You've finished the equivalent of a college music theory semester. Next comes tonicization and modulation to different keys, then how 19th and 20th century composers broke the rules and forced theorists to invent new frameworks to explain what they were doing.
All right, we've reached the end of Music Theory Part five, Counterpoint. So here's the deal. Here's where you are. If you were in a college music theory class, it would typically be four semesters long. And if you've taken all five of these music theory classes, you have completed the entire first semester of a college music theory program. There's a lot more to go. But if you are feeling comfortable with what we've learned so far, then you should be able to ace a college music theory class, no problem. You will go through it. I've literally been teaching my music theory curriculum. So congrats to you. You finished it. Up next, as we go forward, the next kind of big thing that the second semester of college music theory covers is what's called diet is what's called tonicization, which is a fancy way of saying modulating to different keys. But sometimes we do it very briefly, and sometimes we do it for a longer period of time. So modulating keys can be a very complex business. And once we get into looking at music of the 19th century and things like that, composers started to really kind of bend the rules of theory quite a bit. So there's all kinds of other music theory that are trying to catch up to those composers. So we're kind of explaining some of the things that they did that bend the rules. So in other words, new rules have been made to accommodate these bending of the rules. As composers got more and more liberal with the rules of music theory. First semester music theory always talks about the rules, like the hard and fast rules. This is what you do. As we go forward into the second and third semester, we talk about ways that we can bend those rules to make more interesting music in ways that composers have bent those rules. Then as you get into the fourth semester, you get into the 20th century when the rules just kind of flat out break, and all kinds of new rules pop up, more or less. That's a very kind of simplified way to explain it, but it tends to work. So congratulations. You have finished first semester college music theory. Let's keep going. Let's go into the second semester, shall we? I'm having fun making these, so why not? Okay, I got a couple more little things I want to give you before we wrap up, so let's jump to that right now.
