Edinburgh Music Theory Lessons
Music is generally considered to be in two parts, practical and music theory. The practical element of musicianship involves playing your chosen instrument, be it guitar, piano, flute, drums or singing. The theory part relates to how and why music works. For example, you may have learned to play three chords on your guitar at home, ‘C Major,’ ‘A minor’ and ‘G Major’. That would work perfectly until you wanted to know what scales could be played along with these chords and why some sound like the right fit and others don’t. There is only so far that a musician can go without studying music theory. It is the gel that holds everything together and brings everything in music to make sense.
All of our teachers at Morningside School of Music are qualified experts in music theory, and each teacher holds their own particular strand of interest. For example, our drum tutors are experts at rhythm, timing, polyrhythms and percussion notation, whereas our piano teachers are leaders in the field of classical notation, harmony, cadences, and scales.
It is quite common for clients at the music school learning a musical instrument or voice to have music theory lessons along the way. That said, we also have musicians teaching themselves at home and attending Morningside School of Music for theory tuition. You can only go so far in music without recruiting music theory into your repertoire at some point.
There are two approaches to learning music theory. The graded method and the casual way.
Graded Music Theory
Similar to formally learning a musical instrument using graded syllabi, like The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) or Trinity College London (TCL), you can also carry out music theory graded exams. These work in the same way, grades 1 through 8, although most of the work is written rather than performed. Some exam boards, such as the ABRSM, insist that you have Grade 5 theory before you are permitted to apply for the Grade 6 performance exam, so it is worthwhile starting early on in music education.
ABRSM and TCL have a more classical approach to music theory, which is very beneficial indeed. However, suppose you are a guitarist in a band or a musician who sticks strictly to a more popular music style. In that case, Rockschool (RSL) offer Popular Music Grades which are of equal academic merit.
Non-Graded Music Theory
If your child plays an instrument and has a lot on, maybe school exams for example, and just wants to get better but isn’t too keen on the graded music exams, it is possible to learn music theory in a more relaxed way. We can tailor a learning plan that suits how much time you want to study, what style of music you are interested in and what level you would like to reach. Although there are no exams, we can make this every bit as rigorous or relaxed based on your preferred requirements.
Our teachers at Morningside School of Music make theory fun and exciting, and although most people enjoy the performance part of music as opposed to theory, we believe we can win you over to enjoy both. We teach complete beginners, children, and adults who haven’t looked at theory at all, through to degree, master’s degree and even PhD students. Some of our staff are Doctors of Music and lecture within top university music departments, such as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Morningside School of Music provides the most exceptional standard of music educators so that our clients get the finest music education. Many of our former clients have gone on to study music at universities across the world, graduating and becoming touring musicians, teachers, and lecturers leading out numerous other careers within the music industry.
We have compiled a selection of music theory books that we have found to be very useful:
For more information on Grades, please see the links below.
