## 2.1d Music Theory

This part of the quest consists of 3 different exercises that will allow you to improve your music theory skills. It will take you about 1 hour to do.

Exercise 1: Recognizing genres

Exercise 2: Recognizing song structure

Exercise 3: Learning about major and minor keys

## 1. Musical Genres

This quest is obviously about "Killer Songs." That means that all the songs have something to do with murder. So if you had to categorize them to a genre, would they all belong to the "murder genre"? Not really. They all have the same theme, which is murder, but not the same music genre. So what does genre even mean?

Genre is about categorizing music to a certain style. Below is a list of some genres that you've probably heard of before.

Exercise 1: Pick 5 different genres from this list, and make for each genre a playlist of 3 songs.
Tip! If you have spotify, use that! Otherwise just type out the names of the songs in pages.

## 2. Song Structure

Now that you've learned about music genres, it's time to start analyzing some of the differences in the songs themselves. Every song has its own structure. Most pop music follows the same structure, but once you analayze a different genre, the structure of a song may be totally different.

The most common song structure in pop music is;

A - B - A - B - C - B

Which stands for;

Verse (A) - Chorus (B) - Verse (A) - Chorus (B) - Bridge (C) - Chorus (B)

Exercise 2: Pick 3 songs from 3 different genres, and analyze the song structure of each song.
Tip! Use songs from the playlists you've already made.

Example:

## 3. Major and Minor Keys

Watch the first 3 minutes of the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it43JQy136I

Exercise 3: Take the same 3 songs you've just analysed and try to guess if they're in a major key or a minor key. Then use this website: https://tunebat.com and look up your song to check if you had it correct. What key do you think most "killer songs" are in? Write your thoughts in egodact.