| Because I don't have the proper materials at this time to really do justice to a rigorous discussion of theory and harmony I will assume that my readers have at least a minimal knowledge of musical notation, key signatures and time signatures and know how key is related to the circle of fifths from which key signatures and transpositions is generated. If I come across good theory sites on the web I will drop links to these somewhere on my web site..
That said, I can still write about some useful general principles that govern how we listen to music for harmony and how the history of harmony is reflected in what we hear. I will assert that even the popular music that kids like as pre-teens is sophisticated harmonically and based on a full history of western music. At the same time a vast quantity of music is based on very simple harmonic principles and these provide the basis for more sophisticated harmony is 19Th and 20Th Century serious music and Jazz.
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