Absolute Basics – A little music theory can go a long way. Just the simple basics can help you to understand many musical concepts. And, that’s exactly where this article begins – with the very basics of music theory.
This article is meant for those people new to music theory, those that would like to learn enough to be able to follow along in later discussions on subjects like: building major and minor scales, how to build chords, transposing to different keys, etc.
What will you learn?
Discover the names for all the notes and their relationship to each other. Learn about the intervals between each note and become familiar with a little terminology. Gain a better understanding of the fingerboard and learn the notes at each fret on the mandolin.
If you can already figure out the notes on your mandolin, and if you understand all the simple concepts in the summary at the end of this simple music theory introduction, then you can probably skip this article.
However, for those that can use it, this should be a fairly good “primer”, and probably a good introduction to music theory for any instrument.
We’ll start on Page 2, with some simple dots.