Hi everyone! My name is Syd, and I’m the Front End Manager here at the Kitchener Academy of Music. Even though I work at a music school, I’ve actually never taken music lessons before- can you believe that? So I figured now is as good a time as any to get started! Join me as I take music lessons with some of our amazing teachers. So far I’ve taken Violin, Guitar, Vocal, Theory, Piano and Drum lessons! You can read all about them HERE.
Today I was so excited to take a music theory lesson with Isaiah, one of our newest teachers! One of the things I’ve loved about the music theory lessons I’ve had so far is that they’ve helped me really start to understand the world of music. My hope for today’s lesson was that I would walk away with a better understanding of the reasoning behind why some music is played the way it is!
To start off our lesson, Isaiah introduced me to JamBoards on Google; essentially, this is like a virtual whiteboard that we could both write on at the same time! I’m a very visual learner, so it was great for me to be able to see what Isaiah was writing out, and they were able to add images to the ‘whiteboard’ so that I could better understand what they were talking about. Isaiah also gave me the link to a virtual piano, so that I could click on the keys and demonstrate the concepts that they were talking about. That was a really cool tool; I loved being able to have that added visual to help me really understand!
Isaiah and I talked about so much during our lesson, starting with- what is music theory? The way Isaiah explained it to me, the word ‘theory’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘contemplation’. Essentially, they explained that music theory is really like the contemplation of music! Explaining why music sounds the way that it does, why we like certain sounds over other sounds, why music makes us feel certain things, and so much more.
One of my favourite things that Isaiah and I talked a lot about during our lesson was the idea of consonance and dissonance. From what I understand, consonance is when you combine 2 or more notes and it makes a pleasing sound, whereas dissonance is when you combine notes and it makes a displacing, or harsh sound. Consonance is what we would hear in most of our music today, but dissonance has become more and more accepted as music progresses. Jazz musicians in particular may play around with dissonance to invoke certain feelings in their music. I also found it really cool that consonance and dissonance are based off of the context of the note; you could play any key on the piano, and that note could create a consonance or dissonance depending on what keys it was played alongside with!
I LOVED today’s lesson! It was so cool to learn more about the ‘why’ behind music, and I feel like I walked away with so much more musical knowledge!
If you’re interested in taking theory lessons, or any music lessons, contact us today! Right now you can sign up for Music Lessons at The Kitchener Academy of Music by emailing us at tkaminfo@gmail.com, or giving us a call at (519) 893-2121. We can’t wait to hear from you!
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