Lessons
Class Overview
01:51 2The Piano Roll Editor
06:16 3Octaves
10:01 4Using Octaves
06:13 5The Black Keys (not the band)
07:55 6Finding C and Middle C
06:08 7Section 1 Summary
03:40 8The Perfect Fifth
06:06Finding Fifths
05:25 10Being "In Key"
05:00 11The Pattern of a Key
06:53 12Fifth Examples
08:52 13Moveable Patterns
05:20 14The Major and Minor Third
04:28 15Building Triads
12:32 16Chord Progressions
05:47 17What is Diatonic?
04:16 18Finding All The Chords
09:10 19Roman Numerals
05:02 20Example Song Analysis No. 1
09:58 21Inversions
08:22 227th Chords - Overview
04:25 23Diatonic 7th Chords
02:02 24Maj7 (Major 7) Example
08:26 25Dominant 7th Chords
06:11 26Blues and the 7th Chord
02:20 27The Fourth
06:45 28The Second
04:37 29The Sixth
01:58 30Song Analysis No. 2
15:54 31Wrap Up
02:32Lesson Info
Example Song Analysis No. 1
Okay, So I have here a song by the band called the album Leaf. So the song called 22 14. Ah, and the album Leaf, if you don't know him, does this kind of like down tempo, chills stuff? Um, I really like it. Actually. It's, like, pretty cool stuff. I don't really know anything about them, actually, other than, um, their music, But I've liked it a lot. So, um, here is the track. Let's just listen to a little bit of it way. Ah, uh uh. OK, so it goes on and gets more bells and stuff command and then drums and all other stuff. But I want to look at just this intro thing. Um, so I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna take this, and I'm gonna try. Ah, using able tens, internal convert. So convert harmony to new MIDI track. So that's basically going to do is try to figure out the notes for me. I don't know how well this is gonna work, but let's give it a shot. So here we go. Okay. No. Ah, so here's what it kicked out. So let's open this up and have a look. So I gotta zoom way in here. All right, so le...
t's pick apart these notes. Here's what we have a g and a B. Well, let's just Let's just hear it first. Actually, let's hear what it came up with. A pretty good the So the first thing when you do something like this like converting a melody to harmony. Listen, Teoh, listen to it and see if everything got right. This is not an exact science. Um, like I can tell these two notes up here. Probably not gonna get rid of those. So let's see if we can figure out what this is now. First thing I'm going to do as I'm gonna tidy this up a little bit and I'm going to get rid of some of the single notes here. Okay? So I'm gonna get rid of this A Because that's just a single note, and I'm gonna say this first bar is just G and E. Who and then I have a d and an f e. Let's get rid of that. And let's call this next chord. The F sharp is still going. Another f sharp comes in. D is still going. Let's assume this D goes all the way to the next chord boom. And this one serves here. So basically, I'm just kind of nudging things around to fit, um, in a little bit clearer way. So let's look at these 1st 4 chords first. Okay, so, um, this is still a bit abstract. So the next thing I need to do is let's try to compact to these down and by compactly is down. I mean, let's get rid of octaves. So let's take this be There's a lot of space here, so let's move this Be down an octave. There we go. That looks like something I could deal with a little bit better. Let's take this f sharp moving down. Okay, that replaced the other f sharp that was there, but that's OK. Uh, here's a b. Okay, so now I have some chords that I can see a G and A B A d in an apple and a being and an f sharp and me, you and G So Ah, the first step in figuring out what this is is probably gonna be to figure out what key it's in now. The way I would do that is I would basically draw out the key. You know, using drought. Lucky, like let's take a C major G I A B c Hey, there's all my notes and see Major now let's see Now let's see if this fits like well, right away. Here's an f sharp and that doesn't fit. So it's not in C Major. Let's try another one. Ah, good guests here would be Dean because it's the first. Ah, the root of the first court we get. So let's see if G works a b c Oops. So Ah ah, whole step, Whole step, half step. Most step, Full step whole step half step So we could see that F Sharp who is in this key? So that's a good guess that be and the g r. Both the D is in the movies in the clear, and she is in the key, so G is a pretty good guess here. So let's assume in the key of G. If we are in the key of G, then this first chord eyes going to be a one chord because it's built on G. They were in the key of G. Uh, and it's going to be a major chord. I could count have steps here on and tell me that that's 5/2 steps, which tells me it's a major chord. Or I could just know that it's a major court because it's the one court in the key of G. Okay, so that's a one chord. Let's look at the next one, Dean and F. Ah, this one we can call. Well, let's find a D or and F sharp. So here's f sharp and here's D. So those are 1/3 apart, all right, which is good. Uh, the route is going to be the lower one. So that's D. And what number is that? 12345 So that's a cord built on the five. So that's going to be, ah, five Roman numeral five, which is going to be major because of the major minor, minor Major major. It's got to be major because of the diatonic chord progression. Now it looks like that Hold through to the next bar and then let's go here we have a being in an F sharp, tricky one because watch this be is here. F Charlotte is here. Here's my Here's the two notes of those Gore's just laid out in terms of my scale. The problem here is that they're not 1/3 apart. They're missing a note. Right? Uh, this note should be in the middle, but that's okay. Ah, Core doesn't have to have all the notes. It can have a missing note that happens. But we can assume what note it is because we know what key were in. So, uh, the root of this court must be be. So that's 1/3 chord that's built on 313 Dean is missing, but that's okay. We still call it a three court, and it's gonna be a minor three chord, even though there's no minor third in it. It would still be a minor three chord if it was in the key of are, if the note the court was completed, it would be a minor chord. Ah, and it still gives us that sense of a minor chord because of the B and F being in the key of G kind of like one of those weird little psychological things. So there is the opening chord progression of our song, and I think if we kept going here we would find that repeating just with a couple embellish notes. Ah, just to give it a little more color. All the notes, though, are going to be in key of G. With the exception of from that one right there, I can see that's a C sharp that's not in the key of G. So I would want to go back and listen to that and make sure able to guess that, right? Um and if it did, guess it, right. If that note is actually there, it still could be OK, It's just kind of ah, embellished note, you know, just, ah, one toe, add a little bit of color. So there we go. There is the opening of a song. We pulled apart the cords and looked at it in terms of Roman numerals, and that's what we have. So now we can tell this is a song built on a 153 progression
Ratings and Reviews
exoslime
this is great and very helpfull class, i make and wirte music for more than 2 decades and never gave much about theory, i trusted my feelings to what sound good and what not. Bu t recently i became interested but it all seemed very difficult to me and i didnt got the points behind music theory and how everyhing works together. This class was a game changer for me.. music theory is so simple if you have somebody to explain it in words so that you finally can understand it, and thats Anthony, he is a brilliant guy and he explains it in a simple way that you can easily understand whats going on. This is perfectly the case with this course, the sections are short and to the point, not much talking around and leaving the path, you can make fast progress end learn how music theory works, this is a 5 Star ***** course and hopefully there is more to come
Emane Filali
Fabulous course. As a person with dyslexia, trying to remember the notes and chords as letters only is impossible. I love the visual way the chords are demonstrated and explained. I was originally put off by the "electronic" aspect, thinking it was only for learning how to use piano edit roller. However, as a beginner in playing the piano, this course is applicable to all who want to learn and understand music theory in an interesting visual way. Looking forward to next lesson. Will definately be purchasing the course after. Fantastic tutor and course.
Giulio Lazaretti
Very good class!! Makes it much easier to understand and apply the rules of theory. Anthony is also very wise to suggest to trust your ears, even if what you've written doesn't fit into those same rules. I am so very grateful for you putting this together, Anthony, and for making it available for the general public, Creative Live. I am also very glad I was given the opportunity to learn english in my home country (Brazil), in which many barely know how to read and write in our own native language (portuguese) due to our public education being so bad (which, by its turn, has to do with the myriad of vile creatures that inhabit our representative chambers). Tks XoXo!