ICAN presents The Shape of Music

Welcome to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we go through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. Music is an art form that we’re all familiar with to a certain degree. It’s the sounds that make us want to move or laugh or cry or try new things. Read along as we learn about music theory, which is a fancy way of saying “how music works.”

This is the second section of a two-part lesson where we dissect and analyze the circle of fifths, the treasure map to music theory. In the first half, we started learning about how this diagram maps out the relationships among the 12 unique tones of Western music. We examined its history and how it displays key signatures. Join me as we take a look at a few more functions of the circle of fifths.

Welcome back to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we take you through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. So far, we’ve learned about rhythm (the heartbeat of music) and melody (the “meat and potatoes” of music). Now that we’ve got the basics down, let’s take it up a notch. Join me as we examine the keyboard!

Welcome back to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we take you through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. Here we are at the final episode of this series! We ran the whole marathon and now we’re here to walk a mile around the track and be proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’re also going to connect the dots between all of the concepts we’ve been talking about over the past five episodes. If we imagine our musical journey as a puzzle, right now we’ve got five puzzle pieces for each of our episodes. Our job today is to put these pieces together and assemble a wonderful picture through them. Without further ado, let’s take a trip down memory lane!

Welcome back to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we take you through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. So far, we’ve learned about rhythm (the heartbeat of music) and melody (the “meat and potatoes” of music), and the musical alphabet which is used in these for understanding music. We specifically learned about the keyboard, and how it maps out this alphabet. Now that we’ve got the building blocks down, we’re going to expand on the musical alphabet and learn about the musical language!