Music Theory: The Foundation of Great Music

Delving into the "Russian Easter Overture" by composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov as an introduction to the language of music; how Rimsky-Korsakov achieves the work's expressive effects to capture the emotions of Easter in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Learning to identify the pitch of a musical note; seeing pitches on the piano keyboard; how they are written on the five-line "staff" of musical notation; how symbols called clefs are used on the staff; reading notes on the treble and bass clefs.

Seeing how scales are built using half steps and whole steps; focusing on the major scale; grasping how this familiar pattern of notes is created; learning the function of each note within the scale; listening to music using the major scale.

Looking closely at intervals in music; practicing listening to intervals; how they appear on the written staff; studying the "quality" of intervals; how these qualities create expressive effects; how intervals are used within familiar music pieces.

Defining the key of a piece of music; discovering key signatures in written music, which indicate the key of the piece; how the major keys all relate to each other in an orderly way when arranged schematically according to the interval of a fifth.

Learning how the pulse or beat of a piece of music is organized in the written score within small segments called measures; how written musical notes have a rhythmic value, indicating how long each note lasts in time; clapping musical rhythms.