Is Music Theory Really Useful? Turning Theory Into Practice - PHH 208

Now, most Introduction to Theory or Elements or Fundamentals of Theory courses include only the basics that you really need to know. But sometimes you'll see more advanced topics creep into these courses. And if that's a course that you've been looking at taking, watch out. Because it means that the instructor really loves those topics and wants to teach them. And they're things you probably don't need to know.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Anne Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures, and I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Heart Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spiritual spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us just go to harpmastery.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. Is studying music theory really useful? Well, maybe not. Yep, you heard right. I really said that and I'm a total theory nerd. Well, I'm not going to leave you in suspense. Of course knowing music theory is useful and helpful and part of being a good musician, but only, and this is a big only if you know how it's useful. Did you ever take a class in school and the whole time you're sitting in class and you're thinking I'm never going to use this stuff. Of course you did. I mean, I remember sitting in my calculus class in high school, which incidentally I really enjoyed, but knowing that I was going to go to music school and was very unlikely to ever use any of this kind of higher mathematics again. So maybe your useless class was a math course or it could have been just about any other subject. And sometimes we discovered later that we were wrong. And for instance, a little understanding of chemistry is helpful if you're trying to work out ingredient substitutions in a recipe. Right at the time though, that information might fall into the category of good to know, but I'll never need it. Well, I taught classes like that when I was teaching at Curtis. The theory and ear training classes I taught were certainly full of information that would be necessary for a professional musician, but that didn't mean that any of it seemed relevant to students who just wanted to practice. You may sympathize with that feeling if you've taken theory courses with the idea that these courses would help your harp playing significantly. Please understand. I know and believe with every fiber of my being that music theory makes you a better musician and can absolutely be of benefit to your playing. But unfortunately I have found that a lot of the time harpists take theory courses and are left wondering what use they can make of all this hard won knowledge. These courses don't come with a hands on way to apply this knowledge at the harp. A way to make it really useful. That's what I will share with you today. Some common Sense Ways to Make Theory Practical.

Before we get started, I want to thank everybody who attended our Sharpen youn Focus clinic last week. It was a really great call. We had our expert, Dr. Lucy Smith, come and do a great presentation on focus and presenting it from a really high level. That allowed me at least, because I found this information really fascinating, allowed me to think about ways to focus without getting down in the weeds of thinking about notes and how I was going to play things and I think that that's part of what resonated with a lot of people on the call. It was like, oh, it's not just about playing, it's about what I'm thinking about while I'm playing. And that makes such a huge difference.

Her viewpoint on things is very similar to mine, but she comes with such a different level of expertise because that's her subject and heart playing is mine. So I thought it was a terrific call. And actually, of course, we're coming together again at the end of this month to do a joint masterclass for some students to help them with their focus. And if you missed the focus clinic and you'd like to be able to watch the replay and to attend the masterclass, we have left the registration up so you can still purchase the course where you're going to be able to watch the replay of our call from last week and attend the masterclass, which is on Monday, May 26th. And if you're in the US just a little heads up, that's Memorial Day. So just to let you know about that. But if you, as I said, if you didn't take advantage of it the first time and you are sorry you missed it, do take advantage of it now and go ahead and purchase it right now. You can still do that. You'll find the link on our homepage and you'll find it also, of course, on the app and naturally I've linked to it in the show Notes. So thank you again to everybody who attended. You had great questions and I thought it was a really terrific call. And thank you for taking that initiative to help yourself and help your harp playing and work on your harp happiness. We're dealing with a different aspect of harp happiness today, and that is the kind of harp happiness that comes from knowing what you need to know and not worrying about what you don't need to know. I know the theory of music is really important. Unfortunately, it's a really huge topic and there are certain things you need to know and you probably know what they are, keys and chords, that kind of stuff. But of course, once you know that, then how is it really useful to you? That's what we're going to talk about today. But let me take just a minute and talk about just a couple of the things very briefly that you don't need to know. You don't, you don't need to know advanced harmony. You don't need to know species counterpoint or Shankarian analysis or the rules of fugue or 12 tonalism. And the Reason I mention these is because I don't want you to see those on some music theory syllabus and think that these are things you need to spend time learning. You don't. Now, most Introduction to Theory or Elements or Fundamentals of Theory courses.

Include.

Mostly only the basics that you really need to know. But sometimes you'll see more advanced topics creep into these courses. And if that's a course that you've been looking at taking, watch out, because it means that the instructor really loves those topics and wants to teach them. And they're things you probably don't need to know. What I want to give you today is the permission. If you decide to take a course like that, that's great, but I'm going to give you permission to stop learning when you feel it is no longer in your best interest. If it gets into a topic that just does not interest you, don't do it. I mean, if you are the kind that loves dealing with the innards of music and you want to look at all the puzzles and ways to look at music, I mean, that can be fascinating, but it's a big study and takes a lot of time and is not necessarily terribly useful or relevant to your harp playing. So if your understanding of music theory is primarily to help your harp playing, that's what I want to talk about today and that's what I want to encourage you to do. I also want to encourage you to check out the theory books that are written by harpists for harp harpists. There are numbers of them. And if you look through the online catalogs at any of the harp music stores, you'll see ones that are there and they're going to be really good and useful for you. They all have a slightly different take on them. And the descriptions that you'll see are pretty good at letting you know what level they are. So you can judge from there, but. And you'll be able to pick the one that is just right for you. So I recommend those kind of books over music theory books and workbooks that are written for pianists just because you're playing the harp, and the theory books that are written for harpists to use things like, you know, Three's a Chord or Kathy Bundy Moore's music theory texts. These are ones that are going to be really applicable where you're going to be able to take what you're learning and put it on the harp. So those are things to investigate and I would encourage you to do that. But we're not talking about those specifics. Today we're talking about general categories of what is really useful, things so basic that they are absolutely useful to you on a daily basis in your practice, every day to help you understand what you're playing, help you learn it faster and play it better. And so I'm going to talk about those basic elements. And certainly you would learn these in any theory course or from a theory book. So the topics aren't particularly a revelation. But I want you to be sure that you know why you're learning them, that, that you know how to practice them and what you can do with them once you've learned them. So here's the first topic. Definitely the most basic and very simple. You need to know your key signatures. I know, totally basic, right? But key signatures are sort of the ABCs, literally, I suppose, of music, right? They are the most basic elements of musical literacy, and you just need to know them. And knowing the scales that go with those keys, of course, very helpful too. You should know major and minor key signatures and how to tell the difference. When you're looking at a piece of music, how can you tell whether it is major or minor?

Just look at the accidentals in the piece and that may help you look at the last chord sometimes. Also a good indicator if you are worried about how you should learn these key signatures. There are all kinds of systems, you know, go up from this, go around the circle of fifths. I don't think you need any of those. I think you just need to out and out memorize them. And if you don't want to memorize all the major key signatures and minor key signatures, and I'll tell you, there are 30 key signatures, 15 major, 15 minor. And you know, yes, you can figure out one from the other, but it's just easier to learn them. I mean, there are 26 letters in the Alphabet. So it's not like there's, you know, not like 30 key signatures is that much harder. But if you don't want to do that much, let's do half of it. Learn the key signatures as. With as many as four sharps and as many as four flats. You don't have to learn the ones with five, six and seven sharps and flats if you don't want to, and properly, probably if you have a lever harp, those are keys you're never going to be able to play in anyway. But, you know, up to four sharps and four flats in major and minor, just memorize them, learn them. It's the simplest way. Now, I know that there are plenty of other systems for learning them. And I have linked in the show notes to a blog post I did quite a while ago as a blog post in the archives about learning key signatures and why I don't believe that the circle of fifths is the best way to do it. It's a lovely pattern, but all the ways that we learn them, all those systems, we go one, up we go three, down we go three, whatever it is, all those systems for learning them are all just understanding the patterns that those key signatures form because they're just beautiful in terms of the patterns that they form. So if you like to learn the pattern, that's great. But all of those things require you to figure it out. And I don't want to spend time figuring out a key signature when I'm looking at it. I just want to know what it is. And that's why I think memorizing is faster. However, how do you practice them? Well, aside from memorizing your key signatures, play your scales in different keys every day, right? Just pick a different key. The nice thing on the harp is that it's not going to change our fingering. But on the other hand, the drawback of scales on the harp is that because the fingering for every one of our scales is the same, we often fall into the trap of just playing them in the same key every day, which doesn't extend our own music learning. So memorizing them, yes, but playing our scales in a different key every day is a great way to keep that knowledge fresh. And of course, be sure that you know the key of every piece you're playing. Before you start practicing the piece, look at the key signature, remind yourself what key it's in. That's a great way to keep that memorization and understanding of key signatures fresh. But here's the ultimate why should you learn them? When will you wish you knew them? Well, you're going to wish that you knew your key signatures. When your teacher asks you what key a piece is in, I mean, that's really embarrassing. And of course, it has happened to me, not in decades upon decades, but it's really embarrassing to sit there and think, I don't know what key the piece is in. It's just nice to know. It's a good piece of information. And the key can be useful because the more you know about keys, the more you can figure out where you are in a key. And of course, any further understanding of music theory, harmony, chords, is absolutely dependent on a knowledge of key signatures. You cannot understand chords without knowing keys. You can't transpose something without knowing keys. And you'll understand the accidentals that come up in a piece better, which helps you learn your pedal or lever changes. If you understand why those accidentals are there, and they probably relate to a key or a temporary key change, it makes it easier to play and understand them. So keys are the very, very most basic thing. And anything else you want to understand in music theory starts with keys. So you need to know those. So you need to know keys. Got that? What comes next? Intervals comes next. An interval is just a little two note chord, right? It's just two notes. And what do you need to know about them? Well, you need to know them by their size, probably all the way up to the size of a tenth. We talk about these all the time. And maybe one of the things you don't understand that I can help you with right now is what those numbers mean. When we talk about the interval of a third, which might be from C to E, for instance, it's a third because it has three letter names. Counting from bottom to C, then D, then E. Not three notes, but counting the bottom note and the top note and all the notes in between all the different letter, it's got three. C, D, E. That's why it's a third. So that's kind of a nice thing to know. And you want to be able to know the sizes of intervals up to about a tenth. And an advanced, slightly more advanced understanding of intervals would include knowing their qualities, whether they're major, minor or perfect, or going even a little bit further, augmented or diminished. Those are useful. And why are they useful? Well, they are useful because when you're having trouble learning some notes in a passage, if you can identify the interval, it will help you with your finger spacing. Oh, okay. Well, you know, okay, it's a third. And this is how far I reach with a third. Now, we practice intervals in our exercises and drills all the time. So as you are practicing them, pay attention to what that spacing is. Is, am I playing thirds? Am I playing fourths or fifths or sixths or sevenths or octaves or ninths or tenths? What am I playing? It all comes down to just paying attention. But in addition to helping you learn the notes that you might be having trouble with in a piece, it will also help you if you need to memorize something. Because when you know what interval you're playing, oh, I'm playing a fifth. I'm playing a bunch of fifths in a row. I'm playing a Bunch of sixths in a row. Knowing that interval and being able to identify it by name helps you remember what it is. And of course, being really familiar with intervals will help you recognize patterns of them more quickly. Okay, pretty basic. Intervals are pretty basic, and they come under the category of definitely good to know. And why? Because if you don't understand intervals, you can't build chords. And chords are the next topic on our list. And one I know that you understand the importance of the basic information about chords. Chord structure is where you need to start your understanding of chords. And that would be the basic triad. That's that three note chord, that one that stacks up on, you know, alternate lines or spaces, right? Like C, E, G, or fac or one of those kinds of things. That's a basic triad. And then a seventh chord that would add one more note, F, A, C, E. Right. A seventh above the bottom note. You need to understand how to build them, how to recognize them, and what the inversions of chords are all about when you have those notes in different orders. So that's a bigger topic for sure, and it's one you really ought to know, because as harpists, we play a lot of chords. And understanding those basic chord structures will help you learn more intentionally and more deeply because you'll be able to understand what you're looking at from a perspective that's not just, okay, I've got a G and a C and an E in the right hand. No, it's a C chord. It's got a G on the bottom. It's second inversion. It becomes a shorthand way of knowing you're looking at. And in fact, it allows you to see the notes as a group and understand them as a group rather than just individual notes. So it allows you to read faster. But of course, that only works if you really understand them and practice them. So how would you practice understanding chords, triads, seventh chords and inversions? Well, look at the patterns in your exercises. You should be playing exercises in chords every day as part of your technique work, or at least regularly, if not every day. And as you play those exercises, understand what they're about. Sometimes an exercise will take one chord and then have you play it in lots of different inversions. Look at those inversions, think about what they are, and then practice transposing that pattern. Oh no, we're coming back to keys again. Okay, so practice putting that same pattern in a different key and understanding what the pattern itself is made of, what the chords are made of and how they're built as you Practice a chord passage or practice an exercise in chords. Name the roots of those chords and the inversions of those chords. Like if it's a C, E, G chord, if the notes are C, E and G, it's a C chord. It doesn't matter what note is on the bottom, it's still a C chord. That's the root of the chord. And then if the chord has a different note on the bottom, then we know it's in inversion. So it might be a C chord in first inversion, or a C chord in second inversion, or a C chord in root position if it has the C on the bottom. Those are terms that it's really helpful to know and understand. Now, my job today, unfor, is not to teach you all those things because it wouldn't fit into one podcast. So this is where a theory book or a theory course, if you need, can be really helpful so that you have that information. As harpists playing the chords the way we do all the time, this is absolutely essential information for us to be able to understand what these chords are like. This information isn't just useful for identity, identifying the chords that you're going to play. But as I hope you understood from what I said a moment ago, it's going to help you see the notes as groups and see them as patterns so that your reading is going to be faster. And as you practice them, if you practice naming them, you're paying a lot more attention to the spacing of your fingers. A lot of people rely on finger spacing. Sometimes we call them finger sandwiches to read chords quickly. But the thing is that when you know exactly what those notes are, what the chord is, the finger shape takes on a different kind of meaning. Because now it's not just a shape. It's a shape that has notes associated with it. And as I'll mention in just one second, it might even have a specific function in. In the key that you're in. Oh, my gosh. All these subjects tie in together. So we've done keys, we've done intervals, we've done basic chord structure. And now we're going to get to the fourth element that I think is essential, and that's basic chord progressions. A progression is simply a sequence of chords, because just like everything else in music has patterns, chords have a standard of. Well, standard is too strong a word. But they have very common sequences, common progressions. And of course, what's wonderful about compositions is that they take these common usual sequences and do all kinds of nifty things with them. So you'll see all sorts of embellishments and changes in real music. But a lot of real music can be boiled down to these very basic progressions. And perhaps the most basic of all is a I chord, a IV chord, a V chord, going to a I chord. Now, these Roman numerals, because that's what these are, relate to the notes in a particular key. So a I chord is based on the first note in a key. A IV chord has as its root the fourth note in that key. A V chord has its root, the fifth note in a key. So this is where key signatures become important. Argh. Okay, this all ties in. But learning a couple of those very basic chord progressions, I, iv, V, I. There are plenty of others, of course, and there are lots of substitutions that can go in there. But. But even knowing that one is going to help you find bigger patterns in the music. So this can be a harder thing to think about actually practicing when you're sitting down at the harp. But it can be very simple. If you take a I chord, a IV chord, and a V chord, you can practice that progression along with your daily scales and arpeggios. I was just talking about practicing chords. Well, here's a great idea. Before you start a piece, before you start practicing that next piece on your music stand, think about what key it's in. And then find a I chord, a IV chord, a V chord, and play that basic progression, I, iv, V, I. It'll give you some insight into how those chords are used in that particular piece. It's going to give you information. And even better than that, when you learn what those chord progressions sound like, you're going to be able to sort of sense exactly what the next chord coming up ought to be. It will help you memorize, it will help you find mistakes. It will help you predict your pedal and lever changes. Because you'll learn to hear what is probably coming next. And when the piece doesn't do that, that'll be information too. It'll be like, oh, it went I, iv, V. But then it didn't go to a I chord, it went to a VI chord. Well, this is important information. This is helpful for you as you're memorizing, but not just from a memory standpoint, but from a learning standpoint. It's going to help you understand where things are going. You can use it to help train your ear as well as your fingers. So practice those progressions as part of your daily scales and arpeggios. Practice them before you start a new piece, transpose them into various keys, major and minor. And along with all the other information that has built into this. Right, the keys, the intervals, and the chord structure themselves, these basic chord progressions are going to be the ultimate foundation for anything else you do with your music and for anything else that you might choose to learn in music theory. And that brings me back to one of the important points I wanted to make today, that beyond that sort of basic theory education.

A lot of music theory, most of music theory, perhaps, is not going to be helpful to you, could be very interesting, and depending on the particular way you play the harp, whether you play by ear, whether you play a lot of folk music, whether you do therapeutic music, in which case you might need to learn more about modes.

That kind of specialized information is something you're going to know that you need to learn as you go along. But the stuff that we talked about today is pretty much all the music theory that you would absolutely need to feel like you knew enough to play well and to feel like you were, yeah, a musician. There's obviously a lot more that you could learn, but that is totally up to you. I just want you to be very aware that you can go down a rabbit hole with music theory. Music theory is no longer helpful when you spend more time learning than playing.

And it's not helpful if you realize that you're spending more time figuring out the chords than actually practicing the chords in your piece. I mean, you don't have to identify all the chords. It's not necessary to know every single chord in your piece. Now, it can be extremely helpful if there's a single chord or a short passage that you just need to know better. And so you think, okay, well, I'm going to get some extra understanding of it because I am going to use every single tool at my disposal to try to play this better. But you don't need to know what all the chords in order to practice a piece or to play it well. That doesn't mean that it's not a good thing to know or that it's not helpful or useful knowledge, but its usefulness can sometimes be really on the minimal side. And as I said, if you're spending more time trying to figure out the chords than actually practicing the chords, that's probably not a good use of your time. By the way, if you're a My Heart Mastery member, our Understanding Chord Theory course is brand new. If you look in the brand new curated for you section, that's one of our courses where I've taken all the archived calls that relate to that and organized them in a syllabus for you, and that should help you with your chord theory. And in fact, it works through pretty much what we talked about in that same order, starting with keys, making sure you know your intervals, building chords, and then putting those chords in sequence. So that's pretty much the same idea and that's the same order that you'll find in just about any music theory course anywhere. So. And so my Heart Mastery members, that's in your. In your website there, curated for you courses, we're working on those. And that one is there for you. So now another topic that's similar to music theory is music history, another huge subject. How much do you need to know? We're not going to deal with that today. We might deal with a survey of music history in 20 minutes at some point, but that's a topic for a different day for sure. But I hope our discussion today helped you understand what theory is useful for you and why it's useful, how you can practice it and what you can do with it once you know it. Next week on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the challenges that we have in playing the harp. When did you discover that playing the harp was harder than you thought, and what did you do about it? And if you've gotten to that point and you haven't figured out what to do about it, well, that's what we're going to be talking about on next week's show. We all know what it's like to have that moment of joy when we start playing the Harper, when we start a new piece and everything seems kind of easy. And then all of a sudden things get really difficult. And getting past that point can pose some problems. And I want to. That's one of those things I want to help you with. So we're going to be talking about that next week. It should be an interesting topic to explore. So that's coming up next week on the podcast. Remember, in the meantime, and every day is a day, you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.