Why Music Theory is essential

My Kid hates theory. Why should he/she have to do it?

How often have you heard that from a parent of a student, or how often have you heard that from a student themselves? The student clearly enjoys their lessons and playing the instrument, but when it comes to the theory they turn off.

How do you as a teacher get them to understand that music theory is an essential part of their overall musicianship, and not something that is optional?

Here are some ideas on why music theory worksheets are essential for all musicians:

1. Music Theory is like learning a language. Without language, you can’t communicate with others. If you’re in a foreign country and can’t speak a word of the language, you are going to have a hard time getting the result you want - asking for food or directions is going to be a challenge! The same is true with music theory. If you don’t know the language of music theory when it comes time to play in a band or ensemble and you need to communicate something to the other musicians you may struggle to get what you want across.

2. It helps your emotional awareness of music. Understanding theory, chord structures and harmony provides you with an emotional knowledge and understanding of what the composer was trying to convey. Just by playing you are not aware of the same level of understanding about it, and you may miss some important features that were put there by the composer. If you know theory you’ll really get to understanding what the composer was on about, and your emotional understanding of the piece will be much better.

3. It exposes you to other influences. A great reason to study theory is that it gives you an insight into what other composers have done, and why they have chosen to do what they do. Mozart is famously quoted to have said when listening to music by J.S. Bach: “Now there is something one can learn from!” This is true whether your genre of music is classical, jazz, or contemporary styles. The more music you can listen to and really understand at a deep level, the more accomplished musician you will become.

4. It gives you the skills you’ll need to start composing. Music Theory gives you the ability to not only understand written music and comprehend the “dots” on the page, it also gives you necessary skills to start to compose your own pieces and songs. Writing a song is nothing more than taking a riff or melody and refining it with knowledge that is in your head. Sure, it is possible to write music without any theory knowledge, but it really is a lot more difficult! You have to record everything, then get other musicians to listen and try and transcribe what you are doing, which is much harder.

Hopefully these four reasons will give you, your children or your students reason to continue working through their theory books and music theory worksheets to build up their musicianship.