Wednesday, August 31, 2011
When I was a kid, I’d listen to music and wonder, why is this chord progression so much more satisfying than that one? Now I know the answer: secondary dominants, chords that temporarily change the key in a logical-sounding way. If you want to take your songwriting in a more sophisticated direction, you definitely want [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged alicia keys, bob dylan, cadences, circle of fifths, Composition, country, elizabeth cotten, harmony, i got rhythm, jay-z, jazz, Music Theory, neil young, ragtime, secondary dominants, tritones
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I studied music theory for a good long time before it dawned on me that you can read the major scale right off the circle of fifths. Here’s the C major scale on the circle. The red notes are the ones in the scale and the grey ones are the ones outside the scale. The [...]
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The blues is a good entry path for beginner guitarists. If you learn the standard fifteen chords and the blues scale, you’ll be well on your way. However, there’s one crucial piece of additional music vocabulary you need to do the blues justice, and that’s diminished chords. To make a diminished chord, you start on [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, bob dylan, duke ellington, ella fitzgerald, fats waller, jazz, lambert hendricks and ross, Music Theory, robert johnson, roots, symmetry, thelonious monk
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Minor keys are way more complicated than major keys. But the effort is worth it; all that complexity gives a richer array of expressive possibility. The best place to start with minor keys, paradoxically, is with the major scale modes. The pitches in C major are the same as the ones in A natural minor. [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged alfred hitchcock, bach, bernard herrmann, carlos santana, dorian, Emotion, harmonic minor, henry purcell, klezmer, melodic minor, modes, Music Theory, natural minor, scales, tito puente
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Thursday, January 20, 2011
The C major scale is the foundation that the rest of western music theory sits on. If you master it, you get a bunch of cool chords and scales for free, along with a window into a huge swath of our musical culture. How to form the scale Imagine an ice cube tray with twelve [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged beethoven, bjork, classical, folk, guitar, harmony, leonard cohen, major scale, mozart, Music, Music Theory
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Expanding on a post about blues basics. When you’re first learning to improvise, it’s daunting to be confronted with all the scales. Fortunately, there’s one scale that sounds good in any situation: the blues scale. It’s a universal harmonic solvent. I haven’t encountered a chord progression yet that didn’t fit with the blues scale. It [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, charles mingus, dave brubeck, guitar, harmony, henry mancini, jazz, miles davis, Music Theory
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Since I’m teaching the twelve-bar blues to some guitar students, I figured I’d put the lessons in the form of a blog post. Blues is a big topic and this isn’t going to be anything like a definitive guide. Think of it more as a tasting menu. Blues is a confusing term. You probably have [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged aretha franklin, batman, blues, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, guitar, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, race, thelonious monk, tritones
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010
I’ve picked up some new guitar students lately, so I’m once again doing a lot of explaining what a tritone is and why people should care. Whenever I find myself explaining something a lot, I like to encapsulate it as a blog post. So here we go. A tritone is the interval between the notes [...]
Filed in Emotion, Math, Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, busta rhymes, irrational numbers, Math, melodic minor, michael jackson, miles davis, Music Theory, psychology, scales, simpsons, sonny rollins, stevie wonder, thelonious monk, tritones
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Hip-hop isn’t usually big on chord progressions, but “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys has an awesome set of changes. Because Alicia Keys was involved, I thought she might have written the chord progression. But no, it’s built from samples of the intro to “Love On A Two-Way Street” by The Moments.
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged alicia keys, digging the crates, hip-hop, jay-z, lego, looping, Music Theory, nyc, Sampling, songwriting, the moments
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Most beginner guitarists start by learning the same fifteen chords, usually called the “standard fifteen.” I’ve also heard them called the open chords because they make use of open strings and are thus easy to play. For fingerings, have a look at wikipedia or any book on beginner guitar. You can also see this handy [...]