Music Theory Basics — for the Patient!

I promise this is the longest and most boring tutorial video so far. The video below is about intervals and chords. I spent a long time thinking about the best way to introduce the subject, and it was not an easy task. There is a reason why children study all of this for weeks, months and even years at music school, and adults study it at university. Solfège is not discussed at all in the video (even though at school we learn solfège before letter-note names); I felt that if I also tried to explain the relationship between solfège and scales, the subject would become completely impossible to follow. Perhaps that can wait for another video.

In the end I simply started, without a detailed plan, and tried to explain a few basic ideas. I hope the result is at least reasonably easy to follow.

In the Hungarian/German letter-note system, the notes follow one another like this:

[C] [C# = Db] [D] [D# = Eb] [E] [F] [F# = Gb] [G] [G# = Ab] [A] [A# = B] [H] [C] ... etc.

Pronounced in Hungarian:

[cé] [cisz = desz] [dé] [disz = esz] [é] [ef] [fisz = gesz] [g] [gisz = ász (with a “short” á)] [á] [áisz = bé] [há] [cé] ...

It is worth learning this sequence very well; if necessary, you can glance back at it while watching the video. (In English-language notation, the Hungarian/German B is written B-flat, and H is written B.) I am not dealing here with the more unusual cases in which E or H is raised, or F or C is lowered, although those spellings are possible as well. And before the video, one little secret: on a piano, the black keys are the notes shown here as altered notes. The unaltered notes are, naturally, the white keys.

If anything in the video is unclear or you have a question, I will be happy to answer!