Pushing the Record:: It recording. Even if its just one person, three people, thats fine. Theres plenty of things we can do. Maybe if theres any particular questions that you guys have that you would love to have touched on, I think we should be able to go in that direction.
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How to Play Piano Well With Music Theory:: I started to play by ear when I was a teenager. I went to college for music and then grad school for music. The most natural outlet once you have a vocabulary like that is jazz. Jazz pianists are the most knowledgeable about music theory generally.
Can Music Theory Make Its Way into Pop Music?:: Lamp asks how could theory make its way into pop music. I still find certain combinations of sounds catchy, he says. We could learn jazz, but I'm not interested in creating jazz
Diatonicism in Pop Music:: I think an area thats lacking with a lot of people is understanding diatonicism. Chords all belong to one key, but even easier than that is just spreading out your voicing. How do you go about creating melodies based on those progressions?
The Diatonic System:: If you dont know your scales, you cant learn music theory. The diatonic system is basically a way of saying all the chords that belong to one scale. It definitely does give you an advantage as far as just knowing what options are.
Scales and the diatonic system:: Every single note in the scale, you can build a chord on it. All those chords are diatonic to the key of C major, meaning all those chords work. In theory, they should all sound fine together.
The Basics of Chord Variations:: The way that were playing the chords is a little bit plain. This goes beyond inversions. If you separate where the notes are, thats called a voicing. You can pick which note is on top.
How Do You Come Up With Melody Notes?:: The voicing is very important because the ears tend to listen to the highest notes. Whatever note youre putting at the top of your voicing has a tendency to stand out as a melody note. When youre layering chords, a good idea is to have the voicings be different for each layer.
Flat Scale Degrees:: With every scale, with every chord, you can think of these as numbers. Basically, just combine rearrange those notes until you find something. If youre not finding it, then start incorporating these other scale degrees.
How to Play Chords in Flat Major:: If youre going to pursue music theory, take it a step at a time. I used to just force myself to write songs in different key. If you do one key a month, you know it all in a year.
Taking a Triad in the Key:: The idea of taking a triad, a basic block chord, and just split the notes up. Then you can get fancy by kind of playing outside of the key. It starts to get super interesting when you play.
How To Write a Melody With Just Chords:: Do you develop the melody first and then kind of fit the chords to the melody? Or is it vice versa? Theres no set way to do it. Its usually an interesting chord progression. Sometimes the melody comes out of the voicing of the chords.
How to Guess The Key of a Song:: Use your scales to figure out what key the song is in. Lets try a fun exercise of reharmonizing this. Give me three numbers between one and six in any order. And you can repeat a number if you want.
Diatonic Chords:: For any key, these are all the chords that are diatonic. This is a formula that works for every major key. Between one and six, all these chords are going to be totally fine. You can use them, you can mix up the order.
Dancing With Old Me:: We're still recording, right? Yeah. I want to do two things. One thing I'd like to do real fast is to just go over the notes of the melody for old me in terms of the chords and what scale degrees, he says. Does that sound good?
Overhead Melody:: The melody here is not using chord tones, theyre using notes from the scale. The whole song is three chords. Its like you need to find something catchy, not too unresolved. Questions about maybe that example or anything that we talked about before we go from scratch.
A volunteer takes a call:: So let me have a volunteer. Matthew, can you give me a key? Not C and not a flat. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I hear you. E minor. Awesome.
G Major:: Were going to play in the key of E minor. E minor is the same as G major. Lets explore a couple of chords for me. This will help me write a melody, but I need to like the chords.
Chord Progression:: Use five or three or one on top to create a chord progression. Use your voice leading to move as little as possible. Who has a little bit of an understanding of scales? Anyone want to volunteer something?
Using Chord Progression in Music:: The first thing is chords. How do you develop a melody from that? Ramsey, talk to me about this way that Im exploring chord progression and then chord tones. There are so many tools to coming up with melodies.
3-Chord Progressions vs 4-Chords:: I had a question about three chord progressions versus four chords. Why three and not four? I think it really depends on the context. Try to keep it interesting. Either have rhythm or using three chords instead of four already solves that problem.
Finding interesting Passing Chords:: Sometimes I have a hard time finding something like an interesting passing note. A passing chord just needs to be a chord that is between two of your chords in the progression. It adds so much energy with passing chords.
Experiments in Major Chords:: The ear is able to connect dissimilar chords from that one note. Its definitely an avenue thats not mainstream, at least not yet. Im very hopeful that Ive seen some trends for more really music.
Passing Chords:: When formulating passing chords, are you considering the root note or is it really the highest note in the chord? Once you learn a concept, you can extrapolate it and use it for all music, for all keys. Would it be possible to do this frequently, like biweekly or something on a regular schedule?

Danny Sanchez: Music Theory

Danny Sanchez