Music Theory for Conworlders: A Short Survey of Western Music

Western music has certain properties that western listeners tend to take for granted:

• harmony
• functional harmony

To a lesser extent, we can add

• modulation

A few features that are probably somewhat more universal are:

• repetition
• structured compositions
• some kind of 'tuning practice' of some form
• rhythm

What are these things?

Harmony is the use of multiple distinct notes simultaneously. Functional harmony is a bit more specific - most western music from the baroque to now has some variety of functional harmony. Essentially, the use of chords as 'functional entities'. In a song where the chords go something like 

C - F - G7 - C

the different chords have different levels of tension, and this 'tension' depends on a few factors. We perceive the first chord as fairly consonant. The second is in some type of relation to the first that makes us hear it as slightly less consonant, and the third one is really even less consonant. The dissonance of the final chord is resolved as the first chord reappears.

Functional harmony is not necessary for music with harmony - some early blues, modal jazz, some funk, renaissance and medieval music, and lots of folk and ethnic music have modal harmony instead. In fact, functional harmony seems to be unique to music that has been influenced by European common practice music, whereas harmony does not have any such restriction.

Not all music has harmony at all - there are pieces where only one tone is ever heard at a time. Some cultures only have such music. Tuning is relevant to such cultures as well, since it influences what kinds of melodic options exist. However, the tuning will be less restricted by the requirements of harmony in such a culture.

In most human music, it does seem as though there is a 'tonal center' to most pieces - a tone, that simply speaking, feels like 'home'. A tone - or set of tones - that does not or do not impart any tension when heard. This will depend on the key you're playing in and the way your melody and harmony are used, so it's not like there's necessarily one particular tone that functions as the 'tonal center'. Modulation is a thing in western music where one actually shifts the tonal center during the duration of a piece. Such a thing also brings with it some technical requirements for the scales that would be used with that music - i.e. there must be more than one tone from a which a relatively full, sufficiently well-in-tune scale can be found.

We will soon account for several of these things.