Music theory is one of those subjects whose title seems oxymoronic. Music is supposed to be more "muse" and less about technicalities, but it is always about both. Music is an abstract art which means it is always about imagination AND about making order out of the chaos of infinite possibility. This course looks at how music of the Western world has been put into the same kind of order for centuries from antiquity to present day popular music. The student will come to understand how the fundamental building blocks, pitch and rhythm, are organized and what musicians name these with less memorization and more understanding. This course is designed to help beginning theory students, especially those in college who must pass a 101 level course. It also gives to instructors a tool to help minimize memorization and increase understanding when teaching students who are at or near the beginning of theory instruction. Performing musicians will also appreciate the explanation of common chord symbols to help decode lead sheets. Composers just starting out will benefit from the ground-up explanations of musical building blocks that they can make use of in their own songs and other works.The order of subjects are, in increasing complexity:The symbols of musicThe names of notes on treble and bass clef (learn simple techniques to master this)The organization of rhythmThe organization of pitches into major and minor keys as well as other kinds of note sets and scalesThe transformation of the circle of fifths into a line of fifths as a powerful tool for understandingThe structures of harmony: two notes, three notes, and four notes togetherAt the end of the course, the student will have the ability to:name the parts of a score with at least some understanding of meaning and functionidentify any key signature or derive the notes of any key without consulting a circle of fifths chartaccurately name and reproduce harmonies of two, three, and four partsread and reconstruct chords on a lead sheet