What excatly is music theory?!
Question: I know it's basically the history of music, but .... really, what is it in detail?
Answers: I know it's basically the history of music, but .... really, what is it in detail?
It's not the history of music, but it has certainly changed as music has changed over the course of history.
This is actually a much more complicated question than it seems. Most will say that theory is essentially fundamentals of music (notes, chords, chord progressions, voice-leading, etc). And certainly that's the focus of most undergraduate music theory curricula in the USA. But really, there's no "theory" involved in almost any of that stuff. You need to learn those fundamentals before you can start to theorize.
A theory of music will most likely be limited in scope -- what kind of music? Tonal music? Ok, Schenker's theory is a truly brilliant theory -- he claims that all tonal music grows from the same fundamental structure. That is to say, tonal music arises from a two voice (at least) structure, where the "melody" will generally descend from a member of the tonic triad (scale degree 3, 5 or 8) to tonic (scale degree 1). These pitches will be supported by bass motion which typically arpeggiates the tonic triad. [of course, any one who has studied Schenker will know that this is an ENORMOUSLY overly simplified description...but it's good enough for our purposes...and no, Schenkerian analysis does NOT have "three blind mice" as its goal...when you do this kind of analysis, you're testing the theory...]
That's a THEORY of (tonal) music. Schenker spent his life analyzing piece after piece of tonal music, and was eventually able to generalize his observations to the point where he could say "This is how I think tonal music works."
So on some level, it's like any theory. A theorist has an idea of how ________ works, and then s/he tests that theory by checking actual examples.
The term "music theory" is a little misleading in this light -- there really is no single theory of ALL music. Or at least, not one that works.
I hope this explanation helps a bit!
it's not the so much the history of music, but the actual theory of music, like how it works and why it works and how it all just fits together. Keys, tempos, dynamics, chords, ect. and why certain things work together and others don't. you study other peices as an example of all of those things.
Music theory is the study of how music is constructed. It includes the studies of harmony (scales, chords and their arrangement - a vertical study), counterpoint ( combining melodic lines - a horizontal study), form (a structural study), and composition (combining the other studies to produce a coherent piece of music).
Musician, composer, teacher.
Long story short, it teaches you how to take words on a piece of paper and make a song out of it. It's not as easy as people think. There is allot of thought process to it and that is music theory.