In this episode we are talking about why music theory is important and how it will improve your writing.

Music Theory is a skill that you will slowly develop over the course of your music career. Discovering new chord progressions, melodic phrases, or rhythmic techniques will add to your pallet of musical devices that you can draw from when writing new material.

However, it's difficult to discover new sounds when you don't understand the fundamental tools you're working with.

Understanding how to build chords, scales, and rhythms is a key part of any musician's workflow. It doesn't mean you're helpless without it, but you will find that knowing this will let you write quicker and more confidently.

In this video, we are going to cover a fundamental concept to understanding most music - scales and keys.

Scales and key signatures are at the route of nearly all tonal music. A key gives you a baseline set of notes to work with, and from here you can build chords and melodies.

This is not to say you can't break away from the key, in fact this is a key part of adding diversity to your music - however you need to know the rules before you break them!

Chord progressions are such an important part of music, most of all contemporary music. Most genres have common chord sequences and patterns.

In pop music, you will often hear the same 4 chords built upon the same scale positions - Chord I, IV, V, and VI.

Blues is dominated by the 12-bar formula, changing between chord I, IV and V.

Jazz uses much more colourful chords, featuring chord extensions and alterations.

Understanding how chords work, and how to piece chords together into cohesive progressions, is a great first step in learning how to write your own hits.

Moving away from the tonal side of music, we have rhythm. Rhythm dominates genres like hip-hop and EDM, and is a crucial part of developing the groove of your piece.

Rhythmic techniques like syncopation (accenting off-beat notes), and repeating rhythmic phrases can be a good way to create overarching themes beyond melodies and chords.

Structure is often overlooked. In some genres, there's a clear progression - verse, chorus, bridge etc. In other genres, not so much. However, structure doesn't always refer to entire sections. Internal structure, such as how you organise chords and recurring phrases, is just as important falls under the umbrella term of structure.