Brummet's Conscious Blog

Think Music Theory Is Too Hard? Here's Why Written by: Mark Clark In my opinion (as a 35+ year music professional), music theory is taught in the most confusing and painful way imaginable. One example of this, students are often confronted with multiple sets of systems to described the same thing in different classes. For example, Scale Degrees are referenced using numbers (0-9) in private lessons, roman numerals (both upper and lower case) in analysis, terms like Tonic, Submediant, Dominant, etc. when you get to theory class, and something called "Solfege" (Do-Re-Mi) in ear training. Too often the student has no idea all these systems are referring to the same basic thing, scale degrees. And this is just one example! Scale Degree Naming Schemes... Numbers : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Names : Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant,  Leading Tone Roman : I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII Solfege : Do, Re,...