Music Theory

What I learned in music is that there is very little to actually memorize and there are helpful rules to guide you. Mind you this is not a complete music theory lesson.

The first thing you need to know is the scales


Using the circle of fifths we can make the scales since all we need to know is the sharps/flats. so F major only has one flat and it's B, so the scale would be F G A Bflat C D E F.

Now we could find the chords which fall under the key(scale) of F major.

Before we go into the chords of a specific scale lets look at all the major scales:

C-E-G
D-F#-A
E-G#-B
F-A-C
G-B-D
A-C#-E
B-D#-F#

Some rules to change a major to a minor or diminished or augmented chord;
1)To change a major to a minor you flatten the third (C-E-G -> C-E flat-G)
2)To change from major to diminished flatten the third and fifth (C-E-G -> C-E flat-G flat)
3) Major to augmented sharpen the 5th (C-E-G -> C-E-G#)

*If you have a flat chord then you first flatten everything in the major chord and the change it to minor, diminished or augmented.

Now follow this simple pattern when you write out the chord

M m m M M m Dm (where M = Major, m = minor, Dm = Diminished)

Lets try this using the key of F (F G A B flat C D E)

This means that in the key of F, F B flat and C are all major chords and G, A, and D are all minor, and E is diminished.
Lets apply the rules to see what a B flat major chord looks like:

the B major chord is B-D#-F# so if we flatten everything we get B flat - D - F


Try writing out the chords that fall in the key of A flat major. You should get the following chords

A flat - C - E flat
B flat - D flat - F
C - E flat - G
D flat - F - A
E flat - G - B flat
F - A flat - c
G - B flat - D flat