ABBA, “The Winner Takes It All” (Dr. B Music Theory) — Transcript
Full transcript
- 0:00all right welcome to dr b
- 0:03music theory i'm going to go check and
- 0:05make sure everything's working with this
- 0:07stream so give me
- 0:08one moment while i make sure we are
- 0:11up and running appropriate it looks like
- 0:14we're in good shape
- 0:16so i'm glad to
- 0:19welcome you all back for those of you
- 0:22watching live
- 0:23i would like this to be a little bit
- 0:25more interactive than we've
- 0:27we've done in the past so you can see
- 0:30that i have
- 0:31some stuff up here on the on the board
- 0:33behind me
- 0:34i'm going to be asking you to type in
- 0:37the chat
- 0:38roman numeral analysis so this is a good
- 0:41test uh see if you can get that all
- 0:43right so
- 0:44welcome again welcome again and this
- 0:48this is gonna be archived so you can
- 0:50watch it later you can watch it again
- 0:52you can pause it and go listen to the
- 0:54things i'm
- 0:55referencing so what i wanted to do is
- 0:59two weeks ago someone was
- 1:03asking why don't you talk more about
- 1:06melodic development
- 1:08and why don't you talk more about melody
- 1:10in general
- 1:11and was an excellent question and it
- 1:14really had me thinking
- 1:15and so today i really wanted to start
- 1:17about
- 1:18talking about melody and there was a
- 1:22group back in the
- 1:231970s 1980s called abba
- 1:27and they were from sweden and but they
- 1:30they had their songs in english and they
- 1:32were international
- 1:34sensations they kind of won a year of
- 1:37the eurovision song contest
- 1:39and if any of you haven't seen the will
- 1:41ferrell movie that's came out recently
- 1:44about the eurovisions contest it made me
- 1:47laugh a bunch of times so
- 1:49i would recommend it but anyway so abba
- 1:52wrote some wonderful melodies any
- 1:55any group that gets kind of like
- 1:59super super popular has at least
- 2:02decent two awesome melodies and that's
- 2:05because
- 2:06although when we're talking about music
- 2:08theory we spend so much time talking
- 2:10about harmony and certainly harmony is
- 2:12important
- 2:13it sets a mood it gives a certain
- 2:16feeling an interpretation but it's
- 2:18really the melody that people that
- 2:20listeners
- 2:21lock into it's they they don't leave
- 2:24the concert arpeggiating the harmonies
- 2:27they leave a concert
- 2:29singing the melody that's what we latch
- 2:31on to and
- 2:34i don't want to diminish the importance
- 2:35of melody let me i do i give this
- 2:37example to about my students all the
- 2:39time so imagine if you will
- 2:42you're watching a movie and there's a
- 2:45small child playing by
- 2:49by the ocean and you hear
- 2:52this again beach sunshine
- 2:56ocean and and you hear this
- 3:08that music is telling you how to
- 3:10emotionally interpret that scene right
- 3:13those are just two chords going back and
- 3:14forth
- 3:16but the emotions you should be feeling
- 3:19are probably like relaxation
- 3:23maybe nostalgia
- 3:26sense of peace now imagine if you will
- 3:29the exact same
- 3:31scene small child playing by the by the
- 3:33ocean sun is shining and instead the
- 3:35music you hear is
- 3:36[Music]
- 3:41just one chord repeated in a very unique
- 3:44rhythmic
- 3:45fashion obviously there's a completely
- 3:48different emotional interpretation
- 3:50now you know something's gonna happen
- 3:52you're like on high alert you know like
- 3:53that kid's gonna get eaten by a shark at
- 3:55any minute now in the movie right
- 3:57that's the power of just harmony
- 4:01but what i really want we're going to
- 4:03talk about harmony today don't get me
- 4:04wrong and that's why i said you can do a
- 4:05roman numeral analysis
- 4:07but we're going to really focus on the
- 4:09melody and the melodic development
- 4:11so this is a song by abba a group that
- 4:15was
- 4:16popular in the 1970s 1980s
- 4:19they they were so popular that their
- 4:21music has kind of withstood the test of
- 4:23time and not all popular music does
- 4:25but in i believe it was 1999 it was
- 4:29turned into a musical called mamma mia
- 4:31that was a big hit on broadway new york
- 4:33city and then it toured
- 4:34and then it was turned into a major
- 4:37major motion picture movie
- 4:39starring like meryl streep and pierce
- 4:42bros and like
- 4:42top a-list actors and all this
- 4:48was the soundtrack was the music of abba
- 4:50and
- 4:51in the movie as well as one of their
- 4:53songs there's a piece called the winner
- 4:55takes it all
- 4:56and that's the song i want to talk to
- 4:58you talk about with you today
- 5:01so i put it up here put it up here and
- 5:03there's a couple things that are
- 5:05interesting this is not the complete
- 5:06song right
- 5:06but this is all the essential material
- 5:09this is
- 5:10all this is everything and it's just a
- 5:13matter of repeating it
- 5:15and restructuring it in terms of how you
- 5:17get an entire like five minute song
- 5:19out of just this and if we look at it
- 5:22we're really talking about 16
- 5:24measures of harmony just 16 measures
- 5:28and using a total of only eight chords
- 5:32and i'm counting as different chords
- 5:34when you have let's say
- 5:35a flat minor right here and a flat minor
- 5:39with e flat in the bass i'm counting
- 5:41that as the same
- 5:43i'm calling rather i'm counting that as
- 5:45different chords because it's
- 5:46the inversions count right that's
- 5:48important so
- 5:49with only eight chords and only 16
- 5:53measures of real material
- 5:56they created a song that was an
- 5:59international hit that was you know that
- 6:02you know and their music as a whole
- 6:04spawned a musical spawned a movie it's
- 6:06in the movie this song specifically
- 6:09so let's take a look at this melody
- 6:12right
- 6:14and if we just take a look
- 6:18at right here starting with these these
- 6:21[Music]
- 6:32pickups
- 6:36that then repeats itself but it's so
- 6:38it's the same it's the same material but
- 6:39so i'm not going to repeat it right now
- 6:41and then the next melodic part
- 6:48[Music]
- 6:59and there you go you got yourself a hit
- 7:01song now i know there's many of you out
- 7:04there
- 7:04who are composers songwriters
- 7:08arrangers and one of the things that you
- 7:12really should focus on is writing an
- 7:14awesome melody
- 7:15it's so easy to get caught up in harmony
- 7:18especially if you're trying to
- 7:19you're trying to be a little more
- 7:21sophisticated a little bit more
- 7:23uh elegant you're trying to you have a
- 7:26you're a curious musician you're
- 7:28interested in all different styles
- 7:30don't forget sight of the melody the
- 7:33melody's going to be your most important
- 7:35thing as a songwriter
- 7:36as a composer think
- 7:39if you know if you if you love your
- 7:40classical music think tchaikovsky
- 7:43a master of melody um
- 7:46and so we're looking at it in a
- 7:48different genre here
- 7:49but the the elements of melody the
- 7:52kind of building blocks and the tips are
- 7:55gonna
- 7:55transfer across different styles for
- 7:58those of you who are
- 7:59taking music theory you're musicians
- 8:02you're you're
- 8:03getting ready for an exam or perhaps
- 8:04you're in college and you're
- 8:06or ap music theory uh you're in high
- 8:08school taking advanced placement classes
- 8:10and you need to be able to analyze
- 8:12melodies because sometimes that's asked
- 8:14of you
- 8:15these are this is going to be a great
- 8:17way for you to kind of apply that
- 8:19knowledge
- 8:20in a different style so let's take a
- 8:23look
- 8:24we have scale
- 8:28slightly different rhythm and then big
- 8:32leap
- 8:33right so one of the big things that we
- 8:36talk about with melodies is
- 8:38the relationship the ratio between
- 8:42stepwise motion meaning going up or down
- 8:45a scale
- 8:45and a leap if you have all
- 8:48up and down a scale it's going to be
- 8:51boring
- 8:52it's not going to be exciting it's not
- 8:53going to be interesting
- 8:55if it's all leaps it's going to be
- 8:58distracting and confusing
- 9:01so getting the balance right of the the
- 9:04number of leaps
- 9:06to the number of steps and so let's just
- 9:10take a look at what
- 9:11what abba did here so we have a leap one
- 9:13leap right here
- 9:15then we got more this is all scale
- 9:18all scale then we have a like a little
- 9:20leap right a little leap between this a
- 9:22flat
- 9:23and the c flat just a little bit of a
- 9:27leap
- 9:27so sometimes a third is considered a
- 9:30step
- 9:32it functions more like a step in terms
- 9:33of how melody's created and sometimes it
- 9:35functions as a leap
- 9:36so if we're going if we're going
- 9:40like an arpeggio you know arpeggios will
- 9:43often sound like
- 9:45stepwise motion they don't feel like
- 9:47they're creating this
- 9:48open space this this this kind of vacuum
- 9:51which is kind of what a leap does
- 9:53that then wants to be filled so if
- 9:56you're just going up an arpeggio
- 9:58that's a leap of a third it doesn't
- 10:00really sound
- 10:01like a leap right it's it's kind of that
- 10:04halfway in between it's kind of more
- 10:05close to feeling like a step
- 10:08in this case we have a chord change so
- 10:11this one actually
- 10:12feels more like a leap this a flat to to
- 10:15to c flat so we have this
- 10:21but it's not it's not a big leap not a
- 10:24big leap at all
- 10:25so it doesn't doesn't have quite the
- 10:26same feel and then we go
- 10:29and then again this kind of sort of leap
- 10:31right here so i'm going to put that in
- 10:32parentheses because it's
- 10:34it's it's not super obvious as a leap
- 10:37now here's where it gets interesting
- 10:43we step up and then we have a giant leap
- 10:46a leap of a seventh now most of the time
- 10:50a leap of the seventh is is too big it's
- 10:53a dissonant leap
- 10:54and so for certain styles of music so if
- 10:57you're in your
- 10:58your your johann sebastian bach chorale
- 11:01style of writing
- 11:02the leap of a seventh is gonna stand out
- 11:04too much and you avoid those dissonant
- 11:06leaps
- 11:07usually you'd only have a leap of a six
- 11:09a major six or a minor six
- 11:11but different genres have different
- 11:15permutations there's a lot that's in
- 11:17common but there are differences
- 11:19so here one of those differences is this
- 11:21leap of a seventh
- 11:23is not only it's very striking and it
- 11:27sounds great so it's it's allowed
- 11:29but it's we have so we have this bailey
- 11:32and then we go down and we do another
- 11:34leap here so this d flat to c
- 11:36flat is a leap of a seventh this b flat
- 11:39to
- 11:40a flat is another leap of a seventh this
- 11:43e flat to d-flat is yet another leap of
- 11:46a seventh
- 11:49and then finally right here this this
- 11:51note here the sustained note the c-flat
- 11:54we do have a leap of a seventh down to
- 11:57the d-flat though that one that one
- 12:00right there doesn't
- 12:01kind of function as a leap because it's
- 12:03this is a
- 12:04kind of kind of like the end of a phrase
- 12:06right here this c-flat
- 12:08and then we have a rest and then this is
- 12:10really a pickup
- 12:11and it's just essentially the same
- 12:14melody we had
- 12:14pick up for the beginning so if we look
- 12:18there's a lot more stepwise motion in
- 12:20this melody
- 12:21than there are leaps but the leaps are
- 12:23placed in
- 12:24key locations they're sprinkled in there
- 12:26so we have
- 12:27one two three four measures then a
- 12:30little leap
- 12:31one two three another little leap
- 12:34big leap one two big leap one
- 12:37two big leap then one two three
- 12:41four leap so predominantly by step i'm
- 12:45saying it again because it's important
- 12:47but key places where we have a leap
- 12:50now what's also really important when
- 12:52you're talking about melodic
- 12:53construction and we're looking at how
- 12:56this song in particular utilizes that is
- 12:59what happens right
- 13:00after the leap
- 13:03we have big leap
- 13:07and then it just stays there
- 13:10and then as soon as we we repeat that
- 13:13and then we use a scale
- 13:15and it fills in that vacuum that was
- 13:19created
- 13:20so we have da da da da da
- 13:24it's like that's a surprise right that
- 13:26leap it's like we're like
- 13:29big surprise dumb and we just kind of
- 13:32stay there and everyone kind of was like
- 13:33ooh
- 13:34surprised but we're not nothing's
- 13:35happening now so it creates a certain
- 13:37emotion when you do that
- 13:39we're going to talk about that as well
- 13:41the emotion of the song
- 13:42so the big leap is the surprise and then
- 13:45the fact that it
- 13:46stays there kind of
- 13:50gives you this like it it makes it makes
- 13:53the listener kind of like
- 13:54perk up their ears and say well what's
- 13:57going to happen we just had the surprise
- 13:58what's
- 13:59what's next after the big surprise then
- 14:01you get what
- 14:02you would normally expect which is after
- 14:04a big leap you then
- 14:06step back in the opposite direction so
- 14:08leap down
- 14:10step up and we kind of fill in that
- 14:12sonic space between the g flat
- 14:15and the b flat we don't fill it in all
- 14:17the way but we get pretty close
- 14:18so we fill in that sonic space we then
- 14:21have our scale
- 14:22and then we kind of keep going on the
- 14:24scale and the
- 14:26the last part we have we already talked
- 14:27about that
- 14:31that a flat to c-flat but notice here
- 14:36let me tell you why this is in
- 14:37parentheses in case you were wondering
- 14:39uh depending on this is the verse right
- 14:42here
- 14:43depending on what verse we're in
- 14:45sometimes there's a pickup
- 14:46sometimes it just starts there so we put
- 14:48we put it in parentheses you'll often
- 14:50see that in sheet music
- 14:51so what that means is that sometimes
- 14:54it's a
- 14:54quarter rest eighth rest with an eighth
- 14:56note on the end of two and sometimes
- 14:58it's just two beats rest so notice we
- 15:01have
- 15:02rhythmically as well because we wanna
- 15:04analyze a melody melody is not just
- 15:06pitches
- 15:06melody is also rhythm so rest on one
- 15:10two pick up
- 15:13and this dotted 8th 16th note is just a
- 15:17little bit of variety so it's not
- 15:19just eighth notes to give it a little
- 15:21bit of uh
- 15:24it's almost like a little little almost
- 15:26like a trip trip and fall right
- 15:28da da dum trip fall which is kind of a
- 15:32really neat way to do it
- 15:35so two beats rest three and four
- 15:39and then e1 and then we do the same
- 15:42rhythm
- 15:44and then we change change what happens
- 15:46but notice that this cell
- 15:48is the exact same as this two beats rest
- 15:51there and if we depending on which verse
- 15:54we are
- 15:54on we have another two beats rest and
- 15:57then dot three
- 15:58and four and which is here we just keep
- 16:01they keep it
- 16:02straight right instead of doing da da da
- 16:04da da
- 16:05which kind of you know again we're
- 16:07looking for variety we've established
- 16:16[Music]
- 16:17so it keeps it a little straighter now i
- 16:19to be fair
- 16:20when you listen to the recordings this
- 16:23is this is kind of like the
- 16:25the the very notated version that's very
- 16:29kind of
- 16:29rigid when it's sung there are
- 16:32performance
- 16:34liberties taken with the exact rhythm
- 16:37it's not
- 16:37always metronomic exactly this rhythm
- 16:41a good performer is going to
- 16:45they're going to they're going to kind
- 16:47of anticipate some notes and they might
- 16:48sing certain note values shorter than
- 16:50that's written
- 16:52they might also delay and back phrase
- 16:54certain things
- 16:55so they might make certain notes a
- 16:57little bit longer than their written
- 16:59and this is one of the things that kind
- 17:00of creates a unique style
- 17:02and it has a huge effect on the emotion
- 17:04of the song
- 17:05so we're talking about the rhythm in a
- 17:07more general sense
- 17:09than an exact specific sense and you can
- 17:12you know for those of you that are
- 17:14watching this
- 17:16after the live video is over you know go
- 17:18ahead and pause the recording
- 17:20and go listen to the song there's a
- 17:22couple different versions worth
- 17:24listening to there's the
- 17:25official video version there's a live
- 17:27version by abba
- 17:28and then you can also go ahead and
- 17:30compare it to the meryl streep
- 17:32version that's from the movie mamma mia
- 17:34of this song
- 17:36so you have a couple things you can
- 17:37listen to so you can kind of hear
- 17:39exactly what i'm talking about from the
- 17:42actual recording
- 17:43but getting back to that rhythm two
- 17:46beats rest
- 17:46da da da da two beats rest
- 17:50two beats rest da da da da dam two beat
- 17:53rest
- 17:54da da da da da it's it's very
- 17:57uh it's very predictable in this sense
- 18:00the rhythms there's not a lot of variety
- 18:02so for those of you composing melodies
- 18:05it's
- 18:05really easy to make something way more
- 18:08complicated than it should be
- 18:10now i'm not saying this is i'm not
- 18:13saying this is complicated this is
- 18:14definitely not complicated and i'm not
- 18:16saying you can't be
- 18:16more complicated than this but there's
- 18:19something
- 18:20worth exploring as a composer in
- 18:23figuring out how you can make something
- 18:25that simple
- 18:27sound good the elegance of simplicity
- 18:30the beauty of simplicity
- 18:32there's something to that that is
- 18:33absolutely worth exploring as a composer
- 18:36so don't be afraid of repetition
- 18:39especially when you're composing a
- 18:41melody notice
- 18:43that
- 18:45[Music]
- 18:46the rhythm is pretty much the same but
- 18:48the melody's different
- 18:50um it goes up again but it's at a
- 18:52different level so the first one is
- 18:55and the second one is
- 18:56[Music]
- 18:58and then we do so these two went up
- 19:02then this one goes down so
- 19:06you're taking this here's kind of like
- 19:09one of the secrets to writing a great
- 19:10melody
- 19:11you make at least one aspect
- 19:14simple and then you make something else
- 19:17is where you put your complexity
- 19:19so if we take the music of tchaikovsky
- 19:22as i mentioned before
- 19:23classical composer wrote the nutcracker
- 19:26nutcracker swan lake sleeping beauty
- 19:28walt disney realized how great his
- 19:30melodies were and took those and put
- 19:32them in the
- 19:32disney movies great melodies so his
- 19:35melodies were very he'd repeat them
- 19:38over and over and if you just had the
- 19:40melodies alone you'd be like gosh
- 19:41tchaikovsky why are you so famous can
- 19:42you come up with something different
- 19:44but if you listen carefully in the
- 19:46background
- 19:47every time that melody happens there's
- 19:49something else happening behind it
- 19:51there's a counter melody or there's a
- 19:53different way in which the chords are
- 19:55being
- 19:55performed or there's different harmonies
- 19:58under the same melody
- 19:59so tchaikovsky takes something that a
- 20:02listener can latch onto
- 20:04a reasonably simple melody and then
- 20:07puts all the complexity in other areas
- 20:10and even within your melody
- 20:12what you can do is you can say i'm going
- 20:13to do something simple
- 20:15i'm going to take this rhythm of two
- 20:17beats wrath
- 20:21little variation right two rates
- 20:25two beats but once you've done that and
- 20:29you've
- 20:29said i'm gonna have this one area that's
- 20:31simple then you figure out how you how
- 20:33much variety can
- 20:34you get within that simplicity so this
- 20:38first one
- 20:38starts on a d flat the second one is
- 20:41exactly the same thing
- 20:42going up the scale the exact same rhythm
- 20:44but starting on b flat
- 20:45this one is kind of like the inversion
- 20:48so the other one went
- 20:49went up this one goes down and then it
- 20:52goes down again
- 20:54um but with us but here the rhythm gets
- 20:56varied a little bit so it's this is the
- 20:58kind of like the same thing but the
- 20:59rhythm gets varied
- 21:00so we have an almost exact repetition
- 21:02then they go back and they do this whole
- 21:04thing again
- 21:05and then this is where the art of the
- 21:07performance comes in because the
- 21:08performer is going to then
- 21:10even give other variations to this
- 21:14and we haven't even started talking
- 21:15about the lyrics yet right because the
- 21:17lyrics
- 21:18are gonna make a huge difference right
- 21:20now i wanna just focus in on
- 21:22the um the melody sides the musical side
- 21:27and i think it's worth just kind of
- 21:30being
- 21:31clear when we're talking about a song
- 21:33we're talking about a
- 21:34combination of art forms we're talking
- 21:36about the art of music which deals with
- 21:39pitch rhythm harmony things like that
- 21:43and we're talking about the art of
- 21:45literature
- 21:46the lyrics the poetry these are two
- 21:50things that
- 21:51you know you can look at separately but
- 21:53in a good song
- 21:55kind of become inseparable but i do
- 21:58think
- 21:59you know when i say music that
- 22:03that we can pull those two things apart
- 22:05so i wanted to focus on just the
- 22:07music side of the song before we start
- 22:10talking about the lyrics
- 22:12so this all gets repeated wonderful
- 22:16then after all this kind of like more
- 22:19more kind of calm it's got a narrow
- 22:22range it's not a
- 22:23not a wide range it goes down to a flat
- 22:25and up to g flat so it's a minor seventh
- 22:27in terms of range
- 22:29and then all of a sudden we have this
- 22:32huge
- 22:33dramatic leap up
- 22:36the only big leap we've had is really
- 22:38just this one
- 22:39big leap here that goes down but now we
- 22:42have a leap and it's
- 22:43this was a leap down of a six this is a
- 22:45leap up of a seventh
- 22:47that tends to have this yearning quality
- 22:50when you have that leap up
- 22:51and so they leaps up and then
- 22:53immediately steps back
- 22:55so with leap up step back that's
- 22:57textbook how you write a melody
- 23:01then here's where uh two weeks ago
- 23:03someone was asking about melodic
- 23:05development
- 23:06well this is melodic development has
- 23:08many way
- 23:09many ways you can do it one is kind of
- 23:11the repetition
- 23:13aspects the the variation aspects we
- 23:15talked about within the verse
- 23:16when we get here when i start notating
- 23:18things with the red
- 23:20lead sheet symbols this is the chorus
- 23:23and so the chorus has the series a
- 23:25sequence
- 23:26we have
- 23:27[Music]
- 23:34and then it does it again
- 23:35[Music]
- 23:37and then we finally have what like kind
- 23:40of like the wrapping it up
- 23:45and do not underestimate the power of
- 23:49three
- 23:50this has been something that's been a
- 23:51big thing in music for
- 23:53for centuries three is like the greatest
- 23:56number
- 23:57in terms of how we hear things we hear
- 23:59it once
- 24:00okay it kind of has a surprise oh what's
- 24:03going to happen
- 24:03then you hear it again but at a
- 24:05different level starting on the b flat
- 24:07you're like oh okay i get it third time
- 24:10you've heard the expression third time's
- 24:11the charm
- 24:13this is kind of the same thing with
- 24:14music when you're composing you get it a
- 24:16third time
- 24:17and then finally you say okay after that
- 24:20it would start to become
- 24:21predictable but three times just really
- 24:24works psychologically
- 24:25uh first it's like question
- 24:29answer confirmation you can't it's
- 24:32almost like that kind of
- 24:33setup in terms of how it how it plays
- 24:36for the listener
- 24:37so this wonderful sequence this
- 24:40development of the melody
- 24:42as it shifts into different areas
- 24:45so that's kind of a quick talk about
- 24:48that now let's see how
- 24:49the harmonies support it okay
- 24:53and let me point out a couple things so
- 24:55it starts off with an introduction which
- 24:57is
- 24:59just the chords of the chorus so let's
- 25:02think about this as in terms of
- 25:04songwriting and if we can take
- 25:05principles you can take the chords of
- 25:07the chorus
- 25:09use them as an instrumental introduction
- 25:12that way when you get to the chorus the
- 25:15listener
- 25:16is hearing a melody they've never heard
- 25:18but they have this sense of familiarity
- 25:20that they get from the harmony
- 25:23music is like an amazing psychological
- 25:26tool
- 25:27and and i wonder to what extent
- 25:31um you can you know as human knowledge
- 25:35continues to evolve
- 25:36that we figure out how music can be
- 25:39used to help us you know help us
- 25:43feel better relieve anxiety like we all
- 25:46kind of implicitly know this
- 25:48we all know that there's certain songs
- 25:49that will make us feel better
- 25:52but to like get get deeper into that
- 25:54discovery and i remember
- 25:56i was listening to an interview recently
- 25:58with like an olympic athlete
- 26:00and uh he was talking about how you know
- 26:03at one set of olympics he was listening
- 26:05to music that was all like very very
- 26:06energetic
- 26:07and then like his neck next olympics he
- 26:10was listening to like all this kind of
- 26:11like
- 26:12depressing slow music and he did
- 26:15terrible
- 26:16on the second olympics and he in
- 26:18reflection he's like oh
- 26:19i didn't know it at the time but looking
- 26:21back just
- 26:22my mind wasn't there i was like listen
- 26:24watch them you know just just look at
- 26:26the music i was listening to
- 26:28like i was just kind of in a funk i was
- 26:30not feeling i was feeling down and my
- 26:31head wasn't in it
- 26:32so of course i did not compete at the
- 26:35level that
- 26:36i did on my first olympics and so it was
- 26:39a whole like psychological shift that
- 26:41happened
- 26:41so that when it went to the third
- 26:43olympics he was able to to win lots of
- 26:45gold medals
- 26:46so this is also kind of reminds me of
- 26:49when when you look at music history and
- 26:51you talk about ancient greece
- 26:53so 500 bc long time ago and they start
- 26:56talking about things like
- 27:00like ethos
- 27:05this idea that music can affect our
- 27:08character not only our like our our our
- 27:11emotions but our like our ethical moral
- 27:14character
- 27:15as a human being and you know there's
- 27:18certainly something to it right it's
- 27:22what just like people say you are what
- 27:24you eat
- 27:26you kind of feel what you listen to as
- 27:28well you kind of
- 27:29you kind it it does something when you
- 27:32when you
- 27:32when you're listening to a lot of music
- 27:34that has a certain feeling you know of
- 27:36course
- 27:36you're you're in that feeling and
- 27:38that'll continue so
- 27:40if you want to change how you feel
- 27:42listen to different music
- 27:44think about when people go and you know
- 27:46typical workout music
- 27:48typical workout music is not like a
- 27:50ballad
- 27:52it's more it has a faster tempo it's a
- 27:54certain kind of feel to it
- 27:56because you're looking for a certain
- 27:58physiological as well as emotional
- 27:59result from that
- 28:00so think about the the ethos of a song
- 28:04and how these melodies will and the
- 28:07types of melodies will affect that
- 28:10so our introduction is the the the
- 28:13harmonies
- 28:14of the chorus so the genius behind that
- 28:16is
- 28:17we hear an instrumental introduction
- 28:20and then when we get to the chorus with
- 28:22the melody which we haven't heard before
- 28:24this
- 28:24melody for the chorus that's so striking
- 28:26with this ascending leap of a seventh
- 28:29we have the familiarity of the chords
- 28:32then when we go to the verse we have a
- 28:34different set of chords they're both in
- 28:36the same key
- 28:36this this piece does not modulate so
- 28:39it's one piece
- 28:40all in the key of g flat major so
- 28:43there's
- 28:43there's not a lot of different harmonies
- 28:45but you know it's it's more
- 28:47sophisticated than just
- 28:48one four five so let's take a look at
- 28:51what we have
- 28:51and i'm gonna look here in
- 28:55in in the chat here just to i'm going to
- 28:57take it normally i wait but since i
- 28:59wanted a little bit more interaction
- 29:00i'm going to take a look right now so
- 29:02i'm going to take a little break and
- 29:03then we're going to come back to it
- 29:06all right so good evening from
- 29:10england is he in california i wonder if
- 29:12that's referring to my colorful
- 29:14shirt i am not in california but i
- 29:18i would be happy to be in california so
- 29:20anyways
- 29:21i'm in new york state good evening from
- 29:24england
- 29:25thank you very much i love england
- 29:27visited london
- 29:28um and my my biggest tip is if
- 29:31you if you're in london you haven't been
- 29:33to lord frederick layton's house museum
- 29:35he was a painter
- 29:37i loved it go to it it was wonderful i
- 29:39saw lots of great musicals while i was
- 29:41in in london
- 29:42uh but thanks thanks from england uh
- 29:45good evening hey good evening to you
- 29:47andrew good evening morning from new
- 29:49zealand ah
- 29:50that's a place i haven't visited but
- 29:52want to visit uh
- 29:54from sri lanka woo super cool another
- 29:57place i've never been but
- 29:58need to go hello so glad to catch this
- 30:01live again
- 30:01love from india all right love right
- 30:04back to you
- 30:07please don't forget the analysis of the
- 30:09beethoven seventh symphony second
- 30:10movement oh
- 30:11thank you for the reminder i did i did i
- 30:13may have it written down somewhere but i
- 30:15had forgotten about it
- 30:16so i will get to that uh hi is it
- 30:19necessary that we go
- 30:20back to the original key once we
- 30:22modulated can't we begin and end the
- 30:24piece in the second key piece i'm going
- 30:26to rep
- 30:26hey hey pranav i know i saw and i got a
- 30:29couple messages from you that i'm going
- 30:30to answer
- 30:31probably not today but but soon don't
- 30:33worry it's going to all work out
- 30:35it'll it'll be great so
- 30:38so is it necessary we go back to the
- 30:39original key once we've modulated well
- 30:42so i'm going to answer that we don't
- 30:44modulate in this piece i'm analyzing
- 30:46but in general in music
- 30:50the idea is that once you modulate you
- 30:52do have to go back
- 30:53to where your start to where you started
- 30:56and
- 30:57almost you know kind of history shows
- 30:59that
- 31:00that's what the masters do and so we
- 31:03should probably take a page from their
- 31:04book and do the same
- 31:06the one big exception is where
- 31:09sometimes a piece will start in a minor
- 31:12key
- 31:12and it will end in either the parallel
- 31:15major
- 31:16or the relative major and that the idea
- 31:19behind that is that
- 31:20they're you know it's like if it starts
- 31:21in c minor you might end in e flat major
- 31:24or even c major
- 31:25the idea that minor has more tension uh
- 31:28and is
- 31:28less at rest less resolved than
- 31:32a major key so the figure the idea is
- 31:34like well what major key do you resolve
- 31:36in do you
- 31:37do you keep the same tonic note
- 31:40c c and just make it c minor c major or
- 31:42do you keep
- 31:43the same key signature c minor e flat
- 31:45major so
- 31:46sometimes you'll have something like
- 31:48that in terms of how you
- 31:49then modulate back but modulating back
- 31:53is something you definitely need to do
- 31:55well usually to the same key you started
- 31:57in but sometimes to
- 31:59something more resolved the relative
- 32:02major or parallel nature
- 32:03good question uh gotten got
- 32:06nolan saying hey nolan i'm doing great
- 32:08this weekend and he's
- 32:09nolan is a student of mine taking music
- 32:11theory one at the college i teach
- 32:13and he's working on his homework while
- 32:15he's listening to the stream hey that's
- 32:16a
- 32:17that's the great way to do it uh nolan
- 32:19brennan folks
- 32:20uh he he's a hard-working passionate
- 32:23guitarist so who knows
- 32:24i'm hoping one day he's going to be
- 32:25super famous and i'll be watching his
- 32:28his youtube channel all right how to use
- 32:31wide intervals while using music
- 32:32yeah exactly this is well this is one
- 32:35this is certainly one way to do it right
- 32:39and i think part of the reason that this
- 32:41this chorus is so effective with the
- 32:43wide leaps
- 32:44is that you only had one really wide
- 32:47leap at the beginning and then lots of
- 32:48scales lots of scales everyone's feeling
- 32:50comfortable everyone's feeling
- 32:51comfortable
- 32:52and then all of a sudden boom surprise
- 32:56big leap and then then then it resolves
- 32:58and then boom surprise again
- 33:00but it's the same shape it's the same
- 33:03melodic shape so
- 33:04it's it's a surprise from the leap side
- 33:07but
- 33:07there's some familiarity and then
- 33:09surprise again
- 33:10the same shape same leap
- 33:15each time it's going to become a little
- 33:16less surprising because we start to hear
- 33:18that pattern of the sequence
- 33:20so that's one way you can use wide leaps
- 33:23set up a sequence
- 33:25so that you have you know kind of get
- 33:27everyone comfortable hit them with a big
- 33:29leap
- 33:31step back right away then do that same
- 33:33big leap with the same kind of rhythmic
- 33:36feel then do it one more time a third
- 33:39times the charm
- 33:41that's that's one way you can use wide
- 33:43leaps so
- 33:44yeah that's that's a great rule of three
- 33:47great trip thank g
- 33:48tip yes thank you thank you all right we
- 33:50got our analysis
- 33:52all right so we've got uh
- 33:55one which is correct and these two
- 33:57slashes here
- 33:58mean that that chord stays g flat stays
- 34:00for two beats
- 34:02then b flat seven over d and we have
- 34:05that being
- 34:06uh five hmm
- 34:10all right caleb i'm gonna have to i'm
- 34:12gonna have to say you're
- 34:13you're it's a good attempt but not a
- 34:15hundred percent on
- 34:18um
- 34:20five six or maybe maybe you're analyzing
- 34:22this part right here
- 34:24yeah i think you are yeah yeah yeah
- 34:27that's what you're doing all right
- 34:28i got you you're analyzing the verse
- 34:30that's great okay so one
- 34:32one i agree and i'm going to go ahead
- 34:34and put in these roman numerals now so
- 34:35let's talk about it
- 34:37because us music theory folks we love
- 34:38our harmonies and we love our roman
- 34:40numeral analysis so
- 34:41one chord and it stays that's what this
- 34:44line with dots means repeat what it was
- 34:47in the last measure so i'm just write it
- 34:49once
- 34:50this is a five chord and first inversion
- 34:54this goes to a two chord
- 34:58in second inversion so two six four
- 35:03and then five seven so 100 correct
- 35:07excellent excellent i want to talk a
- 35:09little bit about about that just since
- 35:11caleb did a great job analyzing there
- 35:14one chord then we go to
- 35:20we not only is it harmonically important
- 35:23that we
- 35:23look at what's going on there also the
- 35:25bass line descending bass line
- 35:27is like especially in popular music but
- 35:30in all styles of music is like the power
- 35:32of the scale is something i talk about
- 35:34so
- 35:34for those of you who haven't watched all
- 35:37of my lesson videos and i've got like
- 35:40i don't know 40 of them or something
- 35:44they are in order of complexity so i
- 35:46start off
- 35:47lesson one is like pretty basic
- 35:50lesson two builds upon lesson one three
- 35:52four five et cetera et cetera et cetera
- 35:54so some of the things i might be talking
- 35:56about in this video you might not
- 35:58understand yet
- 35:59so there might be a hole in your
- 36:00learning or you might not have quite
- 36:02gotten to that
- 36:03to that level i urge everyone to
- 36:06watch the visit my lesson videos in
- 36:09order lessons one two three so
- 36:10everything that's called
- 36:11lesson is meant to be heard in specific
- 36:15order
- 36:15then all the the the kind of topics i'm
- 36:18doing now with the live q a
- 36:20these are more of you know just various
- 36:23topics that are built upon
- 36:25that knowledge of all those lessons so
- 36:27when you have
- 36:28listened to all those lessons you're
- 36:30going to really be able to understand
- 36:31and appreciate everything that's
- 36:33happening
- 36:33in these live q and a's when we talk
- 36:35about different topics
- 36:36so check out that descending bass line
- 36:39right we
- 36:40g flat f e flat
- 36:43d flat you know so scale degree one
- 36:46seven six five power of the scale
- 36:50it's a big thing so we get chord wise to
- 36:52harmonize that
- 36:54we get our one chord and then we get our
- 36:58five six
- 37:01two six four
- 37:04five seven
- 37:07and so this is this is the only thing
- 37:10that's a little unusual in terms of
- 37:12traditional classical harmony
- 37:16is the five six to two six four but even
- 37:18that's like not a big deal at all it's
- 37:20really not that unusual
- 37:22actually i shouldn't even say that it's
- 37:23not unusual because the real
- 37:25chord progression is one five
- 37:29so this goes all the way to this so
- 37:32five six to five seven this is just a
- 37:35passing
- 37:36this is a passing six four chord we we
- 37:38talk about that in one of the lessons
- 37:40passing six four textbook classical
- 37:43passing six four chord so it's one
- 37:47five six passing chord still staying on
- 37:50five just adding a seventh and putting
- 37:51in a root position so
- 37:52it's really one five but we we we have
- 37:56some variety of chords there to make it
- 37:58a little bit more complex and a little
- 37:59bit more interesting
- 38:00so that's what we have harmonically so
- 38:02then caleb then says
- 38:05uh that we go and this is on our chorus
- 38:09we got our one chord
- 38:13now caleb calls it a three
- 38:16six five and that's not the most
- 38:20insightful way to look at that chord and
- 38:23let me tell you why
- 38:24um
- 38:27it's it's not functioning as a three
- 38:29chord
- 38:30and so caleb uses an uppercase roman
- 38:33numeral 3
- 38:33to indicate that it's got a major triad
- 38:35and then puts a 6 5
- 38:37with no m to indicate that has a minor
- 38:397th
- 38:40so calling it uppercase 365
- 38:44it's not crazy crazier things have been
- 38:46done
- 38:47you're not you know it's it's reasonable
- 38:49to say that but what
- 38:50i would really say is that this is a
- 38:52secondary dominant so i would call it
- 38:54five six five
- 38:58of where we're going which is a six
- 39:00chord
- 39:02so five six five of six so if you listen
- 39:04to the secondary dominant
- 39:06chapter this is textbook secondary
- 39:09dominant and then
- 39:09as as expected it goes to that six chord
- 39:14then here this e flat seven over g is
- 39:17another chromatic chord so
- 39:19this is a chromatic harmony right i'm
- 39:21gonna put a little star next to it this
- 39:23is not in the key
- 39:24this is not in the key e flat seven over
- 39:26g so we get two
- 39:28chromatic harmonies you know this is you
- 39:30know
- 39:31talking about abba which is a pop group
- 39:34the fact that they're using
- 39:35secondary dominance you know not every
- 39:37pop group
- 39:38uses that and if you were to listen to
- 39:40the top you know the top 20 of today's
- 39:42hits
- 39:44not all of them are going to be this
- 39:45sophisticated harmonically
- 39:48using secondary functions using a
- 39:50passing 6-4 chord
- 39:51i mean for all of us who've who've done
- 39:53our music theory homework
- 39:55you know we can we can identify with a
- 39:57lot of that stuff so here this e flat
- 40:00seven over g
- 40:01this is a five six five
- 40:04going to a flat which is our two chord
- 40:09two and then d flat seven is again our
- 40:12five
- 40:13seven
- 40:16so for our chorus
- 40:29[Music]
- 40:37we get a little secondary functions in
- 40:39there which kind of adds a whole
- 40:41other aspect to it so yeah thank you
- 40:43thank you i'm gonna go back to the chat
- 40:45and we're gonna come back for more
- 40:46things
- 40:47uh i'm trying to melodic solo on guitar
- 40:51yeah so that's it so this is from eric
- 40:56you know improvisation
- 41:00tends to be less melodic than composed
- 41:04melodies
- 41:06it tends to be a little bit more
- 41:10virtuosic scaler
- 41:13arpeggios and kind of like faster
- 41:17rhythmic
- 41:18note values and so
- 41:21if we talk about let's say whether it be
- 41:23blues improvisation or
- 41:25jazz improvisation or
- 41:28metal guitar solos if we think of
- 41:31you know they tend to have a lot of note
- 41:34and they tend to be
- 41:35patterns a lot of scale and arpeggio
- 41:37patterns
- 41:38not necessarily melodies
- 41:41and a melody has a certain amount of
- 41:43rhythmic
- 41:45variety it has pauses
- 41:48it has rests and if you were to think
- 41:52if you were to like let's say transcribe
- 41:54a bb
- 41:55king solo and bb king is more melodic
- 41:57than most or let's say an eddie van
- 41:59halen solo
- 42:00or a charlie parker solo
- 42:04you would find more notes than this
- 42:07you would not find so many kind of
- 42:12longer note values in rest more than you
- 42:16think right
- 42:17more than you would think they they have
- 42:18so like young
- 42:20young people who are getting used to
- 42:22improvisation or or not young people who
- 42:24are just learning improvisation
- 42:26will tend to be like i am going to play
- 42:34and if you're a guitar player and who
- 42:35doesn't need to breathe you can just
- 42:37keep going
- 42:38right and it tends to not sound melodic
- 42:40it tends to be too
- 42:41much so the importance to play
- 42:43melodically this is why
- 42:45piano players like keith jarrett talks
- 42:47about keith jarrett plays soprano
- 42:49saxophone in part so that he can get the
- 42:51idea of
- 42:51breathing when he's playing a piano
- 42:53melody he doesn't need to breathe when
- 42:55he plays the piano i mean he does need
- 42:56to you know what i mean right he needs
- 42:58to breathe
- 42:58but his his melody doesn't need to have
- 43:01a breath he can keep
- 43:03playing non-stop on the piano without
- 43:05taking a breath
- 43:06but he wants his piano melodies to feel
- 43:08like they're taking a breath
- 43:10to feel like a singer or a saxophonist
- 43:14and so this idea of soloing melodically
- 43:20a lot of the you need to try to figure
- 43:23out what you're doing where
- 43:24you need some repetition of melody so
- 43:27like this
- 43:30then inversions you need some longer
- 43:33note values
- 43:34these are the things you should have in
- 43:36your improvisation and that's a
- 43:38wonderful
- 43:38challenge to put to yourself say i'm
- 43:40going to improvise
- 43:42with the kind of rhythmical character
- 43:45that's from
- 43:46this abbason like give yourself that
- 43:48challenge and then
- 43:49pick another song and be like i'm going
- 43:51to compose i'm going to
- 43:52improvise rather with the rhythmic style
- 43:56of this melody and that's a great
- 43:59exercise
- 44:00and so a lot of the cool jazz players
- 44:03from like 1949 1950s so
- 44:07miles davis birth of the birth of the
- 44:09cool jerry mulligan
- 44:12paul desmond these types of jazz jazz
- 44:15players
- 44:16um they didn't they didn't play as as
- 44:19many
- 44:20fast notes and they played more
- 44:22melodically in their improvisations
- 44:24and so it can be done and it's and it's
- 44:28you know it's it's really refreshing
- 44:30like so me
- 44:31when i like when i play jazz i like i
- 44:34like everything right so i want the best
- 44:36of all everything i'll i'll typically
- 44:38start my solos
- 44:39very very melodic very much in a cool
- 44:42jazz
- 44:42paul desmond style because i love paul
- 44:44desmond and then i'll end with like
- 44:46john coltrane sheets of sound because i
- 44:49love that too
- 44:50so i'm a big fan of the variety of that
- 44:53but you need to be able to develop you
- 44:55know both sides of that so yeah good
- 44:57luck with that eric
- 44:58you know go ahead and try to improvise
- 45:00like here's some chord changes
- 45:02go ahead and improvise make up your own
- 45:04melody on these chord changes
- 45:07but try to use this kind of like this
- 45:10kind of a
- 45:11rhythmic feel so instead of going like
- 45:13say
- 45:14[Music]
- 45:16let's say you start
- 45:18[Music]
- 45:31i'm doing a terrible job let me let me
- 45:33try that again so let's say you used to
- 45:37[Music]
- 45:44go
- 45:51right so i have a new little phrase
- 45:54[Music]
- 45:57right so you kind of gave me that same
- 45:58idea but you have a different melodic
- 46:00shape
- 46:01and then try to figure out how you can
- 46:03like sequence it repeat it
- 46:04make it go up make it go down give that
- 46:07give that challenge to yourself i think
- 46:08that would be a ton of fun
- 46:10carlos greeting from greetings from
- 46:12greece well i was just talking about
- 46:14ancient greece so and i've never been
- 46:16there oh
- 46:17good good big fan from kansas awesome
- 46:20thank you grant
- 46:22here's another question here
- 46:27let's see here uh oops i i scrolled down
- 46:30a little bit too quickly
- 46:32uh would you harmonize the c flat in the
- 46:34third measure as d
- 46:35flat seven i know some would just leave
- 46:37it in a g
- 46:38flat and use it as a passing tone uh the
- 46:41c flat in the third measure
- 46:44one two the
- 46:47c flat and the third oh okay so you're
- 46:49counting this has been i kind of this is
- 46:50a pickup
- 46:51uh yeah this is just a passing tone
- 46:56so this is all all all g flat so let me
- 46:58let me do that that's a
- 47:00thank you for asking that question
- 47:02because
- 47:04we have this is all on a
- 47:08this is on a d flat seven so chord tone
- 47:11passing tone chord tone escape tone
- 47:15step out leap down chord tone
- 47:18chord passing tone poor tone
- 47:22and um this is kind of like a
- 47:25combination of
- 47:26an anticipation to a
- 47:30neighbor tone so it's like you could
- 47:31analyze this e flat as a
- 47:33neighbor tone but it because of this
- 47:36dotted eighth
- 47:37sixteenth that's kind of like a very uh
- 47:40characteristic rhythmic device for
- 47:43anticipation so you could say
- 47:45anticipation neighbor tone or neighbor
- 47:48you could just say neighbor tone
- 47:49neighbor tone
- 47:49but understanding that this feels like
- 47:52an into this is an
- 47:53anticipation to this which is a
- 47:54non-chord tone
- 47:59neighbor tone accent in neighbor toe to
- 48:02chord tone
- 48:03so this is another thing that's when
- 48:05we're looking at at
- 48:06pop music and we're saying oh you know
- 48:08so many people like oh pop music's so
- 48:10simple and they look down their nose at
- 48:11it
- 48:13look at the way the non-chord tones are
- 48:15being used
- 48:16you know they're there's some
- 48:18sophisticated stuff like that's
- 48:20like you know it's not super i'm not
- 48:22it's not super
- 48:23sophisticated but you know it's like
- 48:25okay we got a note that's not in the
- 48:27chord
- 48:28that's anticipating another note that's
- 48:30not in the chord and then resolves right
- 48:32back down
- 48:32and it's all accented that that stuff
- 48:35gives it
- 48:36some of the the emotional juice that
- 48:38this song has and we're going to talk
- 48:39about that emotional juice in a moment
- 48:41so
- 48:41don't think i have forgotten and then we
- 48:44have
- 48:45core tone we can call that a passing
- 48:49tone
- 48:49passing tone so two passing tones in a
- 48:52row that's not uncommon when you go from
- 48:54the root to the fifth
- 48:56and then chord tone
- 48:59that's an upper neighbor that's kind of
- 49:01like a little bit unprepared because
- 49:03there's the rest but it's essentially
- 49:04coming from that c flat to the d flat
- 49:07chord tone passing tone chord tone
- 49:11chord tone and then here
- 49:15chord tone chord tone chord tone
- 49:19anticipation
- 49:23chord tone chord tone chord tone chord
- 49:27tone
- 49:28anticipation again
- 49:32chord tone chord tone chord tone
- 49:35chord tone anticipation
- 49:39chord passing tone chord tone passing
- 49:41tone
- 49:42chord tone
- 49:46so lots of passing tones a couple
- 49:49accented neighbor tones
- 49:51uh an escape tone not too bad right
- 49:54not too bad so when you're composing
- 49:56your melodies
- 49:58notice the percentage of chord tones
- 50:01to the percentage of non-chord tones
- 50:04this is another
- 50:04big kind of like melodic how to write
- 50:07melody how to analyze a melody tip
- 50:10is you're gonna have just like you're
- 50:13gonna have predominantly stepwise motion
- 50:15in your melody with
- 50:16some leaps i don't know what are we
- 50:18gonna say maybe
- 50:2010 leaps 15 leaps something like that
- 50:24and then for chord tones versus
- 50:26non-chord tones you're going to have
- 50:27predominantly chord tones
- 50:30and then a certain smaller percentage of
- 50:32neighbor
- 50:33of a non-chord tones so maybe we're
- 50:36talking about
- 50:37[Music]
- 50:3970 chord tones maybe 65 chord tones
- 50:43and then 30 non-chord tones
- 50:47often passing tones being the most
- 50:48obvious and most kind of like easy on
- 50:50the ear
- 50:51so that's another way we can analyze all
- 50:53that
- 50:55good good good good um
- 51:01so well yeah thank you thank you for
- 51:04flying crow for asking about
- 51:06about non-chord tones uh sound
- 51:09sounding major okay good uh i wish dr b
- 51:11was still in my theory professor
- 51:13hello from florida hey hey hello david
- 51:15thank you
- 51:16good good year you're still tuning in i
- 51:18appreciate that
- 51:20uh good evening thanks for this you
- 51:22always make my day and motivate me to
- 51:23work
- 51:24good thank you i appreciate that i i
- 51:27love
- 51:27i love i love achievement i love
- 51:30achieving great things
- 51:31uh i i try to try to do the same for
- 51:34mine
- 51:35myself jeff jackson another one of my
- 51:38students
- 51:38has got another vote for the beethoven
- 51:40oh it's the the people have spoken i'm
- 51:43going to have to
- 51:44hopefully in another two weeks i usually
- 51:45do these videos every two weeks
- 51:47on a saturday 3 p.m eastern time if the
- 51:51if everything works out then who knows
- 51:53next might be beethoven it might be
- 51:55negative harmony
- 51:56it a lot of that depends on uh to be
- 51:59honest a lot of it depends on how much
- 52:00time i have during the week
- 52:02and then just where where my my
- 52:05interests
- 52:06kind of guide me in that in that for
- 52:08that week like what am i feeling what am
- 52:10i thinking about
- 52:10what do i think is going to be valuable
- 52:13to you all but yes
- 52:14beethoven i love it uh
- 52:18uh david's talking to nolan thank you
- 52:22thank you giving me
- 52:23good testimonial winner takes it all has
- 52:25a beautiful piano intro peter you're
- 52:27absolutely right and i haven't i haven't
- 52:29played it and i hesitate to even try
- 52:32to play it here uh because i'm not a
- 52:34piano player
- 52:35but it's it's a great song for piano
- 52:37players and one of the things that i i'm
- 52:39good
- 52:39i'm gonna try to play it and you please
- 52:41will all forgive me if i don't do a
- 52:43great job at it
- 52:44but what's awesome about the intro
- 52:47is that it starts with a sus4
- 52:52and then it just kind of has this
- 52:54descending sus4 so it goes sus4
- 52:56to the 3 kind of then it goes down the
- 52:59scale and then it just
- 53:00does it at each each one of these
- 53:03chords so on the g flat on the e flat
- 53:05minor on the a flat minor
- 53:07and you get this cool so when you listen
- 53:09to it you'll you'll hear it but
- 53:10you get this
- 53:18[Music]
- 53:26and it's all these dotted quarter notes
- 53:28starting on beat two
- 53:29so what you do is you get quarter rest
- 53:32you get the kind of you kind of get the
- 53:33the bass note and the the general chord
- 53:35and then you get this
- 53:36dotted quarter and i let me write it
- 53:39with more traditional
- 53:43so dotted quarter
- 53:49and then a quarter note so it's it's
- 53:52one bomb bom bom
- 53:56so one two and one
- 53:59and four so you get this cool hemiola
- 54:03syncopation for those of you not
- 54:05familiar with that word it's a
- 54:08this is a great word to add to your
- 54:10vocabulary dealing with a rhythm that's
- 54:13repeats but kind of implies a different
- 54:15it's almost like this
- 54:16feels like another beat that's different
- 54:18than the actual beat
- 54:19so it's a rhythmic syncopated and so
- 54:22let's
- 54:22let me let me try to play that for you
- 54:24again as you know that so one two three
- 54:27[Music]
- 54:36four
- 54:43and the way it's played actually is it
- 54:45has all these arpeggios and it just
- 54:46sounds really like
- 54:48it sounds flowery and elegant it's it's
- 54:51really
- 54:52it is a great piano introduction i agree
- 54:53with you 100 peter
- 54:56uh what reasoning so this is from
- 54:58alexander what reasoning stands behind
- 55:00your
- 55:01your chord progression chart are the
- 55:02exceptions what are some
- 55:04and when might you break them yeah so
- 55:07so in my lessons i have the chord
- 55:09progression chart so
- 55:11uh really the chord progression chart
- 55:13isn't
- 55:14let's say my chord progression chart
- 55:17this is
- 55:17like what if we look at the music of
- 55:20mozart
- 55:21beethoven haydn this is
- 55:24what they normally do this is really
- 55:27what we're looking at
- 55:28and then there's reasons behind what
- 55:29they normally do and i've
- 55:31there's there's kind of like acoustic
- 55:33human perception
- 55:34universal reasons and why they do that
- 55:37circle of fifths
- 55:38things like that and then there's
- 55:39certain kind of like cultural
- 55:41reasons why there are certain things
- 55:42that work a certain way the harmonic
- 55:44progression chart is
- 55:46is pretty much dealing with a lot of
- 55:50um like if you want harmony that makes
- 55:53it sound like it's moving forward so
- 55:55like
- 55:55goal-oriented harmony a moving forward
- 55:58so you have
- 55:59a place of resolution let's call it our
- 56:02one chord
- 56:03we then go away and if we want to feel
- 56:05like we're moving forward
- 56:06back to one this is the way this is kind
- 56:09of the
- 56:10harmonic chord progression so it's it's
- 56:13taken from the
- 56:13from the the the past great composers
- 56:17and it's dealing with that as kind of
- 56:19like a philosophical
- 56:21musical philosophical goal emotional
- 56:24goal
- 56:25that's what we're trying to look look to
- 56:27to create with those kind of harmonic
- 56:29progressions
- 56:30if that's not your goal then that's not
- 56:32the way you should use harmony if your
- 56:34goal is to feel
- 56:35like um you're just kind of floating
- 56:38in uh you know
- 56:41a water immersion chamber
- 56:44then those are not the harmonies you
- 56:46want you want more
- 56:48repetitive harmonies harmonies that kind
- 56:49of feel like they're shifting like this
- 56:52some of the music of like claude debussy
- 56:54fits in this category eric satie um
- 56:58so wc has a piece called nuage is
- 57:02uh and i might be butchering the
- 57:03pronunciation but it's like clouds
- 57:06it feels like clouds floating it doesn't
- 57:08feel like clouds going to
- 57:10you know the country dance
- 57:13or or whatever so again that
- 57:17chart of harmonic progression is for a
- 57:19certain feeling
- 57:20which is was a feeling that was the
- 57:21predominant feeling going for
- 57:24with throughout when we talk about
- 57:26western european art music
- 57:28mozart beethoven people like that so
- 57:30that's a really good question
- 57:33um are the exceptions what are some and
- 57:35when might you break the rules
- 57:37so yeah there's there's certainly a lot
- 57:39of ways you can break the rules
- 57:41i cover some of those in my lesson so
- 57:43i'm gonna i'm not gonna go into those
- 57:45right now i apologize
- 57:46it's a great question but i'm gonna i
- 57:48want to get back to talking about winner
- 57:50takes it all
- 57:50but yeah there there are rules about how
- 57:53to how
- 57:54to break it and it's really an idea the
- 57:56concept of
- 57:57um these rules the rules on the chart
- 58:01are dealing with circle of fifths and
- 58:03that you can create
- 58:04other rules like i mentioned in this
- 58:06power of the scale this descending bass
- 58:09line g
- 58:09flat f e flat d flat like you could kind
- 58:13of keep going and use the scale
- 58:15to create all sorts of unusual things
- 58:19i'm thinking about right now and i've
- 58:21talked about this in some of my other
- 58:22videos
- 58:23uh luca luca morenzio is a
- 58:27italian madrigalist from the 16th
- 58:29century
- 58:30who has this super chromatic these are
- 58:32like super chromatic and he's going up
- 58:34and down a chromatic scale a solo
- 58:37a pencil or pencil something like that
- 58:39is the name of the piece
- 58:40but it's just like chromatic scale and
- 58:42that's what
- 58:44makes the ear follow what's going on
- 58:46because the chords change
- 58:48so dramatically that you'd be like this
- 58:50is crazy what is this
- 58:52it's insane and kind of like carl
- 58:54josueldo is another italian
- 58:56madrigal composer from the 16th century
- 58:58but they're using certain things to kind
- 59:00of tie it together
- 59:01now i should let you know that both of
- 59:04these two people i just mentioned are
- 59:06pre-tonal harmony they're they are
- 59:09before the major minor tonality system
- 59:11really comes into existence is
- 59:13discovered
- 59:14by people people like um
- 59:18claudio monteverdi starts to get into
- 59:20that uh and then later on
- 59:22sebastian bach antonio vivaldi the
- 59:24baroque composers are really the first
- 59:26using the major minor tonality system
- 59:29which is
- 59:30essentially what we still have today yes
- 59:33there's some variations we get into some
- 59:34modal ideas
- 59:36like neo-modality not old modality
- 59:39it's like modal ideas within a tonal
- 59:41context that's kind of what we have now
- 59:43along with tonality so mixtures of that
- 59:46but the italian madrigalists were
- 59:49pre-major minor tonality they were
- 59:51really thinking more about melodic
- 59:53lines than harmonies so from a certain
- 59:56perspective
- 59:57it's really great to go look at those in
- 59:59the context of what we started today's
- 1:00:01discussion with which is
- 1:00:02how to write melodies and they were just
- 1:00:05writing melodies and they were they
- 1:00:06weren't
- 1:00:06they wanted to make sure that the
- 1:00:08melodies came together
- 1:00:11in a way that was pleasing but they the
- 1:00:13italian medical composers were not
- 1:00:15necessarily concerned as long as this
- 1:00:17came together nicely
- 1:00:18and this came together nicely they
- 1:00:20weren't concerned how these two
- 1:00:23related to each other and that's really
- 1:00:24what tonalities gets about
- 1:00:26it's like this vertical harmony is
- 1:00:29related to this vertical harmony
- 1:00:31is related to this vertical harmony etc
- 1:00:33that's tonality
- 1:00:35whereas the italian composers were like
- 1:00:37we're writing awesome melodies and i
- 1:00:38want to make sure they line up here
- 1:00:40great i want a shirt make sure they're
- 1:00:41lying up there end of story they didn't
- 1:00:43really necessarily
- 1:00:44go to like how do these line these these
- 1:00:48moments where they line up how do those
- 1:00:49relate to each other so that's part of
- 1:00:51the
- 1:00:52evolution of music but you can analyze
- 1:00:55uh
- 1:00:55all these italian madrigal composers and
- 1:00:57they're super complicated
- 1:00:59type of melodies very chromatic
- 1:01:01rhythmically challenging they weren't
- 1:01:03meant for
- 1:01:04you know like a general audience they
- 1:01:07were meant for other musicians
- 1:01:09other people knowledgeable about music
- 1:01:11so they're really
- 1:01:12really interesting things all right
- 1:01:15so i kind of answered that question i
- 1:01:17know i didn't answer it completely but
- 1:01:18hopefully i gave you a little bit of a
- 1:01:19start
- 1:01:20on that uh all right
- 1:01:27all right thank you thank you uh
- 1:01:30david played a piano for production of
- 1:01:33mamma mia
- 1:01:34so super familiar with the song that's
- 1:01:36great uh picker d third can you please
- 1:01:38explain the comp
- 1:01:39this compositional device yes uh yeah
- 1:01:43uh uh print off yeah this is absolutely
- 1:01:46big
- 1:01:47let me just put this up because because
- 1:01:48i didn't mention it and i know
- 1:01:50we're a little off topic but that's okay
- 1:01:52right that's how uh
- 1:01:53that's how an exciting conversation
- 1:01:56happens right you have a topic
- 1:01:58and you kind of get all these
- 1:01:59interesting you start making all these
- 1:02:01interesting connections to other things
- 1:02:04so
- 1:02:07the idea of the picker d third i used to
- 1:02:10always call it the cardi third i think
- 1:02:11it's picker d third is the right way to
- 1:02:13say it
- 1:02:14so the idea here is that you're in a
- 1:02:15minor key
- 1:02:17c minor and you end or you
- 1:02:20add a cadence you turn it to c major
- 1:02:24um and this was common uh i forget
- 1:02:27exactly when this was
- 1:02:29happening historically i think pretty
- 1:02:31early on
- 1:02:3317th century maybe as early as the 17th
- 1:02:36century sometimes in the 18th century
- 1:02:38for sure the idea and it's
- 1:02:41and it's based on on the science a minor
- 1:02:44triad
- 1:02:45is objectively scientifically
- 1:02:49less stable than a major triad with the
- 1:02:52way the
- 1:02:52the frequencies interact with each other
- 1:02:55it's not as stable and i do talk about
- 1:02:59that in one of my lesson videos but i
- 1:03:00haven't really gone
- 1:03:01super in depth into that but for now
- 1:03:04hopefully you can take my word for it
- 1:03:06it's less stable the way the frequencies
- 1:03:07interact with each other
- 1:03:09and the same major triad is more stable
- 1:03:14so if you think about uh
- 1:03:17what composers would do is they would
- 1:03:19start a piece in a minor
- 1:03:21but they would realize that they would
- 1:03:22like the feeling of having everything
- 1:03:24feel resolved and figured out
- 1:03:26so you might start with the kind of the
- 1:03:29the
- 1:03:30angst or the drama of a minor key
- 1:03:43and then you might want to say all is
- 1:03:45right in the world
- 1:03:47we've resolved to something more
- 1:03:49resolved than that minor
- 1:03:51[Music]
- 1:03:54and when you do that and end with that
- 1:03:57major triad
- 1:03:59there's this sense of like ah and it's
- 1:04:01it's
- 1:04:02it's it's the acoustics of the nature of
- 1:04:05sound
- 1:04:05combining and meshing up with human
- 1:04:07psychology the way we perceive
- 1:04:09sound and that we sense that that it's
- 1:04:12greater
- 1:04:13it's more resolved so emotionally we
- 1:04:15feel like oh yes the darkness of the
- 1:04:17minor
- 1:04:18we have to work through things uh
- 1:04:20whether that's
- 1:04:21work like a fun challenge or oh a sad
- 1:04:24challenge
- 1:04:25but then when we have that that pickety
- 1:04:27third resolution to that major triad
- 1:04:30the feeling is everything is right with
- 1:04:32the world
- 1:04:33it's gonna be okay things are resolved
- 1:04:36that's that's really how it works and
- 1:04:38kind of like the function
- 1:04:40behind it so you can usually this
- 1:04:42happens um
- 1:04:43towards the end of a piece you usually
- 1:04:45don't want to go drama drama
- 1:04:46then boom and then go back to that right
- 1:04:49away but you can right you can kind of
- 1:04:51play
- 1:04:51back back and forth with it so hopefully
- 1:04:54that explains a bit of of how that
- 1:04:56came to be and how you would utilize
- 1:04:58that in your own compositions
- 1:05:02uh got another question here from caleb
- 1:05:06here
- 1:05:07dr b how do i know if i succeeded in
- 1:05:09creating a modal chord progression
- 1:05:11and not a a modal chord progression and
- 1:05:14not a modal one
- 1:05:15i'm not quite sure i understand it for
- 1:05:17example a simple two chord progression
- 1:05:19like c
- 1:05:20minor to d minor is is dorian or ionian
- 1:05:24so let's take that c minor to d minor
- 1:05:32so and let me do uh let me do um
- 1:05:35contrary motion
- 1:05:44so so if you're doing c minor to d minor
- 1:05:54and this is uh this is like the same
- 1:05:56relationship for a lot of jazz tunes
- 1:05:57like so what
- 1:05:58um which kind of goes from d minor
- 1:06:02or d minor to e minor or john coltrane's
- 1:06:05impressions
- 1:06:06same kind of chord progression it's just
- 1:06:08up a whole step so that idea
- 1:06:12so if you look at c minor um
- 1:06:15i would say you're gonna go c e flat
- 1:06:19uh let me give myself a i don't want to
- 1:06:21erase too much of this stuff i'm gonna
- 1:06:22erase the hemiola part
- 1:06:24you don't need that anymore i want to
- 1:06:26give myself a little room here
- 1:06:28to leave this stuff because when we go
- 1:06:30back
- 1:06:31because we haven't talked about the
- 1:06:32lyrics yet and
- 1:06:34lyrics are another part of music that i
- 1:06:37think are
- 1:06:38absolutely i mean i don't i can't think
- 1:06:41of any
- 1:06:42music theory book i've read that really
- 1:06:44discuss lyrics
- 1:06:46but certainly songwriting books do
- 1:06:49so if we have c minor c e flat g
- 1:06:53and then we have d minor d f
- 1:06:56a we pretty much have a scale already
- 1:07:00right the only note letter missing is a
- 1:07:02b
- 1:07:03right so chances are if it's going to be
- 1:07:05it's going to be a b
- 1:07:06flat and the chord you start with is
- 1:07:09going to be
- 1:07:10your tonic it's going to sound like c as
- 1:07:12your home base if so if you start with c
- 1:07:16so let's say you're going
- 1:07:28and then you go to d minor so it all
- 1:07:30depends how long you spend on this right
- 1:07:32if you go to d minor and you just shift
- 1:07:34up so most
- 1:07:35typically it's all these kind of minor
- 1:07:38chords are all dorian especially for
- 1:07:40jazz uh you just use a dorian scale
- 1:07:44so this would be c minor dorian right
- 1:07:46and in part because d minor
- 1:07:48d minor fits in so so easily to it
- 1:07:52already
- 1:07:52so you would probably just be doing a
- 1:07:54dorian
- 1:08:00and if you spend a long time on the c
- 1:08:02minor when you shift to d minor you're
- 1:08:04going to just do
- 1:08:05you're just going to move everything up
- 1:08:06a whole step and you're going to do d
- 1:08:07dorian as well
- 1:08:08but if you're going back and forth
- 1:08:10quickly between c minor and d minor
- 1:08:12let's say
- 1:08:12[Music]
- 1:08:19then you kind of like combine them if
- 1:08:21they're coming close together and you
- 1:08:23just basically
- 1:08:24take those two notes those two chords
- 1:08:26rather and say well how does that
- 1:08:28all come into one scale so dorian i
- 1:08:30think is the answer
- 1:08:31is what you're talking about
- 1:08:34um so the idea behind um
- 1:08:40modal progressions the main i the main
- 1:08:43part of it is that your
- 1:08:47couple thick things you're changing
- 1:08:50chords a lot
- 1:08:51slower so maybe you might have a chord
- 1:08:53for four measures long or eight measures
- 1:08:55long
- 1:08:56that's very typical that's going to
- 1:08:58sound modal because it's going to be a
- 1:08:59scale
- 1:09:00same scale for that amount of time if we
- 1:09:01look at the music of bach
- 1:09:03we have chords changing every beat or
- 1:09:06every two beats
- 1:09:07if we look at the music of mozart it
- 1:09:09might be
- 1:09:10a chord for an entire measure or two
- 1:09:12measures
- 1:09:13to get modal we can expand that out have
- 1:09:16a same chord for four measures or eight
- 1:09:18measures or 16
- 1:09:20measures and that gives it that modal
- 1:09:23character right off the bat the other
- 1:09:25way to kind of give it the modal flavor
- 1:09:28is to use a chord progression and
- 1:09:32not have like not raise the leading tone
- 1:09:34if you're in minor
- 1:09:36so if you're in c minor
- 1:09:41normally you'd be like you go to a four
- 1:09:43chord and you go to a five chord
- 1:09:46and you raise the leading tone you can
- 1:09:48make that modal by just saying
- 1:09:54don't don't raise the leading tone
- 1:10:01and you can just shift using all the
- 1:10:03different kind of permutations within
- 1:10:05the scale
- 1:10:07this works particularly easy and minor
- 1:10:09because
- 1:10:11tonal music raises the leading tone for
- 1:10:14five chords and seven diminished
- 1:10:16chords so when you don't do it it makes
- 1:10:18it really really clear
- 1:10:19you're thinking in a modal context to do
- 1:10:22that
- 1:10:23in a major key is a little bit more of a
- 1:10:25challenge but
- 1:10:26there are there's a lot of musical
- 1:10:28theater composers and
- 1:10:30disney composers and they love using the
- 1:10:32lydian mode
- 1:10:33so they'll all they'll be you'll be in
- 1:10:35major and everything will sound kind of
- 1:10:37like
- 1:10:39kind of a kind of normal
- 1:10:48except there right to go one
- 1:10:52five and instead of a minor two you get
- 1:10:55a major two
- 1:11:00so maybe i'll go to a three chord so
- 1:11:01let's say i'll go one
- 1:11:02[Music]
- 1:11:05five then major two
- 1:11:10to three make it dark or maybe
- 1:11:16maybe i could go to a six chord so
- 1:11:24yeah so that would be that would be kind
- 1:11:25of like a very that would be an example
- 1:11:27of a modal product
- 1:11:28progression in major c try a g
- 1:11:32d a minor and it's this
- 1:11:36f sharp that gives it a lydian flavor
- 1:11:42uh so you know when you want to try to
- 1:11:44compose modal progression
- 1:11:46you pick a mode try to pick one other
- 1:11:48than
- 1:11:49ionian because that's the one that's
- 1:11:51that's the mode that was
- 1:11:53ionian is the mode that was picked to
- 1:11:56represent
- 1:11:56major so when you we have the transition
- 1:11:59from the renaissance
- 1:12:0016th century to the 17th century we get
- 1:12:02the beginning of the baroque
- 1:12:04they basically pick aeolian as the mode
- 1:12:06to represent the minor modes
- 1:12:08because there was also the option could
- 1:12:10have been phrygian they could have
- 1:12:11chosen phrygian
- 1:12:13um then they and they could have picked
- 1:12:15dorian but they chose aeolian
- 1:12:17as the representative minor mode and
- 1:12:20they chose ionian as the representative
- 1:12:23for major they could have chosen
- 1:12:24lydian they could have chosen
- 1:12:26mixolydians but they didn't
- 1:12:28they chose ionian so if you were to use
- 1:12:30any of those other ones
- 1:12:31for minor dorian and phrygian and then
- 1:12:34for major
- 1:12:35lydian or mixolydian and you just start
- 1:12:37writing chords and
- 1:12:39and you make diatonic harmonies that are
- 1:12:42only using the notes within that mode
- 1:12:45you'll you'll have a modal progression
- 1:12:47and you can have a lot like this is
- 1:12:48something that pop music does really
- 1:12:50well
- 1:12:52and you can have a lot of fun with that
- 1:12:54right you can
- 1:13:07that's my lydian chord for modal chord
- 1:13:09progression and it sounds it gives it it
- 1:13:11gives it something fresh
- 1:13:13so dorian
- 1:13:16phrygian have fun with those for minor
- 1:13:19lydian mixolydian have fun with those
- 1:13:21for for major don't mess with locrian
- 1:13:26locrian is the seventh mode of the major
- 1:13:28scale don't mess with it
- 1:13:29they didn't back in the day they did not
- 1:13:31even consider that a real mode
- 1:13:33it was and eventually they're like okay
- 1:13:35it's a theoretical mode
- 1:13:36and the reason they didn't really think
- 1:13:38about that one is because it did not
- 1:13:39have a perfect
- 1:13:40fifth that diminished fifth so what
- 1:13:43happens is when we're using these modal
- 1:13:44progressions the most important
- 1:13:46progression
- 1:13:47can still be there five one and
- 1:13:50and not necessarily even an uppercase
- 1:13:53five not even a major five chord but
- 1:13:54this
- 1:13:55motion of scale degree five going
- 1:13:58down to scale degree one that's such a
- 1:14:00fundamental aspect of harmony
- 1:14:02and you can do that with all the modes
- 1:14:05and when you're having your modal
- 1:14:07progressions so it gives it
- 1:14:10kind of like the aspects of tonality but
- 1:14:12with a little unique coloring so i i
- 1:14:15i could talk a lot more about this and
- 1:14:16this is kind of like you got me got me
- 1:14:18started and it's a great topic but i
- 1:14:19think i gave you enough
- 1:14:21to work on in terms of exploring that
- 1:14:23further
- 1:14:26all right uh d
- 1:14:29minor c g g is that dorian uh d minor c
- 1:14:33g yes it is that would be dorian so yeah
- 1:14:36caleb if you went from a d minor triad
- 1:14:38to c major triad to g major triad
- 1:14:40that would be a dorian progression all
- 1:14:43right
- 1:14:51all right so you go you guys are going
- 1:14:53back and forth a little with that that's
- 1:14:54great
- 1:14:54good good um i love i love how your
- 1:14:59you guys are kind of talking amongst
- 1:15:00each other in the chat i love it i love
- 1:15:02it i love it i love it
- 1:15:03um one of the things that you know one
- 1:15:06of one of my
- 1:15:07listeners asked me was whether they
- 1:15:08could start a facebook fan group
- 1:15:10uh that talks about music theory and i
- 1:15:12said yeah and i said if you can
- 1:15:14structure it in a way where people can
- 1:15:16ask questions and get feedback from one
- 1:15:18another
- 1:15:19i would be i would totally love love
- 1:15:21that
- 1:15:22so he started one up dr b music theory
- 1:15:25fan page and so
- 1:15:27yeah if i would love to see if you guys
- 1:15:29find that useful
- 1:15:30great if you want to just chat here
- 1:15:31while these live videos are going
- 1:15:33i'm all you know my goal is learning
- 1:15:36more about music so whatever makes
- 1:15:38that happen is gonna make me happy
- 1:15:42okay uh less able more shots to go rich
- 1:15:45in total gravity
- 1:15:47of yes shostakovich the other end of the
- 1:15:50emotional spectrum
- 1:15:52right i love listen i i i want to
- 1:15:56make everybody happy so i'm i'll and i
- 1:15:58love me some shostakovich
- 1:16:00shostakovich cello concer i i remember
- 1:16:03when i first discovered his cello
- 1:16:04concerto and his his fifth symphony and
- 1:16:07then i started listening to all his
- 1:16:08other symphonies
- 1:16:09whoo that's some like yeah total gravity
- 1:16:13is a great way to
- 1:16:14phrase that so let's talk about the
- 1:16:16emotions because i'm i'm
- 1:16:18i'm not done with abby yet i want to
- 1:16:20talk about the words
- 1:16:22uh because and i want to talk about the
- 1:16:24form so i'm going to
- 1:16:25i'm going to erase the masterpiece
- 1:16:29so take a screenshot if you want or
- 1:16:33go look at the video i want to talk a
- 1:16:34little bit about the lyrics
- 1:16:36and then i want to talk actually i want
- 1:16:37to talk about first about the form
- 1:16:39and then the lyrics because form is
- 1:16:41another aspect
- 1:16:43that people rarely
- 1:16:46or music theory gets into but
- 1:16:49certainly doesn't get into early
- 1:16:52and doesn't examine always in depth
- 1:16:56as much as it deserves and form is one
- 1:16:59of the other areas that
- 1:17:00when you're learning how to compose is
- 1:17:03often the most
- 1:17:04overlooked people look at harmonies and
- 1:17:08you know that's that's usually not a
- 1:17:09problem but form
- 1:17:11is not something that is typically
- 1:17:14considered so
- 1:17:16we have an introduction and it uses the
- 1:17:18same chord progressions as the chorus
- 1:17:21so that's why i'm going to put intro
- 1:17:23chorus and it's repeated
- 1:17:25so it's 8 measures length in length but
- 1:17:28it's repeated
- 1:17:29so 16 measures in total but it's not 16
- 1:17:32measures of
- 1:17:33of all you know unique material it's
- 1:17:36repeated
- 1:17:36and at the very end of it when you
- 1:17:39repeat it they add one measure
- 1:17:42as like a little bit of like a little it
- 1:17:44has like a it just floats there
- 1:17:46for a second and then the voice comes in
- 1:17:49so that's a great trick
- 1:17:50every time you analyze something say huh
- 1:17:53that's a great trick
- 1:17:54how can i use that so introduction eight
- 1:17:56measures chugging along repeat it check
- 1:17:58it along
- 1:17:59float for a measure that gives you a
- 1:18:01lead in a little pickup
- 1:18:02into the first verse so there you get
- 1:18:06verse one now verse one
- 1:18:10is
- 1:18:13eight measures of material repeated kind
- 1:18:16of just like the same
- 1:18:17structures we had here for this intro
- 1:18:19chorus
- 1:18:20then we have our chorus and the chorus
- 1:18:23is eight measures of material but
- 1:18:25unlike the introduction it's not
- 1:18:26repeated you just have this chorus there
- 1:18:29then we have verse two
- 1:18:32again eight measures repeated
- 1:18:36then we have chorus
- 1:18:41we then have the chorus again or
- 1:18:44i could i could put the repeat signs but
- 1:18:46i'm going to write it separately it's
- 1:18:48like
- 1:18:48some people might call that a double
- 1:18:50chorus or this is maybe a half chorus
- 1:18:52and this is the chorus of 16. so whether
- 1:18:54you're looking at it
- 1:18:56as the chorus is 16 measures and you get
- 1:18:58a half chorus first
- 1:18:59and then that's the actual chorus is 16
- 1:19:02or whether
- 1:19:02of course is eight measures and this is
- 1:19:04a double chorus
- 1:19:06either way you kind of understand this
- 1:19:07concept that the first time
- 1:19:09after the first verse you get this
- 1:19:11abbreviated
- 1:19:12chorus and then you kind of get it twice
- 1:19:14now the lyrics change
- 1:19:16uh so it's it's not necessarily a chorus
- 1:19:20in that i mean there's like the words
- 1:19:22there is repetition but there's also
- 1:19:24some differences so like
- 1:19:26you could maybe call it chorus a or in
- 1:19:28chorus b
- 1:19:29uh where the music stays the same but
- 1:19:31the lyrics change so
- 1:19:33this is this is not my specialty so i
- 1:19:35might be using
- 1:19:36not the best terminology for all these
- 1:19:39things that is quite possible
- 1:19:41so forgive me if that's the case we then
- 1:19:43get verse three
- 1:19:45which is our our our eight measures
- 1:19:48repeated
- 1:19:51we then get our what i'm going to call
- 1:19:54our double chorus
- 1:20:03then we have our verse four running out
- 1:20:06of room here
- 1:20:08uh i almost wrote verse with a roman
- 1:20:11numeral five you know your music theory
- 1:20:13you know you're into music theory when
- 1:20:14you write your v's like an uppercase
- 1:20:16roman numeral five
- 1:20:19that sounds like a meme verse four uh
- 1:20:22there and then i'm going to move it over
- 1:20:23here
- 1:20:24so i give myself a little room then we
- 1:20:26have chorus
- 1:20:31which is kind of like the ending version
- 1:20:33which is another variation
- 1:20:35of that chorus and then we basically
- 1:20:37have the intro
- 1:20:39again which is our chorus intro course
- 1:20:42the instrumental and that is
- 1:20:46eight measures repeated this one is
- 1:20:49eight measures
- 1:20:53so there we go that's our form now let
- 1:20:55me
- 1:20:56let me just kind of talk about the the
- 1:21:00lyrics so first verse
- 1:21:03i don't want to talk about things we've
- 1:21:06gone through but it's hurting me
- 1:21:08now it's history i've played all my
- 1:21:10cards
- 1:21:11and that's what i've you've done to
- 1:21:13nothing more to
- 1:21:15say no more ace to play
- 1:21:18that's your first verse then the winner
- 1:21:20takes it all
- 1:21:21the losers standing small beside the
- 1:21:24victory
- 1:21:25[Music]
- 1:21:26that's her destiny am i in the right
- 1:21:29keys
- 1:21:30no i'm not i shifted all right so
- 1:21:33then the winner takes it all the losers
- 1:21:35the loser standing small
- 1:21:37beside the victory that's her destiny
- 1:21:41so this song is kind of like if you
- 1:21:44think about
- 1:21:46what makes these these lyrics
- 1:21:47interesting is you have this
- 1:21:50with that leap and this is where i think
- 1:21:51the lyrics are the most interesting
- 1:21:53we have the winner takes it all
- 1:21:58the loser standing small
- 1:22:02beside the victory
- 1:22:05that's her destiny
- 1:22:08that's what happens the first time and
- 1:22:12you know it's it's this emotional
- 1:22:15the words and the music with that leap
- 1:22:19the winner takes it all the loser like
- 1:22:22it's like winners losers
- 1:22:24like this is not a what i love in life
- 1:22:26is win-win situations this is not one of
- 1:22:28those
- 1:22:29and i'm sure some of us have been in
- 1:22:31that place and we felt that
- 1:22:33uh where where someone wins and because
- 1:22:36they win you lose
- 1:22:38it's not a it's not a nice feeling it's
- 1:22:39not a feeling you uh
- 1:22:41that's that's particularly enjoyable
- 1:22:45and so uh what's interesting is as
- 1:22:49that kind of like the maybe we call this
- 1:22:52like
- 1:22:55you know we we are going to hear this
- 1:22:56when the winner takes it all again
- 1:22:58in the same spot but there is another
- 1:23:00version when we get to chorus 2 the
- 1:23:02lyric wise
- 1:23:03and it goes like this and this is the
- 1:23:05this is the one that like i think really
- 1:23:07brings home some of the emotional flavor
- 1:23:09of what this melody does
- 1:23:11and the reason i'm talking about these
- 1:23:13lyrics is
- 1:23:14you know when we're talking about music
- 1:23:16and then emotion because we know music
- 1:23:19creates emotions it's very abstract
- 1:23:22and when we look at the lyrics
- 1:23:26if the lyrics have the same emotion as
- 1:23:28the music which is what
- 1:23:29normally happens not always sometimes
- 1:23:31you have like
- 1:23:32kind of like irony and music where the
- 1:23:35music has a certain feeling that's
- 1:23:36different than the lyrics and that gives
- 1:23:38a whole other shade of complexity to the
- 1:23:40overall emotional meaning
- 1:23:42so just think about like uh a happy song
- 1:23:46that's uh that's played in a minor key
- 1:23:49or a
- 1:23:49sad song that's played in a major key
- 1:23:52you get these like
- 1:23:53complexities of motion and right there's
- 1:23:55like it's like over 6 000 words in the
- 1:23:58the english dictionary for emotions that
- 1:24:00human beings feel right six
- 1:24:02thousand uh most of us have a hard time
- 1:24:05keeping track of
- 1:24:06ten different emotions that we feel
- 1:24:07throughout the course of a day but
- 1:24:10there's that many different words that
- 1:24:12talk about the differences
- 1:24:13that sometimes very subtle so looking at
- 1:24:17the lyrics can give us an insight into
- 1:24:19how
- 1:24:20this leap in the chorus
- 1:24:23feels so let me give you another one and
- 1:24:26there's there's a couple different ones
- 1:24:27so we get a different
- 1:24:29different take and different flavor of
- 1:24:30that ascending leap and what it means
- 1:24:33so the next one is the gods may throw a
- 1:24:36dice
- 1:24:38their minds as cold as ice
- 1:24:43and someone way down here
- 1:24:47loses someone dear
- 1:24:51whoo that is heavy stuff right that's
- 1:24:54that's like
- 1:24:54you you feel like a victim you know
- 1:24:57there's
- 1:24:58gods up up there
- 1:25:01minds as cold as ice i mean uncaring
- 1:25:03they don't care about you
- 1:25:06they they throw a dice random they don't
- 1:25:08even they're not even
- 1:25:09singling you out whether you did
- 1:25:10something good or bad it's just
- 1:25:13bad luck and the gods decide
- 1:25:16and and someone down here someone you
- 1:25:18care about
- 1:25:21you lose them man that's like that's a
- 1:25:24heavy emotion right
- 1:25:26you know abba as a pop group tends to be
- 1:25:28more
- 1:25:29upbeat happy music because you know most
- 1:25:31people want to feel happy
- 1:25:33i want to feel happy right but every now
- 1:25:35and then they had a song that was like
- 1:25:38you know ooh really really gets you and
- 1:25:41part of
- 1:25:42to add to the the the poignancy of that
- 1:25:46is abba was a group that had uh
- 1:25:49two married couples there's a guy
- 1:25:51married to a female singer
- 1:25:53another guy male to another female
- 1:25:54singer both as they became popular
- 1:25:58and had more and more success there were
- 1:26:00strains on both of those relationships
- 1:26:02they both ended up getting divorced and
- 1:26:04so one of the couple
- 1:26:05uh got divorced and was reasonably
- 1:26:08amicable
- 1:26:09and they wrote this song about the
- 1:26:11divorce and at that same time they're
- 1:26:13writing the song the other couple
- 1:26:15is like having a not amicable
- 1:26:18hard time that is going to end in
- 1:26:19divorce a little bit down the road so
- 1:26:21this is all about
- 1:26:22romantic love things not working out
- 1:26:26feeling helpless uh that's kind of what
- 1:26:30that
- 1:26:30that that gets in there and let me let
- 1:26:32me give you another set of lyrics here
- 1:26:34to kind of like bring home what i'm
- 1:26:37talking about about feeling helpless
- 1:26:39and and think about how this melody the
- 1:26:42rhythms
- 1:26:43the harmonies the melodic shape how that
- 1:26:46reinforces these feelings or
- 1:26:48or supports those feelings so the
- 1:26:52judges will decide
- 1:26:56um the likes of me abide
- 1:27:00[Music]
- 1:27:01spectators of the show
- 1:27:05always staying low
- 1:27:07[Music]
- 1:27:08right the judges will decide the likes
- 1:27:11of me abide meaning like they decide i
- 1:27:14just have to follow along
- 1:27:16spectators of the show so you're not in
- 1:27:18control of your life you're just a
- 1:27:19spectator
- 1:27:20you you know like oh man talk about you
- 1:27:23know
- 1:27:24you know feeling like you don't have
- 1:27:26control over your of your own life of
- 1:27:27what you want what's going to make you
- 1:27:29happy
- 1:27:29there's these gods there's these judges
- 1:27:33you just have to go along with it
- 1:27:37man talk about capturing an emotional
- 1:27:39feeling
- 1:27:40so i think we did some real
- 1:27:44deep diving here into to analyzing
- 1:27:47melody
- 1:27:48uh and and not only analyzing the melody
- 1:27:51but
- 1:27:51how the harmonies might support that how
- 1:27:54lyrics
- 1:27:54might play in there and that's you know
- 1:27:56there's a lot more i could talk about
- 1:27:58um and probably should talk about when
- 1:28:01terms of how
- 1:28:02how you how a melody you know it's like
- 1:28:06music is so hard right because it's so
- 1:28:09abstract it's like
- 1:28:10you know and like and from one's
- 1:28:12perspective you're like how is it that
- 1:28:14these these frequencies that vibrate at
- 1:28:17different
- 1:28:18speeds make me feel stuff
- 1:28:21right let's not it's not necessarily
- 1:28:24obvious
- 1:28:25why that would happen why would certain
- 1:28:28sounds vibrating at different
- 1:28:30frequencies coming together with
- 1:28:31different sounds with different
- 1:28:33frequencies
- 1:28:34how that would make people feel stuff
- 1:28:39and so it's so abstract but when we're
- 1:28:42looking at music you know one we can
- 1:28:45kind of just
- 1:28:46we can listen and absorb lots of music
- 1:28:48and we can just use our instincts
- 1:28:50and not really instincts but we can
- 1:28:52learn use that
- 1:28:54that knowledge and information that sunk
- 1:28:56into our like we can listen to the music
- 1:28:58we can feel it
- 1:28:59it can sink into our subconscious and
- 1:29:01then we can use that to become great
- 1:29:02composers
- 1:29:04but if we can do that and
- 1:29:07get an analytical side to it like not
- 1:29:10analyze and
- 1:29:11like lose the that that that feel
- 1:29:14for it whether we're listening and using
- 1:29:16our emotions and our ears
- 1:29:18but combine that with a certain
- 1:29:20analytical thing we can
- 1:29:21speed up that process of us really
- 1:29:24understanding it and being able to
- 1:29:25control those
- 1:29:26elements and write music for ourselves
- 1:29:30or analyze music and really say well
- 1:29:32this look at how that melody that
- 1:29:34leap how that creates this certain kind
- 1:29:37of void
- 1:29:38sonic void and there's like this the
- 1:29:40lyrics are all about this
- 1:29:41void inside someone's soul
- 1:29:44as as they lost someone that they loved
- 1:29:47and obviously
- 1:29:48worked with closely in the case of the
- 1:29:50group abba is we're talking about people
- 1:29:51who
- 1:29:52who loved each other and like their
- 1:29:54whole career
- 1:29:55ever you know like they were around each
- 1:29:57other all the time
- 1:29:58and when that is gone or is over
- 1:30:01what does that feel like so thank you
- 1:30:05very much i hope you
- 1:30:06enjoyed that and you can certainly apply
- 1:30:08a lot of this
- 1:30:09uh information to any song even
- 1:30:12beethoven
- 1:30:13which is going to be a lot of fun to do
- 1:30:15so let's take a look i'm going to go
- 1:30:16back here
- 1:30:17um i got a request can you think of
- 1:30:21starting a series or channel on
- 1:30:22orchestration
- 1:30:23you're not the first to ask i've
- 1:30:25absolutely thought about it
- 1:30:26um i've been joking i just i just need
- 1:30:29to get fired from my job
- 1:30:31that's all that needs to happen and then
- 1:30:33i'll be able to do my music
- 1:30:35music history series my orchestration
- 1:30:38like i i have so many ideas uh that i
- 1:30:41would love to do
- 1:30:42um and and i'm i plan to do them it's
- 1:30:46you know it's time is such a precious
- 1:30:48commodity so that's why i always
- 1:30:50i always try to prioritize take care of
- 1:30:53myself
- 1:30:54so that i'm i'm healthy and have my
- 1:30:56energy so i can be doing all those
- 1:30:57things i would love to do a series on
- 1:30:59orchestration
- 1:31:00so it's in the works thank you for for
- 1:31:02and and i appreciate when you make the
- 1:31:04request if i hear that request over and
- 1:31:06over and over again
- 1:31:07it just keeps moving things up up the
- 1:31:09priority list for me in terms of what
- 1:31:11i'm going to do next
- 1:31:12uh in terms of what the next project is
- 1:31:14so yeah i would love to do
- 1:31:16that all right
- 1:31:19um
- 1:31:20[Music]
- 1:31:24all right uh what do we have next
- 1:31:29it's like a waltz number two okay dave
- 1:31:31asked are we sure this
- 1:31:32theory isn't racist um
- 1:31:35yes yes we are sure um so
- 1:31:39there's there's and i'm not quite sure
- 1:31:42which exact theory you're talking about
- 1:31:43but
- 1:31:44but i know that there's been some uh
- 1:31:47some
- 1:31:48some youtube things about like music
- 1:31:51theory
- 1:31:52is white supremacy or is music theory
- 1:31:55racist
- 1:31:56um the answer is no it's not uh
- 1:31:59music theory is talking about
- 1:32:02studying music like i've said before
- 1:32:05from a
- 1:32:05from a scientific perspective meaning
- 1:32:08acoustics and there's a science behind
- 1:32:10that that's
- 1:32:10independent of whatever race or culture
- 1:32:13you're coming from
- 1:32:14and it's also talking about a specific
- 1:32:17culture
- 1:32:18now to talk about a specific culture and
- 1:32:21in this case western european
- 1:32:23is not racist we can also you know
- 1:32:26different countries are going to talk
- 1:32:27about different cultures
- 1:32:28so in india they're going to talk a lot
- 1:32:32more about
- 1:32:33indian music and it you know we're not
- 1:32:36we're not going to say oh
- 1:32:37they shouldn't be talking about music
- 1:32:39from their culture
- 1:32:42of course they should they should talk
- 1:32:43about that and
- 1:32:45at no point necessarily do you know what
- 1:32:48i think
- 1:32:49would be racist would be to simply say
- 1:32:51that
- 1:32:52um this is
- 1:32:55that that only one culture produced
- 1:32:58music that's of any value and
- 1:33:00all other cultures have no musical value
- 1:33:02worth studying
- 1:33:03that would be racist but that's not what
- 1:33:05music theory says and that's certainly
- 1:33:07not
- 1:33:08what what's being said with any of the
- 1:33:09theories i've talked about
- 1:33:11what i'm saying is that every culture
- 1:33:14both
- 1:33:14from a musical standpoint and others has
- 1:33:17things that are awesome about it
- 1:33:18and things that are not awesome about it
- 1:33:20every culture right
- 1:33:22and our our jobs as scholars
- 1:33:26as lovers of music of music theory is to
- 1:33:29take
- 1:33:29everything of value we can find from as
- 1:33:32many sources as possible
- 1:33:34and certainly when
- 1:33:37you know it's the idea of knowing the
- 1:33:40culture
- 1:33:41that's surrounding you and understanding
- 1:33:43it
- 1:33:44is important i mean i i i've seen some
- 1:33:46of those late night tv shows where
- 1:33:48you know whether it's conan o'brien or
- 1:33:50jay leno or
- 1:33:52jimmy fallon or whatever they go and
- 1:33:53they interview like an american in the
- 1:33:55streets and they ask him some like
- 1:33:57really basic thing about american
- 1:33:59history and the person doesn't know
- 1:34:01anything and everyone
- 1:34:02at home is going like oh my god this
- 1:34:04person is so ignorant
- 1:34:05that's a bad thing and so i think that
- 1:34:08when we're talking about
- 1:34:09music theory here we're talking about
- 1:34:12western european art music music theory
- 1:34:16this is we should know about this we
- 1:34:18should know about
- 1:34:19the music of mozart the music of haydn
- 1:34:22the music of beethoven
- 1:34:23these are geniuses from a specific
- 1:34:26culture
- 1:34:27that whose music has withstood the test
- 1:34:29time and
- 1:34:30has influenced so much of the music
- 1:34:33that's going on
- 1:34:34both in this culture and in other
- 1:34:35cultures by no means does that
- 1:34:38mean that we're not gonna or we're not
- 1:34:40gonna talk about
- 1:34:42other areas i'm not an expert in every
- 1:34:45area
- 1:34:46and i haven't studied them all i've i've
- 1:34:48mentioned in my last video
- 1:34:49how i was looking at indian music and
- 1:34:51and investigating that
- 1:34:54and i found it super interesting i was
- 1:34:56living in in the east village new york
- 1:34:58city and so they had all the indian
- 1:35:00restaurants in the east
- 1:35:01village and i loved it i was like oh
- 1:35:03table sitar and then i was like oh
- 1:35:04that's north indian music and no there's
- 1:35:06this south indian music
- 1:35:07and i loved experiencing it and i but i
- 1:35:09remember at a certain point
- 1:35:11in my studying and i was doing this on
- 1:35:13my own i'm going to a concert
- 1:35:15and i think and i remember thinking
- 1:35:16myself i think and i said to myself i
- 1:35:19think i understand
- 1:35:20everything i can about this music
- 1:35:22without someone teaching me
- 1:35:24about the culture right so there's there
- 1:35:28was a universal aspect
- 1:35:29for that music that i could understand
- 1:35:31and i could appreciate
- 1:35:33and there was also a cultural aspect
- 1:35:36where i was just not familiar enough
- 1:35:37with
- 1:35:38indian culture especially south indian
- 1:35:40culture to really understand
- 1:35:42everything that was going on in the
- 1:35:43music and that makes sense and that's
- 1:35:45that's totally fine so that's that's how
- 1:35:48i would quickly respond to that
- 1:35:50to that to that question um
- 1:35:53and i think you know obviously there's
- 1:35:55there's
- 1:35:56a rich conversation that can be had to
- 1:35:59kind of
- 1:36:00understand and really understand well
- 1:36:02like
- 1:36:03when you're talking about theories and
- 1:36:06and racism like racism is a racist is a
- 1:36:09word that's used
- 1:36:10so broadly in our on our time right now
- 1:36:14so it's you know what are we really
- 1:36:16talking about when we say that and
- 1:36:18should it be as broad as people are
- 1:36:20using it today
- 1:36:21or does it really belong to talking
- 1:36:24about well what are we specifically
- 1:36:25talking about
- 1:36:27what you know it's like words are are
- 1:36:30meant
- 1:36:30to help us think and understand concepts
- 1:36:33so they need to apply to something
- 1:36:35specific
- 1:36:36they can't be so broad that you know
- 1:36:38everything falls into that category
- 1:36:40or too many things fall into that
- 1:36:42category so
- 1:36:43that it's a it's a it's a great
- 1:36:45conversation and and certainly one that
- 1:36:47that i imagine i will be having with
- 1:36:50other music theory people and other
- 1:36:52scholars and people in academia uh this
- 1:36:55is certainly a conversation that's
- 1:36:56that's that is uh underway
- 1:37:00all right um
- 1:37:06about seouling here's another one about
- 1:37:08souling over modal progression what's
- 1:37:09the best approach to just focus on the
- 1:37:11mode or try to do arpeggios over the
- 1:37:13changes
- 1:37:14i feel like doing arpeggios over the
- 1:37:16changes so
- 1:37:17uh so for soloing over
- 1:37:21for modal changes and let me answer that
- 1:37:23question
- 1:37:25uh improvising over modal changes so the
- 1:37:28real
- 1:37:29there's a couple little things that you
- 1:37:30can you can work on
- 1:37:34there's scale patterns and there's
- 1:37:37arpeggios
- 1:37:38so if we were to take our c d
- 1:37:42e flat f g a
- 1:37:45b flat as our mode right a dorian mode
- 1:37:50anything like just running up and down
- 1:37:52scales as we talked about with our
- 1:37:54melody is gets boring quick so maybe a
- 1:37:57pattern right so c
- 1:37:58d e flat
- 1:38:04[Music]
- 1:38:12[Music]
- 1:38:13so you could do something like that you
- 1:38:14could do it like a little scale pattern
- 1:38:17you could do arpeggio patterns where you
- 1:38:19go
- 1:38:20[Music]
- 1:38:24and let's say you uh
- 1:38:33so here's your your four note pattern
- 1:38:36right
- 1:38:37you go
- 1:38:44oh i moved out of dorian and i didn't do
- 1:38:46dorian at all
- 1:38:48because this would be a bad job of being
- 1:38:56dorian
- 1:38:59[Music]
- 1:39:01right you can kind of develop little
- 1:39:03patterns that deal with arpeggios
- 1:39:06that's a great way to do it so scales
- 1:39:09triadic arpeggios and then the other
- 1:39:11thing
- 1:39:12is that works really well is doing
- 1:39:15things in fourths
- 1:39:17so c f
- 1:39:20b flat so let's say you go and then you
- 1:39:23go
- 1:39:24that's a three note cell then dgc
- 1:39:27is another three note cell
- 1:39:30and the fourth will generally be perfect
- 1:39:34but then every now and then it's going
- 1:39:35to become a
- 1:39:37an augmented fourth
- 1:39:41so you get
- 1:39:46and that's uh very common for
- 1:39:49kind of like a jazz
- 1:39:57see
- 1:40:07and so sometimes like uh john coltrane
- 1:40:14uh would would use this kind of kind of
- 1:40:16like
- 1:40:18quartal harmony
- 1:40:22joe henderson is another sax jazz these
- 1:40:24are jazz saxophonists
- 1:40:26but it's not unique to jazz it doesn't
- 1:40:28have to be you can
- 1:40:30certainly do all of this stuff in
- 1:40:32different styles as well
- 1:40:34so that's you know scales scale patterns
- 1:40:37arpeggio patterns and then quartal
- 1:40:40kind of like doing things in fourth
- 1:40:42that's what i would recommend as a place
- 1:40:44to start in terms of really getting into
- 1:40:46improvising over modal progressions
- 1:40:52[Music]
- 1:41:01oh so caleb says did say he got the
- 1:41:03feeling the song was about a divorce all
- 1:41:05right
- 1:41:05good good good i'm glad glad you agree
- 1:41:09with me on that one
- 1:41:10uh someone saved i saved someone's music
- 1:41:13theory excellent
- 1:41:14uh here's a question from carlos could
- 1:41:17you give me some
- 1:41:18leads to learn some harmonic techniques
- 1:41:20to sound dark
- 1:41:22and aggressive well have you seen
- 1:41:25my my demonic progression video yet
- 1:41:28i gave you my the my favorite demonic
- 1:41:31progression
- 1:41:32uh and so i'll i'll i'll give you the
- 1:41:36quick version of it and you can look
- 1:41:37that up if you haven't and i'll give you
- 1:41:38a few other things
- 1:41:44dark progressions like you got you
- 1:41:46certainly got minor
- 1:41:48as a way to get kind of dark and you get
- 1:41:51chromaticism
- 1:41:52but again it's like that's like
- 1:41:55scratching the surface
- 1:41:56you know it's certainly more than that
- 1:41:59so
- 1:42:03mine my progression my demonic
- 1:42:05progression is
- 1:42:06[Music]
- 1:42:13that's essentially it so let me
- 1:42:16to
- 1:42:16[Music]
- 1:42:22to oh wait a minute i didn't do that
- 1:42:26right
- 1:42:36so there's my harmonic progression that
- 1:42:39i think is super dark
- 1:42:43[Music]
- 1:42:48right the sonority of a minor triad with
- 1:42:50a major 7
- 1:42:52is dark all by itself so minor triad
- 1:42:56with a major seven and so
- 1:42:59when we look at seventh chords when
- 1:43:01you're first learning seventh chords
- 1:43:02there's really only
- 1:43:03five types that are really common major
- 1:43:06triad with a major seven
- 1:43:07major triad with a minor seven minor
- 1:43:10triad with a minor seven
- 1:43:11diminished triad with a minor let me
- 1:43:15diminish triad with a minor seven
- 1:43:17diminished triad with a diminished seven
- 1:43:19so like c major seven
- 1:43:22c c7 c minor seven c
- 1:43:26half diminished seven c diminished seven
- 1:43:29uh
- 1:43:31those are the five common seventh chord
- 1:43:34types
- 1:43:35but minor triad with a major 7 is
- 1:43:37possible
- 1:43:38it's just not as common and so what i do
- 1:43:40is a sequence
- 1:43:42all with root movement so so what
- 1:43:44happens is the upper part of a
- 1:43:46minor major 7 is an augmented triad so
- 1:43:52you get augmented triads
- 1:43:53going down by half step chromatically
- 1:43:57chromatically down by half step
- 1:44:01well well you have these chromatic third
- 1:44:05relate these up
- 1:44:06up by minor thirds in the base so on top
- 1:44:09we have
- 1:44:10[Music]
- 1:44:14augmented triads descending by half step
- 1:44:17and the base we have
- 1:44:21it's kind of like uh where like it's
- 1:44:24kind of like in tritone substitutions
- 1:44:26where the third and the seventh
- 1:44:28flip-flop every other chord
- 1:44:31so what happens is that
- 1:44:36the the note it's not like this is the
- 1:44:40third
- 1:44:40to the third to the third to the third
- 1:44:42it's like it goes from
- 1:44:44third becomes the seventh
- 1:44:48[Music]
- 1:44:50comes the fifth goes back to being the
- 1:44:53third
- 1:44:54so it's kind of like it it transforms
- 1:44:57and so if you if you know about tritone
- 1:45:01substitutions
- 1:45:02let's say c7 and f-sharp seven
- 1:45:06the third of a c7 is an e and the
- 1:45:09seventh is a b-flat
- 1:45:11in an f-sharp seven the the third
- 1:45:14is an a-sharp which is n-harmonically
- 1:45:17the same as a b-flat
- 1:45:19and the seventh is an e but the roots
- 1:45:22change by a tritone
- 1:45:24so c7
- 1:45:27f-sharp seven right
- 1:45:31third becomes the seventh
- 1:45:35seventh becomes the third
- 1:45:38[Music]
- 1:45:41so if you want to get dark that tritone
- 1:45:44is also going to be helpful right we
- 1:45:47talk
- 1:45:47so this is that what's called the
- 1:45:49tritone substitution
- 1:45:52and this is a progression and you can
- 1:45:54see how i'm dealing with
- 1:45:57more dissonant seventh chords than
- 1:46:00your standard five and i'm using these
- 1:46:03augmented triads so i'm using
- 1:46:04chromaticism in there
- 1:46:06as well that's those are some of the
- 1:46:09ways and some of the things that you can
- 1:46:10certainly
- 1:46:11start experimenting with to get kind of
- 1:46:13like these more
- 1:46:14darker and and when we say dark uh we're
- 1:46:17kind of talking emotionally
- 1:46:19uh the kind of feelings is like there's
- 1:46:22a certain like there's a
- 1:46:23there's a tension there's a muscular uh
- 1:46:27strength tension to it um
- 1:46:32there's like maybe there's like anger
- 1:46:35there's frustration
- 1:46:37uh what we would call some of these
- 1:46:40darker emotions
- 1:46:42now i am looking at the time and i'm
- 1:46:45getting a little concerned that
- 1:46:47the uh my my remote batteries are going
- 1:46:51to be dying soon so i'm going to
- 1:46:52talk a little bit more about this and
- 1:46:54then i'm going to glance here at the
- 1:46:55chat and see if i can get to some more
- 1:46:56questions
- 1:46:59um
- 1:47:02so
- 1:47:06um so dark aggressive
- 1:47:10minor chromaticism tritones um
- 1:47:14think about uh the the group rush
- 1:47:22i i don't i don't even remember the name
- 1:47:24of that song it's like yyz
- 1:47:25or something it's not that but it's
- 1:47:29the group rush um does great has a great
- 1:47:33thing using to tritone
- 1:47:36those are your dissonant intervals so
- 1:47:38what you're what you're doing when you
- 1:47:39want to
- 1:47:39explore more dark aggressive things is
- 1:47:42you're taking the
- 1:47:43the balance between consonants and
- 1:47:44dissonance and you're putting it more on
- 1:47:46the dissonant side
- 1:47:47right so we know minor has a little bit
- 1:47:50more dissonance than
- 1:47:51major we know chromaticism by its nature
- 1:47:54is more distance and the tritone is a
- 1:47:56dissonant interval
- 1:47:57so looking at your dissonant intervals
- 1:48:00so you can do it from
- 1:48:04you can do it from a from an intervallic
- 1:48:07standpoint
- 1:48:08have more dissonance you can do it from
- 1:48:11a chord standpoint
- 1:48:13more dissonance um
- 1:48:17the other aspect is going to be
- 1:48:19certainly be
- 1:48:20rhythmically right so
- 1:48:24so uh and to a certain thing dynamically
- 1:48:28right if you play
- 1:48:30so if you play loud that'll do a lot
- 1:48:33right and part of their you know
- 1:48:36guitarists
- 1:48:37here's where guitarists can kind of i
- 1:48:39don't know if
- 1:48:40the word cheat is quite correct but
- 1:48:42guitarist
- 1:48:43can take their amp and go super loud
- 1:48:46right
- 1:48:46they don't have to be good at their
- 1:48:47instrument at all they can turn the
- 1:48:49volume all the way
- 1:48:50they can get a certain level of
- 1:48:52intensity
- 1:48:53darkness aggressive quality just by
- 1:48:55sheer volume right
- 1:48:57the other way is like using distortion
- 1:48:59on a guitar
- 1:49:00which which creates a certain that's a
- 1:49:02like taking away from the pitch side and
- 1:49:04introducing a more noise
- 1:49:07kind of aspect to that it's what
- 1:49:10distortion does it
- 1:49:11also can make things sound aggressive
- 1:49:14so there's timbral ways to do it right
- 1:49:17so timbrel is dealing with the
- 1:49:21you know if you're playing guitar use
- 1:49:23some distortion
- 1:49:25uh if you're like me playing saxophone
- 1:49:27growl
- 1:49:28so you can kind of hum hum growl at the
- 1:49:31same time you play note and it makes it
- 1:49:33it makes it all kind of like it gets a
- 1:49:36bit more of a noise
- 1:49:38aspect into it so it's pitch plus noise
- 1:49:42loud so the rhythms can tend to be more
- 1:49:48short
- 1:49:52and repeated
- 1:49:57so think about like uh igor stravinsky
- 1:50:00the rite of spring where you have this
- 1:50:06so there's all these short notes
- 1:50:08everything's the whole chord's being
- 1:50:10repeated and every now and then there's
- 1:50:11a loud accent that's unexpected
- 1:50:14so rhythmically that's how you would do
- 1:50:15that um the
- 1:50:17your intervals that are going to be most
- 1:50:19dissonant
- 1:50:20are going to be your seconds major
- 1:50:22second
- 1:50:24minor second uh major seven
- 1:50:29minor seven and then your your tritone
- 1:50:32your interval of a tritone
- 1:50:34so you can play around with those
- 1:50:36intervals to get certain dark more
- 1:50:38aggressive
- 1:50:39things and and then chord wise exploring
- 1:50:42like so your diminished triad in your
- 1:50:44augmented triad but
- 1:50:45seventh chord wise your diminished
- 1:50:47diminished seven is pretty
- 1:50:49pretty uh has a little bit more dark
- 1:50:53though though at this point it's it's
- 1:50:55you know it's like
- 1:50:56the old black and white films where you
- 1:50:58have the the lady tied to the train
- 1:50:59tracks
- 1:51:00[Music]
- 1:51:05it's it's uh that that can actually come
- 1:51:07a little cliche but
- 1:51:08if you want to figure out how to use
- 1:51:09diminished seven chords in a non-cliche
- 1:51:11way you can listen to
- 1:51:13ludwig van beethoven he certainly does a
- 1:51:15great job with
- 1:51:16with diminished seven chords making them
- 1:51:18sound kind of aggressive and
- 1:51:20and uh and a little bit darker
- 1:51:23but then you can explore things like uh
- 1:51:26other
- 1:51:27other other type of chords like a major
- 1:51:30triad
- 1:51:31uh no augmented triad with a major seven
- 1:51:35that's a really cool sonority kind of
- 1:51:38like the minor
- 1:51:39tried with a m with a minor triad with a
- 1:51:42major seven
- 1:51:43how about an augmented triad with a
- 1:51:45major seven
- 1:51:47so
- 1:51:49[Music]
- 1:52:02so play around with that minor triad
- 1:52:05with a major seven augmented triad with
- 1:52:07a major seven
- 1:52:08and then the last thing i'm going to
- 1:52:09give you in terms of harmonic material
- 1:52:11and this is just a a little taste right
- 1:52:15a little taste because it is uh
- 1:52:19polychords so you have a triad on top
- 1:52:22and then a
- 1:52:22foreign base note underneath so
- 1:52:28we've talked about you know c
- 1:52:32you know if we have a c major triad in
- 1:52:33first inversion
- 1:52:35c with e in the bass or c with g in the
- 1:52:38bass so
- 1:52:39c major triad in first inversion
- 1:52:43c major triad and second inversion
- 1:52:49right so we have a triad and a note
- 1:52:51that's not the root in the bass so this
- 1:52:53is like
- 1:52:55level one super consonant right
- 1:52:58now let me give you the next level
- 1:53:02a triad with a note that's not in the
- 1:53:04chord in the bass but that is in
- 1:53:06the key so let's say c over d
- 1:53:10which is really uh it would be would
- 1:53:13or let's say
- 1:53:16uh c over f which is really
- 1:53:20a little bit mistaken because this is
- 1:53:22just like a major major seven
- 1:53:24right so that doesn't quite count uh so
- 1:53:27i would i'm gonna go like that
- 1:53:28put let's say and
- 1:53:32c over a doesn't quite count either
- 1:53:36because that's just really a like this
- 1:53:38would be that would be
- 1:53:39a minor seven i'm going to
- 1:53:43use some different colors so this stands
- 1:53:45out so
- 1:53:47again i want to be as clear as possible
- 1:53:48so c with a in the bass is really going
- 1:53:50to sound like an a minor seven
- 1:53:52c with f in the bass is really going to
- 1:53:53sound oh no that's not this that's not a
- 1:53:55major major 7. i'm mistaken
- 1:53:57that's totally legit that totally works
- 1:54:00so c with f
- 1:54:04so this one doesn't work so well
- 1:54:09so let me let me play for you what we're
- 1:54:11talking about here
- 1:54:12what i'm talking about here so
- 1:54:16c major tried
- 1:54:21[Music]
- 1:54:27these can sound like uh this is another
- 1:54:30whole area of harmonic and this is
- 1:54:32this is done in other styles of music
- 1:54:34other than what we've been talking about
- 1:54:35a lot
- 1:54:36so popular music a lot of guitar music
- 1:54:39jazz
- 1:54:39other stuff they'll use this kind of
- 1:54:41stuff where it's kind of like
- 1:54:44diatonic in a certain sense
- 1:54:47modal where you're just taking uh
- 1:54:52and then set a chord from the key let's
- 1:54:54say our key c major
- 1:54:56we're just kind of like
- 1:55:03[Music]
- 1:55:06we just keep that d we just move the d
- 1:55:08up or we're let's say from
- 1:55:10[Applause]
- 1:55:14from c to f you know c c major in root
- 1:55:16position to c
- 1:55:17over f f is not in the c chord c
- 1:55:20e g so but it is in the key
- 1:55:23[Music]
- 1:55:30you could also be like putting a d in
- 1:55:31the base
- 1:55:32[Music]
- 1:55:32[Applause]
- 1:55:40so you can mix those in with otherwise
- 1:55:43tonal harmony or you can kind of just
- 1:55:45explore
- 1:55:46those the next kind of level is where
- 1:55:49it's really really dissonant uh
- 1:55:52are notes that are definitely outside
- 1:55:54the key so like c
- 1:55:55with f sharp in the bass uh would be an
- 1:55:59example of that so you have
- 1:56:01[Music]
- 1:56:08or c with
- 1:56:12d flat in the bass
- 1:56:14[Music]
- 1:56:21here's the f sharp
- 1:56:25so what what this does
- 1:56:30is it and again this is triad with a
- 1:56:33base note
- 1:56:34what this does this is where you can if
- 1:56:36you want to get more dark and aggressive
- 1:56:38get and explore this area and just
- 1:56:41go ahead and go through the whole
- 1:56:42chromatic scale right say i'm going to
- 1:56:43play a c major triad with c in the bass
- 1:56:46well that's just a c major triad that's
- 1:56:48very consonant how about with a c
- 1:56:49sharp or d flat that's pretty dark and
- 1:56:52aggressive with a d
- 1:56:55that's more in this kind of middle area
- 1:56:57not super dark and aggressive
- 1:57:00but a little bit more distant with an e
- 1:57:02flat
- 1:57:03e flat would certainly count see with e
- 1:57:06flatten the bass because we get the
- 1:57:07e flat versus the e natural there
- 1:57:11see with e in the base well that's just
- 1:57:13an inversion
- 1:57:16see with f in the bass that's kind of
- 1:57:17our diatonic modal flavor
- 1:57:20c with f sharp in the bass that gets
- 1:57:22into our dark area
- 1:57:24c with g in the bass that's just an
- 1:57:26inversion
- 1:57:29c with a flat
- 1:57:32this is the same as the a flat
- 1:57:377 sharp 5 which is one of the other
- 1:57:40sonorities
- 1:57:42that i told you to explore
- 1:57:45but that would all that would count as
- 1:57:47well c
- 1:57:50with an a in the bass that's that's kind
- 1:57:53of in this area
- 1:57:54but it's also just a a minor seven
- 1:58:01c with b flat in the bass this sounds
- 1:58:05like a
- 1:58:05essentially like a c7
- 1:58:08same thing as the c7 but with a in first
- 1:58:10conversion
- 1:58:13c with b in the bass that's pretty
- 1:58:15dissonant so we're
- 1:58:17when we get those dissonances we're look
- 1:58:19what what's causing that is
- 1:58:20the half step so here it's the b
- 1:58:24versus the c that creates that real real
- 1:58:27dissonance
- 1:58:28here it's the a flat versus the g
- 1:58:31there's your distance here it's the e
- 1:58:33flat versus the e
- 1:58:38here it's the d flat versus the c
- 1:58:42here it's the f sharp versus the g
- 1:58:47now that's not the only dissonance in
- 1:58:50all the cases but
- 1:58:51that half step dissonance is certainly a
- 1:58:52big a big part of what makes it sound
- 1:58:55kind of more aggressive and darker
- 1:58:59so right there
- 1:59:03one two three four five five harmonies
- 1:59:06for you to explore
- 1:59:08how's that for you all right
- 1:59:14uh
- 1:59:16yeah so caleb gives some opportunities
- 1:59:19uh
- 1:59:19good good suggestions as well but i i
- 1:59:21gave you like a
- 1:59:23this is a whole other this is like a
- 1:59:25whole next level
- 1:59:26harmonic concept thing and i i'm giving
- 1:59:29i
- 1:59:30kind of feel bad that i'm just giving
- 1:59:31you like just throwing at you and not
- 1:59:33giving you any
- 1:59:34insight into like how you would use it
- 1:59:37what kind of scales would you use
- 1:59:39um but that might be something for
- 1:59:41another another video
- 1:59:43but i'm just throwing those at you at
- 1:59:44things that you can experiment with
- 1:59:46all right folks i think i'm gonna
- 1:59:50wrap it up because um because we got
- 1:59:53we had a we had a good two hours folks
- 1:59:55and so for those of you who are here for
- 1:59:57the full time thank you very much
- 1:59:58for those of you watching um after the
- 2:00:01fact
- 2:00:02please please give me a thumbs up if you
- 2:00:04liked it subscribe
- 2:00:06and share with anyone who think would
- 2:00:07enjoy learning more about music theory
- 2:00:10thanks everyone i hope to see you in two
- 2:00:12weeks
- 2:00:13be well
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