My Free YouTube Music Theory Lessons

[SetFree]

I've been a musician for most of my life, playing guitar, and learning music theory in order to write for orchestra. I have a Specialist Certificate in Orchestration For Film and TV from Berklee College of Music (online). The YouTube lessons are mainly of a graphic nature with musical video examples I recorded using Finale notation software. The background music for the lessons, which is intended to be minimal, I also wrote.

The goal of the music theory lessons are to cover the essentials of theory. Some of it may seem a bit academic, but the material is still minimal for what the musician needs to know to progress into more complex music writing. There's a lot of material in the lessons, yet simple, and it applies to all western instruments. The lessons will teach you how to write your own songs, or longer form pieces if you so desire. Right now I'm up to Lesson 6 with more to come.

Here's the link to Lesson 1.

 

[Ammi]

Have you heard this song? After all, He is the reason for the season.

 

[Ammi]

I've been a musician for most of my life, playing guitar, and learning music theory in order to write for orchestra. I have a Specialist Certificate in Orchestration For Film and TV from Berklee College of Music (online). The YouTube lessons are mainly of a graphic nature with musical video examples I recorded using Finale notation software. The background music for the lessons, which is intended to be minimal, I also wrote.

The goal of the music theory lessons are to cover the essentials of theory. Some of it may seem a bit academic, but the material is still minimal for what the musician needs to know to progress into more complex music writing. There's a lot of material in the lessons, yet simple, and it applies to all western instruments. The lessons will teach you how to write your own songs, or longer form pieces if you so desire. Right now I'm up to Lesson 6 with more to come.

Here's the link to Lesson 1.

I watched your video. Early on in my guitar playing, I bought a Berklee guitar book. I worked about halfway
through it though I think I lost it decades ago. Was Al Dimeola a graduate of Berklee?

 

[SetFree]

My Music Theory Lessons page:

Simple Music Theory

Essentials of Music Theory from the Scale to Orchestra. Learn to Compose.

www.youtube.com

 

[SetFree]

I watched your video. Early on in my guitar playing, I bought a Berklee guitar book. I worked about halfway
through it though I think I lost it decades ago. Was Al Dimeola a graduate of Berklee?

I'm not sure about Al Dimeola going to Berklee, but I'm pretty sure John Scofield and Pat Metheny studied with some of the guitar instructors that were at Berklee, though I don't know if those same instructors are there now.

Brett Wilmott has a guitar book on chord melody playing, through Mel Bay that I highly recommend. He was a Berklee guitar instructor at one time.

 

[SetFree]

At present I'm studying music Interval Theory with Music Interval Theory Academy (M.I.T.A.).

Study of Interval Theory is an advanced music study that concentrates more on the nature of the music Intervals instead of standard Diatonic thinking. Here is a short comparison between Diatonic thinking and Interval thinking:

Diatonic Theory -- based on the 7 notes of the Major Scale: like C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. A chord triad is built from the Root C, and then every other note to get the notes C-E-G which spells a C Major chord. The Major Scale harmonized into chords produces 7 different chords.

Interval Theory -- based on the 12 notes of the Major Scale: like C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. Chords are built using a numbering system which can cover any of the Intervals within a chord. For example, a C Major triad, the notes C-E-G, is looked at from the point of view on its Interval spaces, starting from the Root C. From C to E is 4 chromatic steps, from E to G is 3 chromatic steps. Thus it is call a 4-3 chord. A C-Eb-G triad is a C minor triad, and because of its Interval arrangement it is called a 3-4 chord.

There is an Interval Rule involving a total of 12 tones when creating Interval combinations. You can create an Interval like a 9 (from E to C#) and then create a 3 following it (like from B to a D), and as long as both Intervals equal a total of 12, then the two different Intervals will sound complementary. Your first Interval combination could be a 2 (very dissonant) followed by a 10; or a 5 Interval combination followed by a 7 Interval combination. This kind of writing leaves standard Diatonic thinking. But it allows one to create some ideas that might be very difficult to think of using standard Diatonic thinking.

Then there's the idea of a Matrix of Intervals. It simply uses Intervals in a Matrix that covers, well, all possible Interval combinations.

3+1, 3+2, 3+3, 3+4, 3+5, 3+6
4+1, 4+2, 4+3, 4+4, 4+5, 4+6

You can build the above Matrix starting with 1+1 and go all the way to 6+6. The above underlined Intervals are a simple minor chord and a Major chord. You could build your own composition just using a couple of the above Interval combinations, or several of them, combine them, jumble them up, whatever. This is actually a very free method of composition. And these methods are just a tip of the iceberg in Interval Theory.