As I gear up for teaching music theory in the fall, I’m still refining my explanation of Western music’s arcane naming system for enharmonics. Why is the note between F and G sometimes called F-sharp and sometimes called G-flat? Why do we sometimes call the interval between that note and C an augmented fourth, and …
Tag Archives: music theory
High Time
The Grateful Dead’s second and third albums were expensive, high-concept psychedelic odysseys that didn’t sell, putting the band deep in debt to their label. This forced them to bang out a series of low-budget quickies: a live album and two back-to-basics roots records. Ironically, this constraint produced the band’s best-loved and most iconic recordings: Live/Dead, …
Hobo Blues
Now that the novelty of merely getting to talk about the blues in class has worn off, I am dealing with the practical question of how best to teach it. Rather than working from a set of abstract principles, I decided to walk my students through a selection of specific tunes to see what we …
The minor key universe
In a previous post, I suggested that we think of an expanded major key universe that includes the major scale, Mixolydian mode, Lydian mode, and maybe also Mixolydian b6. In this post, I present a similar approach to minor keys, by extending the logic of Western European tonal theory to cover some additional minor scale …
Joy To The Modes
The best way to teach the diatonic modes is to compare them to each other in parallel. One way to do that is to just run up and down them scalewise, but that isn’t very musically satisfying. So I thought, how about putting a familiar melody into all the modes? I wanted one that touches …
What is voice leading?
Sit down at the piano and play the chords C and F in root position, back and forth, like so: (C E G) to (F A C). Pretty clunky! Now invert the C chord; that is, move the bottom note up an octave. Alternate that version of the C chord with the F chord, like …
The bottom number in time signatures has always confused me
The top number in a time signature is easy to understand. Is the song in four? Count “one, two, three, four.” Is it in three? Count “one, two, three.” Is it in five? Count “one, two, three, four, five.” That’s all there is to it. However, the bottom number is another story. What is going …
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Identifying major and minor
This summer I am writing more music theory teaching materials for beginners. In this post, I will be explaining major thirds, minor thirds, major chords, and minor chords. So, what are these things? The definitions are annoyingly circular. A major third is the interval between the first and third degrees of the major scale. And …
Identifying plagal cadences
This week in aural skills, we’re working on various harmonic tropes based on IV-I root movements. This chord progression is technically called the plagal cadence, but is more memorably nicknamed the “Amen” cadence because it’s a traditional European hymn ending. (It has nothing to do with the Amen break, though they do sound good together.) …
Identifying pentatonic scales
It’s pentatonic scales week in aural skills class. This would seem to be the easiest thing on the syllabus, but I discovered while doing listening exercises with the students that even these simple scales have their subtleties. Major Pentatonic You can understand the C major pentatonic scale to be the C major scale without scale …