Simple Music Theory for Beginners

1. Introduction: As a music producer, we have to learn music theory, which is essentially learning to speak the language behind music. Learning the behaviors and patterns of music lay the foundation so we can write and speak the language of music as we would our own native tongue. But the problem is, music theory is complex. Some dedicate their entire lives studying theory. But that level of expertise is usually not necessary. Even though English is my native language, I don't need to know every word in the dictionary. To become a music producer, how much music theory do you really need to know. The thing is most popular music only use very fundamental ideas for music theory. If you can grasp the basics, you'll be fully equipped to create amazing songs. My name is Maddie Kenny. I've been a musician almost my entire life. I've completed music theory school and have also been a music producer for the past 10 years. I actually became a doctor recently, but my passion for music kept me producing even while I was in medical school. I've played recitals, performed in orchestras, bands, and even deejayed. Having produced in every genre, from classical to hip hop to house to cinematic scores, I firmly believe that understanding music theory is the foundational core for anyone looking to create music. This class is perfect for beginners with absolutely zero knowledge about music theory. You don't have to know anything about music at all. But it's also for intermediate students who might need a little refresher or extra help and clarity on the conceptual areas of music theory. I'll be guiding you through the very basics of what notes are. Then we'll look at how they're organized into keys and scales, we'll learn how to create chords and chord progressions, and for your class project, we'll combine everything we learn to synthesize a chord progression into a simple song that you can proudly call your own. I've also included a downloadable workbook with the exercises and templates for each lesson so you can practice honing your skills. Music theory can be a very confusing topic, but it doesn't have to be. My goal is to cut through all the noise, pun intended, and deliver only the must know principles to help you get started writing and producing amazing songs. I'm really excited to get started and I hope I see you all in the next lesson. 2. Class Project: For the class project, you'll outline the structure of a song using the knowledge and skills we cover. You'll choose a key, a scale, and a chord progression. By the end of the course, I ask that you share your unique chord progression with your classmates so we can all learn from one another. As this course is for a complete beginner, the only thing you'll need for this course is a piano or a keyboard of any kind. It can be a virtual keyboard or a physical keyboard, like the one I have here. But this will be very important so you can follow along and physically apply the lessons to reinforce the concepts that we cover. If you're able to record your keyboard sounds directly into your DAW, that's excellence but if not, just taking a simple voice recording on your phone will be fine as long as you can stay accountable and post your class project so I can give you feedback and we can all learn from our experiences. I'll be using a DAW, a digital audio workstation called Ableton, which has a virtual piano instruments, and I'll be playing it on a Novation midi controller, the 61 SL MkIII. Again, it's not necessary for you to have this gear, I'll only be demonstrating with this piano keyboard right here. As you go through the course, I highly encourage you to pause in between lessons and play around on your own piano keyboards to really understand the theory. Music theory is all about pattern recognition so the more time we can spend with the instruments, the faster and the deeper things will fall into place. With that, let's get started with notes and pitches. 3. Notes & Pitch: Let's learn about notes. To understand what notes are in music theory, it's helpful to briefly go over how our brain actually interprets sound. All sounds are made up of vibrations or sound waves. Our ears act as little amplifiers that allow our brain to process all different kinds of sound waves. The faster the vibrations, the higher sounding of the note, the slower the vibrations, the lower sounding the note. If the speed of the vibration, what we call the frequency of the vibration, is held at a constant rate, it'll create a single sound which we call a note or pitch. For example, if I play this A note on my piano here, it creates sound waves that vibrate to produce this specific pitch. If I slowly move up the keyboard, I'll create different pitches that vibrate at faster and faster frequencies. To master music theory, we look for patterns. It turns out that as I move up the piano, there are only 12 notes that exist before the notes repeat at a higher pitch. See, this A and this A sound the same. One is just higher than the other one. This distance of repeated note to repeated note, the A to the A here, is what we call an octave. On a piano we refer to the white keys by letter names A through G. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then back to A. For absolute beginners, it can be useful to put stickers or markers on each key so you remember which one they are. That'll help you learn the layout of the piano a little bit faster. The black keys are called sharps or flats. Sharps are notes that are higher, flats are notes that are lower. This also means that each black key has two distinct names. This black key here, that's between a C and a D, right here, we can call this a C-sharp because it's higher than the C. But we can also call it a D-flat because it's a step lower than the D. This can be a little confusing and I'll go over how to determine which name to refer to it by when we get to the keys and scales section. But let's do another example. This black key right here between the D and the E would be called a D-sharp because it's higher than the D or it can be called an E-flat because it's lower than the E. The distance between any two notes are called intervals. These can be half-steps, aka, semitones, or whole-steps, aka, whole tones. Moving from any key to the next adjacent key is called a half-step. Going from C to C-sharp would be a half-step. This is most commonly a white key to a black key, like I just showed you there or vice versa, a black key to a white key. That's also a half-step right there. Half-step is the next adjacent key. The only exceptions to those rules would be when you're going from B to a C, right here, B to a C, or an E to an F, because there is no black keys in-between those notes. For a whole-step, if we think mathematically, would be two half-steps, because two-halves make one whole. For example, moving from a C to a D would be a whole-step because it's going from a half-step to another half-step. Two halves make a whole. So C to a D is a whole-step. D to an E would be another whole-step. E to an F would be just a half-step because it's moving to the next adjacent key and there is no black key in the middle. This is a very important concept to understand because music theory is built around the relationship between these half-steps and whole-steps for different notes. We covered a lot of very fundamental basics about music theory in this lesson. We covered what octaves are, which are repeated note to repeated notes, and there are 12 notes in-between an octave. We learned what half-steps are, which are steps moving to adjacent keys and we learned what whole-steps are, which is two half-steps, so moving from white key to white key or black key to black key or those two exceptions between a B and a C and an E and an F, which are just half-steps because there is no adjacent notes in-between them. Feel free to pause here and play around on your piano keyboard. In your workbook, you'll find a piano keyboard octave with all the white keys and black keys labeled to refer to. In the next lesson, we'll explore keys and scales. I'll see you all there. 4. Keys & Scales: Let's learn about keys and scales. A musical key, let's use the key of C for example is a group of notes where C is home base or the root note for which the other notes would sound good together. Think of the key like a guide for what notes go together in a piece of music. A scale is the actual group of notes that are part of the key. In general, most music nowadays are based on what we call a major or minor scale. Major scale sound happy minor scales sound more sad and melancholy. these two scales are considered heptatonic scales. Hepta meaning seven, so they each have seven notes in their scale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and the eighth one would repeat back to the same note. Let's learn in the key of C. Here's a C note, and this will be a root note in the key of C. The C major scale has seven notes starting with C, so C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and then back to C. Remember that as we move up the white keys, where does adding on different letters. As you can hear, the six other notes in the scale, they all sound pretty good together with this root note there's no obvious dissonance in the way that that scale sounds. Let's look at the formula for how I got those six other notes from the C major scale. Every major scale follows the same pattern between notes. The pattern is whole, whole, half, whole whole, whole, half, whole, whole half, whole, whole whole half. This refers to the interval, either a half note or a whole note above the root note. Starting with the root note C. I'll move up a whole step to D another whole step to E, a half step to F, whole step to G whole step to A, whole step to B and then another half step back to C whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. That's the formula for every major scale, for any key that we want to play it. I just like to teach using the key of C because it's a very chill key all the notes in the scale are just the white keys so it's super easy to learn and super easy to get comfortable with. But we can follow that same formula for any other key and create another major scale. Let's do it again for the key of F-sharp and remember that A-sharp key means that it's one step above the root note, so an F-sharp would just be a half step above F, which is right here. here's F, F-sharp would be the one right above it. I'll start with F-sharp and I'll go whole step to G-sharp, whole step to A-sharp half step to B. Whole step to C-sharp, whole step to D-sharp, whole step to E-sharp and then half-step back to F-sharp. Another F-sharp major scale. Now, you'll notice that I called this key right here, the E-sharp although we also know it as F. This is because when naming notes in a scale, we only want to use letters one time, this is to help prevent any confusion but technically, yes, I could also call this F-sharp, A-flat, A-sharp B, C-sharp, E-flat E-sharp, F-sharp But that would get super confusing. It's better to think about the seven notes as seven different letters in the alphabet so we never mix up what's scale we're actually in. In addition to learning the letters associated with each note in a scale, it's also important to get good at identifying the number or degree associated with each note in the scale. Let's go back to the C major scale, it's a bit easier to work with, and let's identify the degree of each note in the scale. It's just as simple as the letter association as well. In the C major scale, we call the root note the one note so C would be the one and each note above it goes up a degree. C would be the one, D would be the two, E would be the three. F would be the four. G would be the five, A would be the six, B would be the seven and C again, we'll go back to the one. Knowing the degrees becomes incredibly helpful later on when we build chords and chord progressions. As a side note, I do want to mention that there are lots of other scales you can play for any given key. There's the Japanese scale there, pentatonic scales, there's blues scales, Indian scales and that's because remember, scales are just groupings of notes that are in the key. But I recommend just learning the major scales first because they'll serve as that fundamental concept that makes learning the other more abstract scales a lot easier. We covered a lot of basics of keys and scales, and more specifically, how to identify and play the notes of a major scale for any given key using that whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half pattern. I would definitely recommend taking a pause right here before moving on and experimenting with identifying different major scales. In your workbook, you'll find the major formula scale, and remember that there are 12 total major scales which correspond to the 12th unique notes in any octave. Ideally, you'll want to be able to master all the scales but let's start smaller, just practice identifying three different major scales and as you practice, recite aloud the letters and the degrees of each note in the scale to really understand the relationship of the major scale. For example I would say C the one, D the two, B the three, F the four, G the five, A the six, B the seven, and then C again, the one. In the next lesson, we'll cover relative minors. I'll see you guys then. 5. Relative Minor: Let's learn about Minor Scales. Just like how there are 12 major scales for every key, there are also 12 minor scales for each key. Now you might start to feel a little overwhelmed, like, geez, that's a lot of scales to learn. But don't worry, you actually already learned all 12 minor scales. This is because for every major scale, there's something called a Relative Minor Scale. What that means is for any key, all seven of those notes in the major scale are also the same seven notes of a related minor scale. Don't believe me? Let's experiment and find out. To determine the relative minor scale, start at the root note of any Major Scale and move down three half steps. If I'm starting from a C major scale, my root note would be C, and I move down three half steps, 1, 2, 3, I'll land on an A. That means the relative minor scale of C major is an A minor. Now if I play the exact same C major scale, but I start from the root note of A, I'll actually get A minor scale. [MUSIC] Another way to determine the relative minor scale is to remember that it's just the sixth degree of the major scale. Again, if I start from C, my one, and I move up six degrees, remember 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, I'll also arrive at A minor. As you can see, all the notes in the relative minor are the same as the notes in its relative major scale. C major sounds like this [MUSIC]. A relative minor scale starting from A, because we went down three half steps, 1, 2, 3, sounds like this [MUSIC]. Cool, right? Same exact notes, but if we start from an A, we get this spookier sad sounding scale. [MUSIC] Let's build off of what we know and do it again for another key. Let's do it for the D major scale. Remember for a D major scale, we want to use the formula, whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. Starting from a D, I'd go whole step to E, whole step to F sharp, half-step to G, whole step to A, whole step to B, whole step to C-sharp, and then half-step back up to D. [MUSIC] Now to find the relative minor, we take the sixth degree of D, which is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, so it's going to be a B. The relative minor of D major [MUSIC] is going to be a B minor. I can use the same exact notes that I just found in the D major scale, and I'll play them starting from B. [MUSIC] As you can see, just learning all the major scales. We actually already have learned all the relative minor scales as well. We just have to remember to move the root note to the sixth degree or down three half steps from home base, then we'll end up with a minor scale. Now that you know how to find the relative minor scale of any major scale, I'd recommend you pause again before moving on to the next lesson. In your workbook, you'll find another page with the formula for finding the relative minor key. Spend some time to practice and discover three relative minor scales from three new major scales, don't use the three that you learned in the last lesson. Try to see if you can find any other patterns at all while you are experimenting and practicing on your own. I'll see you guys in the next lesson. 6. Chords: Let's learn about chords. Chords are just a group of notes played at the same time. In general, if you play any group of notes from the same key, it'll be some chord. But we're going to go a little deeper, so you can understand why some notes sound better together than others. The most basic type of chord is a triad. A triad meaning three, meaning there are three notes in a chord. In the key of C major, the C triad would be the root note of C. You'd play the third, then the fifth. You play a note, you skip one, play another note, skip one, play another note. Get comfortable with the shape of that chord. Let's use this triad chord structure to learn the rest of the chords in the key of C major simply by moving up that structure up the scale. First is the C root chord, and then we go to the two, which is D, and then third is an E, fourth be in F, the five would be a G chord, the sixth would be an A chord, seventh would be a B, and then back to a C. It's important to realize that all those chords I just played, even though they're unique individual chords, they actually are all part of the key of C. That's why that numbering by degrees is so important. This is why being super quick and get at the number and letter associations comes in handy when we're learning keys. In the key of C, we have a D chord, an E chord, an F chord, a G, an A, and a B, but they're all part of C. For example, this D chord is the two chord in the C of key, because the second note is a D, and we're playing a two chord. This F chord is also going to be known as the four chord in the key of C, because F is the fourth degree. 1, 2, 3, 4. Now, let's listen a little more closely to those two chords I just played, the D chord and the F chord. They're both triads, but one sounds happy in one sounds more sad. That's because one is a major chord and one is a minor chord. Let's break down the formula to figure out which chords are major, and which chords are minor. Playing this F triad sounds happy, so it's a major triad. All major triads follow the same pattern of four semitones and then three semitones. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 and then three. To turn it into a minor chord, all we do is flip that. We go three and then four. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, so major, and then a minor, we drop it. Major chord four then three, minor chord, three then four. Another way to remember it would just be dropping the middle key down a half-step. All right, so that's the formula for a major and a minor triad. If we go back to the key of C, I'm going to play all the triads again in order and this time, pay attention to the pattern of which degrees I play that are minor triads, are major triads. The one gives us a C major, the two gives us a D minor, the three gives us an E minor, the four it gives us an F major, the five gives us a G major, the six gives us an A minor. Remember the relative minor of C major. The seventh actually gives us this weird diminished chord. That is because instead of the 3-4 or the 4-3, this one is actually a 3-3. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. You hit a diminished chord. Diminished chords are a bit more complex and confusing to understand, so for the sake of this course, I'm not going to touch them. Then we get back to a C. Cool. In every major scale we play, we get the same pattern of major and minor triads, as we move up the degrees of the scale. Major, minor, minor. Major, major, minor, diminished. Once again, major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. Let's start again with a D major on the one, a two would be an E minor, the three is going to be an F-sharp minor, the four is going to be a G major, the five is going to be an A major. The seven is going to be a diminished C-sharp. Then back to a D for the one. Major minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. In music theory, major chords are notated as uppercase Roman numerals and minor chords are lowercase. This notation could also be simplified to look something like this, with a capital I, lowercase ii, lowercase iii, capital IV, capital V, lowercase vi, and then a diminished 7. Capital letter, meaning a major chord, and a lowercase letter meaning a minor chord. All right, so I just covered a lot of information about chords. Chords are the building blocks for songs and they're super important to get the hang of. Before moving on to the next lesson, practice playing the seven triads for different major scales. Like I would do F again, so F, G, A Just get really comfortable with playing the triads for different scales and also sail out if it's a major or minor triad, and also the degree of that triad that you're playing in that scale. Do this again for at least three different keys. Then try again, going backwards down the scale to see if you can still say it aloud as you go. I'll demonstrate that here. We have a one, C, and then the seven diminished B. Then A is going to be the sixth minor. The G would be the five major, the F would be the four major, the E would be the three minor, the D would be the two minor, and then back to C, which is the one major. All right, get practicing and I will see you in the next lesson. 7. Chord Progressions: In the last lesson, we learned about the relationship between the notes in the scale when we turn them into their triad chords. Now we get into the part you've all been waiting for, putting everything we've learned so far together to create chord progressions. Chord progressions, how we put songs together. If we think about any song, there are just a series of chords in the key played to a particular rhythm. There's no right or wrong way to create a chord progression. Music theory isn't a rule for your music. I prefer to think of it like a tool. Understand the relationship between how certain chords sound together when they're played in a progression and use them to create songs that you think sound great. Let's practice making chord progression in the key of C. Remember from the previous lesson that the triads from the major scale by degree are Major 1, Minor 2, Minor 3, Major 4, Major 5, Minor 6, diminished 7, Major 1. To make a chord progression, all we do is simply pick an arrangement or variation of these different number degrees and play them in a series. For example, let's do one of the most common chord progression in the key of C, which is a 1, 4, 5, 1. That would sound like this 1, 4, 5, 1, Cool. That's a chord progression. Let's do another one. I'm just going to randomly pick some numbers, 2, 5, 6, 1. As you can see, you can create any variation of chord progressions in any of the 12 keys, the options are basically limitless. Chord progressions can be long, they can be short, it's totally up to you. Just remember that creating chord progressions is going to become much easier once you really master the basics of understanding the relationship between the triads and the degrees which they're associated with. Knowing what a 2, 4, 5 we can actually fluidly come up on the spot with different variations and come up with a lot of different kinds of songs. Now that we've learned how to make chord progressions, which is really just grabbing different degrees together and putting them together, it's time to continue crafting your class project. For your class project, create a chord progression that you like. This can be an original chord progression that you just come up while you're experimenting, or you can look up a chord progression of one of your most favorite songs. Write down the chords, play them out and figure out what chord progression that they used in that song that you really like. If you do this over time, you'll find that most music use very simple but emotionally provoking chord progressions. For example, one of the most famous chord progressions is something called the 2, 5, 1 because it has that very resolving sound going from a five to a one. One of my favorites is going from a two to a four to a five then to one. Adds a little bit more suspense. It prolongs that tension that we're building up going from a four to a five and then to the one. But anyways, go ahead and practice, experiment with finding different chord progressions that you like, and it will expand on this concept more in the next lesson. 8. Inversions: Now that we have the basics of chords and chord progressions under our belts, let's learn about inversions. We can create inversions of any chord by moving the bottom note [NOISE] of that chord up an octave. [MUSIC] This allows us to use the same notes in the chord, but it creates a different sound and has a different flavor to that chord. What I just played there was a C major triad. [NOISE] I'm going to make a first inversion by moving the bottom note, the root note, up an octave. [NOISE] This is now considered a first inversion. I can do it again and move the new bottom note, which is now an E up an octave as well. [NOISE] That's called a second inversion. Of course, if I would do that one more time, moving the bottom note up to the top, I would just get back to the C major [NOISE] triad up an octave. Let's do that again for an A minor triad, the relative minor of C major. Here's the A minor triad. [MUSIC] I'm going to make a first inversion by moving up the bottom note up an octave. [MUSIC] I'll do it again to make it second inversion by moving the next bottom note up an octave. [MUSIC] We can even play around with inverting the bass note of the chord if we're playing with two hands. If I'm still playing an A minor here, I can just play the A minor with the A through bass note, [MUSIC] or I can play around with inverting the bass note to the first inversion or the second inversion. [MUSIC] As you can hear, all of those variations have a little bit of a different vibe to the way they sound, but I'm still using all the same notes. Those are all the basics about inversions. We can now add inversions to our chord progressions to create new sounding chords that make our music much more interesting. Another benefit of using inversions is that it makes it much easier on our hands because we don't have to move them as far to play these triads, and we could just create chords that are closer together. For example, playing a I-V-IV progression of triads will look like this. [MUSIC] V, IV. But if I play with some inversions, I can play that same triad that looks something like this. [MUSIC] That sounds so much different, although it's the exact same chords played inverted, and it's also much easier to play since my hand didn't have to move all the way across to hit different notes. As a music producer, using inversions is a really powerful way to keep instruments in their frequency range. Because as we mix music, we generally want the bass sounds to only occupy their lower frequencies, we want synthesizers, guitars, or other instruments to occupy the mid-frequencies, and we want our vocals to capture the mids and the high frequencies. Using inversions while we play, allows us to separate and create more clarity in our mixes. But again, remember that there aren't any rules to music theory. If you like the way your chord sound when they're spread out all over the keyboard, that's totally cool. It's up to you how you want your music to sound. Before moving on to the next lesson, revisit your class project. You should already have a core progression for the song that you want to write, and now what you can do is spice it up by adding a few inverted chords to create a different vibe. Play around with it for a bit and I will see you all in the next lesson. 9. Melodies: Let's talk about melodies. The melody of a song is the catchy musical phrase that sits on top of the chords. In most music, the melody sits higher in the mix and the chords so it stands out to our ears. From music with singing and vocals, this is usually what we're singing along to the melody. But even in instrumental tracks, there's usually some kind of melody that helps move the song forward and it gives you that emotional story to follow. To come up with a melody to sit on top of our core progression, you don't only have to stick to the nodes that are in the chord because that sounds pretty boring. I'm just going to play a 1451 in C major but I'm only going to use the nodes in the chorus to play the melody and look how boring this sounds. Sounds pretty bland, pretty boring like it's "Lego Movie" or something. We want to add a little bit more creativity into it. A better way to think about melodies is that in general, you can use any nodes that are in that key that you're playing in to create melodies. Again, if I'm using that 1451 progression, I can use any notes in the melody in the key of C. You have a lot more room for variation and you can come up with much more interesting melodies that would work with the chord progression that you're playing. Using notes that are outside of the triads that you're playing are called passing notes, they are nodes that are outside of the chord but they're still in the key of C major. Using notes that are outside of the key are usually best done if you're trying to get to a particular note. For example, if I wanted to go from this F to a G, when I switched from the four-chord to the five chord, I can use that F-sharp as a trill passing note. Remember that there's no right or wrong way to write music but writing melodies is notoriously difficult for artists to do. There's always the struggle as an artist to come up with something that's original and catchy, doesn't always pan out that way though, but the more that you practice and the more songs that you write, the more likely you'll hit that golden gem of a melody that becomes that stuck in your head song for days and days. Another piece of advice for writing melodies is to listen to some of your most favorite songs, some of the melodies you'd like the most, figure them out on the keyboard itself with the chord progression, and then see what combination to use to create that melody and you imitate and work around that melody to create something for yourself. I want to offer just a few more practical tips for how I think about writing melodies. The first is that simpler melodies are often better because if we have less notes, there's more room for those notes to be very expressive. One of my favorite examples for a very expressive, strong melody is Hans Zimmer's melody in Superman. There's only a few notes that are played in that melody but the way that it gives room for the course to really elongate, gives it so much expression rather than if it was a melody like. Sometimes melodies that are too quick and jump around too often don't really stick in your head and it sounds a little bit inconsistent. The next piece of advice for writing melodies is to create a call-and-response type of melody so that would mean something like if you had a three-note sequence as your melody, you can respond to it with a different three-note sequence. For example, it can be like. That call and response idea is those three notes. The call is something that introduces a question like an idea and the response would be similar but it would be bringing it back down. Call and response can be used to build an idea out and the response part elaborates on that idea to complete the phrase. When I think about writing melodies, it's like telling a story, when you ask a question, you get a response, when you put something out into your story, something else happens. Call and response, cause and effect, that's really how we tell stories with the music that we write. The next piece of advice for writing melodies is something I call tension and release. Similar to column response, where you're putting something out and you're expecting something to return, some kind of response, but the tension actually causes this frustration that we're waiting for something to resolve itself in the melody. One of my favorite ways to do this is to really actually just hold notes in your melodies until the chord progression resolves back to the one or to a different note. For example, I can do for that same 1451 progression that I've been doing in this video. Although I just held that C note at the top, it was continuing to add tension as I've built it up with those four and that's five chord and then it finally resolved back on the one on that same note but I built tension until it resolved. The last piece of advice I want to give for any melodies is to end your melody on a note that's in the chord. This is not a hard and fast rule at all, it's just something that I like to do because I feel that ending your melodies back on the notes in the chord really brings it back full circle. If we're going with that tension and release idea, the release is going to be so much more satisfying if it ends on a note that fully resolves on a chord that we like. Very satisfying sounding. Now you know how I go about thinking about and crafting melodies for songs, so get out there and start practicing. In the next lesson, we'll introduce the final piece of the puzzle which is rhythm to glue everything together. 10. Rhythm: Now, we've covered what notes are and how they're related to scales and keys, we've also talked about how to combine notes from the scale into chords to create chord progressions that serve as that foundation for our music. But the key component that's still missing is rhythm. Rhythm helps us determine how do we know when a note is going to be played. How long is any individual note going to be? Rhythm makes sure that our music is vibey and that it bumps and that it moves forward and has some groove to it, something that we can dance to, something that we can lose ourselves in and trance out to. When thinking about rhythm in music theory, we use something called the counting system. Music is divided into evenly spaced intervals called bars or measures. Each bar or measure is then further divided into beats. The most basic kind of rhythm is 4/4. If I'm counting out a rhythm to 4/4, it would sound something like this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Each of those counts, 1, 2, 3, 4 is a beat. When I return back to one, that's the start of the next measure, or the next bar. 1, 2, 3, 4, that's one bar, now we move on to the next bar, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Four beats per bar, that's why I repeated the counts as I got to four. Now, if I hold a chord that lasts all four counts, it's called a whole note because it takes up the whole bar. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. If I hold the chord and it only takes up two beats, it's called a half note because two beats are half of the whole bar. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. If I play a chord and it gets only one count, it's called a quarter note because it's a quarter of the measure. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. We can continue to divide these beats up smaller and smaller as well. If I hold a chord that's half as long as a quarter note, it's called an eighth note because half of a quarter, in the counting system, we call that one and two and three and four and, adding that and is the half note. If I play that out, it would sound something like this. One and two and three and four, and one and two and three and four and. Let's go even further than that. If our notes are half as long as an eighth note, they are 16th notes. Which means that 16 of those notes are in one bar. In a counting terms, we call that 1 e&a, 2 e&a, 3 e&a, 4 e&a, 16. If we play that out, it would sound something like this. 1 e&a, 2 e&a, 3 e&a, 4 e&a,1 e&a, 2 e&a, 3 e&a, 4 e&a. Going back to eighth notes; one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and. Going out to quarter notes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Half notes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Whole notes, 1, 2, 3, 4. Theoretically, you can continue dividing your measures up into whatever intervals you want to, they don't even have to be even numbers, there are things like triplets where I can divide up into thirds. One. I've never really gone past 16th notes when I'm writing music, unless I was doing some drum fill buildup that would require a 32nd notes or 64th notes, but those are so fast that are almost like stutter sounds. But anyways, let's go back to that idea of 4/4. The 4/4 is what we call the time signature. The top number refers to how many beats there are per measure, the bottom number refers to how long the actual beat is. Four. This means that there are four beats in the measure, and that's why we counted to four, 1, 2, 3, 4. The bottom number of four means that each beat is 1/4 of a whole note in length, so that means a quarter note. There are lots of other kinds of time signatures like 3/4 or 6/8 or 2/2. Those are a bit more advanced, so for the sake of this course, don't worry about those, let's just stick with the classic 4/4, learn the fundamentals, and then once you get good at understanding how that time signature works, you can experiment with these more intricate ones. Now that we understand how to count rhythms, all that's left to do is play our code progressions and melodies while we count. We can have our instruments, drums, sounds, screaming, whatever you want, playing on the beats or anywhere in-between the beats at all. For example, I can play a whole note chord to be played on the beat, or we call it on the one, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. But I can also play the whole note chords on count 3 of the beat, so it's a little bit more offset. That would be like this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. The notes are the same length, just played on a different count of the measure. Know that you can put your notes or your chords or drum sounds on any beats or in-between beats, and that's going to help you create whatever groove you want to for your songs. Knowing how to count is incredibly useful, especially if you plan to DJ or if you plan to introduce drums into your songs. If you wanted to count with drums, the most common drum pattern would be a kick drum on the one and the three beat, and a snare or clap drum on the two and the four beat. It'd sound something like this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. If you wanted to add hats to it, the hats would be eighth notes on there. The hats would sound something like this, one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and. Once you get comfortable with that beat, you get started experimenting putting kicks on different counts, in-between counts, maybe even adding snares or different toms into the mix as well. The last thing I want to cover here is tempo. Tempo refers to how many beats that are per minute or BPM. The faster the tempo, the faster the song feels. It's up to you to decide the pace you want your songs to feel. Faster songs are usually in genres like house music or dubstep or hip hop, slower songs are more in like R&B or Lo-Fi. Experiment and find the sweet spot for the rhythm you want of your song. 11. Wrap Up: Congratulations on making it to the end of the course. We've covered so much in music theory, you're now equipped with all the knowledge to start creating 5D songs. Now that you have all the tools you need, I highly encourage you to post your class project up so the other students can see and learn from your creative eyes and ears. For your class project upload a recording of your core progression that's inverted with or without a melody on top. Can't wait to listen to them and give you some feedback. Remember that in order to become confident and proficient with music theory, we have to practice consistently. Don't let this knowledge that you learned from this course go to waste, pick up a guitar or get a DAW, and start creating music to really hammer in these skills. I really hope that all the skills you've picked up in this class will kick-start your music career. Whether that be just learning it as a hobby, whether you're creating songs for YouTube videos or for online content, or if you just wanted a refresher to get back into the swing of things if you used to be a musician. Again, thank you so much for watching, I hope you learned some valuable stuff, and use this to start producing your own tracks. Best of luck.