Music Fact, what in the world is that?

Most people refer to it as Music Theory. I never liked the word, theory, because a theory is just that, a theory. And what you want to know are the facts. You see, a theory over time can be proven wrong. A fact is always a fact, period. The information we will be presenting to you is fact. It will never change, it will live on forever, and once you get it, you’ve got it for life. Isn’t that what you want out of taking lessons? The real deal! If that’s what you are looking for, you’re in the right place.

Let’s start from the very beginning.

I know, some of you are saying, “been there, done that.” I understand completely. But I can also say, sometimes we may have missed a little piece of the puzzle that may shed light on everything.

Here's what I am saying, bear with me, please. Don’t skip any lessons. And when the information is clear to you, move on with the course. I want you to get the information now, and never have to go back. This method also ensures that if a term is used, it is explained, and we all completely understand it. We are all on the same page, same level of understanding, so you can’t get lost.

The way I see it, music is a language just like English, French, Spanish, German, etc. In order to speak a language, you need to know:

• Words and the construction of words (and their meaning).
• What a sentence is.
• How to construct a proper sentence to convey a thought and/or emotion.

It is very frustrating for a person to attempt to communicate a subject to a listener and not be able to. Both parties become very frustrated. The person speaking can’t find the words to say, the listener is trying to comprehend, the listener may even attempt to assist the speaker by throwing in a thought, a sentence, but the speaker keeps saying, "no, no, I mean, you know when the da, da, da, da (whew, sounds like a Police song brewing, “The do, do, do, the da, da, da.”)." Excess time goes by, and the result is maybe either "I got it," or "I think I got it," or "oh well, whatever."

Let’s look at a sentence:

I love to create great music.

Every word in that sentence has a place and meaning. It conveys a thought to the listener, and if you understand English, you get what the speaker intends to convey. Each word has a relationship to the word to the left of it, as well as the word to the right of it. LOVE has a relationship to I as well as to.

GREAT has a relationship to create as well as music. What is before each word and after each word is very important for clear communication.

What if the speaker said:

Great I to music love create. 😕 🤪 ???

You would probably need to give this sentence some thought. Although the correct words are used, the order does not convey a clear thought. This completely relates to music, especially in the art of improvisation (creative melodies/soloing). Each note relates to the other notes in the melody and each musical phrase.

I’ve heard many a guitar player begin to play a solo. The first four measures sound amazing, but from the fifth measure on, the player got lost. The audience (listeners) got lost. The relationship of the notes, the intervals, the note before, and the notes after did not connect. It felt like: "Great I to music love create."

Let's go a level deeper.

If you remember, in the English language, we have 26 letters. Each letter is either a consonant or a vowel. Our vowels are:

Remember how we learned it in school?

The rest of the letters are consonants. Think about this.

Let's take 2 consonants, the letters B and T. In the English language, we can create different words by adding and changing the vowels.

Using B and T, we see that adding a different vowel in between the two consonants creates different words:

The same is true with music.

So what does this all mean?

Let's learn MUSIC FACT!