Template:Portal:Theory/Featured Lesson

Revision as of 18:58, 13 August 2009 by Matt23 (Talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Power Chords

Want to learn about the most common Rock chord? Check out Andrew's lesson on Power Chords.

"In this lesson we are going to take a look at something near and dear to all of us - Power Chords. Power chords fit into this series nicely at this point, because they are more than intervals, and less than chords! If you haven't done so already, I suggest you check out the earlier parts of this lesson to understand the concepts of degrees of the scale and intervals as we'll be using those some more in this lesson..." (more)



The Natural Minor Scale

"Second only to the Major scale, minor scales are an important part of the music we listen to. Notice that I said "minor scales" - plural. The reason for this is that although there is really only one major scale there are a number of different scales that have the term minor attached to them. Of these the most common is the natural minor scale, which we will be learning about here. For interest, the others are the Harmonic Minor and the Melodic minor..."(more)



Time Signatures

Heard people mention time signatures but don't know what they are? Check out Andrew's lesson on them.

The basic unit of time from the point of view of a song is the bar or measure (two terms for the same thing). A bar is a regular collection of notes, each of the same duration in terms of the number of notes it contains. The duration of a bar in note terms is defined at the beginning of the song in the time signature (more of which later) and each bar is assumed to contain the same number of notes unless the time signature is explicitly changed..." (more)



Chords for Scales

Want to see how Chord relate to Scales? Check out Andrew's lesson "Chords for Scales".

In this lesson we're going to take a look at how we match chords to scales, to give you an instant boost when writing songs or solos, and help you pick out musical sounding progressions..." (more)



How Can I Tell Which Key a Song is in?

Ok, so you have a killer MP3 of some band you have downloaded that you want to Jam to, or you have an amazing tab that you want to develop ideas from, or maybe even a piece of music that you want to work with. Before you can do anything, you need to figure out the key that the song is in so that you can apply all of your knowledge about scales etc to figure out which notes to play. In this lesson we’ll try and figure out some ways to do this..." (more)



Modes - The Theory

Know the basics of modes but want to find out more? Check out Andrew's lesson "Modes - The Theory".

In the previous modes lesson we described what modes are, and a practical way of diving into them. However, modes are a complex subject, and the theoretical underpinnings are fascinating. Once you thoroughly understand the previous lesson, spending some time here can really help you with concepts all across music..." (more)



The Major Pentatonic Scale

"Our next scale is the Major Pentatonic scale. Closely related to the Minor Pentatonic scale, it can be regarded as a Minor scale with a couple of notes missing.

The Major Pentatonic scale is a 5 note scale, built using the formula: 2 2 3 2 3

Lets have a look at how we would build a scale of G Major Pentatonic. Our root note is G, and building up from the formula we get the following notes..." (more)



The Melodic Minor Scale

"The Melodic minor scale was an attempt to "fix" the problem caused by the large 3 step interval in the harmonic minor without sacrificing the leading tone (for more details on this see my lesson on Minor Scales Revisited). The resulting scale is a harmonic minor with a sharpened 6th (meaning it reverts back to a major 6th). This means we end up with what is basically a major scale but with a flattened 3rd. Since the 3rd is the truly important indicator of major vs minor, this works out reasonably well in practice, and is better suited to melody than the harmonic minor, at least in classical terms..." (more)



Suspended, Added Tone Chords

Want to learn how to make suspensions in your songs? Check out Andrew's lesson on Suspended, Added Tone Chords.

"In this lesson, we are taking our understanding of chords to the next level! We have looked at triads, sevenths and even extended chords, but there is more! Once again, we can modify the combinations of notes in our chords in some ways that are different again to get more cools sounds..." (more)



The Circle of 5ths

Want to learn a simple but very useful bit of theory? Check out Andrew's lesson on The Circle of 5ths.

"The circle of fifths ... a lot of people ask what it is and how to use it, as if they hope it will solve all of the worlds problems. Whilst it won't do that, it is a very useful tool, and can help us in a number of ways. This lesson will describe what it is, and how we can get a lot of mileage out of this musical geometrical figure..." (more)