The Complexity of Music

Have you ever really dissected music? If so, you have been introduced to how complex music truly is, if not, what are you waiting for? I never really dissected music until my freshman year of college, and it has forever changed the way I see, hear, and listen to music! Music is so intricate and people underappreciate the thought and emotion that goes into music. If all you do is listen to music, you’re not doing enough! You need to sit down, look at sheet music or the chords and truly try to understand what all is involved in music. You will be surprised. When you first glance at music, you see lines and spaces with oddly shaped circles with stems attached, it doesn’t look like a whole lot, but when composers pair these “circles” with thoughts and a destination, the music comes to life! Music is full of intervals, which are used to create chords, these chords then are able to be combined with other chords that fit within a certain scale, and this scale is then used to create music. Now, you must know that it’s not that easy!

Before dissecting what intervals and chords are, you have to understand where scales come from. Scales come from a formula from the piano, so starting from whichever pitch you desire you would move in a various pattern between whole steps and half steps. The specific formula to create a major scale is: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. Then if you wanted to make a natural minor scale, you would lower the third scale degree, the sixth scale degree, and then the seventh scale degree. There are more than just one type of minor scale, but this is one of the most well-known.

Now that you basically understand where scales are derived from, we can now take a look and intervals and chords and how closely they depend on each other. You have various intervals: major or minor seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths, and perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves. These intervals may be consonant or dissonant, both of which create texture to a piece of music. Not everybody likes a dissonant texture because it’s full of clashing intervals, and it’s not as “pretty” as a consonant piece of music, but the more you know about music, the prettier these clashes become. These intervals are put together to create chords, you can have various chords as well: major, minor, major-minor (dominant), augmented, or diminished. These chords work the same way as intervals, they may be either consonant or dissonant. These chords fit into the scale, various scales have a formula to them. For example, the major scale consists of these chords: major one, minor two, minor three, major four, major fifth, minor sixth, and diminished seventh. These chords are used to create the music you listen to every day, and the more you become aware of these formulas, the more you will enjoy your music!

Music is not at all what it seems, it is complex, and one may never truly know everything about music, but we can sure try, right? Don’t underestimate your music, gain everything out of it that you can!