You might be a theory geek if…
- your favorite pickup line is, “What’s your favorite augmented sixth chord?”
- your second favorite pickup line is, “Would you like to raise my leading tone?”
- you dream in four parts.
- your biological clock follows a non-retrogradable isorhythm.
- you can improvise 16th century counterpoint with no trouble, but you frequently forget how to tie your shoes.
- you expected something quite different out of The Matrix.
- you can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
- you like to tease your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
- you know how large a major 23rd is without having to count.
- you only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
- you feel the need to end Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony with a picardy third.
- instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
- you find free counterpoint too liberal.
- you wonder what a Danish sixth would sound like.
- you long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
- you can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
- you have had to be forced to stop labeling motives.
- you confuse fishsticks with ground bass.
- you found No.19 funny.
- you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on “Three Blind Mice.”
- you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on 4’33”.
- you have ever had a gebrauchsmusik party.
- you lament the decline of serialism.
- you know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the top of your head.
- you have ever dressed up as counterpoint for Halloween.
- you have ever written a musical palindrome and given it a witty title.
- you can name ten of Palestrina’s contemporaries.
- you have ever found a typographical error in a score by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
- you have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a composition by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
- you enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
- you have ever played through your music as if the fingering markings were figured bass symbols.
- you suspiciously check all the music you play for dangling sevenths.
- you have devised your own tuning method.
- you keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
- you have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
- you know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
- you have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
- you have ever used the word fortspinnung in polite conversation.
- you feel cheated by evaded cadences.
- you organize phone numbers based on their prime form.
- you find it amusing to refer to your ear-training course sections as your “pitch classes.”
- every now and again you like to kick back and play a tune in hypophrygian mode.
- you wonder why there aren’t more types of seventh chords.
- you wish you had twelve fingers.
- you like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
- you abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass symbols.
- you always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
- you have ever told a joke with a punchline of: because if was polyphonic!
- your lips may say, “perfect fourth,” but in your heart it will always be “diatessaron.”
- you have ever said, “Yes, didn’t Scriabin use that sonority in . . .”
- you know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
- you can name relatives of the “Grandmother Chord.”
- you’re still wondering why I haven’t included the “must-resolve-the-dominant-seventh-before-going-to-bed” indicator.
- you can not only identify any one of Bach’s 371 Harmonized Chorales by ear, but you also know what page it is on in the Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first four bars.
- you got more than half of the jokes on this list.
I hope this list gave you at least a few chuckles. This list originally a list of 75, but I whittled it down to 55 to omit some of the ones I totally didn’t get.
I can’t take credit for this list – it was given to me by my theory professor at college two years back. I hope you enjoyed it.
Joy is a pianist and teacher in Ohio with great passion for helping students experience the wonders of music making! Here at Color In My Piano, she enjoys sharing and exchanging ideas and resources for piano teaching.
