Think of all the different genres of music out there, rock, blues, pop, hip hop, classical, jazz, country, reggae, and all of the countless other genres. They're all derived using the same theoretical system called the western theory of music, otherwise known as the western music system. This system is what musicians use to organize sound into that universal language of music, which we can all feel and understand on an emotional level. Now, the western theory of music is extremely broad and comprehensive, but it can be broken down into three main components, namely, melody, harmony, and rhythm. Melody refers to strings of individual musical pitches called notes that are heard one after the other. Pick any song you know, and the notes that you would sing would be the melody.

A guitar solo could also be considered a melody harmony refers to stacks of notes that are heard simultaneously. In other words, chords. Whenever you hear two or more notes played or sung at the same time, that is a harmony. Rhythm refers to the time values of melodies and harmonies, as well as other more percussive sounds. As an illustration, think of the different rhythms you'd normally create with your strumming hand and play a song. Now, if music can be seen as a kind of language, then of course, what we're dealing with within this course is the reading and writing of that language.

The Western theory of music has a system for transcribing music, called music notation. It's a very accurate way for any musician to write down a piece of music so that other musicians can use it to recreate the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms on their own instruments. We're going to start right from the beginning and break everything down. It's really easy, practical steps that are designed to move you smoothly from one level to the next. In the following video, we're going to make a stop On what can be seen as the musical alphabet, which musicians use to write melodies and build harmony