Welcome to the Modern Music Theory website!
When you finish this series of lessons, you’ll know more about scale and chord theory than most music major graduates, a lot of jazz professionals, and even a few music professors. And you won’t have to spend hours sitting in a boring music theory class to get this knowledge. It’s all free, and you can come back to this website time and time again, to review and re-learn.
You are going to encounter some new material here … music theory you haven’t seen in any music text, or heard in any music lecture hall. Traditional music theory is important, but sometimes it’s antiquated, unnecessarily complicated, or simply incorrect. I never hesitate to depart from traditional theory when another approach is easier, or more correct. Don’t worry … I’ll alert you when that’s happening.
To get the most out of this series, you should already have a solid grounding in the fundamentals of music notation, including staff notation and the letter-names of all the notes (Ab, C#, G, etc.).
This website is divided into three main parts:
(1) Basic Knowledge
(2) Scales
(3) Chords
Don’t skip over section one, Basic Knowledge. The material there forms the foundation for what you will learn in sections two and three.
Keep in mind that this is a course in scale and chord theory, not music history. I won’t mention any history unless it’s necessary for understanding the topic at hand.
Some lessons have bonus pages! These special pages contain information that’s not essential to know, but is fun and useful to know. Be sure to check them out.
This course deals exclusively with Western music, which is used across more than 90% of the world. We won’t discuss other forms of music, like Arabic or Japanese, which have their own rules and theories.
Finally, if you have a comment or suggestion, you can email me here:
With all that being said, let’s learn some theory! Click the link below to get started!
— Kent Allen
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