10 Things Every Gamer Needs to
Know About Music Theory
1. There are four fundamental elements that come together to create music.
2. Fundamental 1: Rhythm. Rhythm is the foundation of music. It defines the passage of
time through the presence and absence of sound. It is the most basic and fundamental
component of any musical expression. Clap your hands together slowly four times in
a row. When you clap there is sound, when you are not clapping there is an absence of
sound. This is rhythm.
3. Fundamental 2: Pitch. A pitch is a single sound. Open your mouth and say “aaaah” just
like you would at the doctor’s or dentist’s office. The sound you are making is a pitch
4. Fundamental 3: Melody. A melody is a series of pitches. Melody can be made from low
sounds and high sounds. One sound happens for a certain duration, then ceases to exist
and another sound takes its place immediately or after a silence. In a melody, there is
never more than one sound at a time. Any theme that you recognize from your favorite
games is probably a melody.
5. Fundamental 4: Harmony. Harmony is the combination of at least two different pitches
sounding together at the same time. These combination sounds are called chords.
6. Tone. Another word for tone is timbre (tim-ber). Tone is the color or quality of a sound, it
is how you can tell the difference between a violin and a piano playing the same pitches.
The pitches stay the same, but they sure sound different when you hear them from
different instruments.
7. Theme. A theme is a full melody of a song or piece of music. For example, the Hyrule
theme from A Link to the Past can be heard in most Zelda games.
8. Motif. A motif (moh-teef) is a part of a theme, but not the whole theme. Just enough of
the same pitches in the same order (melody) for you to recognize that the motif is part
of the theme.
9. Leitmotif. A leitmotif (light-moh-teef) is when a theme represents a person, place, or
thing in a story, opera, movie, or video game. It is a musical way of representing a noun
that is tied into the story of the video game.
10. Note. A note is a way of representing certain pitches. All notes are pitches, not all
pitches are notes. We use the first seven letters of the alphabet to represent certain
pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
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