January 10, 2025 • 24 mins
In this special episode of our Music Theory Podcast, we dive deep into a comprehensive Season 1 Review and provide an exciting Season 2 Preview. Whether you're a passionate music theorist, a dedicated music student, or a seasoned musician, this episode is packed with valuable insights and analysis that will help you elevate your understanding of music theory.
In Season 1, we explored foundational concepts like harmony, counterpoint, scale construction, and chord progressions, offering practical applications for students and professionals alike. We'll review the most popular topics, key takeaways, and memorable moments from the season, perfect for anyone who wants a quick recap or missed an episode.
Looking ahead, Season 2 promises even more advanced discussions on topics like form analysis, tension and release in music, and historical music theory. Get a sneak peek of upcoming episodes focused on specific composers, styles, and theoretical breakthroughs.
This episode is a must-listen for music theory lovers, music historians, and anyone looking to deepen their knowledge of how music works at its core. Tune in for a journey through both the past and future of music theory!
Keywords: Music Theory Podcast, music theorist, music student, music theory review, music theory preview, harmony, counterpoint, chord progressions, scale construction, musicians, historical music theory, season review, season preview.
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Episode Transcript
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UNKNOWN (00:00):
piano plays
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Hello music theory lovers, scholars, and students
alike.
Happy 2025.
This is my first episode back ofThe Harmonious Blacksmith, a
podcast on music theoryexploration.
This is episode 11, and I amyour host, Kevin Patrick
(01:28):
Fleming.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Oh my! Oh my goodness, that's so unexpected!
Oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:44):
thank you so much everybody i appreciate it look
i'm really excited to announcethat i have a few little new
perks that are coming up for mypodcast going into this year
very much would love to createsome visual resources for y'all
to go with my episodes so thatit would include like pdfs and
(02:06):
also videos with me justexplaining things with pdfs and
with visual aids and things likethat which where when they're
coupled with the episodes, itjust makes it a little easier to
follow along.
Also, the website for my podcastspecifically is up and out now.
(02:26):
And so if you scroll downthrough the description of the
episodes, you will find a linkat the bottom that says episode
website.
And you can click on that and goto the actual individual website
for each episode.
But also at the bottom there inthe description, there's a link
to my podcast.
There will be a link that sayssupport the show.
(02:47):
And look, I love making thispodcast.
I love giving it to you.
I want to make it as great aspossible.
I want to improve on it and alsobring visuals to you.
This is just a little call forsupport.
If you really enjoy my podcast,please click the support the
show link in the description ofthis episode and just check out
(03:08):
the options there.
And look, thank you so much foryour support, y'all.
I really, really do appreciateit.
and I'm just really lookingforward to making some really
good podcast episodes andresources for you going forward.
Reminder, this is a linear andcumulative podcast, so if you
are new to my podcast, first ofall, welcome, and we're happy
(03:30):
you're here along with us onthis journey, but you're
probably going to want to goback to episode one and listen
through all the way until youget to where we left off.
Basically, everything is abuilding block on a building
block on a building block aswe're building this music theory
fabric, if you will, to makesure that we understand all the
(03:52):
concepts as a whole.
So this being episode 11, thisis actually the first episode of
season two of the HarmoniousBlacksmith.
And because of that, I'm goingto do for y'all what I do for
all my music theory students.
We're going to do a rebuildtoday.
(04:12):
That's what I call it.
We're going to do a little musictheory rebuild, which is
basically a recap of the firstseason and how we got to where
we are today.
So where did we start?
We started with a single note.
and sound in the ways of musicwas born.
(04:34):
Mankind learned how to harnessthis sound and control it.
So what is a note again?
It's really just a controlledvibration that creates a
constant sound based onvibrations of a string, right?
Which are measured in frequency,which is like vibrations per
second.
(04:55):
Yada, yada, yada.
I won't have to go too far inthe science further than that.
But once we learned how toharness one sound...
Then we wanted to learn how tomake more sounds.
And basically what we realizedis, you know, once you Something
like a string, for example,which, you know, you can imagine
there are differentamalgamations of that over the
(05:17):
centuries and eons.
But once we learn to harnessthat and get different sounds
and go higher, go lower andcreate different sounds, then we
started putting the soundstogether in what we call a
scale.
Right.
Right.
which is kind of what I'm doingright here, a little bit of a C
(05:37):
major scale, or in a lowerregister would sound like this.
Ah, that's lovely.
So there is a long evolutioninto that, as you know.
And then eventually theevolution led us to put those
notes together in patterns thatsounded pleasant to our ears so
(05:58):
that we could use them to createmusic and sing tunes.
That's how scales were born.
And of course you remembereverything comes from scales.
The major scale is thepredominant pattern in Western
harmony.
that we base everything off of.
And of course, you remember thatpattern's whole, whole, half,
(06:20):
whole, whole, whole, half.
So then melodies started beingcreated.
The idea of this memorable,controllable sound that we call
music.
So then how do we define melodyexactly?
Melody is the succession ofconnected notes sung or played
(06:46):
one at a time in order to createthe main thematic material in
music.
The common colloquialism for theword melody is tune.
So when people say, can youcarry a tune?
Or, wow, he can carry a tune.
Really what they mean is thatthat person has a good ear for
(07:10):
music, meaning they can hearsomething and reproduce it with
the accurate sounding pitches.
That's what carrying a tune is.
Simply put, just think of melodyas something that one person can
sing, right?
Because one person's not gonnabe able to sing a bunch of notes
at the same time they're notgonna be able to create chords
(07:31):
and things like that they'resinging one note at a time in
succession and connecting themso when you think melody just
think solo singing and as itevolved evolved evolved people
started wanting to get even morecreative and that's how harmony
was born so remember what thedefinition of harmony was two or
(07:53):
more notes soundingsimultaneously And eventually,
we just started stacking moreand more notes on top of each
(08:17):
other, and then chords wereborn.
And remember the definition of achord, any three or more notes
stacked on top of each othersounding simultaneously.
Okay.
(08:41):
So now we have melody, harmony,and chords, and in a big picture
sense, that really does catch usup to modern times.
And as creativity began to spinout in a lot of different
directions and new scalepatterns were being experimented
with, our Western system enteredthe modern dichotomy that is
(09:04):
major and minor.
Those are the two main realmsthat we tend to write and enjoy
music under the major sound andthe minor sound.
And thus it was established tohave the overarching colors of
(09:28):
the music rainbow be happy andsad as opposing emotions.
And of course, in the spectrumof human emotions and
experience, happy and sad arereally just very general
emotions, right?
Think of them as the two maincolors in the musical rainbow.
And there are many, many colorsand shades in between.
(09:52):
As there are different emotionsand experiences and stories to
tell in life, but this justgives us a place to start.
And as the realm of sound is cutup into finer colors so that we
can continually evolve ourexpression, now you have the
seven Greek mode.
(10:14):
And remember, major and minorare just two of the seven.
So now we're broadening ourspectrum from two scale patterns
to create major melodies, andsounds all the way to seven
patterns.
Who remembers how to name allseven modes?
Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian,Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian,
(10:38):
Locrian, and back to Ionian.
So recall that a major scale inGreek modes is called Ionian,
and a minor scale in Greek modesis called Aeolian.
Also, on a side note, if youjust need a silly sentence to
help you remember the order ofthe modes and their names, I dig
(10:59):
potatoes, leave me alone.
Ionian.
I dig potatoes, leave me alone.
So A and lone, A is Aeolian,lone is Locrian.
I know it's a little silly.
It's very silly, but somebodytold it to me back in high
(11:22):
school and I've remembered itall the way since then.
So hopefully you will too.
So then as we continue toprogress and organize these
ideas, then the concept of a keycomes around.
And what is a key exactly?
When you really get down to it,it's actually just manipulating
(11:43):
the seven pitches of a diatonicscale vertically and
horizontally in very creativeways.
To expand on that, it is thescale that you play.
It is the triads that come outof that scale using the skipping
method in thirds that we learnedback in the triads episode.
(12:03):
of season one, expanding thosetriads into chords, extended
chords, like sevenths, ninths,elevenths, even including
suspension chords, add chords,and all kinds of colors like
that, which turns into chordprogressions, which is really
just a succession of chordsgoing from one to another to
(12:26):
another within that key thatgive us this harmonic backdrop
from which we can continue towrite music, melodies,
harmonies, and really be ascreative as we want to create
whatever we want.
So everything we talked about sofar leads up to the concept of
(12:47):
keys and chord progressions andthings like that based on major
and minor scales and the otherfive iterations of the Greek
modes.
But one thing I also don't wantyou to forget is that there are
many, many evolutions andvariations of scales, as you can
imagine.
And I did an entire episodededicated to minor, and I don't
(13:10):
want to leave that behind.
Because remember, even though wehave a natural minor scale that
we also call Aeolian within theGreek modes, that scale has
typically produced weak chordprogressions and weak musical
tension within those chordprogressions and melodies.
And so songwriters and composersalike kind of evolved and
(13:34):
started altering it into acouple of different iterations
one of which was called harmonicminor which is just the natural
minor scale with a raisedseventh scale degree and it's
called harmonic minor because ifyou recall that seventh scale
degree is raised to make thefive chord in the key major
(13:57):
instead of minor and you mightalso recall that we call that a
leading tone.
A leading tone is that seventhscale degree that is only a half
step away from the octave or theroot.
And a leading tone hastremendous amounts of musical
tension when you get to it thatwant to be resolved back to the
(14:20):
octave or the one.
Hence the reason that it's beenraised in minor because the
regular natural minor seventhscale degree is just weak
sounding and it doesn't producethat leading tone sound that
gives you that beautiful musicaltension that is then resolved so
(14:41):
let's compare them real quickremember the natural minor will
sound like this and with thatyou can hear that the seventh
scale degree is actually a wholestep away from the octave And it
just doesn't create enoughmusical tension to have a
(15:04):
resolution, so we create what'scalled a leading tone, which,
remember, is a raised seventh,which is a half step away from
the octave.
And that gives us harmonicminor, which sounds like this.
And you can just hear thatseventh scale degree pulling up
to the octave.
UNKNOWN (15:26):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (15:28):
Don't forget melodic minor.
I'm not going to go too detailedwith melodic minor, even though
I'll have an episode in thefuture that will.
But basically, melodic minor iswhere you raise scale degrees 6
and 7 on the way up, and younatural them out on the way back
down.
So melodic minor sounds likethis.
UNKNOWN (15:53):
Melodic minor.
SPEAKER_00 (15:56):
In summary, harmonic minor has a raised seventh
specifically for the harmony,which gives us its name.
Let's not forget that.
It's raised in order to make thefive chord a major chord in
minor and also to have thatleading tone that creates more
musical tension.
It is done for the chordprogressions, for the harmony,
(16:19):
as opposed to melodic minor,which has raised six and seven
on the way up and lowered sixand seven on the way down which
seems kind of strange, but itreally is for a more colorful
melody, better melodic optionsin minor keys.
And look, this is just arambling review today, as you
(16:39):
can tell.
But as y'all know, I have plentyof audio examples on all of this
in season one.
So again, if you're stumbling onthis episode sort of randomly, I
have lots of audio examples inseason one in episodes one
through 10, and you shoulddefinitely go back and Check
those out.
Another thing we did in seasonone is we introduced the concept
(17:04):
of ear training or aural skillsfor the purposes of fine-tuning
your ear to music so that youcan continue to refine your
ability to understand whatyou're hearing and how to
associate it in a lot ofdifferent ways.
And this season, we'll have oneor two new ear training episodes
(17:25):
for sure, but we introduced theconcept using the concept of
intervals in music.
And if you recall, an intervalin music is really just the
sound that is produced, theunique sound between two notes.
So the way I did it is we wouldplay a low note and then play a
(17:46):
higher note above it, give theinterval its name, and then
learn to associate that soundwith something that's extremely
familiar and memorable to you.
For those of y'all who've beenlistening listening this far,
you have a list of those things,right?
If you remember, like forexample, when I did the tritone
interval, it reminded me of theintro of the Simpsons theme
(18:08):
song.
Not sure if you remember that,but that's just an example.
And you're going to find thatear training is really powerful
in a lot of differentdirections.
The ability to learn andrecognize these different aural
colors that we call intervals,in ear training.
It just gives you the ability torecognize and associate things
(18:31):
faster, to organize themquicker, and to really
understand what things aresupposed to sound like, how they
function.
And I could go back to what wewere talking about with carrying
a tune.
Being able to carry a tune wellmeans you have an understanding
of the distance of the pitchesthat you're singing and how
exactly they're supposed tosound in the end.
(18:54):
So in season two, we willcontinue our ear training
studies and of course we willcontinue the interval studies
which will turn into learningthings like melodic dictation
and harmonic dictation which ishow to hear a melody and either
sing it or play it back so toget more efficient at that and
(19:17):
to hear chord progressions andbass lines even and be able to
understand what you're hearingthere and how to connect those
together just so that you canOrganize it all in your mind
faster, hear it faster,understand it faster, and just
get better at the languagealtogether.
So that's a lot to look forwardto here.
(19:38):
Oh, yes.
Yes, that's right.
Let's get excited about seasontwo.
This is a lot of great stuffwe're going to go over.
It's going to be so much fun.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
So that brings us back tocurrent, which is about keys,
(20:01):
key relationships, and thecircle of fifths, which is what
the last episode of season onewas all about.
And so we just talked about theamazing tool that is the circle
of fifths and how freaking coolit is, man.
I mean, you have this intervalof a fifth that you can use on a
(20:25):
lot of different And mainly tounderstand sharps and flats, how
many of them are in each key,and what order the keys are
organized in based on that.
And there's a couple things Ididn't even address yet about
the circle of fifths that I'mlooking forward to getting to in
(20:45):
another episode about circle offifths.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Let's get fired up.
And the study of the circle offifths is also going to help us
in our understanding of keyrelationships, which becomes
(21:06):
very important.
Key relationships like relativekeys and like closely related
keys.
We're going to learn those kindof concepts so we can learn
things like modulation.
Oh, yeah.
And key changes.
UNKNOWN (21:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:25):
Holy cow, that's amazing.
And we're even going to studyimprovisation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vote Harmonious Blacksmith in2025.
That's right.
That's right.
Thank you.
(21:47):
Thank you, everyone.
But now it's time for breakdown.
Today we recapped and reviewedseason one.
(22:08):
Yeah! Thank you so much.
We started with a single note.
We learned how that evolved toscale patterns, how scale
patterns evolved to triads andchords, how chords evolved to
chord progressions, how all ofthat ended up evolving into what
(22:31):
we call keys.
Yes, my honorable subject, it'sokay to be excited about keys.
Don't ever let anybody tell youotherwise.
In season two, we're going totalk about chord inversions and
(22:53):
bass lines.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, baby.
Let's go.
UNKNOWN (23:02):
Let's go.
SPEAKER_00 (23:03):
in season two we're gonna talk about harmonic and
melodic dictation yes we're evengonna talk about improvisation
oh yeah and we're even going totalk about songwriting and
(23:27):
composition Oh, baby, oh, baby,it's going to be good.
So I will see you in the nextepisode where I can continue
(23:47):
this music theory explorationwith all of you.
piano plays
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Hello music theory lovers, scholars, and students
alike.
Happy 2025.
This is my first episode back ofThe Harmonious Blacksmith, a
podcast on music theoryexploration.
This is episode 11, and I amyour host, Kevin Patrick
(01:28):
Fleming.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Oh my! Oh my goodness, that's so unexpected!
Oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:44):
thank you so much everybody i appreciate it look
i'm really excited to announcethat i have a few little new
perks that are coming up for mypodcast going into this year
very much would love to createsome visual resources for y'all
to go with my episodes so thatit would include like pdfs and
(02:06):
also videos with me justexplaining things with pdfs and
with visual aids and things likethat which where when they're
coupled with the episodes, itjust makes it a little easier to
follow along.
Also, the website for my podcastspecifically is up and out now.
(02:26):
And so if you scroll downthrough the description of the
episodes, you will find a linkat the bottom that says episode
website.
And you can click on that and goto the actual individual website
for each episode.
But also at the bottom there inthe description, there's a link
to my podcast.
There will be a link that sayssupport the show.
(02:47):
And look, I love making thispodcast.
I love giving it to you.
I want to make it as great aspossible.
I want to improve on it and alsobring visuals to you.
This is just a little call forsupport.
If you really enjoy my podcast,please click the support the
show link in the description ofthis episode and just check out
(03:08):
the options there.
And look, thank you so much foryour support, y'all.
I really, really do appreciateit.
and I'm just really lookingforward to making some really
good podcast episodes andresources for you going forward.
Reminder, this is a linear andcumulative podcast, so if you
are new to my podcast, first ofall, welcome, and we're happy
(03:30):
you're here along with us onthis journey, but you're
probably going to want to goback to episode one and listen
through all the way until youget to where we left off.
Basically, everything is abuilding block on a building
block on a building block aswe're building this music theory
fabric, if you will, to makesure that we understand all the
(03:52):
concepts as a whole.
So this being episode 11, thisis actually the first episode of
season two of the HarmoniousBlacksmith.
And because of that, I'm goingto do for y'all what I do for
all my music theory students.
We're going to do a rebuildtoday.
(04:12):
That's what I call it.
We're going to do a little musictheory rebuild, which is
basically a recap of the firstseason and how we got to where
we are today.
So where did we start?
We started with a single note.
and sound in the ways of musicwas born.
(04:34):
Mankind learned how to harnessthis sound and control it.
So what is a note again?
It's really just a controlledvibration that creates a
constant sound based onvibrations of a string, right?
Which are measured in frequency,which is like vibrations per
second.
(04:55):
Yada, yada, yada.
I won't have to go too far inthe science further than that.
But once we learned how toharness one sound...
Then we wanted to learn how tomake more sounds.
And basically what we realizedis, you know, once you Something
like a string, for example,which, you know, you can imagine
there are differentamalgamations of that over the
(05:17):
centuries and eons.
But once we learn to harnessthat and get different sounds
and go higher, go lower andcreate different sounds, then we
started putting the soundstogether in what we call a
scale.
Right.
Right.
which is kind of what I'm doingright here, a little bit of a C
(05:37):
major scale, or in a lowerregister would sound like this.
Ah, that's lovely.
So there is a long evolutioninto that, as you know.
And then eventually theevolution led us to put those
notes together in patterns thatsounded pleasant to our ears so
(05:58):
that we could use them to createmusic and sing tunes.
That's how scales were born.
And of course you remembereverything comes from scales.
The major scale is thepredominant pattern in Western
harmony.
that we base everything off of.
And of course, you remember thatpattern's whole, whole, half,
(06:20):
whole, whole, whole, half.
So then melodies started beingcreated.
The idea of this memorable,controllable sound that we call
music.
So then how do we define melodyexactly?
Melody is the succession ofconnected notes sung or played
(06:46):
one at a time in order to createthe main thematic material in
music.
The common colloquialism for theword melody is tune.
So when people say, can youcarry a tune?
Or, wow, he can carry a tune.
Really what they mean is thatthat person has a good ear for
(07:10):
music, meaning they can hearsomething and reproduce it with
the accurate sounding pitches.
That's what carrying a tune is.
Simply put, just think of melodyas something that one person can
sing, right?
Because one person's not gonnabe able to sing a bunch of notes
at the same time they're notgonna be able to create chords
(07:31):
and things like that they'resinging one note at a time in
succession and connecting themso when you think melody just
think solo singing and as itevolved evolved evolved people
started wanting to get even morecreative and that's how harmony
was born so remember what thedefinition of harmony was two or
(07:53):
more notes soundingsimultaneously And eventually,
we just started stacking moreand more notes on top of each
(08:17):
other, and then chords wereborn.
And remember the definition of achord, any three or more notes
stacked on top of each othersounding simultaneously.
Okay.
(08:41):
So now we have melody, harmony,and chords, and in a big picture
sense, that really does catch usup to modern times.
And as creativity began to spinout in a lot of different
directions and new scalepatterns were being experimented
with, our Western system enteredthe modern dichotomy that is
(09:04):
major and minor.
Those are the two main realmsthat we tend to write and enjoy
music under the major sound andthe minor sound.
And thus it was established tohave the overarching colors of
(09:28):
the music rainbow be happy andsad as opposing emotions.
And of course, in the spectrumof human emotions and
experience, happy and sad arereally just very general
emotions, right?
Think of them as the two maincolors in the musical rainbow.
And there are many, many colorsand shades in between.
(09:52):
As there are different emotionsand experiences and stories to
tell in life, but this justgives us a place to start.
And as the realm of sound is cutup into finer colors so that we
can continually evolve ourexpression, now you have the
seven Greek mode.
(10:14):
And remember, major and minorare just two of the seven.
So now we're broadening ourspectrum from two scale patterns
to create major melodies, andsounds all the way to seven
patterns.
Who remembers how to name allseven modes?
Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian,Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian,
(10:38):
Locrian, and back to Ionian.
So recall that a major scale inGreek modes is called Ionian,
and a minor scale in Greek modesis called Aeolian.
Also, on a side note, if youjust need a silly sentence to
help you remember the order ofthe modes and their names, I dig
(10:59):
potatoes, leave me alone.
Ionian.
I dig potatoes, leave me alone.
So A and lone, A is Aeolian,lone is Locrian.
I know it's a little silly.
It's very silly, but somebodytold it to me back in high
(11:22):
school and I've remembered itall the way since then.
So hopefully you will too.
So then as we continue toprogress and organize these
ideas, then the concept of a keycomes around.
And what is a key exactly?
When you really get down to it,it's actually just manipulating
(11:43):
the seven pitches of a diatonicscale vertically and
horizontally in very creativeways.
To expand on that, it is thescale that you play.
It is the triads that come outof that scale using the skipping
method in thirds that we learnedback in the triads episode.
(12:03):
of season one, expanding thosetriads into chords, extended
chords, like sevenths, ninths,elevenths, even including
suspension chords, add chords,and all kinds of colors like
that, which turns into chordprogressions, which is really
just a succession of chordsgoing from one to another to
(12:26):
another within that key thatgive us this harmonic backdrop
from which we can continue towrite music, melodies,
harmonies, and really be ascreative as we want to create
whatever we want.
So everything we talked about sofar leads up to the concept of
(12:47):
keys and chord progressions andthings like that based on major
and minor scales and the otherfive iterations of the Greek
modes.
But one thing I also don't wantyou to forget is that there are
many, many evolutions andvariations of scales, as you can
imagine.
And I did an entire episodededicated to minor, and I don't
(13:10):
want to leave that behind.
Because remember, even though wehave a natural minor scale that
we also call Aeolian within theGreek modes, that scale has
typically produced weak chordprogressions and weak musical
tension within those chordprogressions and melodies.
And so songwriters and composersalike kind of evolved and
(13:34):
started altering it into acouple of different iterations
one of which was called harmonicminor which is just the natural
minor scale with a raisedseventh scale degree and it's
called harmonic minor because ifyou recall that seventh scale
degree is raised to make thefive chord in the key major
(13:57):
instead of minor and you mightalso recall that we call that a
leading tone.
A leading tone is that seventhscale degree that is only a half
step away from the octave or theroot.
And a leading tone hastremendous amounts of musical
tension when you get to it thatwant to be resolved back to the
(14:20):
octave or the one.
Hence the reason that it's beenraised in minor because the
regular natural minor seventhscale degree is just weak
sounding and it doesn't producethat leading tone sound that
gives you that beautiful musicaltension that is then resolved so
(14:41):
let's compare them real quickremember the natural minor will
sound like this and with thatyou can hear that the seventh
scale degree is actually a wholestep away from the octave And it
just doesn't create enoughmusical tension to have a
(15:04):
resolution, so we create what'scalled a leading tone, which,
remember, is a raised seventh,which is a half step away from
the octave.
And that gives us harmonicminor, which sounds like this.
And you can just hear thatseventh scale degree pulling up
to the octave.
UNKNOWN (15:26):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (15:28):
Don't forget melodic minor.
I'm not going to go too detailedwith melodic minor, even though
I'll have an episode in thefuture that will.
But basically, melodic minor iswhere you raise scale degrees 6
and 7 on the way up, and younatural them out on the way back
down.
So melodic minor sounds likethis.
UNKNOWN (15:53):
Melodic minor.
SPEAKER_00 (15:56):
In summary, harmonic minor has a raised seventh
specifically for the harmony,which gives us its name.
Let's not forget that.
It's raised in order to make thefive chord a major chord in
minor and also to have thatleading tone that creates more
musical tension.
It is done for the chordprogressions, for the harmony,
(16:19):
as opposed to melodic minor,which has raised six and seven
on the way up and lowered sixand seven on the way down which
seems kind of strange, but itreally is for a more colorful
melody, better melodic optionsin minor keys.
And look, this is just arambling review today, as you
(16:39):
can tell.
But as y'all know, I have plentyof audio examples on all of this
in season one.
So again, if you're stumbling onthis episode sort of randomly, I
have lots of audio examples inseason one in episodes one
through 10, and you shoulddefinitely go back and Check
those out.
Another thing we did in seasonone is we introduced the concept
(17:04):
of ear training or aural skillsfor the purposes of fine-tuning
your ear to music so that youcan continue to refine your
ability to understand whatyou're hearing and how to
associate it in a lot ofdifferent ways.
And this season, we'll have oneor two new ear training episodes
(17:25):
for sure, but we introduced theconcept using the concept of
intervals in music.
And if you recall, an intervalin music is really just the
sound that is produced, theunique sound between two notes.
So the way I did it is we wouldplay a low note and then play a
(17:46):
higher note above it, give theinterval its name, and then
learn to associate that soundwith something that's extremely
familiar and memorable to you.
For those of y'all who've beenlistening listening this far,
you have a list of those things,right?
If you remember, like forexample, when I did the tritone
interval, it reminded me of theintro of the Simpsons theme
(18:08):
song.
Not sure if you remember that,but that's just an example.
And you're going to find thatear training is really powerful
in a lot of differentdirections.
The ability to learn andrecognize these different aural
colors that we call intervals,in ear training.
It just gives you the ability torecognize and associate things
(18:31):
faster, to organize themquicker, and to really
understand what things aresupposed to sound like, how they
function.
And I could go back to what wewere talking about with carrying
a tune.
Being able to carry a tune wellmeans you have an understanding
of the distance of the pitchesthat you're singing and how
exactly they're supposed tosound in the end.
(18:54):
So in season two, we willcontinue our ear training
studies and of course we willcontinue the interval studies
which will turn into learningthings like melodic dictation
and harmonic dictation which ishow to hear a melody and either
sing it or play it back so toget more efficient at that and
(19:17):
to hear chord progressions andbass lines even and be able to
understand what you're hearingthere and how to connect those
together just so that you canOrganize it all in your mind
faster, hear it faster,understand it faster, and just
get better at the languagealtogether.
So that's a lot to look forwardto here.
(19:38):
Oh, yes.
Yes, that's right.
Let's get excited about seasontwo.
This is a lot of great stuffwe're going to go over.
It's going to be so much fun.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
So that brings us back tocurrent, which is about keys,
(20:01):
key relationships, and thecircle of fifths, which is what
the last episode of season onewas all about.
And so we just talked about theamazing tool that is the circle
of fifths and how freaking coolit is, man.
I mean, you have this intervalof a fifth that you can use on a
(20:25):
lot of different And mainly tounderstand sharps and flats, how
many of them are in each key,and what order the keys are
organized in based on that.
And there's a couple things Ididn't even address yet about
the circle of fifths that I'mlooking forward to getting to in
(20:45):
another episode about circle offifths.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Let's get fired up.
And the study of the circle offifths is also going to help us
in our understanding of keyrelationships, which becomes
(21:06):
very important.
Key relationships like relativekeys and like closely related
keys.
We're going to learn those kindof concepts so we can learn
things like modulation.
Oh, yeah.
And key changes.
UNKNOWN (21:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:25):
Holy cow, that's amazing.
And we're even going to studyimprovisation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vote Harmonious Blacksmith in2025.
That's right.
That's right.
Thank you.
(21:47):
Thank you, everyone.
But now it's time for breakdown.
Today we recapped and reviewedseason one.
(22:08):
Yeah! Thank you so much.
We started with a single note.
We learned how that evolved toscale patterns, how scale
patterns evolved to triads andchords, how chords evolved to
chord progressions, how all ofthat ended up evolving into what
(22:31):
we call keys.
Yes, my honorable subject, it'sokay to be excited about keys.
Don't ever let anybody tell youotherwise.
In season two, we're going totalk about chord inversions and
(22:53):
bass lines.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, baby.
Let's go.
UNKNOWN (23:02):
Let's go.
SPEAKER_00 (23:03):
in season two we're gonna talk about harmonic and
melodic dictation yes we're evengonna talk about improvisation
oh yeah and we're even going totalk about songwriting and
(23:27):
composition Oh, baby, oh, baby,it's going to be good.
So I will see you in the nextepisode where I can continue
(23:47):
this music theory explorationwith all of you.
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