The Basics of Piano and Music Theory in 30 Minutes

1. Trailer: Now that probably look pretty cool. I'm pretty proud of that. I'm not going to lie. But believe it or not, all the concepts that I've just been playing are ingrained into very basic music theory that's just been notched up very slightly. So in this class we're essentially trying to tackle the basic concepts of music theory that will allow you to do almost anything you want at the piano. Now, the way that everything just kind of clicks together in music theory and everything links is something that I'm massively passionate about. I've had a very convoluted journey. Playing the piano, has been playing for 13 years. And along that journey, I've had very, very roundabout experiences with music theory where a lot of time it just didn't make sense. So I'm compacting all the key knowledge that I've gained over these years and putting them into manageable videos that hopefully you guys will understand. So if any of that sounds like it's abuse to you, then hopefully I'll see you guys very, very soon. 2. Notes of the Piano: Hi everyone, and welcome to Lesson 1 of this Skillshare class. So we're going to be covering some basic, basic theory. So these are just the notes of the piano, what you'd refer to them as. And a little music theory flex towards the end, which I'm sure some of you guys will like. This is a piano, and that's a fact. So there are 12 notes in one octave. So one octave is where it goes from one note to the same node that's repeated. So if you can see that both of these no so-called see, this is a C. Very lovely sees. All the white notes have names. So we have C, D, E, F, G, a, B, and then it repeats. Have seen. But in-between these white notes, we have things called sharps and flats, and these are the black notes. So all of these black notes is referred to as sharps or flats. So you might be thinking, Oh, well, why have we started at C? Well, in musical terms, things just kind of revolve around. See, just one of those facts that you'll come to accept very quickly. So in terms of naming the black notes, I think you might remember me saying that we can refer to them as sharps or flats. So a sharp is a note that shoots upwards. So say we start on F, for example, we shoot upwards, we get an F sharp. But if we were to fall downwards, we'd get a flat. So if we start on D, for example, and we fall down widths, we get the flat. So what you might notice is that there are no, It's like g, where on either side we have a black note. So how do you know what it's called it a sharp or whether it's call it a flat O for example, this note could be a flat, but it could also be in reference to G. It could be a G-sharp because g would shoot upwards towards it. So this is what we call an enharmonic equivalent. So that's any note that has essentially two names. So all the black notes have an enharmonic equivalent. So if I was to say to you, this is D flat, what would its enharmonic equivalent? B, pause the video and have a go at figuring that out. Okay? So we have d flat, but we can also shoot upwards from C. So this would be known as D flats or C-Sharp. So those are enharmonic equivalents. That's all the theory we need to know for this lesson. Make sure you go through the notes and try and be able to recognize the note instantly. So if I was just to play this note here, just to know straight away that that's achieved. If I was to play this note here to know straight away that that's a b. So try and make some landmarks in your head between three black notes, what's on the outside? So we have F and B. If the outside three black notes, we have C and E on the outside of the two black notes here. And just try and make some landmarks in your head that will make it much easier to remember. So that's it for this lesson. Hopefully we'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Whole Steps and Half Steps: Everyone, welcome back to video two. So in this lesson we're going to be covering whole steps and half steps. Now, it sounds trivial, but this is quite important when we move on to scales and keys and like how to actually form scales. So let's take our good friend C. And we want to talk about how we can move away from C in terms of whole steps and half steps. So if we want to move a half step away, we essentially want to move to the next available note. Now this can be up or down. So say I wanted to move a half step up. The next available note, It's black note, which would be C-sharp because we're shooting upwards, or is also known as the flats. And remember, enharmonic equivalents. So this is C-sharp, moving up a half-step. Now a whole step is made up of two half-steps. So if we go up a half-step and then we got another half step, we end up on D. So this is a whole step, half step. Okay? Now, let's have a go. If I move from G to a, if we go up a half step, we go to the next available note, which is G sharp or a flat. And we can also go up a whole step, which is two half-steps. So that'll take us 1, 2 to a. Perfect. Now, here's a slightly more tricky one. Let's try a half-step from B. Now think about what your next available notice. You can see there's nothing in between. So the next available note is C, So that's a half-step. Okay, How about if we were to move a whole step from B? So there's nothing in between. Let's go up a half step, and then another half step. We get two flat or C Sharp. So this is a whole step from being perfect, That pretty much sums up everything to do with whole steps and half steps. But try and familiarize yourself with how a whole step looks going from different nodes. So for example, a whole step from a would be going to be a whole step from E. We'd be going to F sharp because this becomes very important when we start to look at scales. But other than that, that pretty much wraps up this video and I'll see you guys in the next lesson. 4. Scales and Keys (how to form): Welcome back everyone. In this lesson, we're going to be learning about the major scale and scales and keys. The major scale is essentially the most important thing in music, and everything is based off of the major scale. What you'll quickly understand is that there are only a set number of notes that you can play in a particular scale or a particular key. And this will allow you to do practically anything. So first we need to tackle what a key actually is and what a scale actually is. Because you might have heard these words thrown around, but they kind of go over your head. It definitely did for me when I was starting out. A key is essentially a blueprint or a guide for the, for the notes you're allowed to play. So for example, the key of C allocates all the white notes as the notes you're allowed to play. So that's the key of C, all the white notes. That's what, that's what's been determined towards in this blueprint. For example, the key of G has mainly white notes, but it throws in black note as well in the F sharp. So we can kind of look at keys as like languages. So if you think about C major with all the white notes, we could look at that as Spanish, for example. But if you look at G-Major, it shares a lot of the white notes, but it also has this black now in the F sharp. So we could look at this as Portuguese. So the key of G is Portuguese, the key of C is Spanish. And Spanish and Portuguese share a lot of similar words and sound relatively similar in the same way that c kind of sounds like G. But if you were to compare two very abstract keys that have, that hardly share any notes in common. That would be like comparing Arabic to Cantonese or something like that. So now we've tackled what a key is. So a key is your blueprint, the notes you're allowed to play. So then what's the scale? Can use them interchangeably like, what was the deal here? What's going on? So a scale is the notes were allowed to play, but in a particular order. So I mentioned before that the key of C is all the white notes. But what order do we play them in? Well, the C major scale determines that we play everything starting from C. So that is the C major scale. So the scale is, the notes were allowed to play in a particular order. So they're kind of used interchangeably the word scaling key. So if I refer to something as the key of C, I'm also referring to it as the scale of C. So you might be thinking, well, how do we form this is wholly major scale. Everything is based off of that. Practically all music comes from, well, it's actually a very simple formula. So we take the note we want to start on, Let's start on C. And we apply this formula which goes whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. Now I'll write that up on the screen so it's a little bit easier to understand. But this just refers to the steps we take from C. So in the last video, we looked at whole steps and half steps. So let's go whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole half from C. So let's go up a whole step. Whole, half, whole, whole, whole, and then half. So we take our note and we go whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. And that's how you form any major scale. So if we wanted to form D major, for example, we start on D and we figured out whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. So that pretty much sums up everything to do with major scales and everything to do with keys that we're gonna be covering. So try and familiarize yourself with this whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half, because this is how you form any scale. But it'd be a flat major, whether it be F-major, whether it be, be made, whether it be B flat major. You pick the node and you apply whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. So yeah, that's it for this lesson. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Please. 5. Relative minor scales: So welcome back everyone. We are going to be covering relative minor scales. You might have come across the terms major, feeling happy, minor feeling sad, or this applies to our scale. So the major scale feels happy. And the minor scale feels a little bit more sad. Every major scale has an evil cousin, you know, that cousin that like shows it to the family function that you don't really like. And it's just a little bit weird and tries to copy you. That's essentially the relative minor scale. Every single major scale has that evil cousin, and it uses exactly the same notes, but it has a different starting point. So if we take our old friends see, we go whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half to work out the major scale. We know that we're using all the white notes. Perfect. How we work out its relative minor is we go down 3.5 steps. So bound 1, 2, 3 half steps back for an a. So if we play exactly the same notes, the C major scale, let's actually write them up so you don't forget them. So we have C, D, E, F, G, a, B, and C. And we'll go down to a and we'll play it exactly the same notes, but just starting from a. So we get a, B, C, D, E, F, G, a. And you can see how it sounds a little bit more sad, a little bit more and happier, but bit more uneasy. Now there's various different types of minor scales, like the harmonic and melodic minors, but we won't really be touching on them because they're a little bit more complex. So we're gonna be looking at the natural minor scale, which is that evil cousin of the major scale. So let's have a go at D major's relative minor. So first we work out what D major contains. So start on B and we go whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. Let's actually write out all the notes that we have. So we have the E, F-sharp, G, a, B, C-sharp, D. Okay? Now we take that 3.5 steps down, 123, okay, we're starting on B, but we want to play all the same notes, including those black notes. So let's start from B and plate exactly the same. That's B, C-sharp, D, E, F-sharp, G, a, B. And now we have the relative minor of D. So kind of poses the question, do my neck scales really exist because they're kind of just the same notes as the major scale. As you progress through music, you kind of realize that people start referring to minor keys is just playing in the relative major. So if someone was playing in B minor, they might just say, Oh, well I'm playing in D because it's just kind of easy to visualize and understand rather than going 3.5 steps down and then ending up playing the same notes. So a lot of people tend to refer to the key they're playing in, whether it be minor or major, has just the major scale or just the major key. Other than that, good luck, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Please. 6. The Number System: Everyone, welcome back. This time we're going to have a look at an introduction to the number system. So the number system will make your life a 100 times easier when it comes to looking at chords a little bit later on. And when it comes to transposing cause, which is a super useful skill and will take your planks in the next level, we've already looked at major scales and relative minor scales. So the major scale is composed of seven notes, and then we come back to the root. So for example, if we take C major 1234567 and it goes back to C, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and it comes back to C and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Every note in this scale we assign a number. So if we're starting on C in C major, this is the one. These two is three. F is the full G is the five, A's the 6, B is the seven, and then C is the one. We've already assigned that as the ones. So there's no point in really calling it the eight. So 1234567. And each one of these notes, depending on what number they are in the scale forms its own court will have a look at that next time. But just to introduce you to the different numbers in the scale, it's very intuitive. So you start on this one. This is the two because it's next is the three, it's the third, 1457, and then the one again. So let's have a go at this in E-flat major, for example. So we saw an E-flat, we form whole, whole half, whole, whole, whole half. So E-flat is the one, go up a whole step. F is the 23, a flat for B flat, 5, C6, C7, and then back to E flat, the one. So it's just to kind of get you guys understanding that every single note in the scale has its own number. And depending on that number, the code that forms will change. So have a look at that a little bit later on. Other than that, pretty much wraps up this one and I'll see you guys next time. Peace. 7. Major and Minor chords: Welcome back everyone. So you might be thinking we've covered quite a lot and we have, it can be quite heavy at the start and border line, a little bit dry, but all of this is pre-knowledge that will serve you really, really well. So when we start to look at chords and transposing chords, that becomes like the base to all your playing. Whatever instrument you play. If you play guitar, if you play piano. But essentially everything we're looking at is forming pre-knowledge that will serve you very, very, very well when it comes to playing, when it comes to transposing, when it comes to songwriting, give you the freedom to start creating your own songs, your own melodies, and your own progressions, which is something that a lot of people want to do, but really, really struggled getting, getting started with. So in this lesson we're going to cover chords. So what is a chord? A chord is essentially a set of notes that are just played together. So this is a court, sounds like a nice quote about this cord. Not so nice, but still a cord. How about this? Jazz? But also a court? So any set of notes that are played together is considered a court. So we've talked about major and minor scales. Major being happy, minor being sad. Same thing applies to chords, major chords, happy minor chord, sad. Major chord, happy minor chord, sad. Same deal. So how did we make a major chord? I want to make a chord progression. How can I make a chord progression with only cause that sound happy? Well, here we go. Let's form the major chord. So we pick our target node. Let's say we want to play a C major chord. We start on C and we go up four half-steps, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then got 3.5 steps, 1, 2, 3. Bang, major triad. Easy peasy. Now what if we want to make a sad court? Well, we invert the steps that we took before, so we start on C. So before we did four half-steps and then 3.5 steps. This time we're gonna do three half-steps and 4.5 steps. So 1231234. And now we have C minor chord. So going back to what we talked about, about making a chord progression that sounds only happy. Let's go. Let's say we want to play a C major chord. And then we wanna play, for example, an F major chord. Stan, f, s go up four and then up three. So we're gonna go from C major. So F-major. And then say for example, we want this to kind of rise a little bit. It's gone down. But we want to have a motion of going up with, well, we could play, I mean, G is kind of close. We could play a G major chord. So again, we start on G, go up four, Good three. And you can see that it's exactly the same shape. There you go. You've pretty much just made a song now you just need to sing along and you pretty much set. So why do we need chords? What's the point? I mean, I can just play stuff in my right hand like malady. But that's fine. Well, the chords are used to essentially give structure and give ground to everything that's happening in your right-hand where the melody is held. So if we look at the court's, we took before C Major, F major, and G major, and we just play something over the top, any of the white notes really, which sounds a million times better than just. It gives it a little bit more color and essentially more structure and more ground to it. So some of you may or may not have come across a website called ultimate guitar tabs. Essentially it's got the courts were any song you want to play. Any song you can possibly think of, it gives you the courts for it. Say, the song you pick has an, a major coordinate and you're like, Man, I really want to play some piano. How do I do that? Well, look at what we've covered beforehand. So we go from a and we go up 34 half-steps, 1234, and then up 3.5 steps, 1, 2, 3. We have are a major chord. And then say the next chord is E major. We do the same thing. We go to E, We got four half-steps, we've got three half-steps. And then it has F-sharp minor, for example. So we start on F sharp. Remember it's minus, so we do three steps than four steps, 1231234. So these are our courts so far, a major, E major, F-sharp minor. And then save the last chord is it says D major. Okay, so we go and D we do for them, We do three. Okay, so now we've got a chord progression. We can sing along to it. So that's where the beauty of music theory comes in, essentially allows you to look at any set of courts and instantly be able to figure it out just by using first principles. So there's not really a need to really memorize anything. It is good practice to just kind of know that. And a major looks like this. So it has to note AC sharpening in it and e-mail it looks like this, E, G-sharp B. But if you just want to apply stuff from first principles, there's absolutely no problem with that. And I find myself coming back to that time and time again. That pretty much wraps up everything to do with major and minor chords. And yeah, hopefully I'll see you guys in the next one piece. 8. The Chords in a Scale: So how do we actually work out what chords were allowed to play it in a key? Well, it's actually very, very simple and every single key follows this formula. So let's take our good friend, C-Major. Remember all the white notes? So the one parameter, a couple of lessons ago we looked at the one and we have the two, the three, the four, the five, the 67, and then back to the one for each number of the scale has its own corresponding court. So the one is always going to be a major chord. So we can go for four half-steps and 3.5 steps. Two is always minor, and the three is always minor, and four is always major, and five is always major, six is always minor. And then the seven is what we call a diminished chord. So this is where it goes, three half-steps and then three half-steps. So you can kind of think of it as like a minor chord stacked with another minor chord. But we hardly ever really use them except for like jazz and R and B. So if that's what you're into, Feel free to read up on diminished chords because they can work pretty well, is like passing chords to create some tension. But for the purposes of this course, we're just going to focus on the major and minor chords because those are used in the majority of pop songs that I've ever been written. So that frees up and allows for opportunities for our right hand to do all sorts of things. Because we know that our left hand is only allowed to play this set of chords. So Louis compile these songs someone you loved. And we can see the left-hand always has the same shape. Uses the root, the third, and the fifth. So one, the three and the five root third, fifth, it has this shape, so we play a note, skip it out, planar, skip note, and then play another note. And that shape is held between all law courts. So let's go back to Louis capacity song so that it uses the one chord. So we know the one is major, uses the five chord. Now the fight is major 12345. And he uses the sixth chord minor, and then goes back to the four chord, which we know is major. So the reason this stuff is like super, super cool and super important is because it actually allows you to understand what the majority of music is based on. So most of the pop songs you ever look at, well, we use the same cause most of the time it's going to be the one chord is going to use the four chord is going to use the five chord and the six chord. You might have heard of the four chords of pop is what Louis capacity song, someone you loved uses, which is the one and the five is six. For these chords are used time and time again in pop music. So there are various ways to stop playing these four chords. So for example, apologize by one republic uses the same courts, but just in a different order. So it goes 641 and then five. So we can kind of start to see how a lot of songs are using the same chords over and over again, but just in different orders. A little bit of practice and you'll be on your way to playing the songs you hear on the radio. So yeah, that pretty much wraps up this video and hopefully I'll see you guys in the next one piece. 9. Class Project: Hi everyone. Welcome back. Just wanted to talk to you guys about what the ultimate aim of this course is. Aim of the course is to kind of allow you to play any chord progression you want. So the project for this is going to be you guys heading over to Google finding your favorite song and the chords for that song. And using the principles we cover in this class, figure out the cause for it and how you play them. And then upload a video of yourself, either just playing the chords or playing melody and your right hand or singing along anything. But ultimately, we want you to understand how to form the cords. Essentially take any song that you like and play the courts to it by figuring it out using the principles that we cover in this class. So ideally, the less confident you are in that key, the better because it will really put your theory and your knowledge to the test. Hopefully, I'll see some super cool projects uploaded into the project section and I'll see you guys very soon. Bye. 10. Chord Inversions: Everyone, welcome back. So in this video we're going to be talking about chord inversions. So we already spoke about major and minor chords. How it's formed from a major chord, for example, is formed from four half-steps and then three half-steps. So you can see that we've got three notes here, C, E, and G, but we're not limited to just playing them in that order. So C, E, and G can be rearranged in a number of different ways. So the first way would be to take this C-H bond note and move it to the top. So that would leave us with E GC, which is c major in first inversion. Okay? What we could do again now is just take this e at the bottom and move it to the top. There's no problem with that. And then we have C major second inversion. The idea of inversions is like a really cool way of kind of minimizing the movement of your hands between different chord progressions. So if we look at the same chord progression we had before, you can kind of see how my hand is bouncing around quite a lot, but we can change that by using chord inversions. So we start on C. We can use that en route. This is what we call root position, where the name of the chord, the C is at the bottom. That's reposition. Okay, now we want to go to G. G-major. Well, this is a bit of a jump. What can I do? Well, I can move this G all the way to the top. And that way I can put my thumb on this note here. So we have these notes. So if we go from the top and then we have to go to a minor or there's no problem with just moving down. Okay, now we have F-major. How can we limit the movement? I don't wanna have to shift my thumb all the way down here. Maybe just keeping my thumb here would be okay. So how can I do that? Well, I can get rid of this F and I can bring it all the way to the top. And that way I can play this a with my thumb. That makes sense. Okay, cool. Perfect. So now we have a number of different inversions we can use. So it would sound something like this. So we're playing exactly the same courts but just limiting the movement that we're using. Feel free to do this with your left hand as well. So that pretty much wraps up this one. And I'll see you guys in the next one where we're talking about rhythm piece. 11. Basics of Rhythm: Hi everyone and welcome back to the final video of the class. This video is about rhythm. I know we've covered a lot so far. Some people kind of say that learning music theory is like a form of prolonged torture. Thankfully, I'm a sadist and I've enjoyed every excruciating detail. So this final video is about rhythm, so beats and stuff and just kind of how everything feels. So I think of harmony and notes and melody is like what you hear, like the surface level. But rhythm and beats is kind of like what you feel. So everyone has this intrinsic level of entrainment. Entrainment is what we call your ability to follow a beat. So if you've ever listened to music and you've ever bought your head along to music, you probably have a decent sense of entrainment like you can follow the beat. If not, then this video is perfect for you and hopefully we can unlock that most western music is divided into something that we call bars. Now, the damned Americans, they call this a measure. Okay? So if you hear the word measure, you hear the word bar means exactly the same thing. A bark consists of four equally spaced beats. So 12341234, that would be two bars, but split into four beats. 123412341234. You see what I mean? So a lot of music pretty much just uses that basic rhythm and note that takes up all four of those beats. So it would be 1, 2, 3, 4 is known as a semibreve. Now, again, the damned Americans, they call this. As much as it pains me. This actually makes a lot of sense. They call this a whole notes because it takes up the whole measure or the whole bar as Europeans had pretty much everywhere else, calls this a semi brief. So it takes up all four beats, 1234. Okay, now let's half that value. Let's take a note that takes up two of the four beats. So it sounds like this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Here in Europe and in Britain, we call this a minimum. The damned Americans. They call this a half note because it takes up half of the bar, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3 folder. Now let's take a look at a note that takes up only one of the four beats. In Britain, we call this a crotchet. The Americans call this a quarter note, which unfortunately makes more sense. It would sound something like this. It would be a note on every single beat of the bar. So 12341234. Now, all of this stuff is relatively basic. And if music used these very simple rhythms, then it would be very boring and not particularly interesting and not amazing to listen to it. For that reason, we can further divide these beats and we call this subdividing where we chop everything in half again and then again. So if we split the beats, 12341234, if we split that in half, that's called subdividing and we get something that sounds like this, 12341234. And those ends are exactly in between the 1 and the 2, 2 and the 3, 3 and the 4. So when we split the beats in half and we get something that sounds like 1234. As Europeans and Brits call this a quaver, takes up those ands are all called quavers. 1234. And the Americans tend to call these eighth notes, which makes sense. It's taking up an eighth of the bath. So it allows you to have a little bit more freedom with when you come in on the beat or when you decide to play a chord. So I could go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 2, 3 and 123412341234123412341234. So it allows you to kind of change the speed at which you're playing, which is good for a buildup of a song, for example. Or in the course, you might want to speed up, you might want a bit more movement. But we can subdivide this even further into something that sounds like one IANA to IANA, three E and a 4 IANA, one IANA to E and a 34 IANA. So we've got lots of different beats in-between 1 and 2, 2334. So those Brits call these notes semiquavers, which makes sense. It's half the time of a quaver, and the Americans call these 16th notes. Now, music doesn't tend to go much quicker than this because it kind of becomes unnecessary and gets very hectic very, very quickly. So don't worry too much about them. The main things you'll tend to hair up crotchets and quavers and minimums and semibreves, or whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, et cetera. So yeah, that brings us to the end of this class and of this video. Hopefully you've learned something along the way. What I've learned from this particular video is that Americans are slightly better than us rhythmic notation. But it's all for nothing because we have the queen and they don't. Americans take your crown and hold it there. But anyways, that's the end of the class. And I hope you didn't cry too much during this marathon of pain. But hopefully you left with a greater understanding of music than you did when you showed up. Again, like all things, this stuff takes practice, so feel free to revisit any of the videos anytime, slow it down, pause, make notes, anything, anything that'll help you learn. But yeah, until next time. Good luck. And I'll see you guys soon. Bye.