The Music Theory sequence (MUS 101, MUS 102, MUS 201, and MUS 202) is a study of the fundamentals of music and musicianship including written harmony, analysis, sight singing, ear training, and written composition. It is required of all music majors and meets for four hours each week. MUS 101 and MUS 201 meet during the fall semester and MUS 102 and MUS 202 meet during the spring semester. Classes meet in LLCC's sixteen station Yamaha Clavinova lab and students have access to various computer programs including Practica Musica (an ear training software), Tap-It, and Finale and Sibelius (software for music notation) in the Fine Arts Computer Lab.
Topics in MUS 101 include scales and key signatures, intervals, rhythmic notation and meter, clefs, construction of melodic lines, triads, non-harominc tones and voice leading in four-part writing.
Topics in MUS 102 include the principles of chord progression, modulation, the dominant seventh chord, non-dominant seventh chords, secondary dominant chords of all types, and song forms.
Topics in MUS 201 include borrowed chords, ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords, the Neopolitan sixth chord, augmented sixth chords, altered dominant chords, and chromatic mediant chords.
Topics in MUS 202 include an introduction to 18th century counterpoint including the canon, two-part innention, and three-voice fugue, transposition and procedures for instrumental writing through doing arrangements for various groups of instruments, and contemporary techniques including totally free tonality, quartal harmony, and twelve-tone composition.
