[Music] hi there have you ever wondered why some sounds goes well together and

some other knots why some sounds can merge beautifully and become sentence and
some others can be less pleasing to the ear and be descendant there are different
ways to explain that but we have to go back to what sound is in its nature what
is sound sound is a variation of pressure that moves through the air translation
sound is a vibration of air the particles in the air get all compressed then
stretched out then compressed then stretched out etc and that's how the sound
propagates like the waves on the surface of water when you throw a rock in the
lake for instance that is also why there is no sound in space if there is no
particle of air to be compressed or stretched there is no sound propagation so
this vibration will make our eardrum vibrate inside our ear and our brain will be
like hey man you are hearing a sound to know if two sounds are consonant or
dissonance we can compare their frequency of oscillation basically the simpler
the ratio is between these frequencies the more concerning they are so if i take
a sound that vibrates at 220 hertz for example the more consonant sound that can
go with it is 440 hertz which is the double of that frequency so they have the
simplest ratio of two to one the next most concerning sound that can go with this
220 hertz is 660 hertz which is the triple of these frequencies so they have a
ratio of three to one and then the next most concerning sound that can go with us
is 880 hertz with a ratio of four to one [Laughter] [Music] and if we keep
going we start creating a series that we call the harmonic series so the simpler
the ratio is between two frequencies the more consonant they are and that means
that the more consonant they are the more frequently their waves will sync up
that is also why when two sounds are dissonance we can hear a beating in the
sounds that are the waves that go slowly in and out of sync this is also how we
can define purity of the consonants this is the absence of beating when two
sounds play together we can use that to create our first musical scale and play
actual music we've set up that the most consonant sound to go with our 220 hertz
sounds would be 440 hertz or twice as high with a ratio of two to one and they
are actually so consonants that they are considered the same notes with different
pitches but if our 220hz is a 440 hertz is also a one octave higher so that means
every time we multiply or divide a frequency by two we actually are getting the
same note but one octave higher or lower so the most consonant interval between
two different notes would be when they have a ratio of three to one and that is
what we'll use to build our scale so let's start with our ad for 140 hertz we can
add one note above and one not below using the three to one ratio and then we can
multiply or divide these frequencies by two to get the same notes but closer to
our 440 hertz note we can then go one step further with this new notes we just
created by multiplying or dividing the frequencies by three to get all the new
notes by bringing these frequencies to the narrowest range possible we can end up
with this suite of notes and there we created our first pentatonic scale with 5
notes per octave that is probably the kind of scale that is the most used around
the world it's used a lot in chinese music blues country and folk music for
example the frequencies in our scale actually correspond to the node d a b d e
which is the pentatonic scale of d major or the pentatonic scale of e minor and
from there we can add two notes again so we can end up with these frequencies
that correspond to the notes g a b d e f sharp which is the scale of g major and
this is how the first chairs were created in this kind of scale the first note is
called the tonic and then there is the second the third the fourth the fifth the
sixth the seventh and this is why we call the next note the octave octa meaning
eight which is technically the same note than the tonic now back to the harmonic
series we made at the beginning of the video and compare it with the notes we
have in our scale so the first note harmonic one is our fundamental and harmonics
two four and eights are different octaves then the most consonant notes with our
sonics in our scale would be the fifth and the fourth as we use the three to one
ratio of the harmonic three to make them and the fourth is a fifth below the
tonic then the most consonant note with our tonic would be the third and the
sixth if we look the relation between our third and the fundamental we find a
relation of 64 on 81 which is almost 4 5th we choose the five to one ratio of the
fifth harmonic in the harmonic series and the sixth is the third below the tonic
and finally the two last notes the seventh and the seconds are the most
dissonance with the tonic in our scare this third that is almost exact but not
perfect will begin to cause problems at some point but we'll see why a bit later
truth is in nature there's no sound that vibrates on only one frequency at a time
a sun that vibrates at only one frequency is a sine wave that's what only one
frequency sounds like any other sound is in fact always a cocktail of a lot of
frequencies among them the lower frequencies is called the fundamentals that's
often the note we hear and the one we can sing and all the other frequencies are
called the overtones we split these overtones into two families the harmonic
overtones and the inharmonic overtones the harmonic overtones participate to the
musical note we hear in the sound the one that we can sing they are parts of the
harmonic series of the fundamental which means that their frequency is multiple
of the fundamentals frequency the fundamental being the first harmonic the
second harmonic being twice this frequency which is the octave the third harmonic
being three times this frequency which is the fifth the fourth harmonic is
another octave and the fifth harmonic at the third etc they all participate to
the musical notes we hear in the sounds in fact when a string of a guitar
vibrates all these harmonics are present in the sound we hear when you play a
natural harmonic you isolate some of these frequencies that were already there
with an open string we hear the fundamental with your finger touching the string
just above the 12th fret which is the middle of the string you hear the second
harmonic with your finger touching the string above the seventh fret which is the
third of the string length you hear the third harmonic etc all the other
overtones that are not part of this harmonic series are called inharmonic
overtones and participates to the tone of the sounds if a sound have too much in
harmonic overtones then we can't really hear notes in it in this case we talk
about inharmonic sounds it's the case of a percussive sound like a snare or
symbol for example drummers know that you still have to tune your drum kits and
this is because the sounds found in nature are rarely 100 harmonic or inharmonic
but more often the mixture between the two so these harmonic overtones
participate to the musical note we hear in the sound and these inharmonic
overtones affect the tone of the sound as a practical example a pure sine wave
is the only sun that have no overtone because that's how one frequency sounds
then if we add order button from our harmonic series the fundamentals begin 1 so
we add the 3 5 and so on then our sine wave begins to become a square wave then
if we begin to add the other overtones of our series our wave turns into a
sawtooth wave this means that the sawtooth wave is richer in overtones than a
square wave which is richer in overtone than a sine wave but the three waves are
hundred percent harmonic sounds and are actually at the basis of some design in
any synthesizer as an example of a hundred percent in harmonic sound you have the
white noise which is all the frequencies between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz all at
the same level which is at the basis of a synthetic snare or symbol sound mix
harmonic sounds within harmonics frequencies and you can theoretically recreate
any sound you've heard in fact overtones are the reason why your piano and the
trumpet sounds different is because they don't have the same overtones in it
harmonic and inharmonic and each overtone resonate at different levels let me
show you [Music] we can clearly see the harmonic series in the three first
sounds the lower sun being the fundamental and with each harmonics at different
levels and we can also see the inharmonic component of each sound in the two last
sounds we can't really see any harmonic series these are inharmonic sounds in the
last video we said that in a major scale the most consonant sounds were the tonic
were the fifth and the fourth and then there were the third and the sixth and
then came the second and the seventh in fact the more consonants two songs are
the more overtone they have in common so if we take a sound when its first
harmonics overtones and compare it to the notes in the scale that are the more
consonant with it then we can see this overton lining up for the fifth for the
fourth the third the fifth the second and the seventh if you're in a coral
singing in notes and a bunch of other people are seeing the fifth of that note
you can actually hear the harmonics overtones bouncing the room around you and
that's pretty awesome a trained ear can actually hear some overtone directly
within one note being played and we can also use that to tune some instruments a
trained ear can hear some of the harmony cover terms contained within
one note and these overtones are actually what was used to tune the clavichords
and other instruments especially the third harmonic of the harmonic series the
fifth the easiest to hear considered to be the most consonant interval of all we
used to tune our instruments fifth by fifth to half the fifth of a note you can
multiply its frequency by three and then divide it by two to lower the node by
one or two octaves so it's multiplying this frequency by three half or three
quarter so you would tune the first note let's say c at 264 hertz then from c you
would tune the g note which is the fifth of c and you can do that by ear actually
you need good ears but you do that by listening to beatings in the sounds so
from these g notes you could find the d then you could find the a then the e
then the b then f sharp d flat a flat e flat b flat and f this figure is called
the circle of fifth the way we tune an instrument is called temperament and this
particular way of tuning an instrument from fifth to fifth is called the
pitagorian temperament it was made by pythagore himself yes the same petagor you
heard of in middle school is considered to be the first one to theorize the
harmonic series and there the first temperaments that were the temperament used
up to the 15th statutory when occidental music used to favor fifth and fourth
which was considered the only consonant intervals but it came with two issues the
first issue is that if we keep adding fifth at the end of the circle after the f
we should land on a c but the c we get by multiplying the frequency of our f
isn't exactly the frequency we began with these dots on the lines so this
interval has to be flattened so we can land on the c we're supposed to have in
results this interval becomes dissonant and it is called the wolf interval
because it remains the scream of that animal here is what it sounds like [Music]
the solution was to put this dissonant interval on an interval that was less used
or in an interval that we had to avoid carefully the second issue was that the
third was not pure neither an interval a major third can be seen as four
consecutive fifth c there from c to e for example e the major third of c and
there are four fifths between these two and if we compare the e in our circle
here which is the third of c and the third that is in the harmonic theory of c
the fifth harmonic overtones we can see that their frequencies are not equal
neither it wasn't really a problem before the 15th century when the third was
considered discernance and this tunic probably have something to do with that but
it became a problem with occidental music was tending to favor intervals of third
and sixth and the solution there was the minton temperament or minton
temperaments i should say because there are several the difference between the
natural third found in the harmonic series and the third found in the pythagorean
temperament is called a coma and as the third is four consecutive fifth the
solution was to lower each fifth by one quarter of that coma so our third would
be pure sacrificing the purity of the fifth in the process that was good enough
for a music that favored the third and the sixth but the problem of the wolf
interval was not resolved yet in fact the last fifth was below the pure fifth
that we were supposed to have and even further from it so the wolf interval was
even worse but it also means that the four thirds that were passing by this worth
interval were forced as well so you had to avoid all of them and you had to avoid
certain tonalities completely so to minimize this problem all the minton
temperaments lowered each fifth by one sixth or one a of a coma bringing the last
fifth closer to a pure interval by sacrificing the purity of each third in the
process and any tuning was still bound to certain tonalities because of that for
the next few centuries musician has been creating different irregular
temperaments which made each delight sound differently due to the irregularities
of the tunings that was until the 19th century when the equal temperament was
created that is the temperament we are still using today the principle of the
equal temperaments is that every notes in the chromatic scale are separated by an
equal interval this means that all the knots end up being slightly offset and all
the intervals end up being slightly off as well technically this tuning that we
use today is the most inexact of all time but it makes all fifth and all thirds
equally consonant as well so we don't have to avoid any tonalities they all get
equivalent we lose the specific character that each tonality had in irregular
temperaments but it allows us to travel from a tonality to another within the
same music without having to avoid any of the tonality neither as an egotist
example this is why my 98 chord song was even possible and that also means that
we can transpose any song in any key without having to return our instrument so
that is with this technically most inexact temperament of all that we get the
more freedom from there we can fiddle freely with our scales and wonder in any
tonalities in our musical system an octave is divided in 12 equal intervals so we
have 12 notes per octave and in the most used scales including major and minor
there are seven of those notes the name of these scales will then depend on two
things the fundamental the first note of the scale and the way the knot are
spaced throughout the octave let's take the scale of c major for example it's
easy it's only the white keys of a piano keyboard so c is the root key of the
scale the note that feels like home and major is defined by the sequence of
intervals from the root key so in this case of c major the first interval is from
c to d that's two semitones so one tone the next interval between d and e is also
two semitones so one tone then one semitone between e and f one tone between f
and g one tone between g and a one tone between a and b and there's one last
semitones to go back to c so the major scale is defined by the sequence of
interval one tone one tone one semitone one tone one tone one tone one semitone
and this is something we can transpose to any tonality to have any major scale so
if i want the major scale of g for instance it goes d one tone a one tone b one
semitone c one tone d one tone e one tone f sharp then one semitone back to g
which is the scale we ended up with in the video on consonances and dissonances
the c major scale works because we defined c as our home notes but every major
scale have a relative minor scale this is another scale that would be minor but
will use exactly the same notes so the only difference between a major scale and
its relative minor is the fundamental notes that we call home that feels like
home the relative minor scale of a major scale is the one that takes his sixth
note as a fundamental so for the c major scale for example the relative minor
scale is a minor taking the exact same note from the c major scale that makes a b
c d e f g that's the a minor scale once again this minor scale is defined by the
sequence of intervals that build it so the first interval is from a to b that is
one tone then from b to c is one semitone c to d is one tone d to e is one tone e
to f is one semitone f to g is one tone and g back to a is one tone so the
sequence that defines a minor scale is one tone one semitone one tone one tone
one semitone one tone one tone and we can also transpose that to an eternality to
have any minor scale so as an example let's make the minor scale of e it goes e
one tone f sharp one semitone g one tone a one turn b one semitone c one tone d
and one tone back to e and this is the relative minor of the d major scale they
use exactly the same notes in the same fashion from a major scale we can take
any note as a fundamental as our whole notes and then we start building a whole
bunch of new scales and this is what we call modes starting with the c major
scale the c major scale is actually called the yonian mode or mode of c the scale
that uses the same notes but starting from d is called the dorian mode or mode
of d the scale that uses the same notes but starting from e is called the 3gen
mode or mode of e and then the mode of f is called the lydian mode the mode of g
is called the mixolydian mode the mode of a is called alien mode that's the
minor scale and the mode of b is called the locrian mode as any scales these
modes are defined by the street of interval that build them so they can be built
from any root note for example if i want the lydian scale of g we'll start with a
g and then we'll follow the sequence of the lydian scale which is one tone one
turn one tone one semitone one turn one turn one semitone that makes the scale g
a b c sharp d e f sharp g that the lydian g scale it exists other scales that are
a bit more exotic which are not made from the same sequence than the major scale
just to name a few there is the acoustic or lydian dominant scale which goes one
turn one turn one tone one half tone one turn one halftone one turn [Applause]
on the byzantine scale that goes one semitone one tone and a half one semitone
one whole tone one semitone one tone and a half and one semitone there are also
less harmonic scales like messian's tone semitone scale which follows the
sequence tone semitone tone semitone term semitone etc but we may see these
exotic scales more in detail in other videos first we'll see how chords are made
and how to find each chord of each tonality [Music] a chord is a set of notes
played together and the name of these chords depends on the root notes
on how many notes there are in it and the interval that separates each note
triads are chords they are made of three notes they are at the bases of all
chords to build them we'll need a root note which will give the chords its name
then a third and a fifth so if i want to make a call of c i'll take a c the third
e and a fifth g that makes a c major chord because between c and e there are two
tones which is an interval of a major third and between c and g there is an
interval of three and a half ton which is an interval of a perfect fifth so a
root note plus a major third plus a perfect fifth makes a major chord which is
considered to be a happy chord it sounds happy to make it a minor chord i have to
lower the third by a semitone so it becomes e flat and the interval between the
root note c and e flat is one tone and a half which is an interval of a minor
third the interval between c and g is still a perfect fifth so a root note plus
a minor third plus a perfect fifth make a minor chord that's considered to be a
sad chord it sounds kinda sad the only difference between a major chord and a
minor chord is the third this note alone will determine the state of the whole
chord and you can actually change the order of the notes the voicing it will
still stay the same chords for example if i write my c major chord e g c it can
be described as a e chord with a third and sixth but in fact it is still a c
major chord that's what we call an inversion if i remove the third in my chord
the chord is neither minor or major this is what we call a power chord this is
just a root note with a fifth and it's used a lot by guitarists so i can alter my
third to make my chord major or minor but i can also alter the fifth if i move my
perfect fifth up a semitone it becomes augmented and if i move it down a semitone
it becomes diminished so a chord with a major third and an augmented fifth is
called an augmented chord such as c e g sharp that's a c augmented chord it's
considered to be more of a bright chord the other way around a chord with a minor
third and a diminished fifth is called a diminished chord such as c e flat g flat
it's considered to be a dark chord and that's pretty much all the most used
triads major minor augmented and diminished we could create a triad where the
major third and a diminished fifth for example which i heard was called a hard
diminished chord which sounds harsh but it's not really used in fact if we see
the three notes together c e and g flat it's often as being part of another chord
other than c often with at least a fourth not added so this half diminished chord
with a major third and a diminished fifth is not really used as is in fact every
chord can be considered at the superposition of third a major chord in the major
third plus a minor third a minor chord is a minor third plus a major third an
augmented chord is two major thirds stacked up and a diminished chord is two
minor thirds stacked up maybe that explains a bit better where we don't really
use the major third where the diminished fifth and then there would be an
interval of third between the third and the fifth in our chord so when you're
using a scale you can build your chords by stacking up thirds in practice that
means that when you're using a scale you can build your chords by taking one note
every two starting with the root notes the space between each note will then
define the nature of the chords so in the scale of c major for instance that's
all the white key on the keyboard if i build a c chord i start from c i leave a
note then take a note that's e i leave a note then take a note that g so we have
our major chord c e g that we had before but we can build a chord for every note
in the scale in the exact same way so for a d chord i start from d leave a note
take a note leave a note take a note so we have dfa with one tone and a half
between d and f that's a minor third and with two terms between f and a that's a
major third so a minor third with a major third that's a minor chord if we build
every chord of the c major scale we find that our c chord is major the d and e
chords are minor the f and g chords are major the a chord is minor and the b
chord is diminished in the same way we refer to every note in the scale with
arabic numerals we refer to the chords of a scale with roman numerals that will
come handy to talk about our chord progressions just know that these are called
degrees the first degree second degree third degree etc the fifth degree the bit
special is called the dominant but we'll get back to it [Music] by stacking
thirds on top of each other or taking one note every two you can create chords
but you don't have to stop at a triad with three notes you can add more when you
add more notes to your triad you're creating an extended chord if you add one
extra note you add the seventh so that's a seventh chord if you add another extra
note you add the ninth so that's a ninth chord another extra note and you're
adding an eleventh so that's called an eleventh chord another extra note and
you're adding a thirteenth note so that's called a thirteenth chord you get it if
i try to make a thirteenth chord from c in the c major scale that makes c e g b
d f a so technically this is a 13th chord yeah again the nature of these
extended chords will depend on the interval between each of their notes so let's
define all these intervals once and for all [Music] every interval is defined by
the distance between a note of the chord and the root note some intervals will be
called perfect if they are extended by a semitone they are called augmented and
if they are shortened by a semitone they are called diminished then some
intervals are called either major or minor where the semitone between the two
states if a major interval is extended by one semitone it becomes augmented and
if a minor interval is shortened by one semitone it becomes diminished but these
are more rare instances to know which intervals are perfect or major or minor
just remember the c major scale as everything seems to be built around that
that's all the right key on the keyboard in the c major scale the fourth and the
fifth are perfect intervals and the second the third the sixth and the seventh
are all major intervals from there it gives you all the reference intervals you
need to know if your sixth or seventh is minor or major for example if you have
four tones between two notes that's like the interval between a c and a g sharp
or a flat so that's an interval of either an augmented fifth or minor sixth for
the seventh it is a major seventh if the note is five tones and a half above the
root note that's a semitone below its octave or if it is two tones above the
perfect fifth it becomes a minor seventh if it's a whole tone below the root note
or one and a half above the perfect fifth we can also observe that the major
chords in this chaos are built upon the perfect intervals and the minor or
diminished chords are built upon the non-perfect intervals this figure can come
in very handy as a reference and should definitely be on the cheat sheet if you
need one so now that we know how to build a seventh chord by adding a seventh on
top of a triad and we know how we can identify different intervals let's see the
most used seventh chord a major triad with a minor seventh which would be a minor
third above the fifth is probably the most common seventh chord and is called a
dominant seventh chord because it is often used on the fifth degree which is the
dominant degree for a c chord they will make c e g b flat and it would be noted
c7 if we have a major triad with a major seventh they would make a major seventh
chord so for c they will make c e g b and it would be noted c capital m seven
then if we have a minor triad plus a minor seventh that makes a minor seventh
chord so for a c chord that would be c e flat g b flat that would be noted c
lowercase m seven you can also have a minor triad with a major seventh that
would be a minor major seventh chord that would make for instance c e flat g b
that would be noted c lowercase m capital m seven this one is a bit more rare
then we can have a diminished triad with a minor seventh that be called a half
diminished seventh chord so for example c e flat g flat b flat that would be
noted c lowercase m seven flat five or like this a c with a crossed circle that's
a half diminished seventh chord and to have a fully diminished stable chord
there would be a diminished triad where the diminished seventh so for c it would
be c e flat g flat b double flat i like this one because it's a bit confusing
even though the b technically becomes the same note than a is still serve the
function of a seventh i will stack up minor thirds on top of each other to make
this one but a would be a sixth so we keep the name b for that note to show that
it's considered a seventh but it's double flat it's diminished so the c
diminished seventh chord could be noted c d seven this one is very dissonant as
it has two intervals of diminished fifth in it i like it a lot now with an
augmented triad we can have a minor seventh that would be called an augmented
seventh chord so on a c chord that would be c e g sharp b flat this one is sort
of a breaking the rule as it doesn't have an interval of a third between the
fifth and the seventh this chord is also used a lot on chords of fifth degree and
is also known as a dominant augmented seventh chord and that be noted c plus
seven with an augmented triad we can have a major seventh that would be called an
augmented major seventh chord so on a c chord that would be c
e g sharp b and that be noted c capital m seven sharp five or c plus capital m
seven now that we know what the different seventh chord look like we can identify
each seventh chord of our c major scale if we take each note of the scale and
build the seventh chord so remember you start with the root notes and then you
take one not every two so leave a note take a note leave a note take a note and
see the intervals that compose them we find that the c chord the first degree is
the c major seventh the second degree is the d minor sevens the third degree is
an e minor seventh the fourth degree is the f major seventh the fifth degree is a
g dominant seven the sixth degree is a a minor seventh and the seventh degree is
a b half diminished seventh this gives you the states of on the seventh chord in
a major scale and because all major scales have a relative minor scale that
should the exact same notes you can have the seventh chord of a minor scale by
simply starting from the sixth degree because that's where relative minor scale
begins so these are the seventh chord of a minor scale you can add the notes on
top of that to create ninth or 13th chord but there may already be a lot of
information i would like to talk a bit about how to actually use this chord to
create our chord progression first to build a music we'll build a chain of chord
that will play in a certain order with a certain rhythm and this is this chain of
chord that we call our chord progression and there are certain rules or
tendencies rather that you can follow to build them i actually don't really like
to call them rules because following them is not really an obligation music
theory hasn't been built at the rigid set of rules that you must follow it's the
music that has been made first and then we tried to find out why certain things
were working and those rules were then deduced from that and it is part of the
fun to try to break certain rules while making music but following them in just a
higher rate of success so i guess it's better to know the rules before trying to
break them it's better to understand what you're doing to do it better anyway so
each chord of the scale has a number that we call degree that is related to the
number of the note in the scale from there you can put together a chain of chords
using the chords of the scale you're using and as all the chords are from the
same scale or the same tonality it should work just fine [Music] so when you're
using different chords from tonality some degrees in the scale will be sensed in
a particular way bringing different colors to the progression some will bring
tension and some other will bring resolution for instance the course five which
is called the dominance will create a tension that will want to be resolved by
going back to the chord one the home card this is because the first note and the
fifth note of the scale have a special relationship they are very consonants if
the one in the home you're searching for then the five would be like the
neighbor's home when you see it you know you're almost there so the fifth degree
brings attention and the first degree brings the resolution and this tension and
resolutions are something you want to play a lot with because writing music i
guess is a bit like writing a dialogue part of your chains of chord or melodic
line would be sentences and there would be questions and answers and suppositions
and some chord progression that has been used a lot has become very recognizable
and can be used like punctuation to build our sentences these little chord
progressions are called cadences [Music] the progression that goes five to one
is called the authentic cadence it's often prepared by a 2 so the full authentic
cadence would be 2 5 1. in c major which is all the white keys of the keyboard
that makes d minor g major c major and this is the most conclusive cadence it
acts like a full stop in a sentence it's a good cadence to end the song for
example it's very conclusive and we finish with a big resolution if your sentence
ends on the five so often two five you prepare it like a perfect cadence but you
stop on the five like an unfinished cadence you stay hanging in the air this is
called the half cardens and it acts a bit like a question mark or a coma it
creates a sentence that finishes on a little tension that needs to be answered
you can also prepare an authentic currency but instead of going to the first
degree you go to a different degree that is called a deceptive cadence or an
interrupted cadence the chord of the first degree is often replaced by the chord
of the sixth degree so in c major there would be d minor g major a minor this is
not a conclusive cadence it's like we prepare the end of the sentence but at the
last moment we continue for a bit longer the deceptive cadence is a great tool to
break the expectation and add an element of surprise to shift the mood of a
sentence for example the last cadence we'll see here is when the progression goes
from four to one this is called the playgirl cadence this is a conclusive cadence
that will sound like the end of a sentence but it's not as conclusive as the
authentic five to one it is used a lot in rock music for example so let's try to
make a song by taking advantage of all those cadences [Music] okay let's start
by picking some chord at random to kickstart our creativity so between one and
seven we have four two seven and three cool that'd be our main chord progression
and i'll copy that four times so i have four lines at the end of each line i'll
insert the different cadences we saw so on the first line i'll squid the seven
and the three in the same bar to have room to finish on the five that's our half
cut ends on the second line i replace the three by four and squeeze it in the
same bar than the seven to have some room to finish on the one so we have a four
to one that's our playgirl currents on the third line i'll prepare an interrupted
garden just like an authentic calence i'll put the five at the very end of the
line so it finishes on the first bit of the next line that will sound more
conclusive except that i'll land on the 6 instead of a 1 in the next bar so
that's our interrupted currents for the last line i'll do exactly the same thing
except that i land on a 1. so we finish on a nice authentic currents in the last
line i also replaced the two and the seven by a five and a four to have that nice
descent of six five four three and there we have our chord progression with the
four to seven that would be the core of our progression and then first we have a
half carbons that bring a bit of suspension then a plagal cadence that brings a
little resolution then we have an interrupted current that adds some motion with
a bit of variety there and then we finish on an authentic garden that is more
conclusive for this chord progression i decided to go for the tonality of c minor
because minor is cool and when you are in a minor society you can make the five
chord major when they prepare cadence even though they are supposed to be minor
in these tonalities it adds some tension and make this cadences better i'll
explain why more in detail in the next video but just so you know i made this 2
last 5 chord major so in c minor this is the chord progression we end up with
play that with a rhythm add a bass a drum and a little melody on top and here is
one way this can sound [Music] we can also play any of these 5th degree chords
in their dominant 7 form to add some tension and another reason why this 5th
degree creates a tension with the first degree is because of how the chord itself
is built [Music] in the scale of c major the fifth degree chord which is g is
built with the root note g the major third b and the perfect fifth d this note b
is very close just a semitone away from the tonic c of our scale and this
fundamental have such a strong role in the scale that this b wants to climb up
this little semitone to go to the tonic that's why it's called the leading tone
because it creates this friction that generally leads to the tonic if we look at
the minor scale like a minor the fifth degree is supposed to be a minor chord
right but when you use this chord to make a current so from five to one in a
minor would be e minor to a minor when you make a cadence you can make it major
to have this leading tone of a half tip below the tonic and add this friction to
your chord progression so the e chord would lead more easily to the a chord using
this leading tone in fact any dominant chord a chord of fifth degree that is
preparing a cadence can be made major in any tonality so in a minor it allows you
to use the notes g sharp that is normally not in the scale the minor scale as
we've seen so far is actually only one kind of minor scale that we call the
natural minor scale [Music] this possibility to play a major chord on a fifth
degree on a minor scale adds an altered note and that actually creates an
alternative minor scale that we call harmonic minor scale harmony is the
combination of several terms placed simultaneously thus chords this harmonic
minor scales allows us to have a major chord on the fifth degree and therefore
create better authentic currents in minor tonality in the same way we did in the
video about scales we can transpose this scale to an eternality as long as we
follow the sequence of interval that build it so the sequence of intervals that
build it is one tone one semitone one tone one till one semitone one tone and a
half one semitone this scale is great harmonically but melodically this one turn
and a half between the sixth and the
seventh notes is quite a big gap as to make a great melody small intervals are
often preferred and these bothered composers enough for them to create a third
minor scale by raising the sixth note by a semitone the gap between the sixth and
the seventh notes being now reduces to one tone this is what we call the melodic
minor scale and the sequence of interval that defines it is one tone one semitone
one tone one tone one tone one tone one semitone in fact this melodic minor scale
is just like the major scale except the third is minor the handy thing is that
when you're using a minor tonality you can rather freely use the natural harmonic
and melodic minor scales at the same time depending on the context mainly using
the natural scale then using the harmonic scale for cadences and the melodic
scale for certain melodic movements which can make the minor tonalities very rich
in possibilities [Music] so when we play a chord of 5th degree a third will
create a tension and we can emphasize this tension by making the chord a seventh
chord for a g chord it will become g b d f the interval between the b and the f
here is a diminished fifth and this is very dissonant this dissonance as to the
friction created by the leading tone making it even more powerful this
configuration a major third with a perfect fifth and minor seventh is called a
dominant seventh chord because that's the type of chord we often use on a
dominant chord to be resolved on the tonic using the same logic you can also use
this dominant 7th chord on any 5th degree of any scale if it's preparing a
cadence so i can resolve this g7 chord by going to c minor instead of c major or
i can use a e7 chord to resolve on either a major or a minor chord or i can use a
d7 to go to either a d major or d minor these dominant chords and dominant
seventh chords are very useful in many situations but before we get there in the
next video i'll explain a bit more about this circle of fifth which is one of the
more powerful tool a composer can have this figure is called the circle of fifth
because it shows all the notes going from fifth to fifth so here the fifth of c
is g and the fifth of g is d the fifth of d is a etc as all the notes are
arranged by fifth we can easily see what the fifth of each note by going
clockwise on the circle but as the fourth is the fifth below the tonic we can
also quickly see what the fourth of each note by going anticlockwise on the
circle so the fourth of j is c the force of c is f the fourth of f is b flat and
so on so forth but more than notes this circle represents tonalities and this
circle allows you to quickly know which notes are in each tonality the tonality
of c major that is at the top is made of only natural notes which means that it's
all the white keys on the piano keyboard then all the tonality that are on the
right side of the circle will have sharp notes in them each step you go clockwise
will add one sharp note and the sharp notes appears in that order f c g d a e b
as a mnemonic to remember it it's written there on the circle from f to b so the
g major scale begins with a g and we'll have one sharp note which will be f sharp
so the g major scale is g a b c d e f sharp the d major scale begins with the d
and will have two sharp notes which are f and c so that's d e f sharp g a b c
sharp one last example the b major scale will have five sharp notes which are f
sharp c sharp g sharp d sharp and a sharp so the b major scale is b c sharp d
sharp e f sharp g sharp a sharp then all the tonality on the left hand side of
the circle will have flat notes in them same principle each step you go anti-
clockwise at the flat notes in the scale and the flat notes appear in that order
v e a d g c f which is the exact opposite order of the appearance of the sharp
notes so the scale of f major have one flat note which is b flat so the f major
scale is f g a b flat c d e the scale of b flat major has two flat notes which
are b flat and e flat so the b flat major scale is b flat c d e flat f g a one
last example the scale of a flat major has four flat notes which are b flat e
flat a flat and d flat so the a flat major scale is a flat b flat c d flat e flat
f g do you remember when i said this figure can come in very handy as a reference
and it should definitely be on the cheat sheet if you need one this is where it
comes handy because knowing these chords of the c major scales allows us to
transport them to the scales we just found in the circle of fifth we know the
first chord would be major the second and the third degrees would be minor the
fourth and the fifth degrees would be major the sixth minor and the seventh
diminished so these are the chords you can use in the tonality of a flat major
for instance in the same way you can find all the chords of all the major
tonalities around the circle now looking at this circle of fifth you should be
able to find the notes of any major scales but it doesn't stop there i said in
the video about scales every major scale has a relative minor scale this is a
minor tonality that will use exactly the same notes than its relative major scale
the relative minor of c major is a minor for example from there you can write all
the minor tonalities on the circle as they are all relative to a major scale so
in the same way that we did for the major tonalities you can find all the notes
for all the minor scales for example the c minor scale has three flat notes which
are v flat e flat and a flat so the c minor scale is c d e flat f g a flat b flat
and the c sharp minor scale has four sharp notes which are f sharp c sharp g
sharp and d sharp so the c sharp minor scale is c sharp d sharp e f sharp g sharp
a b and in the same way we did with the major tonalities you can know each chord
of each minor tonalities we know the a minor scale uses the same notes than the c
major scale so it also uses the same chords except the scale starts on the a so
these are the chords of the a minor scales and we can transport them to an
eternality the first degree is minor the second is diminished the third degree is
major the fourth and the fifth are minor and the sixth and seventh degrees are
major these for instance are the chords you can use in a c sharp minor tonality
so now we have all the tonalities around the circle and we can quickly find the
notes for each of them it also worked the other way around you can find the
tonality you are in from the notes you have in a melody if you have a melody
where all the f's are sharp and all the other notes are natural you're probably
in g major or e minor if all the b's and the e's are flats you're probably in b
flat major or g minor the way the circle is arranged it groups similar tonalities
together c major is close to g major because only one notes or rather one
alteration separate them this comes very handy to make modulations to switch from
internality to another because the more nodes to tonality have in common the
easier it is to modulate from one to the other from c major for instance it
should be very easy to make a transition to a minor as all the notes are in
common it should also be quite easy to go to g major e minor f major or d minor
as they all have only one note or one alteration that differ from c major these
tonalities that are close to c major are called its adjacent scales and
modulations to an adjacent scale is always smoother and it would be more
difficult to make a transition between c major and f sharp major which is very
far on the circle as they have a lot of alterations that separate them so when
you are looking to do a modulation the circle of fifth can be very handy to know
the naval terms of your tonality to know which tonality will be easier and make a
smoother transition so if you are in b minor the adjacent scales would be d major
e minor g major f sharp minor and a major and in the same way you could find any
adjacent scale for any tonality and now i realize i haven't talked clearly about
how to make these modulations so that is what we'll talk about in the next video
in the last episode we talked about cadences and dominant chords basically saying
that a chord of 5th degree naturally creates a tension that wants to be resolved
by a chord of the first degree and also saying that this chord of 5th degree can
be major in all tonalities and we can emphasize this tension even more by making
this fifth degree chord a dominant seventh chord with a major third and a minor
seventh for example g7 which is a g major chord with a minor seventh is a great
chord to go to either c major or c minor because g is the fifth of c and we can
use that to make smooth transitions between two tonalities using a g7 chord to
switch between c major and c minor for instance switching from a tonality to
another is called a modulation but remember that the closer two tonalities are on
the circle of fifth the smoother the transition so a transition between c major
and c minor while being still very possible will not be as smooth as the
transition between c major and one of its adjacent scales and that is because
between c major and c minor there are a lot more notes that are different a lot
more accurations that would make the change more drastic so say we're in c major
and we have this chord progression c major a minor f major and then we want to
modulate to d minor to have this chord progression of d minor b flat major g
minor we can make the transition smoother by adding the a7 chords just before the
d minor a being the fifth of d [Music] and in the same way we could use a c7
chord if we want to go to a f major or a d7 if we want
to go to g major for example the authentic guidance and the tension a dominant
course creates is really handy to announce where we are going with our chord
progression and therefore to do modulations of course in music you don't have to
always follow all these rules strictly in music if it feels right it is right
it's your music instead of using the orthotic cadence to do a modulation you
could take advantage of other cadences like the playgirl 4-1 for example but
there are other ways to make smooth transition between two tonalities one of them
is the harmonic sequence a sequence is a pattern that repeats itself with each
iteration offset by a certain interval usually in one direction the pattern can
be melodic which makes a melodic sequence or the pattern can be called which
makes a harmonic sequence these sequences can be tonal sequences which means that
they're all bound to one tonality in this case all the intervals will not be
strictly the same and all the notes used are the notes of the scales of that
tonality they are bound to [Applause] all these sequences can be real which
means that each pattern is an exact transposition of the first one in this case
the sequence will use notes that are not in the scales we started with so we can
use that to make our modulations so let's make one of these real sequences in
three steps so step one create a pattern or a chord i'll take c major step two
choose an interval and a direction the most used is probably the descending fifth
so i'll take this one for the example but ascending fifth and descending third
are also rather common and step three copy your patterns following the direction
and the intervals of your choice so here in my example that would make c major f
major b flat major e flat major so there i moved from c major to e flat major
this particular example works particularly well because by going down from fifth
to fifth we follow the circle of fifth adjacent scales to adjacent scales each
cone being the dominant chord of the following and this is kind of the same
technique than using the dominant chords but extend them to several steps to
reach a further tonality this is just like a series of authentic cadences and in
the same way if we choose to make a sequence with ascending fifth that would be
like a series of plagal cadences because each chord would then be the fourth
degree of the next one you can also make another kind of modulation that is
chromatic that means by going up or down one semitone this is often used to add
interest to a melody this type of modulation is rather drastic as moving up or
down a semitone would be quite a long jump on the circle of fifth and this type
of modulation don't always use a transition chord because this change of tonality
can be so drastic it is often definitive this means if you move a whole tonality
up or down a semitone this is not to go back to the original alternative right
after accidentals or notes that are outside of the tonality we are using which
can be a good way to add some tension to our harmony and melodies and add
different flavors and emotions a good way to implement an accidental is to use
dominant chords again just like we used them in the previous video about
modulations taking advantage of the authentic cadence you can momentarily
consider any of your chords as a first degree so you can play its 5th degree just
before it so it would make a beautiful 5 to 1 progression for example we are in
c major that's all the white keys on the keyboard and we have this chord
progression c major a minor d minor g major [Music] then for a moment i can
consider any of these chords say the d minor as the one i can add it's on fifth
degree just before it which is a major or even a7 this is the fifth degree of the
d minor scale and then after my d minor i can go on with the tonality of c major
i was in before i don't have to stick with the tonality of d minor after that d
minor being the second degree of my tonality the a7 chord is then a five of two
it's the fifth degree borrowed from the tonality of the second degree d minor
[Music] this borrowing allows you to add some notes that are not in the original
tonality you're using this a7 chord is made of the notes a c sharp e and g see
there we're using the note c sharp that is not normally in the c major scale so
this kind of borrowings are super cool to add accidentals through your chord
progression and you can add the fifth degree of any of your degrees the five of
two five or three five or four and that allows you to use a lot of notes that are
not supposed to be in the tonality you're using but you can do more you can also
borrow a chord from a parallel tonality parallel tonalities are the major or
minor tonality of the same key so c major is parallel to c minor d major is
parallel to d minor so at any time you could replace any degree of the major
scale by this equivalence of its minor scale for example in c major we could
replace any chord of the c major scale by an equivalent called other c minor
scale so in this case the c major could become a c minor the d minor could become
a d diminished the e minor chord could become a e flat major in this case the
third degree is then noted at the flat 3 because the e became an e flat and then
the f major could become f minor the g major could become a g minor the a minor
could become a flat major then the sixth degree can be noted flat six at the a
became a flat a and the b diminished could become a b flat major and same there
it could be noted flat seven because the b became a b flat note note how the
major chords are written with upper cases and the minor chords are written with
the lower cases with the roman numerals it's just a bit more simple to say which
chords are major and which chord or minor in the same way if you come from a
minor tonality let's say a minor to take the relative of c major so it's all the
white keys again then the a minor chord could become a major the b diminished
could become a b minor the c major chord could become a c sharp minor which is
noted sharp 3 and the c became a c sharp the d minor could become a d major the e
minor could become an e major the f major chord could become a f sharp minor
which is noted sharp six because the f became a f sharp and then the g major
could become a g sharp diminished and the seventh degree is noted sharp seven
whether little o which is diminished as the g became a g sharp note as well as
these chop six and sharp seven are also possible in the melodic minor scale as
the melodic a minor scale also have a f sharp and a g sharp in it but because the
c stays natural the sharp 6 would be diminished in this case so replacing a chord
by another chord is called a substitution and you can replace a chord by its
equivalence of the parallel tonality but you can also do that with any mode so
let's say you're in c major you could replace the e chord of the c major scale by
the e chord of the scale of c dorian or c phrygian for example but you can also
make other types of substitutions and it all comes back to the authentic cadence
again you know when a fifth degree resolves to a first degree i said you could
make this fifth degree chord a dominant seventh chord to investigate the tension
between the five and the one but you could also alter this fifth degree in
several other ways you can make it a diminished seventh chord for example which
will bring a new flavor to your chord progression so in c major the authentic
cadence would go from j7 to c the notes that build the g7 chord are g b d and f
if you make it a g diminished 7 chord it will become g b flat d flat and f flat
which is the note e and the keyboard so there you are using the note b flat and d
flat that are not in the c major scale but you could also make these fifth
degree chords an augmented chord so in this case the augmented chord would be
made of g b and d sharp and there you are adding a d sharp that is not in the c
major scale a third way of altering the fifth degree chord would be to use a
tritonic substitution tritonic means three terms which was a forbidden interval
in the middle age as it is very dissonant it was even called the devil's interval
just to give you an idea anyway so tretonic substitution is used a lot in jazz
for example basically you replace the dominant seventh chord of your fifth degree
by the dominant seventh chord a tritone away so three times higher or lower so in
c major you can replace the g7 chord by a d flat 7 chord if you come three turns
up or down from d you'll fall on a d flat in both ways so the d flat seventh
chord would be made of d flat f a flat and c flat which is the same note of b on
the keyboard so this chord would use the notes d flat and a flat that are not in
the c major scale this tritonic substitution works particularly well when you use
the full authentic cadence 251 as it will become two flat two one allowing your
base to do a chromatic dissent that will sound amazing if the authentic cadence
is the equivalent of a full stop in a sentence then these substitutions give you
a lot more option to finish your musical sentences so all these accidentals can
be a good way to add different flavor to your chord progressions this is the 12th
episode of music theory in five minutes and we will see six special chords and
chord progression then in special context can wear special names number one the
napolitan sixth we kinda saw it already in the previous episode about
substitutions it is more or less the same thing that the tretonic substitution
when you are making an authentic cadence which is a progression that goes
from the chord of the fifth degree to the chord of the first degree you can then
replace the chord of the fifth degree by the chord that is a tritone or three
tones above or below in either major or minor tonality you should end up with a
chord that is between the first and the second degree so we can note that flat
too then if this new chord's lowest note is its third then we call it a napolitan
sixth let's see an example to see that clearer and where we call that a sixth in
c major again that's all the white keys on the piano keyboard the fifth degree
would be a g major and the first degree would be a c major then if you transport
this fifth degree 3 tons above it will become a d flat major chord and it's the
same if you transport the g major cut three times below now we need to put the
third of this d flat major at the base so i'll move this d flat up an octave so
the third f become the lowest note this combination of notes d flat f and a flat
will still be a d flat chord but this configuration can be seen as a f with a
third a flat and a sixth d flat so this could be a f6 chord which is the first
inversion of d flat major and that is why we call that a napolitan sixth
napolitan because replacing the fifth degree by a flat two in this way was used a
lot by the napolitan school which gathered a lot of huge composers of the italian
opera in the 18th century the major chord on this flat two can also be used in
root position or second inversion that means with the root note at the base or
with the fifth at the base we can then call it a napolitan chord the napolitan
chord on napoleton 6 is also very often used to go to the fifth degree and then
to the first degree it then occupies the function of a subdominant and it is also
as a subdominant substitution that it is described most of the time [Music]
number two the picardy third it's also called a picardy cadence it happens only
in minor tonalities or in some modes where the first degree is a minor chord the
picardy cadence is an alteration of a conclusive cadence that appears at the end
of a whole section or at the end of the music it is when you replace the last
first degree that then should be minor by a major chord you do that by reading
the third of this chord by a semitone and that's why we call it the picardy third
the origin of picardy in the name is unknown but we often give the credit to
genjar crusoe who defines it in his dictionary of music that's where he said that
this way of concluding a music survived longer in religious music and more in
picardy a northern region of france when there was music in a lot of cathedrals
and churches this picardy thought gives a feel of happy ending at the end of a
song that is in minor and was even perceived as being more conclusive it could
occur in an authentic cadence but also in the playgirl cards which is conclusive
as well number three the foreign cadence from gabrielle fury the foreign cadence
is the special form of the half cadence which is the musical sentence that
finishes on the degree five the half currency is not a conclusive currency and
it's often prepared with the first degree chord so we have the progression of one
to five the exact opposite of an authentic cadence and that emphasis the feeling
of suspension that these cadence provide so in c major these half cardinals could
be c major to g major now the foreign cadence is a particular version of that
and it has the name of gabriel fury because he used this a lot basically you
replace this first degree by your fourth degree you play it in its dominant
seventh form and you put the fifth of that chord at the base let's break it down
so we're still in c major so we will land on the g major chord which is our fifth
degree and just before we put a call of fourth degree that is f and then we'll
make that a dominant seventh chord so that's the root note f the major third a
the perfect fifth c and the minor seventh e flat then if i put the fifth at the
base the c is now the note that will support the whole chord and that make it
feel a tiny bit more like the c chord we have in the regular half cadence in
theory that makes it a little bit more effective [Music] so this is what we call
a fouriern cutters now you can notice that the notes e flats here is not supposed
to be in our scale well this is kind of a borrowing from the melodic minor scale
that we saw in the previous episode the melodic minor scale is like the major
scale except the third is minor the third note is flat so we can borrow the
symmetric minor where the third note e is flat that allows us to build this f
dominant seven chord in c minor though it's less of a borrowing as we already
have a minor tonality anyway so a half cannon that goes from four to five with
the dominant seven on the fourth that's a four round cadence number four the
andalusian cadence this is called the cadence but as far as i understand it this
is more of a chord progression as it is more intended to be played in loop
instead of just finishing one of your musical sentences the andalusian cadence is
most used in flamenco music and an example of this chord progression can be a
minor g major f major e major if we consider we are in the tonality of c major
the a minor chord would be a chord of the sixth degree the g major would be the
fifth degree the f major would be the fourth degree and the e major would be the
chord of the third degree but with a raised third as the chord of e is usually
minor in the c major tonality so on top of that you could play a solo using a c
major scale being careful of that e major chord that's one way to look at it but
if we consider we are in the tonality of a minor which uses the same note than
the c major scale then the a minor would be the first degree the g major would be
the seventh degree the f major would be the sixth degree and the e major chord
would be the chord of the fifth degree which makes sense to have major as in a
minor tonality we can make the fifth degree major when it's preparing a cadence
to go to the first degree for instance so this chord progression kind of always
called the one of the next loop so the progression keeps rolling one seven six
five and then back to one and then you can play a solo on top of that using the a
minor scale this is a second way to look at it which is totally fine when this
chord progression is looped so we can play over it but lot of flamenco musics are
actually written in a phrygian mode which is the mode of e so the e phrygian
scale uses the exact same note then the c major scale or the minor scale except
that the tonal center the first degree is on the e that means that the
progression actually finishes on a one but a one that is major even though it's
supposed to be minor in phrygian it's kind of like a picardy third we saw in the
first part of this video so as it finishes on the one you could theoretically use
it like a regular cadence in a major or minor tonality but that's the cadence
that have a particular color as it borrows its nose from the phrygian mode let's
say we are in e major and we want to finish with the nandalusian cadence here are
the chords of the e major scale as reference if we finish with the andalusian
cadence we finish nicely on our first degree here but the a minor will be a minor
4th degree instead of major the g major chord would be a flat three and the f
major cone would be a flat two and it kind of makes sense to have a flat two just
before one in accordance it's just like the napolitan six that we also saw in the
first part of this video so even if the underlying cadence is supposed to be
played in loop i did sound called progression let's see how it could sound like
if it was used as a regular cadence so here we are in e major and we have a chord
progression that could be e major g sharp minor b major and f sharp minor at the
end of that we'll add the n values and cadence we just saw and just before the a
minor chord i'll add a major chord which is in the tonality of e major this
should make the transition smoother so the other e major chord would be our
first degree the d sharp minor is the third the b major would be the fifth the f
sharp minor would be the second degree and the major would be the fourth that
then becomes minor and the rest of the underlying catens it just as we saw it a
minute ago so here is how it could sound like [Music] anyway so that is the
andalusian cadence very popular in flamenco music number five sus4 chords a sus4
chord is a chord that is lacking in the third but i have a fourth instead sus
means suspended that's what happens when you remove the third of a chord it
becomes suspended and four because it has a fourth added so for a c chord for
example you could take a c the root note g the fifth we don't take the third and
add the f the fourth classically this is more of a transition chord allowing us
to go from a chord to the other by moving one note or two at a time so for
example this c sus4 could be between an f chord and a c chord then from the f
major chord which is made of f a c i can move only the a to g to have my c sus4
chord and then i can move the f to have my c major chord c e g the interesting
thing is that it worked the exact same way in minor if we're in c minor the f
chord would be minor so that's f a flat c then i can move the a flat to g to have
the c f g that's the same c sus4 we had in major and then i can move the f to e
flat to land on a c minor chord the fact that this sus4 chord doesn't have any
third plus the tonality it is from this could be major or minor and you can use
that as your advantage even if these
are classically transition chords you can use them like regular chords to bring
the strange feeling of being between major and minor for example if you wrote a
chord progression in major and you think it sounds a bit too happy you could make
some of the chords useful that's often done by some progressive rock or
progressive metal bands for example i have this chord progression if i change
all these chords by their cs4 form they could become [Music] hear the difference
and then on top of this chord progression i could play a solo using either the g
major or d minor scale or switching between the two the line between the two is
then blurred number six says two chords a sus2 chord is basically the same thing
that a sus4 as you must have guessed this is a chord without the third but where
the second added so a c sus2 would be made of a root c the second d and the
fifth g in the same way can be used as a transition chord between two other
chords for example you can put a c sus2 between a g chord and a c chord this way
you can make a smooth transition between these two chords by changing one note at
a time the b becomes the c and then the d becomes a e and in the same way than
for the sus4 chords you can use this sus2 as regular chords as well to blow the
tonalities a little actually these two chords are an inversion of sus4 chords for
example say we're in c major and we have the c sus 4 chords if we move the c up
an octave we end up with the f g and c which is f sus2 chord see there is an f
for the second and a fifth and no third so they are basically the same chord as
they are an inversion of one another in the fifth video the one about chords and
triads i said that you could mix the order of the notes that make a chord and it
will still be the same chord but the order of these notes still have an
importance especially the lowest notes the one at the base which will define the
state of that chord and this is what we call an inversion let's make a c major
chord as an example which is made of c e and g as it has three notes we can have
three positions with the c at the base with the e at the base or with the g at
the base if the root note c is at the base then we say that the chord is in its
root position it is not inverted the first inversion is when the third is at the
base then we call that a sixth chord it's because if the third of the c chord e
was the root note of that chord it would be accompanied by its third g and its
sixth c this is the first inversion of c major then the second inversion is when
the fifth of our chord is at the base we call that a six four chord it's because
if the g was our root note it would be accompanied by its fourth c and its sixth
e this is the second inversion of c major [Music] the order of the notes above
the base doesn't really matter as it is the lowest note that defines the
inversion when you're writing a harmony the way the notes of your chord laid out
the voicing is something you want to keep in mind because there are some things
that are generally preferable to do or to avoid so here are five tips to write
better voicings number one if in your chord progression two consecutive chords
have some notes in common then these common notes should generally be played at
the same pitch by the same voices in the harmony for example if i have a
progression that goes c major to a minor here i have written the two chords on
four voices the bass the tenor the alto and the soprano here is the c major chord
with the notes c e g and c and here is the a minor chord with the a a c a e n a
so as we can see the note c and e are commons to these two chords so i should
generally extend the c and the e from the first chord here the c played by the
soprano and the e played by the tenor but i could also extend the c played at the
base number two when you spread the notes of your chords on different octaves it
is preferable to keep the notes of the harmony gathered to have only one line
apart that will play the melody you may not notice it when all the lines are
played by different instruments so the best example may be a coral of four voices
see here if i have this chord progression it is either preferable to gather the
harmony in the bases to have the melody in the trebles or the harmony in the
trebles to have the bass a bit apart instead of splitting this into two groups
[Music] number three when you go from a chord to another it's preferable to set
different movements to the fifth and the root note of each chord for instance if
the chord c major is followed by a minor and i write them like this you can see
that the fifth and the root notes both go in the same direction downward and by
the same interval so we say they are parallel so parallel notes that are
separated by an interval of fifth are often to avoid but this of course depends a
lot on the style of music you are writing in in rock music for instance we often
use power chords which are only the root notes and the fifth that are transposed
in the same disposition all the time so they are parallel fifth everywhere but it
is still something to keep in mind when you are writing an arrangement as
parallel fields were the forbidden movement in classical music so a good
disposition for our c major and a minor could be this which also follow the tip
number one by continuing the note c number four if a knot of your chords needs
to be doubled so if you have four voices playing a three note chord for example
it is often advised not to double the fifth because when you double a note in a
chord you end phases each role if you double the third you will encase it the
fact that the chord is major or minor which is the character the color of the
chord this is often the best choice but it depends a lot on your composition and
what you want to push forward if you double an extension such as a seventh for
example you will enthuse the tension that this seventh creates and this knot will
then need to be resolved as well if you double the root note of the chord you
will face it the very chord that you are playing which is kind of the same thing
that double in the fifth except doubling the root note is often better number
five the bass plays a lot on how we hear a chord so putting an extension note at
the base like a seventh and ninth or eleventh is open to avoid it is often better
to put at the base the root note the third or the fifth and it is better to put a
note that have a strong tunnel role in this position overall try to consider each
note of your harmony as a separate voice and try to avoid big gaps between notes
so it is easier to sing each line because in a harmony that works well together
it's even better when it's made of lines that can work well on their own and most
of all trust your ears if you find something that sounds really good but defy
the rules maybe you should stick to it because your ears are your best lies
embellishing tools are not that are not part of the chord you're using and they
can be used to add variety or interest to your melodies at these notes are not
part of your harmony they can add a bit of dissonance with the rest of your
chords and that can sometimes be a nice touch to add but as they are distances
they are not always but often used on the weak beats if they happen on a strong
beat it's said that they are accentuated anyway depending on the context these
embellishing tones can wear different names number one neighbor tone or auxiliary
tone labor tones are notes that will come from notes of your harmony move up or
down a turn next to it and then resolve to the starting notes that was part of
your chord for example if we have this chord progression [Music] if we add an a
button to these notes and one on that one it could be something like this these
notes are the neighbor tones [Music] and these neighbor tones can also be
double then you would have two extra notes one above and one below before going
back to the original note number two passing tone a passing tone is the note that
comes from a note of your chord then move up or down a step and resolve by going
in the same direction to another note of your chord that can be the same chord
than the first one or a different chord for example if we have this chord
progression [Music] we can add a passing turn between this note and this note by
going up and up and then between this note and this note by going down and down
[Music] you could also use more than one passing tone to go from one note to
another this is as well very close to the concept jacob collier uses to explain
how he used micro tonality in some of his compositions it's not like g and and
then the chords between f sharp and g and then f sharp it's more like you erase
all idea of like notable harmony and you just think i'm a g and my destination is
e so i go you divide it equally up you know or into more than like five you know
and if you can if you can do that all that matters is that you're aiming the
place all that matters is that you're arriving in a place it doesn't matter how
you get there number three escape tone an escape tone is similar to the first two
it is a note that comes from a note of your chords and then move up or down the
step and resolve by going in the opposite direction with the skip to another note
that is part of your chords for example if you have this chord progression we can
add an escape tone between this note and this note by going up and then down or
between this note and this note by going down and then up each time with escape
number four anticipation and suspension anticipation and suspension occur when
the harmony shifts
from one car to another but all the notes of these chords don't change at the
same time if one note is played early before the rest of the chord it is in
anticipation and if one note is delayed and comes after the rest of the chord
that is a suspension if you remember the sus2 and ss4 chords that we talked about
like two episodes ago i said that there were originally transition chords and
this is exactly when they can occur [Music] number five the apogeatura the
apogera is a bit like an unprepared neighbor tone it is a non-chord tone so not
that is not part of a chord that resolves to a note of your chords by going up or
down a step this embellishing tone is usually but not exclusively on a strong
beat so when you want to add an apodiatura to a note you would start with the
note just below or above it before going to the note that is part of your chords
the time value of the arpeggiatura is then subtracted from the time value of the
principal note which means that the arpeggiator delays the appearance of the
principal note for example if i want to add an apogeatura to this note i could
add this note at the beginning of it if harmony is the way we organize notes in
pictures rhythm is the way we organize the notes in time and this is not to
confuse with tempo which is the global pace of the music for example a tempo of
100 bits per minute is different than a tempo of 140 bit per minute but a rhythm
which is the grouping of several notes can be played at any of this tempi now to
talk about rhythm we'll have to define how we divide time and define the length
each note can have and how we can notate that as well so we start with the tempo
that defines the speed of the music by telling us how many beats fits in one
minute so for 100 bpm that's a hundred beats per minute that's the pace of our
music then one of the biggest slots we can have is a whole note which is four bit
long this is noted as a little circle then this whole note can be divided into
half notes which are two bits long it's noted with a little circle with a tail
like this then if we divide this note by two again we have a quarter note which
lasts for one beat and this one is noted as a black note with a tail if we
divide this one by two we have an eighth note which lasts for a half beat and is
noted as a black note with a hook divided by two we have a 16th note which is as
long as the quarter of a beat and is noted as a black note with two hooks and
then you can go on dividing the length of these notes again and again dividing
the length by two every time and adding a hook every time so we have a whole note
which is the length of two half notes each of them is the length of two quarter
notes etc etc and you also have equivalent symbols to write silences as well for
each of this length here you can see them on this screen we can then begin to
combine all these notes and silencers to create some rhythms for example if we
take some of them at random we could get this rhythm here the pulse given by our
bpm would land there on these dots and our rhythm will then sound like this to
have more variety we can then add modifiers to these nodes to modify the length a
bit first you can link them so the length add up so a half note which is two
beats linked to a quarter note which is one beat would make a note that would
last for three bits or a quarter note linked to a sixteenth note would make a
knot that would last for one bit plus the quarter of a beat [Music] secondly you
can also add a dot to a note basically it extends the length of these notes by
half of its original value for example a half note is two beats but a dotted half
notes would be a half knot plus the half of a half notes so with the same length
that a half notes plus a quarter note three beats a dotted eighth note would be
the same than an eighth note plus a sixteenth note which would be three quarter
of a bit in total [Music] and then a third way we can modify the time value of
a note are templates if we can divide the length of a node by 2 by 4 two plates
are here to divide them by other odd numbers they are noted as a group of nodes
linked by a bracket with a number above that indicates the ratio of the division
there are different kind of tuplets there are triplets that divide length into
three equal parts triplets on quarter note for example are three notes that will
take the same length than two quarter notes and triplets on eighth notes or three
notes that will take the same length that two eighth note here is how this
triplets sound like [Music] then there are quintuplets that are a way to divide
the length in five equal parts six to plates divided by six and septoplate
divided by seven for example can to plate sex to plate and septuplets on eighth
notes or respectively five six and seven notes that will take the same length
than four eighth notes a quick note aside most doors allow you to make triplets
by editing the time grid but that doesn't always allow you to make other tuplets
so i'll show you how i do them in my door of choice ableton live and hopefully it
would work in a similar way in other doors so for quintuplets you put six notes
the five notes of the quintoplet plus one note then select them all and squash
them so the five first notes fill the right amount of beats and then you have a
perfect quarter plate that you can then duplicate as you want for sextuplets you
can use the triplet grid as six is a multiple of three and for the septa plates
you put eight notes so the scepter plate plus one note then select them and
squash them like before so you can see the time of your song as divided in beats
which are all divided by two then subdivided by two as much as you want really
and that forms a grid that is really well represented by a piano roll of a door
and then you have these modifiers to modify the length of each note to create
notes with length that doesn't really fit with this green so you can make any
rhythm you want and so we now have all these notes to choose from to fill that
grid and we can pretty much create any rhythm pattern we like really would there
be a drum pattern a melody a harmonic rhythm which is the rhythm with which your
chords will change and these rhythm patterns don't have to be all of the same
length they can be three bits long four beats five bits long and the length of
these rhythms will be determined by the type of bar we put this rhythm in or
rather by the time signature of this bar bars are like containers to put notes in
and the length that will give us the core structure of our rhythm is given us by
their time signature the time signature is the numbers we sometimes see at the
beginning of a bar and that is presented like a fraction these bars and time
signatures will be the topic of the next video in the last episode we talked
about different length notes can have which is a way to divide time in sensible
length so we can combine them to create rhythms then bars are like containers in
which we can put these notes and these bars are a good way to divide the song as
well especially because bars can be of different length so they don't always
contain the same number of beats the way we tell how many beats fits in a bar is
called a time signature it appears in the form of two numbers at the beginning of
a bar the top number tells us how many notes fit in the bar and the number below
tells the nature of these notes most of the time it's a quarter or eighth note
then all the bars after that would be of the same size until another time
signatures appears and tells otherwise so a time signature of 4 4 for example
tells us that the bar is made of four quarter notes so it's 4 bits long this is
the most common time signature in today's music so common that is sometimes
written c instead of 4 4. but unlike some may think this c doesn't stand for
common as this time signature hasn't always been the most used and this all comes
back from the middle age [Music] back in the middle age around the 13th century
in europe the concept of bars didn't really exist though at this time we already
had some symbols to write notes of different length but the relative length of
these notes would vary long story short in the 14th century the breve could be
divided in either two or three subdivisions if it was divided in three
subdivisions it was said that the tempest was perfect and the tempest was
imperfect if the breath was divided in two subdivisions and then these
subdivisions of the breve called the semi-breves could also be divided in either
two or three subdivisions in this case we talked about major prolactio for three
subdivisions and minor prolactio for two subdivisions so you have these four
possibilities the tempest perfectors where the bit is divided in three it was
indicated at the beginning of the score by a circle and the tempest imperfectus
where the bit is divided into that was indicated by a half circle then if the
prolessor was major a dot was added in the circle or the half circle and that is
where the c comes from originally it's not a c it's a half circle that means
tempus imperfectas porolacio minor in which every beat is divided in two
subdivisions that are also divided into subdivisions just like our 4 4 that
became the most used time signature this is a very short version of how it worked
back then and maybe someday i will make some episodes on how european music
evolved in this part of the middle age and how france kind of rocked this game in
terms of innovation at that time but for now there you go now let's have a look
at some different time signatures we already talked about
the 4 4 where a bar is made of four beats usually the first and the third beats
are considered strong beats with the first one being the strongest so the bits 2
and 4 are considered the wig bits as a basic drum pattern to highlight that we
often find a kick drum on the first beat and a snare on either the 2 and 4 or on
the third beat [Music] with a time signature of 3 4 the bar would be filled with
three quarter notes so the bar would be made of three beats with the strong beat
being on the one and the b2 and three being weak beats [Music] a bar with a time
signature of 6 8 would also be three bits long because there would be six eighth
notes so that the same length that three quarter notes but the eight as a
denominator is a hint that the strong and weak beats cannot be divided in quarter
notes in fact in six eight the strong beats would be on the first and fourth
eighth note the first one being the strongest so it's like a two bit bar with
each beat being divided in three subdivisions here is what it sounds like
compared to a three-four measure [Music] the 4 4 and the 3 4 are called simple
time signature it means that the beat is divided into simple notes here the beat
falls on every quarter note the 6 8 however is called a compound time signature
because the beat is divided into dotted notes here the bit hits every dotted
quarter note another example of compound time signature can be 9 8. here the bar
contains 9 8th notes a common way to divide that bar would be to put the strong
beats on the first the fourth and the seventh note so it sounds like this [Music]
there with these time signatures we covered the equivalent of all tempers from
the 14th centuries we saw earlier the four four would be the equivalent of tempus
imperfectas palacio minor where the long notes are divided in two and these
subdivisions are also divided in two the three four would be the equivalent of
the tempest perfectors parlacio minor where the long notes are divided in three
and the subdivisions are divided in two the six eight would be the equivalent of
the tempest imperfectas prolacyo major where the long notes are divided in two
and the subdivisions are divided in three and finally the nine eight the least
common of the four would be the equivalent of the tempus perfectos prolacyo major
where the long notes are divided in three and these subdivisions are also divided
in three among these four it's interesting to see the most used time division
from the middle age became the least used time signature today but this modern
time signature system allows us to create more types of time signatures to make
bars of 5 or 7 beats for example this would make sometimes signatures like 5 4
and 7 4 or 5 8 and 7 8. this kind of time signatures are called asymmetric
matters because they are not made of groupings of two or three notes but a
mixture of the two the five eight for instance can be counted either like a group
of two eighth notes plus a group of three or a group of three eighth notes plus a
group of two in the first case the accents the strong beats would fall on the
first and third notes and in the second case it would fall on the first and
fourth note for a bar of 5 4 it would work in the exact same way but with quarter
notes instead of 8th note for a time signature of 7 8 it would work with the
same groupings of two and three notes so it can be either two plus two plus three
or two plus three plus two or three plus two plus two in the first example the
strong beats would fall on the first the third and the fifth notes in the second
example they would fall on the first the third and the sixth note and in the
third example the accents would be on the first the fourth and the sixth note
[Music] for a 7-4 time signature it would be the exact same thing but with
quarter note instead of eighth notes again and it works the exact same way with a
time signature of 9 8 we just saw earlier with groupings of two and three notes
we can have all these different combinations [Music] with all of this you could
make your own time signature with simple compound and asymmetric matters you can
even use several of them in one song as the song doesn't need to use only one
time signature all the way and each one have its own character and its own vibe
knowing how to identify where are the strong beats or accents should help you to
get used to them these being said don't hesitate to move these accents around i'm
giving them as a guideline but there are lots of examples of music but in the
accents on different beats but for now we still haven't talked about polyrhythms
and that's something i would like to tackle in the next episode of this series
polyrhythm is the superposition of two rhythms that don't have the same number of
beats but are of the same duration for example in a bar of four four which is
four beats long you could have three triplets half notes over four quarter notes
then you have a polyrhythm of three over four the same duration the bar of four
four is divided in three by the triplets and by four by the quarter notes here is
what it sounds like [Music] in the same way you could make other polyrhythms
like 5 over 4 or 7 over 5 for instance as long as the two rhythms that are
layered feel the same amount of time usually one bar it will be a polyrhythm if i
talk about polyrhythms i also have to talk about polymeta a polymeter is the
superposition of two time signatures that don't have the same number of beats per
bar so their bars would be of different length combining two rhythms that are not
of the same length will mean that the more their patterns repeat the more offset
they'll become even though each of their subdivisions can be of the same duration
let's have a look at this to see what i mean this is a 3 4 of a 4 4 polymeter
we'll have a bar of 3 4 so we'll play the first note and leave the two other
silence that would be our pattern that will then be repeated that will make 1 e a
2 e a 3 e a 4 e a and with the bar of 4 4 we'll play the first one and leave the
three other silence they will make one e and the 2 e and the 3 e and so now if we
layer these bars on top of each other every quarter notes will be of the same
length and both rhythms will start on the same beat but as you can see the hits
offset over time because it's a 3 4 of a four four polymeter the two patterns
will resynchronize again after three loops of the four four patterns or four
loops of the three four patterns and this polymeter will play like this you can
notice how this polymeter of 3 4 of a 4 4 is similar to the polyrhythm of 3 over
4. they sound identical but at different speeds [Music] and that is because
their ratio is the same it's three to four and that's probably the most important
part but we'll get back to it so to sum it up a polyrhythm is one length of time
usually a bar divided in two different ways so the notes won't have the same
length in the two rhythms and the polymeter is two rhythms built around the same
type of notes so the total length of the two rhythms are different so you can
play this polymeter as is having these hits played with different notes by
different instruments or with different drum sounds but you can also create
rhythm a bit more complex for each layer to see how they combine and that's where
knowing where all the strong and weak bits of each time signature can be handy as
it gives you a good base to start with again this is all explained in the
previous video about time signatures but keep in mind that the ratio is
everything the simpler the ratio is between two meters the easier the polyrhythm
or polymeter is to internalize if the ratio between the two meters is very
complex like let's say 9 over 15 the polyrhythm will be more difficult to
understand quickly if it kind of reminds you the very first video of this series
about consonances and dissonances you're right combining rhythms kind of works
like combining tones where the simpler the ratio is between two frequencies the
more consented they are if you want to learn more about the relationship between
rhythm and pitches you can watch adam neely's confirmation about it on ableton
channels it's a 45 minute video talking about how polyrhythms and chords can be
related and then explain a few things beyond that point it's very interesting
i'll leave a link in the description so the simplest ratio you can have between
two rhythms is two over three where an amount of time is divided in two in the
first rhythm and divided in three in the second rhythm this particular polyrhythm
is called an emiola and you can obtain it by combining a bar of 3 4 and a bar of
6 8. the bar of 3 4 is divided in 3 bits that can each be divided in two which
gives us this one and two and three end and the bar of six eight is made of two
groupings of three nodes which gives us this one e and two e end so see how we
have this pattern of two repeating three times and this pattern of three repeat
it twice the emula is kinda special because it is a polyrhythm the same bar
divided in two ways in two and in three beats but at the same time it's also a
polymeter as it is two-time signatures combined where all the subdivisions are of
the same length so let's hear how the emula sounds like i'll play both rhythms
with bell notes the rhythm of two will be these two notes and for the rhythm of
three i will play these notes [Music] [Music] the simplicity of this polyrhythm
makes it super effective and it has been used in countless musics and genres from
sub-saharan african music to renaissance pieces quick note aside about the
relation between pitch and rhythm the
term emiola was also used by early pythagoreans to talk about the perfect fifth
describing the ratio of two lengths of two strings being three to two the
shortest string would then make three vibration in the same amount of time that
the longest trick makes two producing a perfect fifth and that is the kind of
thing we talked about in the very first video of this series if you want to see
more about how to use the emula i will also leave another link in the description
it is for a video of j klisio from signals music studio where he uses the emula
for a composition okay just before we wrap up this video let's make a last
polymeter of 7 4 over 4 4 so the two rhythms will offset in the way that it will
take seven loops of four four bars or four loops of seven four bars uh for these
two meters to re-synchronize if we write the first note of each bar we end up
with something like this so we can see how this matters layer let's see how it
goes if the length of this whole part was 1 bar this would make a polyrhythm of 7
over 4 as there would be 7 bits over 4 bits [Music] which means that if you can
speed that up and internalize it well writing a polymeter is a good way to learn
its corresponding polyrhythm and again the simplest the ratio is between two
rhythms the simpler it is to learn as the loop will be shorter anyway so we have
this polymeter of seven four over four four let's see how it sounds with a bit
more complex rhythms i'll play the kick and the snare on the first and the third
bits of each bar four four then i'll divide the bar of seven four in two so it's
more of two bars of seven eight and i'll play open hi-hats on the one the three
and the five and close high hearts on the two the four the six and the seven
there have been 18 episodes before this one and we have talked about a lot of
things actually we may have talked about pretty much everything i wanted to talk
about when i started this series and of all the things i feel like sometimes it
can be difficult to see how they all combine and how it is all connected so today
i'd like to sum up a lot of things we saw in this series and try to show how they
relate and then put everything on one page that can make a useful document for
composing to begin everything on this document will be based on the key of c
that's probably the easiest because everything seems to be based on the c major
scale and it's easy to visualize on a piano keyboard as it is all the white keys
but to help you use other tonalities there will be other pages for these other
tonalities so at the top of the first page let's start with a reminder of all the
intervals of the scale if you know the root note of your tonality is c you can
see the function of all the other notes with the corresponding intervals in this
table for example if the root note is c a e would be a major third because it is
two whole tones above c and four whole turns above the root note could be either
an augmented fifth or a minor sixth depending if you consider it a g the fifth
note of the scale or a the sixth note of the scale so in the same way you could
find all the other intervals you might need up to the 13th under that let's put
the c major scale if you wonder how major and minor scales are built it is all
explained in the fourth episode about scales and modes so then we can add a list
of all the chords of all the degrees of the major scale from the first degree to
the seventh degree that's major minor minor major major minor and diminished so
the first degree of the c major scale either c major chord the second degree
would be a d minor chord the third degree would be a e minor chord etc this gives
you all the chords you can use within the c major scale and if you want to use
another major scale you can replace these notes by the notes of this other major
scale so it would be all in the tonality you're using the type of chords for each
degree won't change but as i said earlier there will be other pages to help you
use other tonalities to know how to build major minor diminished or augmented
chords it is all explained in the episode about triads in the last row i will
also add the seventh chord for each degree so if you want to use seventh chord
for your song you could know what type of seventh chord you could use for every
degree so the first degree would be a c major seventh chord the second degree
would be a d minor seventh chord etc we saw how to build those in the episode
about seventh chords it's also in this episode that we talked about all the
intervals that you have at the top of the page okay so under that let's add the
same table for minor scales natural harmonic and melodic so if you're using a c
minor scale you can use these instead it's worth noting that the harmonic minor
scale is a bit special as it contains a different type of 7th chord on each
degree from the first degree to the 7th degree that goes minor major 7th half
diminished 7th augmented minor 7th dominant 7th major 7th and diminished seventh
to know how this natural harmonic and melodic minor scales are built it is in the
episodes about dominant chords but just so it's said here the difference between
the harmonic minor and the natural minor is that the seventh note of the harmonic
minor scale is raised by a semitone compared to the natural minor scale and the
melodic minor scale have both the sixth and seventh notes raised by a semitone
compared to the natural minor scale actually the melodic minor scale is just like
the major scale but with a third that is minor you could use the three minor
scales in one composition as they are very close to one another and there are
basically three variations of the same scale now to use these chords more easily
you have a list of different cadences here cadences are like recognizable chord
progressions that are really useful it's like the punctuation in a sentence so
first you have the authentic cadence that goes from a fifth degree to a first
degree often prepared by a two or four and the plagal cadence that goes from a
fourth degree to a first degree which are both conclusive cadences that trend for
the tonality you are in then you have a half cadence that finishes a musical
sentence on the fifth degree it often goes from the first degree to the fifth
degree and that is like a question that needs to be answered and then the
deceptive cadence that begins like an authentic cadence and but then at the last
minute goes to another degree instead of the one it often goes for the sixth more
details on those on the episodes about cadences then let's add some more exotic
cadences that can be useful we can add the tritone substitution which replaces
the degree 5 in an authentic cadence by a flat 2 so it goes from flat 2 to 1 and
this flat 2 is often a major chord or a dominant 7th chord you can see it in the
episode about borrowings and substitutions we can also add the napolitan sixth
which is very similar it is also a flat two but that replaces a chord of the
second or fourth degree a subdominant chord so it's often seen before an
authentic cadence then we can add the foray and cadence which is like a half
cadence that is prepared by a fourth degree in its dominant seventh form you can
see this two last chord progression in the first episode about special chords and
lastly there is the andalusian cadence which is not really a cadence it's more of
a chord progression that is supposed to be played in loop but just in case you'd
like to try it as a regular curtains here it is to have more details on the
andalusian cadence you'll find it in the second episode about special chords and
chord progressions if i ever talk about other cadences in the future i will
update this document as well so if you're watching this in the future and you see
that other cadences have been added you'll surely find an episode explaining it
in the playlist of music theory in 5 minutes now at some point in your
composition you may want to modulate to another tonality to help you do that you
have here a circle of fifth with this you can know all the notes of every major
and natural minor scales and you can see what tonalities are close to the one
you're using in the c major scale that is at the top all the notes are natural
and it's the same for the a natural minor scale which is it's relative then every
step you go clockwise are the sharp notes in the scale these sharp notes always
appears in the same order which is written here f then c then g d a e and b and
then every step you take anti-clockwise adds a flat note in the scale and these
flat notes appears in the opposite order first the b then the e then a d g c f so
for example in f major this is one step anti-clockwise so it has one flat note
and this note is b because it's the first flat note to appear so the scale of f
major would be f g a b flat c d e and then you can use this table from earlier
to know that the first degree the f chord would be a major chord or a major
seventh chord the second degree the g chord would be a minor chord or a minor
seventh chord etc and if you take d minor it's the same it's one step
anticlockwise so it's one flat note that is b flat and the scale is d e f g a b
flat c you can then use these notes in the table of the natural minor scale to
know what kind of chord is on each degree and from there you can find the notes
for the harmonics and melodic minor scales that you can put in their respective
tables if you want to use them there are a lot of things that you can do with a
circle of fifth and you can have more details about that on the episode dedicated
to it so you can also use this circle
of fifth to know what is the dominant chord of each chord and use that to switch
from a tonality to another for example a d chord is good to go to a tonality of g
a g chord is good to go to a tonality of c a c chord is good to go to a tonality
of f etc you can see more on how to use this in the episode about modulations
another thing to add to this page are modes ionian dorian phrygian lydian
mixolydian aeolian and locrian with the corresponding series of intervals that
build each one next to them one mnemonic sentence to remember the order of this
mode can be i don't punch like mohammed ali i thought that might be useful so
there it is once again i've put all them as c-scales so i thought they would be
more useful to compare them so this is c onion which is the c major scale then c
dorian cephergian c lydian c mixolydian c aeolian which is the c natural minor
scale and c locrian if you want to learn more about modes and how it is all built
it is in the episode about scales and modes that should already be listed in this
little i at the top one last thing i would like to add to this page is a table of
secondary dominance at any point in your composition you can add the fifth degree
of any chord and then go to that chord that's a secondary dominant and that's a
good way to add notes that are not originally in the scale you're using so on the
first line are the chords of the c major scale and on the second line are the
fifth degrees of each of those chords so you could use an a7 chord to go to a d
chord or a c7 chord to go to a f chord for example the four next lines are the
four notes that build these secondary dominant chords the tonic the third the
fifth and the seventh see if you're using a a7 chord to go to a d chord for
example the a7 chord would be made of a c sharp e and g so you will be using a c
sharp that is normally not in the c major scale as a bonus i also added a chart
of different types of chords you could substitute for 5th degree here is the
dominant 7th chord the type of chord we normally use with a 5th degree in a
cadence with the example of a g7 chord which is the fifth degree in the c major
scale that will use the note g b d and f so it doesn't use any notes external to
the c major scale now you could substitute any of these other chords for this g7
chord for example a g diminished 7th chord would use a b flat and a d flat which
are external to the c major scale if you want more details about that it is in
the episode about borrowings and substitutions and that will wrap up this first
page i know that maybe a lot of information if you're discovering it for the
first time but everything should be explained in the series of episodes i had
some feedback saying that this format of five minutes per videos can be a bit
fast for people who are new to music theory so you might want to rewind sometimes
but if anything is still unclear and if you have any questions don't hesitate to
ask them in the comment sections there is no dumb question and i would be happy
to help the 11 following pages are essentially the same but based on different
root notes so you wouldn't have to transport this whole page to an eternality
they are all already done [Music] so the next page will be all about rhythm
first let's put the equivalence of different notations of a whole note being
divided in half notes that are divided in quarter notes etc i'm not sure if
that's really useful once you know it but that kind of looks cool and we can put
the same diagram with the equivalent symbols for our silences then we can break
down all the ways we could divide one bit into 16th notes i'm actually using a
system of squares that are filled or empty so this would look like the midi
blocks in your door and there could be any type of notes like quarter notes 8th
note or 16th note for example we can then number them so we could easily create
rhythm by picking numbers at random this can make good building blocks to come up
with some hopefully interesting rhythms let's also do it with triplets so we
would have both binary and tenery rhythms more details on how we can divide time
in the first episode about rhythm now to use these notes and rhythms in a more
diverse way we can write down different time signatures with an indication of
where all the strong beats in each one the strong beats are the round notes and
the weak beats are the crosses these are just indications of where we put the
strong beats most of the time this is by no mean a prescription of what you
should do all the time but the main principle here is that you can divide these
time signatures into groupings of two or three notes and the first note of each
grouping then becomes a strong beat you can have more information about time
signatures in this dedicated episode here the last pages of this document are
kind of annexes here i listed a lot of different scales that you can try if you
want to change from the major or minor scales and they are all listed by modes so
for example this first table starts with the harmonic minor scales here on the
first row and then the second row is its second mode meaning that it's a scale
that uses the exact same notes but starting on the second note then the third row
is the third mode with the same notes but starting on the third note the fourth
row in the fourth mode etc then i transposed all these scales to a key of c so
they all begin with the same note and i guess it would be easier to compare them
or to find a scale in particular if you know what notes you want to use i did
this for a lot of different skills so you would have a lot of skills to play with
but as you can see for some of them i didn't find any corresponding name these
documents may be updated in the future so if you know the name of any of these
missing scales or if you'd like to see other elements on this document you can
tell me in the comments these last pages are kind of a bonus as we didn't really
see these modes in particular in the series but there you have them so you can
try them if you're still not sure about modes you can watch the episode about
scales and modes that is already listed in the description these are built with
the same principles i didn't include the chords for each degree for each of these
scales as i wanted to limit the visual cluster on these pages but if you want to
know how to find all the chords that will go with each of these skills the
episode about tries can help you do that music theory is like a cookbook it's
full of recipes you can follow as is and it will make great dishes but you can
also take these techniques as an inspiration and apply them in another way to
make something of your own and people have been making amazing dishes long before
the cookbook exists so there are some cases where some music used things that
just didn't fit with our occidental music theory concepts and other cases where
techniques from these western cookbooks were used in an odd way to create
something new today we'll talk about pentatonic scales a pentatonic scale is a
scale that is made of five notes penta meaning five most of the time when we talk
about a pentatonic scale we talk about a scale of five notes that is derived from
a regular hypotenuse gear a scale of 7 notes in a way that some notes are
removed to avoid intervals of a semitone for example the c pentatonic major scale
is derived from the regular major scale of c [Music] only the f and the b are
removed so we avoid the interval of one semitone between e and f here we keep the
e to keep the third of the c major chord and between b and c here we keep the c
to keep the tonic of the scare and as a minor is the relative of c major the
pentatonic minor scale of a will use the same notes but only starting on the a
actually we could write down all the modes of these pentatonic scales for future
reference i'll add them to my big music theory cheat sheet that you can download
for free with the link in the description for more detail about this document i
made a video explaining it so these pentatonic scales are very handy and because
they don't contain any semitone interval it's fairly hard to get something
dissonant with them for example they are great if you are using a modular setup
that triggers not randomly notes would be played randomly but there shouldn't be
much friction between them these scales are also used a lot for soloing in rock
or blues music among others but we'll get back to that later if you want to
experiment with the pentatonic scale you can try to use only the black keys on
your keyboard that would be using the f sharp pentatonic major scale or the d-
sharp and tetonic binary scale so this is one way we could look at pentatonic
scales through the scope of our western music theory where we just take some of
our scales and remove some notes to avoid steps of a semitone but pentatonic
scales have been used for ages in a lot of different cultures that used totally
different paradigms and this is a great way to remind us that our occidental
music theory is not the only way to make music it's only one system among others
it is i guess the most used around the world so much so that these other cultures
tend to adopt occidental scales and instruments because it allows us to play all
together and because well mainly because of colonization for example some pre-
columbian scales divided the octave in five equal intervals so this made a scale
of five notes so that's still pentatonic but these notes didn't really line up
with the notes used in occidental scales this was simply not compatible with our
western music theory so under the influence
of the spanish instrument makers there adopted the accidental scales to make
their instruments making their traditional song sound slightly out of tune but
allowing them to play occidental music as well but making other cultures music
down to only the use of scales would be rather reductive there are often a lot
more theoretical and even spiritual concepts attached to that for example if we
look up the modes of our pentatonic scales from earlier we can find alternative
names for most of them for example ragabopali ragamatyamavati ragadeva etc these
ragas come from indian classical music and they're way more than just chaos they
have actually no direct translation to concepts in the european classical music
tradition araga is more like a combination of a scale not necessarily of five
notes by the way with musical structures and motifs that can be combined and
reordered by the musician who is improvising with it ragas are considered to have
the ability to color the minds of the audience so traditionally each raga have
emotional and symbolic associations attached to it and there are several hundreds
of them and this raga don't always use intervals that match the western music
scales as well all these to say two things pentatonic scales are awesome they are
easy to use and you can use them in many ways and they are present in a lot of
cultures and some musical concepts from other cultures are not always compatible
with our occidonator music theory even though some cultures have adopted some of
our western concepts but sometimes it is our music theory that evolves to
implement something new and that's what we'll see in the next episode of this
series where we will talk about blue scales here is the blues minor scale of a
it's made of a c d e flat e and g apart from the fact it sounds awesome it is
also just like a minor pentatonic scan but what this diminished fifth added this
other note is a note we called blue note but where does this come from it makes
more sense to look at the major blues scales to find that out the relative major
of a minor is c major so the c major blue scales would use the same notes but
starting from c so that's c d e flat e g a sin like this the blue scale is like a
pentatonic major scale but with a minor third added so it has both a minor and a
major third and this is exactly how this extra note was introduced in the scale
as a minor third see you can use a major pentatonic over a major tonality of the
same name like c major pentatonic over a song written in c major for instance all
the notes are in common so it will work you can use a minor pentatonic over a
minor tonality of the same name like c minor pentatonic over a song written in c
minor for instance all the notes are in common so it will also work but you can
also use some elements of the minor pentatonic over the major tonality of the
same name like using some notes of the c minor pentatonic over a song in c major
for instance it's not as intuitive but that's what a lot of early blues men did
because when a major chord is playing and you play a minor third over it it
creates a friction between the minor third and the major third that are then
coexisting and then this minor third wants to go up to the major third of the
chord to be resolved so you can use this e flat as a bridge to go to a e or use
this b flat to go to a b these notes that are specific to the minor scale are
better used as transitions to go toward a note that is part of the major scale
that is used for the song if you finish a melee decline on a note that is not
part of this major scale it will not be as effective as you would then finish on
a dissonance that is not resolved but using these dissonances as transitions has
this particular blues color to it which is really nice another way to use this
dissonance between a minor third and a major third of a chord is by using a
dominant 7 sharp 9 type of chord this is a regular dominant 7th chord made of a
root note a major third a perfect fifth and a minor seventh to which we add an
augmented ninth just like a regular dominant seventh chord this type of chord is
often used on the fifth degree of a scale so if we are in c major it could be
seen on its fifth degree g and our g dominant seventh sharp nine chord would be
made of the root note g it's major third b it's perfect fifth d it's minor
seventh f and the ninth should be a but we need a sharp nine so we raise that by
a semitone which gives us a b flat as you can see we have then in this chord a
major third b and a b flat which is equal to a minor third this chord is
dissonant but it works because these two thirds are spread out on two separate
octaves because it is used on a 5th degree this g7 sharp 9 chord would resolve
well on a c chord which is our first degree so we have a nice 5 to 1 authentic
cadence this dominant 7 sharp 9 chord is also called the jimi hendrix chord
because it's a chord that he loved and that he helped popularize notably with his
song purple haze the chord progression of this song cycles between the chords e7
sharp 9 g and a here is the e7 sharp 9 which can be considered as our degree 5
with the notes e g sharp b d and f double sharp which is like a g natural then
there is the g chord which uses notes already in the e 7 sharp 9 chord the g the
b and the d and then it goes to the a chord which is the first degree chord that
resolves well after the e seven sharp nine chord so when you play over a major
tonality you can use a major pentatonic but you can also use notes from the minor
pentatonic so if you mix the major pentatonic and the minor pentatonic together
to make it only one scale for the tonality of c for example this will make this
gear c d e flat e f g a b flat you can use this scale as is but it could be
tricky to use sometimes as the risk of friction would necessarily increase so the
blue scale is a simplified version of that where we take the major pentatonic and
we add only the third of the minor pentatonic scale this makes it easier to use
because then we only have to be careful of this one note and we still have access
to this blues flavor given by this little chromatic bit introduced by the
introduction of this minor third this gives us the major blue scale and if we
take the relative minor of this scale which would be the scale using the same
notes but starting from a we have now the minor blues scale and this is how we
end up with a blue scale that looks like a minor pentatonic but where the
diminished fifth added this e flat that have been added is three tones above the
root note which is an interval of a diminished fifth this is something that is
the result of ages of evolution and the precise origin of this scale is unclear
but it is the result of repetitive use of unorthodox methods that created this
skills and it is one of the most used in rock blues or jazz it is one of the
first one a beginner guitarist would learn for improvisation because it works on
anything and the morality i'd like to take out of that is that if music is a
language there's always a way we can communicate even though we use it in a
different way or in an orthodox way and we are also able to make up our own slang
or dialects that maybe someday will find its way into the dictionary as you
probably already know to build a chord you basically take the note of the scale
you want to use starts with the notes you want to build a chord from that the
notes that will give the chord its name and then follow the notes of the scale
keeping one note every two if you keep three notes you have a triad which is made
of a tonic a third and a fifth [Music] i'll leave a link in the description to
the episode that talks about triads if you keep four notes you have a seventh
chord which is made of a tonic a third a fifth and a seventh [Music] i will also
leave a link in the description to the episode that talks about seventh chord and
if you keep five notes then you have a ninth chord which is made of a tonic a
third a fifth a seventh and a ninth then the nature of this ninth chord depends
on the interval separating each note and that is what we'll see now there are
many types of ninth chords so we'll start with the most commonly used and then
finish with the more rare ones but just before we begin i'd like to make three
notes first one thing to keep in mind is that the more extension notes you add
above the triad the more color the chord has but also the more tension you add so
generally these seventh and ninth notes need to be resolved in one way or another
second this ninth note is actually the same note than the second but one octave
higher so it can introduce friction with the tonic and the third as these notes
are very close to attenuate this friction it is often advised to keep the ninth
an octave higher so it sounds smoother by letting the chord breathe but there is
no particular rule for that so you do as you want really and third when you don't
play the seventh of a chord so you only have a triad with a ninth we call that
add9 and generally this ninth is a major ninth so we can have for example a c
minor add9 which is a c minor chord plus a major 9th or we can have for example a
c add 9 which is a c major chord where the major 9th added you'll see in a
minute how you can use these chords as there are only variations over the ninth
chord i have on my list so the first type of ninth chord we're gonna see is the
dominant ninth which is simply noted as nine it is made of a major triad with a
minor seventh so that's a dominant seventh chord to which we add a major ninth so
for a c chord that would be c the major
third e the perfect fifth g the minor seventh b flat and the major ninth d this
type of chord is often used as a dominant chord on the fifth degree of your
tonality so that would resolve well on the first degree for instance so in c
major for example the fifth degree would be g so the progression would be g
dominant ninth to a c major chord and in a minor a five to one progression would
make a dominant ninth to a minor chord it is also a common practice to omit the
fifth in a dominant ninth chord so you would have only the tonic the third the
seventh and the ninth now to add more tension to this dominant ninth chord you
could alter it by lowering its ninth by a semitone so the chord would be made by
the same dominant seventh chord but where the minor ninth added this type of
chord would be noted seven flat nine so for a c chord it would be made of the
root note c the major third e the perfect fifth g the minor seventh b flat and
the minor ninth d flat and it would be used and resolved in the exact same way
than the dominant 9th chord so in the tonality of c major that would make g7 flat
9 to a c major chord and in a tonality of a minor that would make e7 flat 9 to a
minor you could also alter the dominant 9th chord the other way around by moving
the 9th upper semitone instead of down that would make a seventh sharp ninth
chord which is built with the dominant seventh chord to which we add an augmented
ninth this chord is also known as the hendrix chord as it was made popular by
jimi hendrix we saw that in the episode about blues scale so for a c chord it
would be made of the root note c the major third e the perfect fifth g the minor
seventh b flat and the augmented ninth d sharp and again it is used and resolved
just like a dominant 9th chord so in c major they would make g7 sharp 9 to c
major and in a minor that would make e7 sharp 9 to a minor to sum it up you can
use a dominant seventh chord on the fifth degree on your tonality to which you
add either a major ninth a minor ninth or augmented ninth depending on the color
you want to add to your chord progression and that works well in either a major
or minor tonality then you have a major 9th chord which is made of a major triad
with a major 7th and a major 9th so that's a major 7th chord to which we add a
major 9th on a c chord that would be made of the root note c the major third e
the perfect fifth g the major seventh b and the major ninth d this is a type of
chord you can use on the first degree or the fourth degree in a major tonality
but you can also use it on a third and sixth degree of a minor tonality using the
major ninth chord on these degrees would work better because it would use only
the notes already in the scale you're using so in the tonality of c major that
would mean using a f major 9th for the fourth degree or a c major ninth for the
first degree as an example we can try a chord progression that goes from one to
four and then four to one or in the tonality of a minor we can use a c major
ninth chord on the third degree or f major ninth chord on the sixth degree for
example so you could make this chord [Music] progression the chord we commonly
name minor 9th actually contains a major 9th the minor 9th chord is made of the
minor triad with a minor 7th and a major 9th so it's like a minor 7th chord where
the major 9th added so on a c chord that would be made of the root note c the
minor third e flat the perfect fifth g the minor seventh b flat and the major
ninth d that's the type of chord you can find in a major tonality on the second
degree and on the sixth degree as building a 9th chord on these degrees using
only the notes of a major scale would make a minor 9th chord and in a minor
tonality this type of chord can be found on the 1st and 4th degrees so in the
tonality of c major the 6th and the 2nd degree would be a minor and d minor this
type of chord seems to be a bit more efficient on a second degree just before a
5th degree chord so that would prepare a nice 2-5-1 chord progression if you want
to resolve that progression totally so we could make this chord progression
[Music] and in the tonality of a minor for instance the fourth and the first
degree would be also a d minor and a minor which can go well together now we
could have a minor triad with a minor 7th and a minor 9th this type of chord
would be noted as minor 7th minor 9th for a c chord for example that would be
made of the root note c the minor third e flat the perfect fifth g the minor
seventh b flat and the minor ninth d flat this is a type of chord you can find in
a major tonality on the third degree and in a minor tonality on the fifth degree
but it is less common in a minor tonality because for a fifth degree chord a
dominant ninth chord is often preferred so in the tonality of c major for example
the third degree would be e minor so we could make that e minor 7th minor 9th
chord then we can have a 9th chord built with a diminished triad with a minor 7th
and a minor 9th so it's like a half diminished 7th chord to which we add a minor
9th i personally like to call this type of chord half diminished 9th but it is
often called simply diminished nights which i find a bit confusing so to avoid
confusion we can call it a half diminished 7th minor 9th with this cross circle
that means half diminished anyway on a c chord that would be the root note c the
minor third e flat the diminished fifth g flat the minor seventh b flat and the
minor ninth d flat [Music] that's the type of chord you could find in the major
tonality on the seventh degree for instance and in minor tonality on the second
degree but it is more used in minor tonalities as the seventh degree in a major
tonality can be analyzed as a fifth degree without the root note the tension it
brings to the chord progression is very similar so let's see how it sounds in the
minor tonality on the second degree in a minor the second degree would be b so a
b half diminished ninth would be made of the nodes b d f a and c so that's a lot
of different ninth chords already and a lot of options to choose from but almost
all these chords can already be found in a major or minor tonality as they only
use the notes from the major and the natural minor scales now we are going to see
some types of 9th chords that can be a bit trickier to use and they use notes
that are outside of the major and the natural minor scales but most of these more
rare 9th chords can actually be found in the harmonic minor scale so more options
to explore but maybe a bit trickier to use you can have what i like to call a
fully diminished 9th chord it is made of a diminished triad a diminished 7th and
a minor 9th so that's like a diminished 7th chord to which we add a minor 9th to
avoid confusion with the previous half diminished 7th minor 9th chord that is
sometimes just called diminished 9th we can call this one diminished 7th minor
9th so for a c chord that would be the root note c the minor 3rd e flat the
diminished fifth g flat the diminished seventh b double flat which is the same
note then a and the minor ninth d flat [Music] that is a very dissonant chord as
it contains two intervals of a triton and an interval of a minor second this is a
type of chord that is sometimes used in a minor tonality on the seventh degree so
in the tonality of a minor there would be a g sharp diminished seventh minor
ninth the augmented ninth chord is made of a major triad with a major seventh and
augmented ninth that can be noted plus nine or augmented ninth so for a c
augmented ninth chord that would be the root note c the major third e the perfect
fifth g the major seventh b and the augmented ninth d sharp that's a type of
chord that is more often used in a minor tonality on the 6th degree so in a minor
the 6th degree would be f and we could have this chord progression [Music] you
could also have an augmented triad where the major 7th and a major ninth that
would be noted plus seventh major ninth so for a c plus seven major ninth chord
there would be the root note c with the major third e the augmented fifth g sharp
the major seventh b and the major ninth d this is a type of chord you could find
on the third degree in a minor tonality so the c 7 major 9th chord could be the
third degree in the tonality of a minor [Music] and finally you could have a
minor triad with a major seventh and a major ninth so that would be like a minor
ninth chord we saw earlier but with a major seventh instead of a minor one and
that can be noted as minor major 7 major 9. so for a c minor major 7th major 9th
chord that would be the root note c the minor 3rd e flat the perfect 5th g the
major 7th b and the major 9th d a chord that can be a substitute for the first
degree in the minor tonality so in the tonality of a minor the a minor chord
could be replaced by a a minor major 7th major 9th chord at some point so that
are 11 different types of ninth chord to experiment with in your compositions
that's a lot of options but remember that your chords don't have to be all ninth
chords ninth chords are great to add color to a chord progression but it may not
be the color you want for each chord so as always just trust your ears one way
that can be good to voice this ninth chord is to have some notes clustered in the
middle with some notes a bit apart in the bass and some note a bit apart in the
higher notes so you would have the color of a ninth chord in the middle but with
a more defined bass and a more defined melody [Music] so in this video we'll
try to take a bit of everything we saw in this series and apply it to harmonize a
melody to make
it easier a few months ago i've made a document gathering a lot of useful
information we've seen i also made a video summing everything up and explaining
how that document works so i'll leave a link to the pdf file and the video down
below in the description so let's begin let's say the melody we want to harmonize
is this one the first step would be to find the tonality it could be in so we
would have a set of chords to start with so if we check the notes of the melody
we have a c sharp a d a e f g a and b flat so we have seven different notes
already which is good that means that we may already have all the notes of the
scale we are going to use and to find the scale we are going to use the cycle of
fifth i'll leave a link in the description to the episode that talks about the
cycle of fifth in case you need to refresh your memories on how it works so we
have one flat note which is b and we have one sharp note which is c if we look at
the minor and major tonalities around the circle of fifth on the flat side we
have a tonality here with one flat note which is b because that the first note to
become flat the problem is in this case the c is natural and not sharp now if we
look back at our melody we notice that it begins and ends on a d which is a good
clue that the d has a central role in our scale and in the d natural minor scale
the seventh note c can be raised by a semitone so the scale becomes the d
harmonic minor scale so the d harmonic minor scale is the scale we were looking
for which means our tonality is d minor now the best way to harmonize this melody
would be to create a clear chain of chord that would fit the notes of the melody
the best way to start would be to define which chords we can use in the tonality
we have so in d minor the first degree the chord made from the first note of the
scale is d minor the second degree is e diminished the third degree is f major
the fourth degree is g minor the 5th degree is a minor but it can also be a major
that's when the c becomes c sharp or you can use a dominant 7th on this degree as
well then the 6th degree is b flat major and the 7th degree is a c major chord
from there you can start assigning chords to some parts of your melody the notes
of your melody being either the root note the third or the fifth of the chord you
used below it so let's see how this chords could fit our melody in the first bar
we have a d a f and a which are the notes of a d minor chord so let's begin with
that then we have a g a f and an e we can decide to neglect the f because it's on
a weak beat so it would be just a passing tone between the g and the e the g and
the e here can be the root and the third of an e chord or they can be the third
and the fifth of a c chord but here i decided to consider them as the fifth and
the seventh of the a dominant seventh chord by adding the root notes a and the
major thirds c sharp it's a chord that can be used on the fifth degree and that
resolves well on the degree one and sure enough we have a d at the end of this
bar so we can land on a d minor chord here having this one five one chord
progression can really accentuate the tonality of d minor with this authentic
current five to one that is very conclusive it's a good way to establish our
tonality then we have a d and a b-flat which can be considered as the third and
the fifth of a g minor chord and the last bar starts with the c-sharp which is
the seventh note of our scale that is raised by a semitone and this alteration is
often seen in a minor tonality on the fifth degree when this chord that is
normally minor becomes major so let's put a dominant seventh chord here so we
have in this bar the root note a the major third c sharp the fifth e and the
seventh g this is a good example to show that you don't always need to harmonize
every note of your melody especially when they move stepwise from one to the
other with these two authentic cadences a7 to d minor that's a very tonal chord
progression that really establishes the tonality of d minor but as i said earlier
there are always several ways to harmonize the same melody so here is another
example of how we could harmonize it we still have the d minor at the beginning
the a7 at the end and the g minor in the middle but the first chord is cut in
half so the last f of the first bar is now part of a f major chord the second bar
is replaced by a c major chord based on the e and the g in the melody that are
now the third and the fifth of that chord and in the third bar the last note b
flat becomes part of a b flat major chord [Music] when you are harmonizing your
melody also keep in mind the rhythm with which the chords of your harmony change
that's called the harmonic rhythm and changing chords faster or slower can really
change the feel of a song here is an example of the same melody harmonized with a
lot more chord changes i will write on screen the name of each chord the function
and the role of the melody notes in each chord [Music] [Applause] and just for
some variety here is the last example [Music] now just as we did you can
consider the notes of the melody like the root note the third or the fifth of the
chord that supports them but they could also be the extensions of a chord like
the seventh or ninth for example at the end of the first bar we have a and f and
i like the change from a d minor chord to a b flat major chord there but the a
was not part of the chord b flat major yet this is not a problem as this a can be
considered as the major 7th of a b flat major chord so that would turn the b flat
major chord into a b flat major 7th chord [Music] from the same principle we
could try to harmonize everything using extended chords like 7th and 9th chords
so that would open up a lot more possibilities in the first bar if we put a b
flat major seventh chord the d becomes the third of the chord the a becomes the
seventh and the f becomes the fifth [Music] in the second bar we have a f major
chord with f a and c so the e here becomes the seventh of the chord and the g
becomes the ninth of the chord so the chord actually becomes a f major ninth
chord followed by a d minor seventh chord because we have a d in the melody and
it's good to land on a first degree but we can still keep the flavor of a seventh
degree in the third bar we have a d and a b flat that i decided to consider like
the ninth and the seventh of my chord and the chord i've built is the c sharp
half diminished seventh minor ninth chord which is from the scale of d harmonic
minor with the c sharp we saw that in the last episode about 9th chord and in the
last bar after the a dominant 7th chord we had before into a dominant 7 flat 9 by
keeping the b flat from the previous chord then i double some notes of the melody
a third below by using notes that were already in the chord progression i just
liked how it sounded [Music] from there we can go even further by using non-
diatonic chords chords that are not from the tonality we are in you can do that
by borrowing a call from another tonality or by substituting a chord for another
one we saw several ways to do that in the episode about borrowings and
substitutions for which i will also leave a link in the description but for the
example i will focus on the secondary dominance only a secondary dominant is when
you take any chord in your chord progression and for a moment you consider it
like the first degree of its own tonality so just before you can put the fifth
degree of that chord to prepare it so this chord you put before is in the
tonality of the next chord but not necessarily in the tonality of the rest of the
song that's a secondary dominant so here is how i harmonize this melody in the
first bar we still have the notes d f and a which are the notes of a d minor
chord so i've put a d minor seventh chord for the flavor and in the third bar we
have a d and a b flat which i consider to be the third and the fifth of a g minor
seventh chord so to introduce the secondary dominant we can consider this g minor
as the first degree for a moment so just before it we could put the fifth degree
of the g minor scale which is d major or even d dominant 7th which can work on
this d in the melody [Music] there is also one way you could extend this
secondary dominant a secondary dominant utilizes the tension of an authentic
cadence the tension of a fifth degree that wants to go back to its first degree
and it's a common practice to prepare these authentic cadence by putting a chord
of the second degree just before it so the full authentic cadence would be two
five one you can put the second degree of the chord you want to go to just before
the 5. that would make two chords that would not be necessarily in the tonality
of the whole song that is something that is used a lot in jazz for example here
for example we could use the a diminished chord just before the d7 because it
would be the second degree of the g minor tonality the problem is the a
diminished chord is made of the notes a c and e flat and we already have an e
natural in the melody because i didn't want to alter the original melody i used
the a dominant seventh chord instead which is in the tolarity of our song
[Music] then to finish the chord progression on this c sharp i've built a chord
of c dominant 7 flat 9 because i didn't consider that as a c sharp but as a d
flat so the c the root note the e is the third the fifth would be a g that is not
there the b flat is the seventh and the melody the d flat is the ninth the minor
ninth we saw this c7 flat nine chord in the episode about 9th chords and it is
again often used on a
5th degree to then land on a first degree so as c is the 5th of f i've put a f
major chord after which utilizes the notes from the melody that are on the
downbeat then just because i was in this kind of gimmick i've put a b flat major
seventh chord to begin the next loop because f is the fifth of b flat so the
chord progression would go down a fifth from d to g then down a fifth from g to c
then again from c to f and then from f to b flat so it's like always going down
on the circle of fifth [Music] so we saw here an example of a non-diatonic
chord with the secondary dominant but you can also harmonize your melodies using
all the chords substitutions borrowings and alterations we saw in the series just
to name them we saw the parallel chords the altered fifth degree cores the
tritone substitution the napolitan 6th the piccard iii the fouriern cadence the
sus4 and sus2 chords or even the andalusian cadence so i won't do an example for
each of them now as i think it would get very redundant at this point and this
video is already getting a lot longer than expected but i hope this video was
clear enough and that it gave you some ideas for your next songs [Applause]
[Music] [Applause] diminished chords are often considered as dark sounding
because they are rather dissonant and this dissonance means tension which means
that they need to be resolved in a way or another the good thing is that these
chords are like actors that can play different roles so they can be resolved in a
lot of different ways and this versatility makes them excellent tools to do
modulations to go from one tonality to another we already saw different ways of
making modulations in other episodes and one particular technique was to utilize
the tension of an authentic cadence to lead the progression toward a particular
chord that would then become a neutrality an authentic cadence is a progression
from a degree 5 to a degree 1. that means that if i wanted to go to the tonality
of e minor for example i could place a b7 chord just before the e minor chord to
facilitate the transition because if e is my degree 1 then b is my degree 5.
[Applause] here the b7 creates a tension that is then resolved by the e minor
then we've seen in yet other episodes that you could alter the seven chords in
several ways but one alteration with it and c is the chord seven flat five it is
made of a root note a major third a diminished fifth and a minor seventh so it's
like a dominant seventh chord but its fifth is lowered by a semitone it's
diminished so when you're using a dominant seventh chord on a fifth degree you
have the option to use a seven flat five chord instead for our cadence in e minor
for example it would sound like this and for an example of a major tonality in g
major it would sound like this [Music] now let's take a closer look at this
seven flat five chords as it's getting interesting look at the interval
separating each note i will add the root note on octave above so we'll see better
what's happening you see the repeating pattern two turn one tone to turn one tone
if we make an inversion with this c7 flat five so we have the g flat at the base
this is still technically a c7 flat 5 but it is also a g flat 7 flat 5. if g flat
is the root note b flat is the major 3rd c is the diminished 5th which should be
called d double flat here really but it's the same note and e is the minor
seventh again it should be called f flat here but it's the same note so whenever
you play a seven flat five chord it can be considered as two different chords
which are a triton apart which makes it a great pivot point for example for our
currents in e minor the b7 was transformed into a b7 flat 5 and that would also
work to go to an e major heaven but this b7 flat 5 can also be a f7 flat 5 to go
to a b flat minor or a b flat major thing is neither the b flat major or the b
flat minor chords or in the tonality of e minor knowing the totality of e major
that's actually a pretty long jump on the circle of fifth so generally when we do
that it's to stay in the new tonality so a seven flat five chord is a better
pivot point for modulation than for borrowing now if you like that kind of pivot
point you will love the diminished seventh chord it's made of a root note a minor
third a diminished fifth and a diminished seventh so on a c chord that'd be a c a
e flat a g flat and a b double flat which is the same note than a in this chord
every note is separated by an interval of one tone and a half which means you can
consider any note at the root note it will always be a diminished seventh chord
so when you introduce a diminished seventh chord in a progression you can
consider it as four different chords which gives a lot of ways to resolve it and
that's the best part there are a lot of ways to introduce and to resolve a
diminished seventh chord the diminished seventh chord can be found on a seventh
degree it appears naturally in the harmonic minor scale but it can also be used
in a major tonality as a borrowing and it resolves well on a first degree so in
internality of c major or c minor they would make a b diminished 7th chord that
resolves well on either a c major or c minor note that if you add a g to this b
diminished 7th chord it will become a g7 flat 9 which works great on a dominant
chord which maybe also explains better which resolves well on a c g being the
dominant of c in a minor tonality you can also use it on a second degree to
resolved on a degree 1. so in c minor that would be a d diminished 7th chord
resolving to a c minor a diminished seventh chord can also be used on either a
raised second degree to resolved on a degree one or an array sixth degree to
resolved on a degree five in c major there would be a d sharp diminished seventh
chord resolving to a c major and a sharp diminished 7th resolving to a g major
to make it easier to remember a d sharp diminished 7th has the same notes than a
c diminished seventh so it's like a diminished seventh chord on the first degree
resolving to a first degree and the a sharp diminished seventh has the same notes
than the g diminished seventh so it's like a diminished seventh on the degree
five resolving to a degree five note that this last thing is generally not used
to do modulations it is generally used in the boundaries of one key but it's a
good way to introduce the diminished seventh chord but as always there is no rule
set in stone in music you can still try it and the best judges will be your own
ears to sum it up in a simple way a diminished 7th chord can be resolved on a
chord or semitone above either major or minor or on a chord sharing the same root
note either major or minor and to introduce a diminished 7th chord you can place
it on the 7th degree of your tonality or on the second degree if you're in minor
these are the best options i think but you can also use it on a raised second
degree and on a raised 6th degree so you have a lot of options to introduce a
diminished 7th chord which can be considered as 4 different chords each of which
have several ways to be resolved now to finish the video i would like to make a
little experiment let's focus on the c diminished seventh chord it's made of the
note c e flat g flat and a so it can be considered as a c diminished seventh
chord a e flat diminished seventh a g flat diminished seventh or a diminished
seventh from what we've seen in this video each of these chords can be resolved a
semitone above so that's c sharp e g and a sharp each of which can be either
major or minor and they can also resolve to a chord sharing the same root notes
so that c e flat g flat and a each of which can also be either major or minor
that would give a whooping 16 options to resolve one chord so to test that i've
created clips in ableton live with every options and then i have set that up so
they play in random order right off the bat we can foresee that the most repeated
chord will be the c diminished 7th chord as it's in every clip so it should make
it sound like the tunnel center as everything will be moving around that but this
tunnel center wouldn't be very stable as it's a diminished chord so that should
make the thing sound a bit weird a bit mysterious a bit haunted well it should be
interesting so let's have a listen and in the meantime thanks a lot for watching
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] today i would like to share with you a
couple of tips and techniques on how to use any scale because there are a lot of
scales i added at the end of my music theory cheat sheet so i figured it would be
easier to use them with some tips on how to work with a scale you never worked
with before the best way to start with any new scan is to first figure out the
chords that you can use with it as an example i will take the double harmonic
major scale which is also called the byzantine scale so in c the notes of the
scale are c d flat e f g a flat and b it's a very interesting scale with a lot
of semitone intervals and a couple of one-ton and a half steps it sounds very
cool so to know which chords we can play with the scale we'll simply see what
triads we can build with its notes so we start with the first one and from there
we'll follow the notes of the scale and keep one every 2 for our chord then we'll
do the same starting with each note with exotic scales you will sometimes have
several options for one chord when the chord can be either major or minor for
example and sometimes you will have weird intervals that can make it hard to
identify the chords or they won't make a proper chord at all so you may just not
use them i took the byzantine
scale because it has example of it so let's see how it goes so we start from c
and then we take one not every two that makes c e and g which makes a c major
chord cool we'll write that down and move to the next from d flat one not every
two that makes d flat f a flat which is a d flat major chord but then see what
the options we have we could make a d flat minor chord if we take the d flat the
e which is like a f flat and the a flat d f a all flat that's a d flat minor
chord from e we have e g and b which is an e minor chord so far so good but here
again we could make this chord major because we have a flat in the scale which is
like a g sharp so e g sharp and b that would be a e major chord from f we have f
a flat and c which is f minor chord from g we have g b and d flat which is a
weird one because we have a major third with a diminished fifth well if we can
add a minor seventh that could make a seven flat five chord and sure enough this
minor seventh would be f which is in the square so we can add a g7 flat five to
our list of chords which works well in this particular case because that's a
chord that is mostly used on a fifth degree and we find it here on our fifth
degree all good then from a flat we have a flat c and e which makes a a flat
augmented chord and from b we have b d flat and f which is a major second with a
diminished fifth which doesn't really make a chord it looks more like just the
upper part of the 755 chord we saw earlier so we won't use it if you have a hard
time identifying a chord it's okay to just leave it aside you may not use them
all anyway all you need is cards that work and that inspire you so for this scale
the chords we have are c major d flat major d flat minor e minor e major f minor
g seven flat five and a flat augmented now looking back at it i realized i didn't
consider some diminished and augmented chords we could also make with this chair
in c we could make a c augmented chord with the notes c e and a flat which is
like c e and g sharp in d flat we could make a d flat diminished chord with the
notes d-flat e and g which is like a d-flat f-flat and g in e we could make a e-
augmented chord with the notes e a flat and c which is like e g-sharp and b-flat
and in f we could make a f diminished chord with the notes f a flat and b which
is like f a flat and c flat so you can start combining them to make a chord
progression and improvise on each other scale to find some good melodies in the
context of a solo you can hold one chord and improvise with the whole scale on
top of it it works particularly well with the first chord of the scale the degree
one because that's the more stable in the tonality you're using but holding a
chord for a while can also allow you to switch to another scale while remaining
on the same chord the principle is that if you can make the chord with the notes
of the new scale you want to use then they are compatible [Music] so you can mix
and match all that you can begin with one scale whether it's called progression
then hold the chord for a while to attention then you can change the scale you
play on top of it and then you're free to go back to the first scale or to stick
with the new one and then use its own set of chords with it when you take the
note c d e f g a and b you have the c major scale if you take the same notes but
start from the d to have d e f g a b c you have the second mode of the c major
scale in the same way you could start from the third the fourth or the fifth note
of the major scale to have it third fourth or fifth mode these are the modes that
we call union dorian phrygian lydian mixolydian aeolian and locrian so the
question is if all these chaos use the same notes how can they sound different
how can we compose a song in one of these modes without making it sound just like
it's major or minor this is the question we'll tackle today but an easy way to
remember the name of those modes is to remember the sentence i don't punch like
mohammed ali each word would give you the first letter of each mode that's how i
remember them so the union mode is the major scale and the aeolian mode is the
natural minor scale we won't focus on these ones as they are already explored
extensively in other videos but we'll use them as references to see what is
unique about every other mode to make that comparison easier i will write all the
degrees relatively to the major scale to show you what i mean i'll do it with you
i'll write the degrees of the major scale one two three four five six seven they
represent the chords made with the notes of this scale and for the minor scale
for example the first degree is one the second degree is two because there is the
same distance between the two first notes than in the major scale which is one
tone but for the third degree it's two tones above the root note in a major scale
but it's only one turn and a half above the root note in a minor scale so i'll
note that flat three to indicate that it's one semitone below its equivalence in
the major scale in the same way i will note the degrees 6 and 7 flat 6 and flat 7
because they are also one semitone below their major equivalents and that's how
i'll note the degrees for each mode now the first step would be to figure out
what type of chord we can find on each degree of each of these modes so we can
compare them to the more common major and minor modes so for example we'll start
with the dorian mode in d dorian the first chord will be a chord of d and it will
be made of the notes d f and a which makes a chord of d minor so the first degree
of the dorian scale will be a minor chord the second chord will be a chord of e
and it will be made of the notes e g and b which makes a e minor chord so the
second degree of a dorian scale will be a minor chord so we'll do that for every
chord based on every note in the scale to find the type of chord for every degree
and then we'll do the same thing for every mode once it's done we have this and
we can begin to analyze the data one thing to keep in mind is that a major scale
and its relative minor scale use exactly the same notes the difference comes from
the fact that they take different notes at their tonal center as their first
degree it is then a matter of using the other chord of the scale to create
tension and make this first degree feel like home and that's where the authentic
cadence and the playgirl curtains come handy because they resolved well on the
first degree if you need to refresh your memories on the cadences i will leave a
link in the description for the episode about that this is important because if
we want to make the first degree feel like home the first degree needs to be a
rather stable chord and that makes the locrian mode very difficult to use because
its first degree is a diminished course and that's not a stable chord by essence
it is dissonance so it brings attention that it's elsewhere which means it will
be very difficult to make that feel like a home court so we won't really focus on
the locrian mode in this video so when we are using a mode the goal of the game
is to make the first degree of that mode feel like home so that's often the chord
we'll use the most and then we'll gravitate toward the more unique cores of the
mode we're using to get the particular flavor of that particular mode to find
these unique chords we'll compare each degree to their equivalent in the major
and minor tonalities if the chord is different from the one we find in major or
in minor then it is unique and we keep it otherwise we'll grade out so on the
second degree we have a minor chord in a major tonality and we have a diminished
chord in a minor tonality so i'll gray out these options from the other modes and
keep the others the third degree is minor in major and flat 3 major in minor so
i'll gray those out the fourth degree is either a major or minor chord so we'll
grade those out as well and we'll do the same thing for all the degrees until
we're left with this here we can notice that we don't have many options for the
dorian and the mixolydian modes but we can still notice some interesting
combinations in the dorian mode we have a first degree that is minor like in a
minor scale but the fourth degree is major like in a major scale and that
combination is interesting because a progression for four to one is a plagal
cadence but we are more used to hearing it fall on a major first degree so having
a minor first degree here is unique to the dorian mode in the mixolydian mode we
have a major first degree like in a major scale but the seventh degree is flat
and major like in a minor scale and we are also used to hearing this major 7th
degree go upper whole tone to a minor chord so having a major chord here instead
highlights the unique color of the mixolydian mode so now that we have all these
data highlighted here is how to compose in each mode in a dorian mode use mainly
the minor first degree and the major fourth degree that creates a plagal cadence
that makes the first degree feels like home and this home is a minor chord which
is particular to that mode [Music] in a phrygian mode you can use mainly the
minor first degree and the major flat two which is a bit like a tritone
substitution which is also a cadence that resolves well on the first degree it
should help make it feel like home and you can then throw the minor seventh
degree in the mix in a lydian mode you can use mainly the major first degree and
the major second degree you can also use the minor seventh degree but the risk is
that if you go from the seventh degree to the first degree it would sound
like the first and second degree of the phrygian mode and in a mixed religion
mode you can use mainly the major flat seven degree with the major first degree
that's a chord change that we used to hear in minor tonality but here the first
degree is major which makes it sound different you can use some of the diminished
chords in each of these modes as well but they can sound too dissonant for the
song you want to make and it is totally okay to use just very few chords as they
are the chords that will bring the color of the mode you want to use quick note
before wrapping up this video i have updated my big music theory cheat sheet now
it includes the chords for all these modes and they are highlighted in the same
way than in this video you have 12 pages one for each root note so you don't have
to transpose any of that yourself it should make it easier to make borrowings for
example say you are composing in e minor and you don't want to use a diminished
chord on the second degree well you could replace it with a f major chord and
resolve it with an e minor chord that would be a borrowing from the free gen mode
or you could replace it with the f sharp minor chord and resolve it with the e
minor chord as well and that would be a borrowing from the dorian mode i have
also added all the ninth chords for the major and minor scales i have added some
substitutions for the fifth degree and have also corrected a couple of mistakes
that were in there so i hope all is clean now and you can find a link to download
this document down below in the description so i hope you have fun with this
thank you very much for watching take care and i'll see you next time you