In this introductory lecture, J. Anthony Allen launches a college‑level music theory series aimed at beginners and songwriters. He outlines the course structure, emphasizing a review of traditional notation symbols—notes, rhythms, accidentals, dynamics, and other markings—using the free MuseScore software as a visual teaching aid. Allen stresses that learning to read music is akin to mastering a new language and encourages viewers to persist, explaining how this foundational skill enables them to understand how notes work together, analyze existing songs, and apply theory creatively in their own compositions. The video serves as a motivational and practical guide to getting started with music reading before moving on to deeper theoretical concepts.
Chapters
Sa, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Let's go through the white notes first and how they work and how the intervals sharp. If you see a note that says A sharp, you know that to find that note on a keyboard, you have to find a. What are we going to hear when I hit play on this and tell it to play these four notes? What are we going to hear that makes the rhythm longer? So this was two beats. So we chop that in half, we think. And three. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this first in a longer series of comprehensive music theory courses. So what we're going to be doing in this whole series is, is we're going to be working through my college level curriculum on music theory. Now, don't let that freak you out. That doesn't mean we're gonna jump right in on the hard stuff the way we always start. This is a review and making sure everyone's on the same page about reading music and understanding all the symbols that we're looking at when we look at a traditional notation score, which is what we're kind of seeing here on the screen. This is a program called musescore. It's a free program. I'll talk to you a little bit more about that once we get into the course. I'll be using this program to kind of outline and help us walk through some concepts of how all of this stuff works. So I want you to get this program, but before you do, jump into the course and let me tell you a couple things about it and some of the options you have. So, but it's a great little free program that we're going to use as a teaching tool to help us learn how to read music, basically. So in this first section, this first course of the long sequence, what we're going to be focusing on is how, what do all these little dots mean? So we're going to walk through how to read music, how to read notes, how to read rhythms, and if you've tried this before, if you've tried to learn before, then try again using my method here. It's hard. It's hard to learn how to read this stuff. It's a whole new language. It really is. So what I hope that you can do is dive in with me here and learn how to do this, take another shot at it, and make sure we get all on the same page so that you're up to speed while we dive into the more serious music theory stuff. Now, my approach to music theory is learning what notes work together so that we can create music on our own. Right. So you might be a songwriter who wants to know, what are some more options I have? You know, how can I incorporate more diversity into my songs, make something sound cool? That's what music theory tells us. Another thing that music theory tells us is you might be listening to a song that you like, and you might think, what did that person do to make it sound the way it sounded? And we can look at that song, we can analyze it, and then we can say, oh, I know what he did. He did this kind of, you know, music theory trick. And then we can use that trick in our own songs. Right. That's totally okay. That's how we learn how to do stuff. So that's what we're going to be doing. But in this first class, we're going to be focusing on how to read music. Okay? So let's dive in. Let's get started. Let me show you this program that we're going to use, and then we'll be up and running talking about notes and rhythms and dynamics and cymbals and what all of these things mean and how we can use them. So please join me on the inside. Off we go. Sat.
