Understanding scales and intervals is essential to understanding chords, chord inversions, and the difference between harmony and melody in music. I’m really glad that I learned music theory on the piano as throughout the process I could refer to my instrument to solidify abstract concepts and visualize note relationships and deepen my understanding of intervals and ultimately understand what chords are, how and why they work, and ultimately incorporate them into my training on the piano.
Before starting on this learning path I didn’t think I would ever understand how musicians do what they do or even what it is they’re doing! It all seemed far too complex and just absolutely mind bending! Yet, here I was after all of this discovery ready and equipped to tackle any musical endeavour. Learning my first song of choice was actually quite relaxing, it took practice to develop the proper fingering but I understood WHAT I was doing, WHY I was doing it, HOW to do it which was immensely fulfilling! Before even picking the song for my video I explored playing a variety of songs, I was able to experiment with what I liked the sound of or what I connected with most because I was able to play whatever I looked at (maybe not without error – but still quite effectively). I knew the chords of the songs, I understood the inversions of them, I figured out the key and adapted the songs to what I thought sounded best – it felt like I had superpowers. I now have a new ability to imagine and create beautiful things on a new medium – one that I never thought I would master.