Beginner's Guide: Music Theory!!

1. Music Theory! Welcome to Class: Hi, welcome to the Beginner's Guide to music theory. I am Margolin. I'm here to walk you through some music theory concepts and some terms to make them more easy, to make your life in learning music theory more easy and also to apply them. So we're going to take a great look at how music theory applies when it comes to the piano. We have a couple piano roles both where you can see my hands, and also you can see the notes. So that note below highlighted in blue will also indicate that. Throughout this course, there is on the top left right here, where it's going to show you the note value. And then on the middle where my face is right now, is going to show you what chords, what notes I am playing to further assist you if you're trying to also learn how to sight read. And sight reading is learning how to read music, sheet music or just music in general, what it looks like on music and better get an understanding of how that kind of places and maybe drift into composing and writing more because that knowledge will empower you to create more. And so, given all these tools that we're going to use part of this course, we're going to talk about dexterity exercises, which is our flexibility when it comes to plate. Talk about intervals, which is our distance between notes. We're gonna talk about chord progresses. And then we're going to talk about new values, how we can play fluently in legato, which is easily smooth and connected throughout the piano. We're also going to drift into those major chords that are kind of made up of all the songs that we hear and love, but also talk about how we can advance those chords and play a seventh, ninth, 11th, and what makes up octave chords. What is a 15 MA when we see it on music or an eight VA? So octaves. And then also, we're going to breach that whole gap and understand what we do with chords when we're playing them on the right hand and our left hands doing nothing. That we can add to our left hand and play root notes. And what root notes are. And then, of course, we'll talk about really great exercises. If you are the piano player, what you can do to improve not only your dexterity, but build upon your skill set and your technique. And what does that look like as far as terms in music theory? Throughout this course, it is a beginner's guide. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you love it. It's so great to have you part of this course. I'm super excited to start this new course. I have other courses on Skillshare and feel free throughout to just message me if you have questions or you're struggling on a particular exercise. I do respond. I look at all those messages, and I'm so thankful for them every single time because I love connecting with my students and further progressing their progress, too. And just really investing in your own musical knowledge is really important. So consistent practice is there, but also review these videos that are in a series. Feel free to repeat them as you need to to build your skill and build your technique and all that. And then also, you'll notice part of the summary that's written in this course, there's a brief description how to do two projects. Those two projects are so, so important. Not only is it incorporating what we've learned, but also perhaps getting into some of those skill sets on your computer, whether you have garage band or you have a simple recording program or even on your phone. You can do a voice note. You can send that to me. You can upload it on YouTube and send me the link. Make it private, if you like, which I always prefer to you. If I'm sending tracks and I'm kind of seeing what an artist wants, as far as me as a musician or sending my songwriting notes, I always maybe I'll upload it to YouTube, make it private, and then send the link. And that's an easy way to kind of protect your artistic creative project at the same time, but allowing me to also view it or listen to it as well. But I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started, and welcome to Beginner's Guide of Music Theory. 2. Class 1: Blocked and Broken Chords!! : Welcome to Beginner's Guide to music theory. I'm Margot. This is class number one. Today, we're talking about broken and blocked chords. So let's get started. So with a block chord, we're looking at major and minor chords that composed of three notes or more and played at the same time. So what does that look like? We're going to look at the piano roll below, and also for those that are learning how to sight read to your left. And so with that, what block k. So to make up those, we're going to talk about C major, and C major is C and G. So for those that are learning what those notes are as well, we're looking at every eight notes repeating tones. And so with that, we have middles crossing our thumb under B and C. And then back down, we have C A C. Same thing with the left, starting with S crossing her third finger, middle finger over, A B C going backwards. B, A, thumb comes under for G F E, D C. Great job. So that only at a C major scale, but gives you the layout of the notes that actually repeat over and over throughout the piano on the white keys. So making up a C major chord, we have C, skipping the note D, playing E, skipping the note F, and playing G. So a black chord is played with all notes together, and then for a broken, you're playing them separate. So let's learn a new chord. We're gonna go all the way up to G. Put our thumb on this G, skip the A, go to B, skip the C, and play D. So there's a blockchord for G major. When we make it broken, we play it separate. When we do the same thing on our left hand, we can choose actually closer to middle C or further down the piano. And we have G major. And we have it when we play as a block chord together, but as a broken. So again, C majors to G major block chord. And then let's add on our fourth. So our fourth from middle C is going to be F, so we got putting our thumb on that F. Once again, skipping a note, playing the middle finger on A, skipping a note, which is our B, and then going to the next note with our pinky, which is C. So FAC makes up F major chord. So we'll play that as a block chord, and it as a broken. Now we're going to do the same thing on our left hand again, and we're doing the lower F, but you can feel free to go CBA GF and play closer to middle C. Playing lower, we have F, skipping G, A, skipping, B, and C. So as a block chord, we have FAC, but broken. So quick review of our block and our broken chords, we have C two. Major and Now, as we go up the scale, you will notice that the notes kind of differentiate and there's chords for each note. So whether they're major or they're minor, depending on the scale and depending on those tones. So we'll learn it as we kind of progress. But there is C major, then there's a course C minor, D major, D minor, E major, E minor, and so forth, all the way back up to C or going down the scale as well. So that is our broken and our block chords. We'll deep dive into majors and minors I was talking about in our next class. So thanks for joining me, and I will see you in class number two. 3. Class 2: Major and Minor Chords (Happy or Sad)!: As part of this class, we are talking about the major and minor chords that we all kind of are used to hearing about and maybe that we're used to even knowing make up a song, but how do we play them? What do they look like on sheet music? So, over here is our guide for sheet music, and below, it's a good indication of how to play them and what the fingers are actually doing and what fingers are going where. So hopefully this provides enough knowledge, but we're going back to our first class and where we learned, C major. And we're gonna learn the minor chord to that. So here we go. So here's C major. Both hands again. But we want to make it into a minor chord. So with all our chords, we're operating on a one, three, and five. How do we know this? Let's simplify it. So if we start on C is the one, our D is our two. Our E is our three from C, of course, our starter. And then our F is our four and G is our five. So given that, we're playing one, three, five together. Now to make it minor or a sad chord and knowing the difference between the happy and sad chord is major and minor. So major, happy, sad being minor. So with that being said, how do we convert it to a minor chord? Well, we're gonna take a C major. And we're going to take that middle finger right here that's playing our third. We're gonna move it down a half step. So right now, it's an E. We're gonna move it to the E flat, the black key. Here we go. So now it's a totally different tone altogether. So major Minor. Alright, now let's add the left hand in doing the same thing separately first and then together. So C major. Then half step lower in the middle down to the E flat. And we have C minor. So major again for all fingers and hands. Here we go. To minor. Good. Now, if you're following along, we're gonna move up to G major. This is our fifth. One, two, three, four, five. Thumb on the right hand on G, pinky on the left hand on G, and we have G B and D learned in the last class, makes up G major chord. Now to make it a minor, again, that middle finger is gonna drop a half step lower in pitch and to the left. And that will make it a B flat. So G T for the major chord, now becomes G flat. So happy major. Sad G minor. Alright, we're doing great. So we went from C major. C minor review G major. G minor to now F major. And that is F A C. Left hand, F together. Now we're going to move the middle finger down half step. And that means we're going to the left, the very next key down the scale to make it a A flat. So A becomes an A flat. So here we go. F major, T and F minor. Alright, let's review all those chords. Here we go. C major. C minor. G major. G minor. F major F minor. Now, throughout a lot of music, you might see, especially if you play guitar or you're used to looking at tabletureF guitar, you'll notice that for a major chord, it always just has the capital C or just the letter itself indicating what chord. Now, when it switches to a minor, it'll have a lowercase M or it'll say MIN, which is short for minor. So for example, F major, there's that one letter indicating what major chord it is but when it's minor, there's that MIN indicating Ooh. There is that minor in between. Same thing for G major, as well. And then throughout. So I hope this was helpful today. We're going to definitely expand upon that. There's different chords that we talked about that are minors as well, and there are majors to those as well. For simple example that we talked about is going up the scale. The second was this D minor chord. But if we want to make it major, we're going in reverse. So the middle is going up a half step to the right and making from an F for the minor to a D sharp. There it is. So there's our new chord. I hope this helps today. I will see you in our next class class number three, thanks for joining me. And keep reviewing the last two classes. It definitely helps to practice and review everything. So I will see you in our next class. Thanks for joining me. 4. Class 3! Root Notes - Knowing Them is Everything : Hi. This is the beginner's guide. This is class number three to music theory. We have been playing a lot with our right hand, really understanding broken and block chords, as well as what kind of separates those, what notes make up those chords. But we haven't used our left hand. So today, we dive in to the left hand and accompany our chord playing, accompany our skies and understand a little bit more about playing. So again, sheet music over here to better understand the notes that I am using. And then below, you'll see the two pianos. Let those be a guide to kind of better assist on how the hand placement is, as well as a relaxed wrist. And then also on the bottom piano roll gives you a better depiction of what notes I am playing on my end. So you're here for class number three. Let's get started. So, we talked about C major. We talked about C major scale. And I go over a lot of these patterns in my other classes when it comes to beginner piano, as well as different types of theory movements when it comes to applying towards songs for, like, pop songs, my class here on Skillshare. But for this, we got to use our left hand, and we got to do it. So for what we've learned so far in this class, we're going back to the chords. So we got C major chord, but our left hand is still doing nothing, so let's start adding it. So our left hand placement over here is going to be kind of we can go right here and go lower. Doesn't really matter. I prefer to have the lowest sound to have that real good kind of, like, separation of tonality and really provide a lower note that a bass player would play in a band situation on the piano. So my hands are a little bit different as far as how far they're separated from the last class. But let's look at what we're doing. So right hand, C chord, C, now, we can accompany that with our root note. What is a root note? A root note is either the first note of a scale. Or, what's the name of it. So, in this case, it's both. So we have C major chords, C major scale, and our root no can be played with our pinky finger on our left on the Low C. So now you have more impovement, but it's harder to see with that sheet music over here on the left. So, let's bring it up. Yeah, that makes more sense. Alright, so the low C, that was lower C and then so forth. But we're on the C so you can see everything. Okay, now we can play different notes of the chord and scale to kind of accompany it. It kind of depends on the song, depends on what you're writing. But if we want to play the fifth note on the bass, we would play it like this. And so when you see in music, the C G, it automatically is telling us the right hand note is what's being played on the left hand to back up our chord or the notes that we are playing. So that's what it's telling us there. But let's look at it from a different chord. We also talked about D minor. So D minor. And if you watch spinlTap, it's the Saddus all keys. So for those who have seen that move, it's being revised this year and coming back, D minor, here we go. So D minor A. We're going to play RD on the left hand. You can play with the pinky, can play at the index. Doesn't really matter. I'm more comfortable keep moving with the pinky just to kind of show today. So here, let's add that. And that's what looks like in heat music. That's what it looks like the piano. That's what it looks like below. But let's say we want to add an A instead. Very different sound that's gonna be happening. Um, not as sad as if you had the D. But again, different sounds. So let's go to our next chord. We're gonna go to the four chord of C, two, three, four. So C to F is now F major, F C on the right hand. And we're gonna play the root note here. Gonna play the lower one. As long as we can see it on the sheet music. So major. We can play with an F on the lower. Our fifth of that over here would be our thumb, it's resting on, again, the lower the low C. So here we go. Different sound. And again, there's that F C in the middle of our screen indicating what chord on the right with the C on the bottom. So together. Now, the last chord that we learned was G major and adding a root no we can do G. That sounds really in harmony, right? Everything kind of flows very nicely. But let's add the fifth of that. So a fifth from G would be D So let's add that. And that's a different kind of root note. You can add the fifth. You can add the third. You can add the root note itself. So whatever works best for you, but knowing what root notes is and then knowing other notes that accompany it is really, you know, really deep diving into what sounds better for a song, what kind of carves that out, and overall, how it improves the song completely. So I hope that helps, but let's kind of move at a faster pace kind of bring it all together. So here we go. C major. We're gonna add the Gs that. So let's add every root note as the fifth. So here we go to G. We're gonna add the D. The F, we're going to add the C. We're gonna ad the D minor. And then back to C. So, very good. This is kind of how we kind of bring everything together. I hope you had a great time learning about root notes and learning about what harmony notes can accompany your chords, as well. I will see you for our next class, but thanks for joining me today and see you soon. 5. Class 4! Dexterity and Stretch Your Fingers: Hi, everyone. Welcome. In this class, we're almost halfway through this course, but we haven't talked about dexterity. Dexterity is our adaptability of our fingers to play it faster and to be able to reach the notes that we want to successfully without playing the wrong notes, it can also be where we have that kind of dual flexibility we can stretch our fingers, especially on the piano or guitar to play different notes or even on the bass. And then also dexterity comes with a lot of practice. So what is practice? Again, it's not perfect. It's just progress. And having repetitive good exercises where you can really thrive as musicians and help our dexterity, which really, again, adds to our wheelhouse and our skills and our techniques. And so with dexterity, we're going to look at the piano, and we're going to talk about a couple exercises that are my favorites to kind of work on. And the first one might be a little bit of a stretch, but we talked about it briefly at the end of the last class, and that is our octave notes. But we're gonna take it slow, so don't worry. I'm not going to push it really fast right out of the gate, but let's look at it on how we can kind of stretch our fingers. As you can see, I am right here again at the S and my pinkies stretched up to this higher s. So together is those two Cs. Now, we want to move in kind of a clock fashion. Like, there's a tempo, which is keeping track of the timing of a song or exercise. And you can do that with a metronome that's either on your keyboard on your piano or you can buy one or download an app that has one. But we're going to keep track and just kind of take it nice and slow and walk our way up. Piano, doing this octave exercise. And you'll notice that if you do this a couple of times, maybe even every practice, and you sit down to do it, you'll get faster and faster. Now I'm going to actually I'm stopping here at high E, and I'm going to come back down just because it's out of the camera. So here we go back down, E and E, D and D, C and C, B and B, A and A, G and G, F and F, A and E, D and D, and R. Z. So we can do it with our left hand, as well. I recommend doing with both hands, really building again that dexterity for both hands. So here we go, middle C to the low C, then B to B, A to A, G to G, F F, E, E, D to D, and this is where we're going to stop and come back. So C to C, C, D, E, E, F. So, great job. So that's just one exercise we can do that really kind of strengthens our webbing, so our webbing between our fingers, but also, really kind of gets it where it's more flexible and we can stretch to longer and further notes that are drawn out. The other thing that we can do is kind of working with our fingers in kind of the claw fashion. You're using your one and three, and you're kind of going up the piano. And again, a metronome is really helpful for these. I'm coming back down again to stay in the cam review. And so just doing this at a faster pace. We can even make our way down the piano. And back up. And so that's just another one we can do with both our hands, but just kind of leave room for our next exercise is really kind of with dexterity is really kind of going into scales. And so, scales are really important. It's something that's talked about widely throughout music theory. You'll do it on different instruments to learn the notes of a scale. And so what is a scale? It's a seven to eight note repeated tone. And by that, I mean, your eighth notes are your octaves, so that repeats. But all these seven notes what makes up an octaive. So here we go. We got CD EFG ABC. But how did I move so fast throughout this exercise? The only way to do it is doing the crossover scale. We can do a five finger notes scale, which helps our dexterity, too. That looks like this. Yes, Gs. Taking it slower again. But when we're playing a crossover scale, it's really helpful to be able to kind of take it one, two, three, cross under to F, G, A, B, C. So definitely refer to the keys below with the blue. C, back down, go all the way to our thumb, cross the third finger over. And we can do that with our left hand, as well. And we start with, again, our pinky, and we go five, four, three, two, one, three, two, one. We're coming back. We're going to go one, two, three, cross our thumb under, so one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five. And so you get used to playing these separate and then also play them together. But these dexterity exercises really help not only music theory and understanding the different terms of what a scale is and root notes, but also what makes up a scale and the components of that, but also helps us with our ear training, helps us also, you know, on the graph over here, is realizing, like, how does it look like on sheet music? And so we'll talk a little bit more about that throughout this course, too. But thanks for joining me for this class. I'm going to see you, and the next one, we're going to talk about key signatures. 6. Class 5! Let's Do Some Sight Reading: Hi, welcome back. This is the Beginner's Guide to music theory class number five. We've made it. We're about halfway through, but we haven't talked about sight reading, and that's something that a lot of my students really want to obtain as far as a technique and skill. And so let's drop a couple hints and some ideas, some technique, some skills in this class. So let's start back here on the piano, back on C major. So when we're looking at it over on our left of the screen. We see that that metal C sits primarily between that fancy looking S, which is our treble clef and our base clef. Now, the treble clef, that has another name for it called the G clef. And then, of course, the base clef below where our left hand is, is pretty much occupying all these bass notes. And so that has another name for it besides base clef. They call it the F clef. And so, again, treble Clep is the G clef and the base clef. Is called the F clef. Now, there's a great way to memorize notes that already dictates how the base clef is going to be laying out either line note or space note. So if you look at the base clef, there is a very fancy symbol with two dots. Those two dots surround one line. That is where you would have an F, the note F. And it kind of slips in a little small little letter there on the left of that. And as you kind of go up the scale, you have F, then G on the space, a line B on the space, and then middle C coming back down, C C. And so when I teach music, especially in person, I'm going to use the same techniques here. And so I always gravitate, learn metal C first. Once you know that and know that that separates your piano, 'cause you go up and you're still in the treble clef. You go down and you're in the bass clef, right? So that's a good way to start. But then use your pinpoint notes. And I call those as the pinpoint notes that are affiliated with the clefs. So G clef or the treble clef. Here's the the G above middle C, the fifth, right? And that is associated to where this treble clef is wrapping around the spaces and the notes, right, in a visual sense. In the left hand, the same thing, right? We already talked about that. Look at that F. The two dots of the base clef are sitting on spaces surrounding that line of the F cleft. So that automatically tells us something there. That is then the process of learning some of the closer notes to middle C, knowing that D comes after C. And then B comes before C. So knowing those kind of helps as well, but let's use two more major pinpoint notes. And so here's C major. The next C above that we've already been using. So why don't we give it more of a better name so we can of course memorize faster, better, more efficiently? And so this is high C. It makes up an octave. This C sits on a space. The next C above that will sit two lines above the treble clef itself. So you have that C in the middle. Then the higher C way on top, right? So you have a line space for C, and then a line again. Now, if you go back down the scale, still talking about Cs only, you have middle C again, below C space no, and then lower C, this will be two lines below the base class. You can kind of see it. Sorry about that if it's not too visible. But that gives us more of an indication what's kind of going. And the best way to also memorize this is that middle C is always on a line. And then it goes space notes. Line notes, space notes. Line notes, space notes. Line notes. Space notes. And kind of going by that is really helpful, too. Another really great thing is really kind of memorizing what this kind of scales looks like, what kind of chords are situated in line notes or space notes, then line notes again and just really being able to understand that. The left hand, if you're left hand, it might be easier to memorize because dexterities there, being able to memorize things because you're used to using a left hand more might be a better idea, but look at this. Space notes. Instead of the line notes, we start with the right hand, so it's the opposite. Now these are line notes for D minor. Space notes for E minor, Fjors back to the line notes and SO until we go over the scale. So that's another really great way to kind of memorize our positions of sight reading. And so I'm a tactile learner. I also learn by auditory and visual depending on the setting. So I like to present this in all my classes and hope it helps. Definitely, writing out notes and being able to identify those on she music is helpful. So pick an easy song. Li You My Sunshine a great easy song. Little Tenderness is another really great song. And so I kind of, like, go to my favorite songs, and I'll learn from those what they look like on sheet music. And that's kind of where I started, too, and where I kind of gravitated from one instrument to the next. So I hope that helped. Thanks for sticking around for some sight reading tips and tricks, and I hope you can practice those at home. Get ready. We're starting to gear up for our projects of this course, so I can't wait till see and hear your projects. I will see you soon. Thank you. 7. Class 6! Chromatic Scales: Hi, everyone. Welcome back. This is class number six of the Beginner's Guide to Music Theory. So excited to unveil what we're learning next in music theory. Talk about some new terms so we can grow your musical knowledge. But also, when you start hearing these terms, you'll be able to equate it to how to play, perhaps how it actually kind of transfers on um, reading music, so be able to sight read better, and also just expanding, again, our tools, right, and our techniques. So what we're talking about today is our dexterity. So dexterity can happen in several different ways. I want to bring our attention back to the keyboard. So two examples below on this screen. And so, again, my fingers, you can watch or the blue keys highlighted below, whichever works best for you. But what we're talking about in this is actually kind of situating how we can find keys better. So building upon Lesson one, if you will. So chromatic scales is the very next note. And when you hear someone say a chromatic scale, I want you to think about not only the white keys, black keys as well, but also naming them, being to associate those names accurately, both up and then down the scale. And because, again, just to emphasize, there's only seven keys in the white that repeat. And, of course, there's five that are emphasizing those notes and going up and down with you repeating their names is really going to build your memorization of what they're called, as well as looking at the screen over here for sight reading, right? We want to describe that is middle C every single time. But if we add to the left and right of that what that note kind of transfers to, it's a half step. So the very next note up or down is a half step, and we have C C sharp or D flat. And this is, we're going through the chromatic scale. So we have D D sharp or E flat. E, which is also an F flat. That's something that we can talk about in a little bit. But let's keep going. So next key is a white key, and we have F or E sharp. Then we have F sharp or G flat, G, G sharp or A flat, A, A sharp or B flat, B, which is also C flat because it's right next door again. And then we have C again, which is also B sharp. So let's kind of go backwards. So we kind of keep this all in good memory. So we have C. This is also high C, if you will, middle C is right here. And so this C is also B sharp. Then we have B or C flat. B flat or A sharp, A, A flat or G sharp, G, G flat or F sharp, F or E sharp, E or F flat. E flat or D sharp. D D flat, C sharp, and back to middles. So go over those notes, refer to the sight reading guide on the top left here of the screen, and also just get accustomed to kind of repeating these Loop it, if you will, to get used to again, going over those notes with your own voice. There is something about when we repeat something to ourselves that our brain actually sticks to and remembers faster and more efficiently. So again, just good tips and tricks of this. But also just knowing, you know, half step whole step relationship and going back to ENF so we don't have a black E in between these two notes, nor do we have them between B and C. So, again, the very next note is your sharp or flat, and so that's why this E to F. This F becomes E sharp and this E becomes flat. And again, just going up and down, we'll kind of bring that forth right in your memory and help you kind of equate the two notes and expand those, of course. And then B and C. So again, C is sharp. B is C flat. Great. So in growing through a chromatic, we can work on our dexter. And then repeating back and forth. So the golden rule is to do one and three, which is your thumb and your middle finger. And then when it gets to the double white keys in between the black and white, that's when you bring your index down. So let me show you a little bit slower how to kind of go up and both down a scale without losing speed. So you're going to take your thumb on middle C as an example, but you can choose any note. You're going white to black in this section, that automatically goes one, three, one, three, one, and then two down. Now, with a lot of piano, I just want to emphasize that our thumbs are our ones, indexes are our twos, threes is middle, ring fingers are four, and then pinkies are five. And that's the best way to kind of memorize that. They have a lot of beginner piano books, but when you start putting it to use and you start utilizing your fingers more, you'll notice that these kind of stick. Don't consider the thumbs right here as your ones. When you play guitar, they will actually include and start with the one on index, just as a note. Same thing goes for string instruments, which I teach. I teach violin and celllo same, and I always teach my students the same thing. Your thumb is more or less your anchor in a properly accurate form, so it doesn't put pressure on the thumb muscles. Okay, so getting back to dexterity, we're going from C to C, but we're using our one and three fingers and our two for the double white. So here we go nice and slow. We have C, C sharp, one and three. D, D sharp, one and three. Put your thumb back on E. Index comes down for F. Go back to the three for F sharp, thumb to G, third finger for G sharp, A with the thumb, A sharp with the third, and then one, two again. Now to come back down, you're doing the same thing. You two, one, crossover the third finger, three, one, three, one, three, two, one, one, and back into position as fast as you like. But still moving so that when you want to stop, like I just did, you put your third down as a stopper. But that should help as far as dexterity exercises. The other one I teach is going through our chords that we already talked about, so you can kind of do arpeggio that I played at the beginning. And that's really helpful going through the keys around the circuits. And making it sound very fluent, very legato, which is smooth and connected, as we play, another really good term used in music theory is legato playing. There's other terms, too, as well as staccato. In Staccato, you're playing with, like, the hot potato aspect where your fingers are bouncing off the notes. But the aspect I always teach too is don't let your fingers go so far off the note that it's hard to come back down and also keep accurate time. You know, definitely measure that how you will, but allowing that to really happen. So that's our dexterity, a couple of exercises as well. I hope that helps, and I will see you in class number seven. Thank you so much. 8. Class 7! Intervals (What are those?): Hi, welcome back. We are continuing our journey through the Beginner's Guide of music theory. This class is number seven, and we're talking about one of my favorite things intervals. Intervals is kind of one of those music theory terms that's tossed around, but it doesn't have context. And so what does it really mean? It's the distance between notes. So, believe it or not, learning the steps that we did in chords is built upon intervals. And so we're going to give that knowledge now because it's a little bit longer of an explanation with the exercises than we could have done if we just went over chords. And again, this is a lot of kind of the separate lessons I teach in my private lessons. Just again, allowing ourselves to process information and be able to really put it to use is the most effective way to learn an instrument, to get better at knowing what music theory really applies to and how we can branch out with music theory and play once we have a nice foundation of music theory on different instruments. And also, the other thing just to talk about is that it's not as crazy to memorize all these different terms if we're always putting it to use, and we're always saying to ourselves, Oh, okay. You know, I just played intervals in the form of a chord. Those are major chord. Those are minor chords and so forth. So, with a lot of that we're going to kind of go into. And with intervals, we're going to start again on C. You can start at any note. And how we're going to do that, let's talk about our distance between notes because we're going to start talking about seventh, ninth, 11th, 13th, and I'll even talk about 15th chords and what that means. But today's lesson, let's talk about how we build these intervals into seventh chords. So um, refer to the middle screen and also our sight reading guide on the far left for this. This will be really helpful, as well as looking at the hands below. And hopefully, all of that comes together so that one of them works best as far as you being able to really assess this information. So again, starting on middle C, we're going to talk about distance between notes. So when you're coming up the stairs or going up a set of stairs, you're always taking that first step. So this is our one. Then we go C to D is our two. E is our third. Sit F is our four, Cita G five. C to A, six or six. C to B seventh. C to C is our perfect a eight. Or an octave. They'll abbreviate this and say, eight VA. And here's where the 15 MA comes in too. And that just means two octaves. So the math might look a little weird and how that's 15 when it's just eight and eight for the first one. And then the second one together, you would think it's 16, but it's 15 because we don't again, are counting the top note. So it's the distance between again, going back to intervals, and that's why it's 15. So you can kind of look at the screen with the blue keys and kind of count up from there and get that 15 A. And they'll write it above where your right hand or left hand will be playing two octaves above for the 15 A. Or they'll write it below in the bass clef. So below that base clef, they'll write 15 A. And that means you're going not just one octave, eight VA, but two octaves, 15. And so that's that distance. Oh, hope that helps. But let's just kind of go over. When we're playing a chord, we got our one, three, and five. And the reason for that is we're going one, skip the two, note two, play the three. So we have a major third, skip the four and play the fifth. So all three notes together is our triad. And that also makes up our major, but can make up our minor, as well. But also just kind of going into intervals, when we expand upon that, we can play the seventh. So this becomes a C major seventh. It's also a E minor. C you play C on the base over here, and this is E min over here. Just kind of give you a little context, so it's not too crazy. But when we play it with a flat B, what does that say? Here's our C seven with a diminished note, the diminished is our seventh here for the B flat. So what we're going to stick with today is the C major sevenths. So we're gonna keep expanding upon this knowledge. We talked about C major chord, G major, and F major. So let's look at a G major chord. Again, skip the second, play the third, skip the fourth, lay the fifth. So the one, three, and five for G major chord, which is GBD. And then we add the seventh. Now because Gmjor scale has an F sharp, if we go around the circle of fits, see this page for the circle of fits. When we are talking about that, we're always including an F sharp in G major. So we have to play it correctly to get a G major with a seventh added on. And that's where you get that good tonality. There's other way to play it, as well, but we'll talk about inversions later. But let's talk about our last chord for this lesson, which is F major with a seventh. So let's talk about what's in this scale once again, and it's G, A, B flat. So we got a flat four. Crossing under did the CD. Okay, so coming back down. Proper form of crossover scales, which you can find also in my other class beginner piano one. But talking about music theory, here is a perfect example of playing the one. Skip the two, play the three. So there's our FA. And here's our fifth, again, FAF, G A, B, and C. There is our fifth. But we want to play a seventh. Now the real question is, where is that? Well, the D is our six. Here's a seventh. And because there's a B flat, there's no other black keys in this chord and scale, we play at F. So just a review. C Major seventh. G Major seventh. GBD F Sharp. And then F Major. So those are those three chords. These are our intervals, again, just kind of going and walking throughout the scale, so just keep that in mind. And then also coming down, too, that changes as well. But just remember the very next note after the first one you play is your second, and then your third and your fourth and fifth for a major scale, of course. Alright, thank you so much. We're gonna be talking more about inversions and class number eight. I'll see you then. 9. Class 8! Fun with inversions!: Hi, everyone. Welcome back. So for this class, where we are talking about inversions. It's building upon the last class that we were just discussing as far as intervals and how to create a seventh chord. So inversions, just to kind of go over this before we get too deep into ninth, 11th, and 13th cords, we're going to be looking at our inversions. So with chords, we've learned our basics, and so we're just going to take those three basic chords and build upon them. And those three chords, again, is our C major chord. R G major chord and then our F major chord. So and, of course, this is our. But with those three chords, we've talked a little bit more about expanding them becoming seventh chords, and how we properly play those based on the scale. And those particular scales again, are based on the circle of fifths. So always refer back to that. But also with inversions, maybe we're not always comfortable playing the G on the top for C major chord. So let's demonstrate. So C major chord or one is RC, or middle third is E and G. But when we play these versions, we can spin them around. You can play different versions going Thank you. So with that being said, what is kind of the proper way to play them? They're different inversions depending on what you want the sound to ultimately kind of gravitate to or if you're creating a build in music. And so with those builds, do we want to go up the scale? Do we want to come back down? And how do we want those to ultimately sound? And so with the one I just played with that type of build the music and three different chords, you'll notice that they always kind of build on each other. So C major chord, D major chord, and then of course, E minor chord. I could have done E major chord, but here we are. So with that being said, let's talk about inversions. Inversions. Here's our second inversion. We're gonna put our thumb where our middle finger is our E, and keeping those same notes again, just keep looking for the EGC. So we're spinning around the notes now. So EGC it's our second position, and our third is GC and coming back down, third, to second position, two, first. So there's that now if we do it on the left hand, same thing. First, gonna take where our middle finger is when putting our pinky and expanding to our thumb down middle C. Again, we're switching the order and then coming back down. Same chord. But again, we're choosing how we want it to sound. Let's expand upon that with G major. So, G major, GBD? Say that middle, that B, we want it on the bottom. We want the base to have a B. And we want the top to now have the G. So what are we doing? We're putting our thumb where our middle finger is and having a B, D, and G. And, of course, you can kind of see as I move from playing my middle finger to my index, it's just easy. And that same thing can be applied again to move into third. So now we have the third inversion of this, and we have D, G, and B. So now I'm putting the B again back on top. Here we go on to go. We'll put it back on the bottom, and now we'll put it in the middle. And you can play that throughout the piano. So that's a good exercise. But if we do it on left one more time, we got GBD, BD G, B. And then our top GBD. Coming back down again. And just emphasize this is also a dexterity exercise. You're working your different muscles to play those different notes, and it's extremely helpful. So we can apply that to F major again. Again, move the notes around. And again, and then we're playing it higher in our first position, but we're kind of come back down. Now we're going to switch it C in the bottom, but now we want to see in the middle. And there we go. So now let's mix around our chords again. So you can kind of see I added before we into the F G major. We do the same thing here. So FAC, ACF. C F A. And back to our first version. Now we're a little bit higher, but we're gonna come back down. Here's our last almost. We got MCA. If it's hard to back down, here's a G major, and then P we start. So always feel like you can mess around with them, see what sounds good. You might be coming up with another song that you are writing or composing, and you have another outlet on how to express those words and those thoughts and that ideal sound that you're trying to get across. So thanks for joining me on this episode of intervals, and I will see you in our next class. Thanks so much. 10. Class 9! 7th and 9th Chords: Hi, welcome back to Beginner's Guide when we're talking about music theory. So we are coming to the end of this course, but we can't just leave without talking about nights. And so with nights, a lot of people struggle not just with the concept, but mostly because that music theory, again, is not that firm foundation. So again, just building on our last class, talking about more about intervals, right, or distance between notes. And so the nights, how is that possible when we stop at eight and we restart our notes again, right? They repeat. So throughout the piano, they technically, as a number, do not constantly repeat. We don't start back at one every time we hit our seventh. So when we're looking at stuff, we notice we call, like, our octaves, the eight, right? The perfect date. They'll call it throughout. And as we kind of progress and go about the piano, we realize, okay, I just got to really listen to the tone and how that tonality is bringing across diverse notes. This is so true. Now, the reason for that is also pay attention to the numbers. And so with ninth chords, we just talked about seventh, but with ninths, it's good to kind of understand how the ninths play hand in hand with intervals. So let's just talk about how that looks like as far as numbers on the piano. So again, our second or third or fourth, seven, eight, and nine, ten, 11, 14, 15. So there's more proof for about 15 MA that we talked about, right? Indicating those two octaves above and below. So just knowing that, three, four, seven, eight, nine, here's our technically our ninth, right? But we're not gonna stretch our hands to play like that. There actually is a theory that I heard, and it's kind of passed along that Ray Charles could hit 13. Sorry, I want to said 17. That's crazy. 13 notes. And so those 13 notes is even I mean, that's it blows my mind. I can't do it. I don't really know a lot of musicians that can, but if you are one of those musicians who can message me. Let's talk about it. I really want to know how that happens. But I digress. For the ninth chord, we're gonna throw it on the bottom. And so, just notice what note it is. That's a D, right? Because here's our eight or nine. Aha. So in C major, our ninth is here. But how do we play it? Well, we got to remember how to play our seventh chord to play a ninth. So we have what? Our major chord. Again, I'm moving my fingers around, so we can play this nice and easy. And because of the C major scale, our seventh is the natural B. So there's a seventh, C major seven here on the screen. And so when we add the nine, how are we going to do that? Well, it's just a matter of rearranging our fingers to be able to do this because we're gonna add the D right here. And so we have C G and stretching my pinky to that B. Here we go. And so there is C major nine. They're telling you what also makes it up, which is your major second. And this is your major second right here. So the notes incorporated. And they're also giving you a little tidbit. I love that. Trough G in the bottom or C. I love that. So just know that we're gonna apply this now to G major. So refresh. G major Cor, G, B and D. G Major seventh include sharp because circle of fifths, y'all. So with that, we have G Major seventh. Now, what is our ninth chord? So let's go through it. G to A, second, B, C, D, major seventh, eighth. Perfect date and our ninth. So it's an A. But again, Look at me. I'm struggling to hit that A, we could clip it, for sure. But to avoid playing and almost hitting the G another note by mistake, let's learn good form, and so we're gonna add it to the bottom. So again, our major Cor Major seventh for G major, and our ninth. G. Here's our D. So again, we're gonna stretch it. And sharp. So G major ninth. And for those that want to see it on the left hand, definitely check out some of my videos. I definitely play a lot of piano on those videos, and I'm definitely playing some nights in some of them. Okay, so we did C major. We did G major. And again, we're doing the one, four, five throughout this course. So now let's go to F major, F major Chord, FAC. Let's play it with Park of the scale. Our seventh. So up to F is our eight. Here's our seven. But it's a bit of a it can be a stretch, right? If we add the ninth on top of this. So, where's the ninth again? Here's our eight. Right? And so we're gonna stretch. Eight to nine is the G. How are we going to do it? Put it on the bottom. So F. Again, don't play the B flat. You're gonna play the C and the E. So there it is. So here's your summation, then we add it. Get that C in there. Always important. All right. And so, again, that also gives us more hints, again, playing the root note on the left hand or playing diverse type of notes where you can add to that sound and really accompany yourself with your left hand. But with learning music theory, this is what's up with the ninth chord. So thanks for joining me again. I hope that was helpful. And again, consistency as everything in knowing what music theory is all about, because you're really learning the terms and putting them to practice. So I will see you for the next lesson. Thanks for joining me today. 11. Class 10! Applying the Circle of Fifths - So Easy!s: Hi, welcome back. This is the beginner's guide to music theory. We're closing out this course with some advanced chords, I must say. And so just understanding what 11th chords are in our major scales, it's really important to again review the intervals, class, go over from basically in this course, it's classes seven through nine as far as the intervals and building a chord. But let's do a quick summary, if you will. So if we build these chords, we're talking about major chords. We're talking about minor. We're talking about all that. But we're going to stay with major. And so with our major, here's our major chord. I'm using different fingering, but one, three, five is usually preferred. We're keeping to the scale and noticing our seventh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven is our B. So there is our C major seven. Now, we want to add that actually. And again, going over the ninth, we had added the D. So we had incorporated all these notes here to make a ninth, C major nine, but now we're adding the 11th. So again, C to C is an eight, nine to ten or 11. So we got an add an F, right? How do we do that? When we're six notes, and we only have five fingers, we're starting to bring in our left hand. So let's do it. A couple ways you can do it. You can play the root note. So C down there, but we're actually going to play Um, the seventh down there. We're gonna play the B. And the reason for that is the tonality I'm looking for when I'm not only just playing but when I'm writing as well. And so let's go over that. So how does that look? That basically looks like a C, D, F, NG. And now we're adding the B. So I kind of bring it down over here, and we're gonna play that B with all these notes. And there, there we go. We're building it. So it says D minor. But remember, when we learned intervals, so you major in D minor half step away. And so what we're doing again, We're indicating the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth over here, and we're playing the seventh. So these are all the notes you need. These are all the notes you need. So definitely stick with that. That'll always tell you exactly what's up. It'll also give you the other affiliated chords, too in the middle here of this class. Okay, so let's keep going. What we want to do now is do our G major. So we got G, B and D, right? Our seventh is our F sharp. We don't want to forget about that. Our ninth is our A. So we're starting to build. If that's nine, ten and 11. So we got to add B or A and C to this. So A and C, keeping our B in between. So I hope that's not too crazy, but here again is our major. And our major seventh. Here is if we add a ninth, right? G major nine. And now we're adding the 11. So we got to fill that in. Again, I'm going to take the seventh, which is our E sharp in the scale. Seventh is always right before that octave, right? In the key. So it's F sharp in this one. We're gonna put it on the bottom. Play F sharp. And we're going to include not only the A, B for the third, the fourth, and the fifth. So we're playing all fingers down on the right with A F Sharp. So, it says, A, min or ninth, but also notice it says 11 parentheses, that is automatically telling us we are on G Major with an 11th. So with that being said, it expands our knowledge again. And that tone is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for conflict with the 11th. And that's what I usually throw them in if there's like a bridge that I need to emphasize, not only the words that I'm singing, but the music as well. I'll throw on the 11th sometimes. Okay, let's talk about F major. Here is our third. Here is our seventh. So again, our seventh is the E for this scale. But we got to throw in a couple of notes. We got to throw in the G, and we got to throw in the B flat. The reason for that is the fourth is the B flat. The second is the G. So we got to throw that in. That means that means our seventh. He's gonna go on the left. So here we go. Left hand. And now let's build our chords. So we got our second, third, we our fourth. And our fifth. Here we go. All fingers down. It says G minor nine, but look at the parenthess 11. And it's F. So, that being said, we have now learned three 11th chords, and you know how to compose them. So again, we're Fertier circle of fifths. Always go through the scale to see what notes make up that scale to make up that and up the circle of fits. Um, I find it really helpful to show off the circle if it's clock. So if you go down the right side, all the sharps are. So your 1:00 position is G major, has one sharp. Our 2:00 position is D major, it has F sharp, C sharp. Our 3:00 position is A major scale, has three sharps, and then E majors are four with four sharps F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, and D sharp, and then so forth. If we go down the left side of the clock, and you can see that on this picture, you'll see that or 12:00 is still C, but our 11:00, starting with the flats is F major, which we learned in this. And that has a B flat. So 1:00 position on the left side, meaning at 11:00. And then so forth. You'll see B flat for 10:00 has two flats, B flat and E flat. And on the flat side, it's usually easier to memorize, but I always teach my students the sharps first. There's more to always be achieved when you're going up the scale as well and just theoretical terms. But also just knowing how and where they position themselves on the circle of fifths is important. Use that as a really great guide. Feel free to print it. I'll include it part of the materials for this course. Anyway, you've made it through music. Theory for the beginner's guide. So thank you for joining me. Again, I'm Bargo. You'll see in our next video, just a final kind of goodbye, but also just going over all the concepts that we talked about, and we went over together. Feel free to message me, do one of the projects that are part of this course, leave a review. And definitely, if you can recommend it, definitely do. I am here. I love that. And connect with me online, if you like, as well. But thank you so much for being part of this course, for joining me, for expanding your knowledge and for growing, not just as a musician, as an artist. Um, and just expressing your individual creative art in itself. So again, you're on the right side. Thank you so much, and it was good to see you. 12. Music Theory Summary and Special Thanks: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining the Beginner's Guide on music theory. I hope you had a great time. I hope you stayed throughout the whole chorus and you're able to get at least two, three things out of it as far as expanding and knowing more about music theory. I hope that the examples on the piano really helped, and you can kind of transfer those on whatever instrument you may be learning. I'm always interested in growing not only as an artist, but as a musician and an educator. Definitely send me any information you felt like could have been more useful part of this course. You can definitely leave a review. I definitely check those. I see those, and I do appreciate the time you put into them. You can also leave me a message, as well, or send me the project by itself that you create. There's two projects that are explained actually in the summary of this course. So go back to when you joined the course in the intro and just seeing what the course was about. There's instructions there how to actually create your own project and go through it. You can upload it or you can upload it privately on YouTube and select the private option instead of the public and then send me a link. I am definitely here for that. I more than willing to give constructive criticism or just, you know, talk about music in general. So definitely connect with me. And again, I'm Margot Lane. It was great to have you part of my class. Thank you for joining me.