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Music Theory Introduction
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0:16
[Music] I'm Jono Buchanan and in this video, and across the next set of videos, we're going to be looking at music theory. Now, generally speaking, if you go looking for music theory advice on YouTube you'll discover someone sort of almost pretending to you this is a little bit like medicine. These music theory pills, they're not going to taste very good but what they're going to do is they're going to be good for you in the end so trust me and it's
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going to be all right. Well I think that's a terrible way to learn music theory. Music theory is the absolute lifeblood of the music we make. It's exciting, it allows us to unlock chords, scales, melodies, all kinds of things, and generally speaking the less music theory we know the more often we end up writing a really similar piece of music to the one that we made last time. If what we can do is to extend our kind of harmonic or melodic understanding,
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then suddenly what we can do is we can make music unlike music we've made before and therefore we can give the world new pieces of music that it will be grateful to receive. So as a result of that what we're going to do is we're going to focus on how music theory can really unlock our artistic capabilities. Now I use the word artistic on purpose because, generally speaking, music is taught as an arts subject. Certainly in the UK, generally
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speaking, you'll find that different subjects fall into different blocks and all the sciences are taught together and effectively music gets put in with drama and maybe art as the art subjects. But actually at the heart of music - and certainly at the heart of music theory - is a really sort of fascinating kind of maths, if you like. The frequency of the notes that we use, unlocks our understanding of harmonics, the harmonic series and how
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all of that stuff relates back to the business of a note. So what I've done is to make another video, which is about the science of an individual note and how one note unlocks the kind of maths behind the way that music sounds. So if you're interested in that go and look at that video and we're releasing that in the same week, so it should be available here somewhere. OK, but at the same time as understanding the artistic side of music we're going to
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look at the maths too, so go and have a look at that video as well. OK, so let's deal with the business of an individual note and let's start with a note that's nice and friendly and probably a note you know already, which is C. Now specifically this C we refer to as middle C or C3 and you can see it's lit up on the keyboard in front of me as well. Now, generally speaking, you can see even if you're not a keyboard player that there
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is a pattern to the way that a keyboard is set out. What we've got is a note which we're calling C and above that there are two black notes here and then we get another pattern of notes where there are three black notes and then there are two and then there are three and then there are two and then there are three and C lies to the left of these two black notes. It's here but it's also here - this is C4 - and it's also here - this is
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C5 - and yep, this is C2. So all of these notes are called C. Now what we're going to discover in the mathematical video is that there is a reason why they're all called C. They're mathematically related to one another. We call them all C as opposed to calling them ‘1’ or ‘Z’ because effectively what they do is to have a relationship which is bound by maths, by science, but for now staying here we're going to just call them all C,
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because that's what they're called. OK, so effectively what C gives us a chance to do first of all, is to understand that music tends to be made from what we refer to as scales - relationships between notes stemming from one bass note. So if C is going to be our bass note and what we want to do is to understand the scale of C, what we need to do is to learn the relationships between this first note - which we refer to as the root
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or the tonic - and the notes that come on top of it that make up a particular scale. And we're going to start by looking at the major scale - the C major scale. Now any major scale is determined by the steps between each individual note and there is a difference in the way that we refer to these in the UK compared to the US. So in the UK, what we refer to is semitones and tones. Here is C and this is a semitone up and here is C and
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here is a tone up. OK, so a semitone is half of a tone - hence ‘semitone'. Now in the US we refer to half-steps and steps, so if this is C, this is a half step and this is a step but the reality is that from a musical perspective exactly the same things are true. If we can learn the relationship between the C major scale in terms of which steps of its scale are tones and semitones and which ones therefore are steps and half steps, we can
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learn not just C major but any major scale. Let me show you what I mean. So the C major scale starts here on its root note C and then it starts with a whole tone and then another one and then a semitone, or a half step, and then a whole tone and then a whole tone and then a whole tone and then another semitone or half step on the top. Let's do that again. Here's our root note - tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. One more time
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without me talking this time. So most of the steps of a C major scale are tones but we have two moments where we end up with these half step or semitone moves here and here and we can just play the scale up and down. Now that relationship of tones and semitones - so long as you use that combination of tones and semitones - you can start on any individual note you like and you will always play a major scale. So let's take another example. Let's suppose I decide to start on the note G - that's
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here. OK, so if I use exactly the same relationship, I'm going to end up with G as my new root note and then tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, and then a semitone step on the end. Now why have I had to play this note? Well because in order to have my note reach from a tone to the semitone on the end I can't play this note because that wouldn't give me the scale of G major. The relationship between the semitone here isn't right for a major scale. We need to
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reach up for this last or penultimate note before we resolve back to this top note and the same thing is true in any other key as well. Let's take A as my root note. Again I need my tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone on the end. So what we've effectively got is an opportunity to make sure that the relationship between tones and semitones is always the same and it doesn't matter where we start. We could
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even play a really complicated scale like this one. OK, so that's F sharp major we'll come back to that in a little while. But it doesn't really matter, provided I take my time and I make sure that I'm always stepping up the tones that I need to and the semitones that I need to - I'll always play a major scale. So if you're brand new to all this, I would watch the major scale section again and just remind yourself about those steps.
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So let's move on to the minor scale. Now, major scales just work like major scales whereas minor scales - there are actually three different variations of the minor scale. Now the main one that we're going to be focusing on is called the natural minor scale and to demonstrate it we're going to move down to the note A, which is here. So C is here, C, B, A. This is where we're going to be looking at the natural minor scale. Now the notes of the
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natural minor scale actually might look quite familiar now that we know the C major scale. What we're going to do is to start on A and we'll see what the steps look like. So that is the natural minor scale and when I say it might look quite familiar it's because we're still only using the white notes. C major only uses the white notes between C and C, and the natural minor scale for A only uses the white notes between A and A. So why
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doesn't that make it a major scale? Well let's again look at the steps between each of those individual notes. In a major scale we know that we start with a note and then we have a tone and then another tone. OK, so let's look at A again for a moment. This time we've got our note, a tone, but this time a semitone or a half step. So this is the crucial difference that comes with minor chords. That the third step is what we refer to as flat. In other
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words, it is a semitone below the step that it would be in a major scale. If we move back to C for a moment, that would mean that we started on C, we had a whole tone step and then we would play this note, which is E flat, to give us this relationship. What we refer to as the minor third, as opposed to the major third, which comes with the major scale. So I've just said that there are three different variations of the minor scale, so let's have
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a look at those. So, just to remind you, this is the natural minor scale. Then we have what's referred to as the chromatic minor scale and that looks like this. So it's very similar except that we raise the seventh step, the penultimate step - the last but one note - gets raised a semitone. So it looks like this. So I've emphasised this G sharp. Let's look at that again. And you hear that a lot in classical music and in Arabic music as well.
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This relationship here in this collection of notes at the top end of our minor scale. That's the chromatic minor scale. And then the third variation of the minor scale is what's referred to as the melodic minor scale. And the interesting thing about this scale is it does something different on the way up compared to the way down. On the way down it's the same as the natural minor scale. It gives us exactly the same notes, but on
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the way up it extends notes six and seven. The sixth and seventh steps in the scale are raised. So, on the way up we get these two notes and on the way down we get our natural minor scale. So I'll play that again. Here is the melodic minor scale in A minor. So, if you want to experiment with those scales - and you'll find them in all kinds of different forms of music - then that's what those scales actually look like.
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Let's come back to the natural minor scale though, which is where we're going to be concentrating our efforts. What we need to do is to work out what the semitone steps are that separate the minor scale from the major scale. We've already seen that the third is the crucial difference. But let's have a look at all of those steps. So, if we're starting on A, we start with a tone and then a semitone and then a tone. And then another tone and then
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a semitone, tone, tone. Let's do that again. Here's our first note. Tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone. Now, at the moment we're in A and that makes sense. That's fine. Let's go back to C and see how the differences look in C. So if we come back to C we know that our major scale is only the white notes. But if we're going to play C minor, what we need to do is to take our semitone and tone steps from A minor and apply them into C.
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So that would look like this. Here's our tone and then our semitone. And this time we're going to now play E flat which is this note here. We need this to be a semitone step for it to be C minor. Then we get our tone. So we're back to here. So you can see that actually all of these steps are the same as they are in the major scale with the exception of this third which is here. And then we're at this point in our scale. So we've got these notes with our flat six,
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our flattened seventh and then back to our main note again. Back to A. Now there's a really crucial point to make here. The reason why I'm playing the minor scale in A is to demonstrate that its notes are the same as C major is in the scale of C major. In other words there is a relationship between C major and A minor. And we call A minor the relative minor of C major and we call C major the relative major of A minor.
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There is a relationship and that's because they share the same notes. They just start in a different place and we can hear how clear that relationship is. If we play a piece of music, I'm just going to make something up which only uses C major and A minor. This relationship should feel completely comfortable because all of the same notes are being used across the two chords. C major, A minor. And these two chords form the relationship that exists in literally
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hundreds of thousands of pieces of music because they sit so comfortably together. These two chords just work and that's because they are the relatives of one another. And every single major chord has a minor equivalent and similarly the other thing is true as well that if we're playing in minor chords and we want to play the relative major, we can do that. And those chords share what's called a key signature. Now we'll look at that in more depth later
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on but effectively it means that the key signature of C major is the same as A minor. It has no sharps and no flats and we know that. As we play up the keyboard we can see that no notes are sharp or flat and so those two chords share a key signature because they have no notes that are sharpened or flattened. So I've just said a moment ago this note happens to be called A and this one happens to be called G. Let's learn them properly. So we've
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got C, D, E, F, G, A, B and we already know that when we get back here we're next to the next C again. We're back to the next C. Again we can see that on our keyboard this is C3 and this is C4. We don't have the other note names printed so let's look at them again. C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then C again. OK, fine. So what are the black notes and what do we call those? Well let's look at that next. So, if this is C we refer to this as
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C sharp. It's C but it's up. It's sharp. OK, so there's C sharp. Now we know this is D so this is D sharp. This is E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, A, A sharp, B and C. OK, so that's pretty straightforward. As long as we know the note names, if we go up a step from there we can just call the note that note sharp and we discover what the note names are. Now the only thing that's complicated about that is that actually this note is two separate
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names. This is always C and this is always D but if we decide to be in C and we want to raise this step, we refer to it as C sharp but actually if we're in D and we want to drop a step, we refer to that as D flat. C sharp and D flat are the same note. D sharp and E flat are the same note. This is F sharp and G flat. This is G sharp and A flat and so on. Now, we're going to come back to sharps and flats. Later on in the course when we
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start looking at scales and key signatures in particular in music but the reason why - and this is why everyone starts thinking oh no music theory is really complicated! The reason that we tend to panic, is because these notes can be called two separate things but it doesn't matter, effectively. What we can do is we can take our time to learn those things. Now why do they matter at all? Well let's have a look again at another major scale.
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I'm going to play the scale of A major again and this time we're going to think about the note names that we're playing. So this is A, this is B. OK, now if I want to play a major scale the next step I have to play is a whole tone which means I don't play C, I play C sharp. A, B, C sharp. The next note is a semitone. D, E, but now I've got to go up another whole tone again which means that this isn't F, it's F sharp, G sharp, A. A,
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B, C sharp, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A. Now interestingly what I discover therefore is that there are three sharps in A major. C sharp, F sharp and G sharp and as we'll discover later on that means that the scale or the key of A major has three sharps in what's referred to as its key signature. Now, that's some advanced stuff but effectively what we can do is we can use playing through the scale of any particular key as a means to discover
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these interesting things about the way the music gets written down. Now let's just look at that in a slightly different way. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play in a scale and we're going to have a quick look at its notes in the note editor. Let's take A major as an example. OK, so we're not worrying about timing, what we're going to do instead is we're going to open up the note editor we'll move our keyboard out of the way for a moment and we'll just
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see how these notes look in the piano roll display. So let's just make this a little bit bigger, so we can see these really clearly. So here is our A, sure enough, B, C sharp which we can see is raised, there's D, there's E, there's F sharp, there's G sharp and there is A. OK, so what I'm then going to do is I'm going to play, I'm going to duplicate this for a moment, I'm just going to mute this instrument, this time we're going to play A natural minor.
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OK, now if I quantize those two things so they're absolutely right next to each other and I highlight all of those notes, both of them together, we can see that most of these notes are the same. It's only at the third, the sixth and the seventh steps that we get these clashes between the major and the minor scale. The lower ones are the minor scale and the upper ones are the major scale. So another way of looking at it is that some
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of the notes of A, regardless of the scales that we're playing, are the same and the difference comes between the major and the minor at the third step, the sixth step and the seventh. And that leads us neatly to understanding the actual names of the notes that we're playing. So, I've so far referred to them as C and D and E and F and G but of course they also have sort of names themselves in terms of how they relate to a scale. So let me show
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you what I mean. Let's come back to C major for just a moment. This is C and we refer to it as the root note or the tonic. So here is the tonic note of our scale, nothing to do with gin and tonic, not yet anyway. OK, here is our tonic note, our root note. This next note of the scale is referred to as the supertonic. It's the tonic plus one, it's super. So there's our supertonic. OK, the next note is called the mediant. So the third note of the C major scale is referred to as the mediant.
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Then we get what's called the subdominant, then we get the dominant, then we get what's called the submediant, which is an odd name for something that is higher than the root note but we'll come back to that in a moment. Then we get what's called the leading note or leading tone if we're in the states and then we're back to the tonic note again. So let's look at them again. Tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, sub mediant,
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leading note, tonic. Why is this called the sub mediant? Well let's put it down an octave for a moment. Here's our tonic note. The mediant is the third step up so the submediant is a third step down. That's why it's called the submediant. So effectively if we take it down an octave we understand that it's a third away from our tonic just in the opposite direction. So again tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading note, tonic. So we can refer to these notes
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in a number of different ways. We can call them C D E F G A B C. We can call them tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading note, tonic. Or we can call them I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, I. So effectively when people talk about adding a sixth into a chord, OK well if this is my C, my sixth note is going to be that. If people talk about adding the mediant, OK well the mediant is there. Or people might say play a C and put a B in it.
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So effectively what I've got a chance to do, regardless of how I talk about whether I'm talking about numbers, note names or these names that we apply to the scale, is effectively they all relate to the same thing. And the thing about musicians that's really annoying, is they're constantly changing those things. So “oh yeah can we go somewhere with the subdominant” for instance? Well, that means the fourth note or F if we're in the key of
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C. But the reason why it matters that we don't just call it F is because we might be playing something in G major, in which case the subdominant is going to be a C, the fourth note of the scale. OK, so effectively we've got these three ways of calling the notes that we use, the names that we do, and all of them mean the same thing. So again, if all of this is brand new just watch this again a second time through, and just make yourself familiar with
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these little bits. Because what we are now going to do is to have the potential to unlock a scale and to begin to see how it relates to chords.
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