify 6/8, you get 3/4, but it isn’t necessarily the same as 3/4 - it depends on the style of music you wish to compose, however, but the sole thing to understand are what the top and bottom numbers mean.
A rather rare example of a 9/8 time signature reads as follows - gives perspective on what odd but totally real beats per measures there are.
Each individual note is one eighth note, refering back to how the top and bottom numbers address the given beats/amounts.
Chords
A chord is a progression, generally three notes, that are played simultaneously.
Let’s use the note C as our starting point. From C to the chord C major, you would play the corresponding notes C, E and G together. That is a CMaj chord.
Down to a minor chord, in order to play a C minor, you would change the middle note, E in this case, one half step down to a D sharp, thus playing the notes C, D# and G
Those were two examples of Minor and Major arrangements, given C.
Still in the key of C, a listing of different types of chords in relation to C are provided.- Cmaj (C major)
- Cmin (C minor)
- Cdim (C diminished)
- C7 (C seventh chord)
- CM7 (C major seventh)
- Cm7 (C minor seventh)
- Caug (C augmented)
- Csus (C suspended)
Although confusing at first, I will simply show you how you would play each of these chords on piano.
As we know, Cmaj is played as C E G, and Cmin is played as C D# GCdim would lower both the E and G in a Cmaj chord, in which it would be performed as playind C D# F#
C7 would be played like a normal C major, but instead of three notes, you would add a fourth note, in which that note would be an A#, thus playing C E G A#
CM7 would lower the top A# note as seen in a C7 chord, being played as C E G A (no sharp on the A)
Cm7 would lower the second note in a CM7, turning the first three notes C E G into a minor C, C D# G, keeping the last note at A still.
Caug, also known as the Devil’s chord, sounds menacing, haha. This chord would be played as C E G# - the reason it sounds scary to some is that the G# clashes unevenly with the harmonizing C E notes.
Csus, actually similar to a regular Cmaj, would higher it’s second note E to the F, making this progression C F G
Different notations can be added on each of these - for example, you can addd more notes to a Cmaj to make it a Cmaj11, Cmaj13 and so on, but rest assured you won’t need to understand the complexity of that just yet.
There are chords known as Power Chords - chords that are neither major or minor. In the key of C, a C power chord would be played by playing one low and one high C in the same octave, whilst playing a G in the middle
THE COMPOSER’S TAKE
As seen by probably the most famous classical composers, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, they take the ordinary to the extraordinary.
I’ll be talking about Franz Liszt. Born in Austria, Liszt had a composing mind like no other - the insane complexity and intricacies of many of his pieces require more than practice.
Similar to Chopin, being one with your piano is the key to your personal success, ingraining emotion and empathy in which a literal relationship with your instrument is made. Playing flawlessly using methods made by them help to further exaggerate such beauty.
This beauty can be seen in his set of 12 Transcendental Etudes S. 139 - 12 Etudes, each in a different key that were composed, and gradually progressed from earlier works into today’s iconic Etudes. I’ll be more than happy to dedicate another talk about his Etudes, as they deserve far more appreciation.My personal experience with practicing, and composing Liszt style pieces, has taken me to a whole different world. The massive chords and octaves he’s known for should never be understated - every single note is played in an eventual Liszt piece, adding to that an entire story line as one could imagine themselves.
Several of his majesties are extremely long in length, in which equalizing the difficulty with the length is his priority.
Take his hardest piece in history, “La Clochette”, an early 1838 version of “La Campanella” - practically 15 minutes play-through, and the difficulty is nonetheless the same honestly. I will provide a Synthesia tutorial to anyone who is imterested in watching it ^^
I’ve managed to learn the first 2 minutes, and not even my 11 years of experience can match up to what this piece has to offer!
Franz Liszt is all about complexity (with exceptions of his Un Sospiro piece, rather calming), but at the same time is providing a baseline for phenomenal composing and ideas that are destined to grow in every musician at heart.
This will conclude my talk for now :D
I’d like to go over some other things in the future, but I’m glad I got to spill everything out about the basic fundamentals, as well as a taste of the amazing Franz Liszt. I want you guys to become amazing musicians! You all have amazing potential here, given that we’re all part of a musical community - we may not always see our musical spirits, but they very well exist within us :)
Thank you
◞ 🎶 If words fail, music speaks! 🎶
𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥! - Gumball -
At least I learnt something new.
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this is an amazing amount of research and this will be greatly beneficial to my podcast
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Shazz_ I can use some of this to be better at piano
🎶music gives life, whereas silence gives nothing -JDP_Random🎶
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Congratulations for being the 3rd Person I upvote
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wow big post
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@OVERLORD i’m curious as to who else you’ve upvoted
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All the people that I upvoted: Admin, Shazz
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said in Music Theory - Piano and the Fundamentals:
All the people that I upvoted: Admin, Shazz
TheyLuhJay’s upvote was a joke
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JDP Random The video I provided of Liszt’s La Clochette is, has been, and will ever be the hardest piano piece you’ve ever seen - it’s listed as playable, too, making it harder than anything else
◞ 🎶 If words fail, music speaks! 🎶
𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥! - Gumball -
anyways
This post is very:
Can’t believe you wrote all of that shazz, Thank you for telling us something new.
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@OVERLORD My pleasure :)
Music has done good for me, and I know it’ll do every single one of you good as well ^^ -
Shazz_ OH MY GOSH I NEED THIS FOR A HOMEWORK THANKS :DDDDD
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@ıllııllıllıツApollo-Justiceツıllıllııllı Glad to know that this can help you on your work :)
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Shazz_ Here you learn much more than in school
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Shazz_
Do you know where I can find practice for stuff like chords and chord progressions? I’ve learned that stuff a billion times but I’ve never had a class with a teacher to actually assign stuff so I learn those facts yknow?How did you learn that stuff to the point that you can actually recall it?
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@MrTree I’d think there are various sites in which you can practice some of the fundamentals at your own pace - I personally learned all of this not only from my music class, but from my platform I use which is Flat.io.
You can give Flat.io a try, but I actually don’t think there is a tutorial when starters join, but.
I could always be your teacher if anything doesn’t seem to work for you :) -
Shazz_
Honestly, what I think I need is someone to hold me to it. like a teacher at a school xD Not to say you wouldnt be helpful! But… xD I’m extremely busy currently. I’m taking 3 ap exams in the upcoming weeks o.o -
@MrTree I’ll leave you be to do your other things you need to do, of course, haha ^^
But I’d be more than happy to help you! I mean that :) -
Shazz_ Wow!
well it does look very hard to play
