Why we need Music Theory
Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens.
Bright copper kettles, and warm woollen mittens.
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
What does theory have to do with any of these things?
A lot more than you’d expect.
Raindrops cascading onto roses serves as a magnificent display of pyrotechnics. The steady pitter-patter? A measure of rhythm and meter. A time signature signifies the number of beats in a measure, with the terms duple, triple, quadruple and so forth.
Music theory is essentially a comprehension of written music.
Just like we use letters in a language, musicians and composers employ notes and symbols to communicate in music. Words can similiarly be substituted by chords. A paragraph? A song. A chapter in a book? An album. The book? An artist. A writer? A discography.
Theory enables you to critically listen to music, to listen for an extensive range of nuances. Why restrict yourself to major and minor scales, when you could work for an aural understanding of Schoenbergian tone rows?
Learning to read music, however, is not a task for the faint-hearted. Know this, you don’t really require theory as to play/compose music (Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Chris Martin, there’s an endless list of accomplished artists who cannot read music). Theory bestows upon you an enhanced understanding of song structure and brings forth clarity on how to wind a melody through chord changes. Noone could possibly comprehend the significance of theory better than Dream Theater enthusiasts, what with their penchant for incorporating a gazillion time signatures, both esoteric and mellow in equal measure.
Modes
Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, Locrian, am I naming ancient Greek civilizations? I might just be, considering this was the genesis of the ‘mode’ concept. After undergoing Stark transitions in the Renaissance polyphonic theory, we finally achieved the not-so-complex tonal harmonic music of the common practice period.
Modes have been dominant in Western music since the late Middle-Ages. Pope Gregorius is known
for his complete and sophisticated theorisation of the musical systems to be used by the church, still known today as Gregorian Chant or Plain Chant. In this system, the definition of the various modes consisted as much of the specification of the relative pitches (as we did) as in the
rigorous definition of the melodic organization and prescribed cadences, none of which should concern one at a preliminary level. The Gregorian modal system is heavily based on the Pythagorean system, and the names of the various modes originate from ancient Greek names (although Gregorius had them all mixed up!)
The names we use today, are a lot different from what they used to be in the Middle-Ages.
Modes can be best compared to a Reddit thread. They are alternative conversations (here, tonalities) derived from a root subject (here, the major scale). Why are they cooler?
They impose no starting pitch, in that they are an entirely abstract and relative concept.
How is a mode any different from a scale then?
A scale can be thought of as the melody of the note once you indicate the starting note.
As Julie Andrews said and I quote,
When the dog bites
And the bee stings
And you’re feeling sad,
You simply remember your theory basics, and then you don’t feel so bad.
Chords & Co. 