Music Theory Classes

Columbus Music and Art Academy offers three levels of music theory and ear training classes for children. Advanced students have an opportunity to study composition.

Beginning Level
This course is designed to develop basic written music-theory skills and music-structural comprehension in preparation for the Royal American Conservatory Preliminary Level Exam. Topics include key signatures, intervals, major and minor scales, simple and compound meters, and performance terminology.

Intermediate Level
The intermediate course directs students toward this goal through in-class sightsinging with solfege syllables; melodic and rhythmic dictation; aural recognition drills involving chromatic, major, minor, pentatonic, blues, whole-tone, and octatonic scales; closed-position triads; intervals; written notational exercises, and music terminological study.

Advanced Level
The advanced course expands upon this curriculum through concepts such as compound intervals, hybrid meters, open-position triads, and triadic inversions. The advanced course will also involve basic formal and melodic analysis, and introduce new concepts, including seventh chords of the dominant, diminished, half-diminished, major-major, and minor-minor types; alto and tenor clefs; the four cadence types, and modes.

Composition
This class is designed for students who have passed CMAA's Advanced music theory class and who have an interest in creating original music. Areas investigated will include instrumentation, transposition, orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, part-writing, and formal development.