The Music Theory Resources page is a collection of recommended textbooks, online courses, social media platforms and creators, books, and tools to help you engage and grow in the fields of music theory and cognition. Sort, filter and search by difficulty level, resource type, and topic.
Blog post analyzing Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 to uncover what makes it magical. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post exploring the qualities that make us feel the melancholy of Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude." By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post analyzing phrase structure in Chopin's Waltz in B Minor, Op. 69 No. 2. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post analyzing "Deck the Hall." By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post analyzing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post exploring metric dissonance as a form of expression in "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post exploring whether music theory counts as a science or not and the implications of the answer. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post illustrating some of the concepts in Diana Deutsch's book, Musical Illusions and Phantom Words: How Music and Speech Unlock Mysteries of the Brain. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post looking at the interesting use of chromatic harmony in The Legend of Zelda Main Theme. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post explaining the Neapolitan Chord and shows how it is used in the Star Trek 2009 soundtrack. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post explaining secondary dominant chords and shows how they are used in "Don't Know Why." By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post explaining common-tone modulation (key change) using "Summer of '69" as an example. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post that gives you 4 different approaches to write better chord progressions. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post on how to create your own chord progressions using 3 different ways of looking at harmony. By Girl in Blue Music.
Blog post on how to make chord progressions more interesting with borrowed chords/modal mixture. By Girl in Blue Music.
Reference book on chromatic harmony to help you spice up your music through key changes, chord borrowings, and more. By Girl in Blue Music.
A seminal music theory work for those wo want to better understand the way music intrinsically expresses itself to people. By Leonard B. Meyer.
Master's thesis that doubly serves as an excellent introduction to Neo-Riemannian Transformation theory. By Laura Mason.
Sideways is a music analysis Youtube channel, focused mostly on film music.
A subreddit (forum community) on Reddit dedicated to Music Theory discussions. Great place to ask for help and has a great FAQ section.
Free course for those of you who want to learn more about music theory but don't know where to start. By Girl in Blue Music.
Free course on how to build chords, from basic triads to extended chords, as well as different notations to represent chords. By Girl in Blue Music.
Course about how harmony works from the absolute most basic phrases through chromatic harmony. By Girl in Blue Music.
A free, interactive, online textbook. Includes material for core music theory sequences. Recommend having a teacher for this one though! Contributions by Mark Gotham, Kyle Gullings, Chelsey Hamm, Bryn Hughes, Brian Jarvis, Megan Lavengood, and John Peterson.
A running Google doc of specific music theory examples in video game music. By Dr. B.A. Ferguson with contributions by T.J. Laws-Nicola and Alan Elkins.
Our Descriptions of Music Theory: a Word Cloud is from the results of the anonymous poll: What is music theory?
Free and interactive site to practice reading sheet music as well as id-ing scales, intervals, and chords. I embed these exercises into some of my courses.
Free music theory site that covers many topics you'd learn in a college-level core music theory class. By Robert Hutchinson.
Database of music theory examples in real music by women composers from antiquity to the present. Includes women in music biographies and more.
Examples of musical intervals (ascending and descending) in real, memorable songs. Solfege reference also included!
Interactive tonnetz. Look at harmony outside of the context of tonality through Neo-Riemannian Transformation Theory. By the Structural Music Information Research (SMIR) project at the University of Strasbourg.
Interactive Circle of Fifths by Muted.io. Explore tonal relationships.
Article about the interactions of metric dissonance with phrase structure and form in rock music. Includes several corpus studies. By Nicole Biamonte.
Music theory examples that include composers by women and people of color, run by Dr. Paula Maust and Kathryn Blake and Jeffrey Martin.
David Bennett is a pianist, composer, and Youtube educator. His channel focuses on advanced music theory concepts in popular music, like in the Beatles, Taylor Swift, Queen, Billie Eilish, Radiohead, Led Zepplin, David Bowie, and many more.
Free chord progression and writing prompt generator to help you beat songwriter's block. Listen on multiple instruments, tempos, and keys. Shown in both pop chord and Roman numeral notation.
My primary recommendation for those wanting to learn music theory on their own. Includes examples from Classical, Folk, and Pop styles! By Jane Clendinning and Elizabeth West Marvin.
Textbook approach to music theory fundamentals for the absolute beginner. Includes online resources, real music (from Bach to Broadway and beyond), and exercises. By Jane Clendinning, Elizabeth West Marvin, and Joel Phillips.
An approachable seminal work on the role of expectation in musical emotion and how this ties to everyday processing of surprise and emotion. By David Huron.
This seminal work explores the multi-faceted nature of the sonata how it is not a definite form but more like a "way of writing...rather than a pattern." By Charles Rosen.
Exploration of the funk groove through the music of James Brown and Parliament. By Anne Danielsen.
An approachable book on the role of repetition in music: about hooks, ear worms, and more. By Elizabeth Margulis.
Collection of essays exploring micro-rhythms in groove-based music and how technology has influences this level of rhythm. Edited by Anne Danielsen.
Systematic discussion of metric manipulations (perception and cognition) in music in the late 18th century. By Danuta Mirka
An exploration of musical meter from the perspective of process and expectation. By Christopher Hasty
Exploration of hypermeter from the perspective of theorists and composers in the eighteenth century. By Danuta Mirka.
The seminal work on musical meter and cognition. Answers why humans interact with musical meter in the ways that we do. By Justin London.
A theory of musical meter developed from exploring embodiment in musical gesture. By John Paul Ito.
Theory of metrical conflict (dissonance/consonance) through analyses of Robert Schumann's music. By Harald Krebs.
An approachable book on form in classical music for musicians who have a basic understanding of functional harmony
Youtube channel of video essays on music theory, cognition, jazz improv, performance technique, and more
Youtube channel with great video essays analyzing popular pieces of music
Free article to help you strategize and find resources to start learning music theory
A robust theory on principles of sonata form based on expectation and surprise
In this free course, learn to read notation, the logic behind it, and other types of notation.
