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Musical alterations (second part): you’ll know them well from today on

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4Double alterations

Before presenting the second part of the lesson regarding alterations, I want to highlight just how important knowing them is: this will allow you to completely understand the topics of harmony, chords, and composition in general.
Today we will dive deep: after having introduced, in the previous lesson, the most simple accidentals, today we will understand, for example, where the need for double alterations come from.

We will examine how to alter the degrees of the scale in any situation, at the piano.
In this way we will need to introduce more graphical symbols, that will allow us complete contro lover the alterations.

Aftert this part you’ll be able to understand:

  1. the difference between temporary alterations and permanent alterations
  2. how to cancel the effect of alterations that are already present
  3. how, why and when to use double alterations

After this lesson, basically, musical alterations will not be a mistery for you anymore!

For a better under standing of today’s lesson, I’d reccomend, if you haven’t yet, to watch the first part of the lesson: Alterations (part one), here is a simple way to really understand them.
If you already watched the first part of the lesson, to help you keep up with today’s topics I added a video, the first, in which I summarized the content of the first lesson.

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Learning material of this lesson

3 videos 21 mins
1. Where did we leave off last time? 5m 10s
2. Temporary accidentals and permanent accidentals 6m 45s
3. What are double accidentals? 9m 11s
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Alterations (part one), here is a simple way to really understand them

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4Musical alterations

Alterations, chromatisms, accidentals, sharps… how often have your heard these terms without really understanding them?
Yet the concept of musical alteration is extremely important to start understanding music and to be able to play the piano or any other instrument.

As with every other musical theory concept, alterations are born from essentially practical needs.
This is the path I will use to try to explain these concepts in depth, by explaining where and how these thoeries are born.

Since this lesson is pretty long and demanding, it has been split into two parts.
In today’s lesson we will try to understand the two main reasons why introducing musical alterations is an absolute necessity.

This way you will finally be able to completely understand the function of those graphical symbols that are calleds sharps and flats, and generally speaking of all the other “musical accidentals”.

Enjoy!

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos 12 mins
1. The accidentals (sharp and flat) 3m 17s
2. Diatonic half-tones and chromatic half-tones 2m 51s
3. The A major scale case 5m 44s
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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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Harmony, how chords are built

armonia1

How can you build chords?

Chords, defined as the simultaneous sounding of at least 3 sounds, are the skeleton, the  base on which you can write a song, more so in popular music.
We have already seen how chords are tied to the concepts of scale and tonality.

This kind of approach will allow us to answer the following questions today:

  • How can you build chords?
  • Is there a fool proof way to know all the chords relative to a certain tonality?

This method exists and today, in the three following videos, I will show it to you at the piano, applied specifically to major scales and tonalities.
I will also explain how to build chords, of any kind and of any complexity.

To achieve a better understanding of today’s lesson I personally advise, if you haven’t already, to wath the videos of the following lessons:

Musical intervals, how to properly name them (firts part)

The major scales: how to remember every note at any time

Let’s start by answering the first question: How can chords be built?

Learning material of this lesson

7 videos 30 mins
1. How to build chords 6m 57s
2. The seven chords of a major scale 2m 33s
3. The features of these chords 4m 26s
4. Naming chords 1m 29s
5. Practice: chords in E major key 5m 26s
6. Composing an easy harmonic base in E major key 3m 15s
7. Building more complex chords 7m 44s
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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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Musical intervals, how to properly name them (first part)

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4

The musical intervals

Have you ever heard or read terms such as “diminished fifth”, “minor seventh”, “augmented fourth”, and so on?

All these names, apparently obscure and cryptical, each define differenty types of musical intervals.
Today we deal with the way that the various intervals are called to be distinguished one from the other. And we will do this using a logical and clearpath‘ that will soon let you learn how to name each interval correctly.

Being able to define an interval with its’ proper name is essential, because it allows you to determine the relation that there is between two or more notes (in this case, relative to pitch).
After all, music is the art that allows us to put different sounds in relation with each other.
You will see that once these concpets are clear to you, you’ll be able to put them to use in various fields.

Among other things you will be able to:

  • start delving into the extremely vast world of harmony
  • understand how chords are built, of any type and of every degree of complexity
  • make the melodies that you are composing better, thanks to a precise use of musical intervals

Let’s start to discuss the musical interval more deeply.

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos 18 mins
1. Melodic intervals and harmonic intervals 3m 14s
2. How to determine the ‘generale name’ of an interval 6m 56s
3. How to find the ‘generale name’ in case of sharps or flats 8m 33s
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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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The major scales: how to remember every note at any time

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4

The major scales

It’s not an easy task to remember every musical scale of the tonal system by heart.
Sometimes, especially for the scale in tonalities  far apart from the C, it’s difficult to remember if a note is either sharp or flat or if it’s natural.
There is a very simple system that lets you remember at any time every note of every scale.
Today we will be discussing major scales.

Interval, whole tone, half tone

This system is based on the concepts of musical interval, whole tone and half tone.
In the next videos I will try to explain these concepts in a simple fashion at the piano, which will empower you to do the following:

  • Find at any given time every note of every major scale (we will take into consideration minor scales later on in the course) without having to pull out manuals or charts.
  • Start to move the first steps in the world of harmony and chords, which are both based on the concept of musical interval.
  • Understand in depth the most important aspects of theory and musical practice.

So let’s start talking of major scales… of course in the next videos.

Learning material of this lesson

6 videos 23 mins
1. 1.What is a musical interval 3m 01s
2. The half tone and how to find it on a piano or guitar 3m 23s
3. The whole tone 3m 05s
4. How to find every note of every major scale 6m 05s
5. Practice 1: the G major scale 4m 21s
6. Practice 2: the E flat major scale 3m 26s
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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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Scale and tonality, the two keys to really understand the chords

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4

Scale and tonality

To better learn music theory, harmony and chords it’s important to introduce two essential concepts:

  • scale
  • tonality

So in the today videolesson I will try to explain the two concepts of scales and tonality that will be the concepts that wil enlighten us and allow us to understand the relationship between the different chords.

Via these two concepts you will see how chords will shine under a new light for you and most importantly you will be able to build all the chords you want easily.

These two concepts will also be the main tools to learn music theory in depth.

Then we will explain other important concepts as tonic, dominant and leading note. These all are some very important degrees of a scale and their knowledge will be fundamental to uderstand the world of Harmony and chords.

In the following videos we approach these concepts.

Learning material of this lesson

4 videos 18 mins
1. The musical scale 2m 39s
2. The tonality 3m 48s
3. The role of notes in different tonalities 4m 58s
4. Chords and tonality 6m 12s
... to continue this video lesson

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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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Chords – learn how to best use them

armonia1Have you ever been confronted with particularily complex chords asking yourself what its’ name was?

Have you ever heard a progression of chords and wondered which is the logic that makes one chord follow another and this succession is particularily pleasing to the listener.

There you go: today we begin our harmony video lessons, where we will discuss chords, trying to better understand their properties and traits to answer these questions you were having.

Chords

Why do we begin by discussing chords? There are multiple reasons to this, but the main reason is that most music and most songs lay their foundations on the correct use of chords.

How often have you wondered, after hearing a song that you liked, ‘What chords are these?’ and immediately went searching for them on the internet? I can only imagine this has happened quite a few times, just like it has happened to me and to many other music enthusiasts.

It was correct on your part to give the chords this importance, because once you found them, these chords gave you a solid idea of the song, which subsequently allowed you to play along with an instrument, while you sung the lyrics, and maybe it helped you to better learn the song and get to know it.

But there are other reasons that make chords, but most importantly a deep knowledge of chords, undisputedly important: that’s because chords make up the frame of a song, its’ exo-skeleton, and are also the starting point to being able to arrange a song.

You can clearly see the incredible importance of knowing chords as well as one can.

Keep in mind…

There is a very important aspect of chords, which I would like to introduce in this lesson. In contmporary and popular music, chords are seen, thought of and used as an independent entity, detached from one another.

Let me clear this up: let’s imagine you wanted to write and compose a song and you stumbled upon a progression of chords you liked, such as C major, Am7, Am, Dm, B7-, and so on..

But what is the correlation between these chords?

This is the crucial part of the issue!

Viewing chords as independent from one another and not understanding the link between them, which means what meaning does a chord have in regards to the previous one and the following one, and in general the way it relates to the whole song, is quite an elementary mistake, that often leads down a dead-end road. It also deprives you of a lot of tools that would allow you to fly higher than you usually do while playing.

It’s like fumbling around a dark room searching for the objects we need. We have to understand where the lights switch is, to be able to turn on the light in this metaphorical room and to be able to see everything clearly and precisely, to be able to master these chords and not be their slave.

The lights switch exists, actually there are two, and they have very precise names: these names are SCALE and TONALITY.

These are two fundamental elements, which will allow you, as previously stated, to understand these characteristics of chords:
•    where chords come from
•    how one can build chords
•    what is the correlation between chords in one tonality and with other tonalities
•    all kinds of chords, from the simplest to the most complex, will be clear and we will unveil the logic behind them by viewing them in the conctext of scale and tonality.

In the next video lessons we will begin to delve deeper into these subjects which will soon allow you to handle and dominate the world of chords.

The knowledge and the study of these elements are in fact one of the first steps one should take when trying to learn how to work with music, using your rationality and not only your instinct.

Trust me, if you will be able to fuse instinct and rationality together, you will be the holder of an explosive mix of creativity and musical energy!!