Plenty of people in the world can’t read or write, yet they can still communicate their thoughts and feelings verbally. And, similarly, many intuitive, self-taught musicians have never learned to read or write music. Music theory can help musicians learn new techniques and new styles that they would never stumble upon on their own.

A keyboard instrument, such as the piano, has several advantages over other instruments. Here they are:

• Everything you need is right there. The main advantage of a keyboard instrument is that the tuning of the keyboard is such that the ascending and descending notes are laid out right in front of you in a no-nonsense straight line.
• From the first try at playing, anyone can make musical noise on a keyboard. With a keyboard there’s no practicing with a bow and no learning how to properly blow over or into a mouthpiece.
• A keyboard has a huge range. No limit exists to how many octaves you can pile on a keyboard.

All first-year music students are given a couple of cheesy mnemonics to help them memorize the lines and spaces of the treble and bass clefs.
Treble clef (from bottom to top of staff)
Notes on the lines: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (EGBDF).
Notes on the spaces: FACE. That’s it — everyone uses this one.
Bass clef (from bottom to top of staff)
Notes on the lines: Go Buy Donuts For Alan (GBDFA).
Notes on the spaces: All Cows Eat Grass (ACEG).

If you know whether a piece of music is written in a major or minor key, you’re on your way to determining the key. Here are some quick rules:

1. If the key signature has no sharps or flats, the piece is in C major (or A minor).
2. If the key signature has one flat, the piece is in F major (or D minor).
3. If the key signature has more than one flat, the piece is written in the key of the next-to-last flat in the key signature.
4. If the key signature has sharps, take the note of the last sharp and go up one note (changing the letter name). If the last sharp is D sharp, the key is E. If it’s F sharp, the key is G.
5. The relative minor of a key is a minor third down from the major. So when you move three adjacent keys, black or white, to the left — or three frets up the guitar neck — you land on the relative minor.

To transpose a piece of music into another key, you can simply move every note in the piece up or down by the same interval. Another way to transpose a song is to learn the scale degrees of the original piece of music, and then play those same scale degrees in the new key.

Learning proper grammar didn’t keep you from using slang or swearing, did it? Seriously, though, understanding the basics of music theory, especially chord progressions and scale degrees, will make playing with other musicians and improvising that much easier.