Five Reasons Why Music Theory Is Important For Your Kids Education

What is this magical term called Music Theory? Music theory is a fixed set of rules that allows the player to understand the complex art of music. Musicians must follow certain rules, so that they can: read sheet music, learn pieces of the chart or by ear or play with other musicians in a band. Music Theory then, serves as a tool that holds together not only the act of performing, but also makes it more compelling to the listener.

There are also more hidden gems in learning music theory itself by kids. It will definitely surprise many parents.

Here are the 5 reasons for the importance of including music theory in your child`s education:

Gives the ability to see the whole picture of how things work in musicYou see, its all very logical. There are certain rules to follow. Here we have dots and stems that have got some magical features! Each note can be expressed by two most important factors: pitch and rhythm. Depending on where and how you draw them on the stave, they are played higher or lower and last for certain amount of time. Then in order to execute them properly you need to play them in certain time that is defined by the time signature and tempo indicators. All of these and many more elements add up eventually to a large portion of knowledge that allows the player to perform and create an extraordinary effect of music flow.

Helps children to become an independent learnerAlthough, your kids are taking music lessons with a professional teacher or even have some classes at school too - lets not forget that the time they spent with them is very limited. It all gets down to the time they spent, while learning on their own. That time spent in solitary is the most precious one, as they are trying to figure things out on their own. This in turn is one of the best way to actually learn anything on their own in the future.

Gives broad, versatile skills helpful in all future professional careers, not only in musicIn order to understand music theory, each student must memorise a complex set of rules and mathematically precise connections between the musical elements: intervals, subdivisions, time signatures, rhythm values, articulation, music expressions and groupings just to name just a few. This in turn will translate into pragmatic skills they will use in their future careers. Clint Eastwood, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Jackman, Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon or Keanu Reeves are the names that don`t need introducing. They all play a musical instrument.

Improves their memory and imaginationOnce someone knows the theory behind the music, the sky is the limit. The memorization of a particular piece of music is much easier. Young musician can organize all the necessary informations into small chunks of data like 2, 4 or 8 bar phrases with specific elements in mind.

It also helps them to create and compose their own pieces. All of these processes take place in ones imagination. A music film composer for instance needs to translate the emotions, a particular movie scenes into sounds that will move the imagination of the viewers.

Boosts cognitive skills and concentration As with any demanding subject, the amount of concentration required is great, to say the least. Music theory is no different. To give you an example lets take the so called music intervals. Interval is a gap between two notes. If you imagine for instance, a piano keyboard with white and black keys - any distance between either white to white, black to black, white to black would be an interval. You could also notice a space between one white and closest black key. That would be the smallest possible gap in western music called a semitone/half tone. There are 8 basic intervals to memorise. Each has got a specific type like major, minor or perfect. The story continues and its just the begining.