Understanding Music Theory in One Hour - Animated Music Lesson

[Music] hi welcome to music theory in one lesson. this is our musical alphabet.

[Music] you may be asking yourself why there are different spacings between each note. that introduces the idea of musical distance, which is extremely important in music. the answer is quite simple. there are more notes than what i initially put on the screen. let's take a look at what's called our chromatic scale. much better.

to the next, the distance of one half step. let's take a listen to each note one after another.

[Music] there are actually two ways to spell this alphabet, using sharps and also using flats. flats are shown below the sharps. in a sharp and a b-flat, yes, they are the same note. that sounds ridiculous now, but later in the course, you're going to learn that this is very useful and practical. let's take a listen to the same chromatic scale, note by note.

[Music] one more thing to keep in mind is that this alphabet will repeat in both directions, essentially into an affinity. but we generally limit how far that alphabet goes. take a listen to our alphabet in two octaves. an octave basically just means where the alphabet repeats.

[Music] scales are incredibly important in music, and they really need to be thoroughly understood. that being said, they are also incredibly easy. a scale basically is just a pattern of whole and half steps. we're going to build what is called the a major scale, but first, let's take a moment to think about that name. a major. a will be our starting note, and major will be the pattern. we will cover other patterns later in this section. the major pattern goes as follows: starting on a, whole step to b, whole step to c sharp, half step to d, whole step to e, whole step to f sharp, another whole step to g sharp, then another half step brings us back to a again. take a listen to the a major scale.

[Music] pretty simple, right? next, we're going to build the f major scale. that is the major pattern, starting on the note f. f, whole step to g, whole step to a, half step to a sharp, whole step to c, whole step to d, another whole step to e, and another half step to f. you're going to notice something peculiar about this scale. we have two forms of a and no b. well, let's do this whole exercise over again, but this time, let's use that version of the chromatic scale that we spelled with flats. f, whole step to g, whole step to a, half step to b-flat. there's our b. whole step to c, whole step to d, whole step to e, and another half step to f. now let's take a listen to this scale.

[Music] major is not the only scale type that we're going to use. next, let's examine the minor pattern, starting on the note a. so, starting on a, whole step to b, half step to c, whole step to d, whole step to e, half step to f, whole step to g, and another whole step brings us back to a. so our pattern now is whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step. whereas the major pattern was whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. different patterns give us different notes. this being the minor pattern is the a minor scale. if we were to take this pattern and start it on d, we would have d minor. let's take a listen to the a minor scale now.

[Music] in this section, we're going to further explore scales by looking at the idea of scale degrees. scale degrees sound like they are very, very complicated and difficult, but they aren't. just like everything else in music theory, quite simply, the note that you start on, an example i had our a minor scale, that note a is our one. the note right after, you guessed it, is two. that's our b, three, four, five, six, seven, and back to one. it's pretty simple. the note you start on is a 1, and the rest fall in line. next, let's make the harmonic minor scale. this is pretty simple. you just sharp the seven. but let's talk about sharping and flatting scale degrees really fast. in this case, the seven is g, so we'll just make it g sharp. but in other scales, we have flats. so if you need to sharp a scale degree that has a flat, you don't put a sharp after it. the sharp just cancels out the flat. it's really important to think of sharps and flats as operators. the sharp will raise the given note by a half step. the flat will lower the note by a half step. but that does not mean sharping a b-flat will make a b sharp. in fact, it'll just make a regular old b. on the screen, you'll see both the a harmonic minor and a natural minor scales. anytime in music you run into the word natural, that's really just code speak for normal or regular, not sharp, not flat, as it occurs from the original pattern. notice the g sharp in the harmonic minor scale. that is our sharp seven. now let's take a listen to this scale.

[Music] now let's take a listen to what is called the melodic minor scale. this one is a little bit different than the harmonic minor because it is different on the way up than the way down. first, on the way up, you're going to sharp the sixth scale degree and the seventh scale degree, giving us at least an a minor f sharp and g sharp. after that, on the way down, you're going to play the natural minor scale as it was originally derived. let's take a listen to this scale.

[Music] intervals are just a measurement of musical distance. first, let's take a look at the c major scale, shown on the screen with its scale degrees above it, and examine each distance. c to d is a second. c to e is a third. c to f, a fourth. c to g, a fifth. c to a, a sixth. and c to b, a seventh. c to c is our octave. oct, the prefix meaning eight. but if you were to examine the c minor scale, you'll see that we have seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and sevenths, but the notes are different. so we are going to need multiple interval types in order to describe these intervals. what we have are major intervals, minor intervals, augmented, diminished, and perfect.

[Music] let's start by examining all of the intervals in our c major scale. we will then compare these notes and intervals to the c minor scale and begin to name the intervals. first, c to d. this is what is called a major second. as you can see from the chromatic scale below, a major second is built off of just one whole step. also notice that the major second belongs to both c major and c minor. this interval will not change between the scales. the next one, however, will. this one, c to e, is, you guessed it, a major third. but notice that c to e-flat is a half step smaller than c to e. this is what's called a minor third, and that could have something to do with why this is called the minor scale. but what is really important here is the logic that this introduces. anytime you have a major interval and you want to make it minor, just lower the higher note by one half step, making the overall distance from the first note to the second a half step smaller. this works for all major intervals. if you make that distance one half small, one half step smaller, it will become a minor interval. let's take a look at c to f.

[Music] c to f is known as a perfect fourth. notice that this perfect fourth belongs to both major and minor. next, we're going to take a look at c to g.

[Music] this is called a perfect fifth. also notice that this belongs to the minor scale as well. in fact, each major and minor counterpart, assuming they have the same starting note or root note, will have their major second, perfect fourth, and perfect fifth in common, and of course, the octave. the other intervals are the ones that vary between the two scales. next, let's take a listen to c to a. this belonging to the major scale, of course, is a major sixth. since we have to differentiate between major and minor here, they are not the same between the two scales. let's take a look at what is in the minor scale, an a-flat. now, knowing an a-flat is a half a step lower than a, we have lowered the size of that interval by a half step, essentially turning that major interval into a minor interval. and it also goes to show that this new minor sixth, c to a-flat, belongs to the c minor scale. next, let's take a listen to our seventh.

[Music] my astute students probably would have guessed that this is a major seventh, which is completely correct. now, examining the minor scale, we move down to a b-flat. that being a half step smaller than the previous interval is a minor seventh. now, i would like to examine the chromatic scale, which is our scale done entirely in half steps, and look at how each interval progresses to the next. so, starting on c and going up to d-flat, we have a half step. this is called a minor second. knowing that a minor interval is one half step lower than a major, it goes to follow that c to d is a major second. c to e-flat, our minor third. bringing it up a half step, c to e, our major third. next, c to f, perfect fourth. c to g-flat is a very special interval called a tritone. we will be discussing this in its own section. next, c to g, a perfect fifth. c to a-flat, a minor sixth. c to a, a major sixth. c to b-flat, a minor seventh. and c to b, a major seventh. of course, we have c to c, our octave. after that.

[Music] as you will find out in this course, intervals have different functions. so now we need to take a look at a bit of a more theoretical application of these intervals. first, let's start with our major interval and alter it to minor. here we have a c to an e.

[Music] next, let's lower that e to e-flat, giving us our minor third. next, we're going to lower that e again, but we're not going to lower it and call it d. we're actually going to call it e double flat. yes, i know that that's a little bit strange, but now it becomes what's called a diminished third, and it will actually act differently because of this fact. calling it a d would make it a major second, and then it would act like a major second. just like with our chromatic scale, there are multiple ways to spell things in music, and in fact, most of the things you're going to run into will have more than two names. but always remember, the name will imply the function. let's go the other way with this interval. c to e, our major third. well, if you make that an e sharp, and yes, i know that's silly because that's really an f, but make it an e sharp, we now have an augmented third. so, looking at the logic of this, major, a half step larger will make it augmented. a half step smaller will make it minor, and a half step smaller further will make it diminished. perfect intervals work essentially the same. here we have c and g, our perfect fifth. if we lower that g to a g-flat, we go directly to diminished. and if we raise it to a g sharp, we go directly to it.

[Music] the logic: any perfect interval lowered by a half step is diminished. any perfect interval raised a half step is augmented. melody is also quite simple. the most important thing to keep in mind about melody is that we use scales as our building blocks. melody is quite simply a single line of music. you can imagine someone humming or someone singing, even playing a single line on the guitar. this defines melody. later, we'll talk about harmony, which is basically multiple melodies played at once that work together. first, let's derive the f major scale and create a melody. first, our root note of f.

[Music] then a whole step to g, a whole step to a, a half step to b-flat, whole step to c, whole step to d, whole step to e, and another half step brings us back to f.

[Music] next, you'll see the scale we just derived, f major, listed with its scale degrees. a melody is fairly easy to sculpt out of our scale. for the purposes of this series, i'm not really teaching artistic taste. i'm more or less teaching you how to spell things out. it will be up to you to figure out what you like to hear. with that being said, let's pick a couple scale degrees and piece together a melody. we're going to start with f, our one. we're going to move to b-flat, our four. we're gonna go ahead and play that b-flat twice. then it'll move down to a, our three, c, our five, and then back to one.

[Music] next, let's take the c major scale and play the same succession of scale degrees. you'll see the c major scale labeled with its scale degrees above it: one, four, four, three, five, one. this produced a similar sound, just starting on a different pitch. now, let's try it using a minor: one, four, four, three, five, one. when you use a scale to build a melody or chord progression, that's called playing in a key. so our first example was in the key of f major, then the key of c major for our second example, and a minor for our third. chords, like everything else in music theory, are quite simple, and they're just based off of patterns. the first chord we're going to build is called the a major chord, and you guessed it, it's built off of the a major scale, which you now see on the screen with its scale degrees. chords are incredibly simple to build. you take the root note, in this case a, and then you do every other note until you have three notes for triads. there are other chords that have more notes than three. this section is focusing on what's called a triad. this triad is called a major. take a listen.

[Music] this works exactly the same when you use the a minor scale, which is the same thing as saying as in the key of a minor. this pattern is movable to all scales. so if i wanted a b minor chord, all i have to know is the b minor scale. next, let's take a look at the key difference between major and minor chords on the screen, transposed over the chromatic scale. this time, you see the a minor chord as well as the a major chord. notice the only difference is that middle note, our c and c sharp. if you remember when we were talking about intervals, we pointed out that the two, four, and five remain consistent between major and minor scales, as long as they start on the same root note. in this key, a, this is also reflected in these chords. the spacing in the chords give it its flavor.

[Music] this relationship holds true for all major and minor triads. if you have a major triad, you want to make it minor, just lower that middle note by a half step. this also works the other way around, making minor into major. you raise it by a half step. now we're going to work through chord progressions. a chord progression is pretty simple. we're going to be building multiple chords based off of the same scale, then we're going to be progressing from one chord to the next. in this example, we're going to use a major, which you'll see on the screen arranged four times in a grid like pattern. above it are the scale degrees. let's build our first chord. you've probably guessed what that chord is going to be. that is our a major chord. in this case, we're going to call it our one chord because, quite simply, it's built off of the first scale degree. chords, when named in context of their scale, are generally named for the root note, in this case a, or our first scale degree. let's build a chord off of the fourth scale degree, d. we're going to do this the same way. we're going to take every other note after the root note, so we have d, f sharp, and you'll notice we've kind of run out of room here, but a does come after g sharp, so we'll use a. and it's totally fine to use the one back there at the beginning, as long as we recognize that 4 is our root. take a listen.

[Music] next, let's use the second scale degree to build our next chord. this would use the notes b, our root, the second scale degree, d, and f sharp, again, just taking every other note until we have three. take a listen.

[Music] our next chord is going to be built off of the fifth scale degree, e, g sharp, and again, we're out of room. so after g sharp is a, and that's not, you know, every other note, so we'll actually have to take the b. so let's take that b as well. now, let's take a listen to the whole progression.

[Music] there are a multitude of ways to play a chord progression like this, and something that's really fun is to take a look at these types of grids and pull some melodies out of them. i'm going to set up a three-part harmony using this chord progression between a cello, a viola, and a violin. the cello's line will be in red, and he'll take up the notes to the left. the viola will be in green, and davio will take the notes in the middle, and the violin will be in black, and it will take the notes to the right. i'm going to have the first melody play, then the first two, then the first three.

[Music] let's take a closer look at the roman numerals we used in the last video. remember, we were using the scale a major, and we had the chord 1, 4, 2, and 5. first, i'd like to point out that 2 is lowercase. that just means it's minor. and logic would lead us to uppercase, meaning major, which is actually the case. so let's take a look at these chords over the chromatic scale and examine the spacings, which are what make them major and minor.

[Music] notice that the two chord, which is minor, has a note in the middle that is a half a step closer to the root in terms of musical distance. this should remind you of our intervals section. remember, if you want to take a major third and make it minor, you just lower it a half step. it works the same way with chords. so if you take a major chord and lower that middle note a half step, you'll get a minor chord. it's also important to note that this pattern holds true for all major scales. so in all major scales, the 1 is major, the 2 is minor, the 3 is minor, the 4 is major, the 5 is major, the 6 is minor, the 7 is what's called diminished, and we'll cover that later. minor scales also have their own patterns of roman numerals. so if you build chords based off of a minor scale instead of a major, the 1 will be minor, the 2 will be diminished, the 3 will be major, the 4 will be minor, the 5 will be minor, the 6 will be major, the 7 will be major. let's take a listen to our chord progression using the a minor scale instead of the a major scale. then we're going to use a couple different scales after that.

[Music] the tritone is an incredibly interesting as well as dissonant interval. the tritone comes in the form of either an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth. let's take a look at the c major scale above the chromatic scale.

[Music] notice our tritone, c to f sharp, lies between the fourth and fifth of the c major scale. so if we took our perfect fourth, c to f, and augmented it a half step, we would get an augmented fourth. or if we took our perfect fifth, c to g, and spelled that f sharp as a g-flat, we would have a diminished fifth. this is just the same interval, really, just spelled two different ways. another way of looking at the tritone is to take any note and just quite simply go up three whole steps, thus the word tritone, three whole tones. the tritone serves as a function. it's extremely unstable, wants to move, and either note will either move outwards or inwards. let's take a look at the chromatic scale again and examine the two ways that this tritone can resolve.

[Music] in both cases, the interval resolved where each note moved opposite of the other. so if the root note moved down, then the upper note moved up, or if the root note moved up, the upper note moved down.

[Music] another interesting note about the tritone is the fact that it is perfectly symmetrical. first, notice that from the first b to the next is six whole steps or whole tones, and the tritone consists of three of those. b to f. notice that on either side, b to f or f up to b, we have the same amount of distance, whereas all of the other intervals, if i were to go from b to c sharp, for example, there's a different amount of distance on either side of the interval. on the screen, you will see the c major scale. notice our tritone, b to f, is circled in black and belongs to this scale. in fact, all major scales, and actually all scales and modes, contain one tritone. first, we're going to examine the tritone contained in c major, and then we'll point out tritones as we move through the rest of this course. so, knowing that the tritone likes to resolve, we have a clear path to resolution here. there's a half step on either side of this tritone. let's take a listen to the resolution and then experiment with what kind of chords we can build with the scale degrees that the tritone leaves us.

[Music] on the screen, you'll see the c major scale. also, i've circled the c and e after our tritone resolved. it left us with c and e. on the first line, it's easy to complete the one chord by taking c, e, and g. on the second line, we can actually use the a as our root. doing every other note from a gives us a c, and since we've run out of room here, you know, the next note up from c is d, and the note after that is e, so that gives us a c and e for our six chord. in this section, we're going to examine more chords, and now we're going to actually examine their functions. so, the first chord we're going to look at is called a diminished chord. we're going to get there by starting with a b major chord: b, d sharp, and f sharp. if you want to derive this chord on your own, just write out the b major scale and do what we've done before, taking every other note from b. next, as we already know, to make b minor, we're going to lower that d sharp down to d: b, d, f sharp. now, to make diminished, we're just going to take the f sharp, the fifth of that chord, and we're going to lower it to f natural. notice that we have that tritone from the last video here, and we know that tritone resolves to c and e. so let's resolve this b diminished chord to a c major chord.

[Music] sounds great. that is the function of the tritone within that diminished chord, and this tritone is actually found in other chords. let's take a look at dominant chords. on the screen, you'll see the c major scale. please note that i'm actually starting this scale on the fifth scale degree, and you'll see the scale degrees labeled up top there. we are going to build our dominant chord in this key. so, first off, a dominant chord is built off of the fifth scale degree, and we're actually going to take four notes instead of three. so let's do every other note until we have four notes. as you can see, we have the b and f, our tritone again, and a very clear resolution. so the b wants to move a half step to c, and the f wants to move a half step to e. so let's take a listen to this chord. also note the seven over by the roman numeral. quite simply, if you look below the scale, if we pretend g is our quote-unquote new one, just for a moment, we'll notice that we have a seven up top there. any time you see a number in subscript to these roman numerals, that indicates the intervals above the lowest note, or our base note. next, let's examine the major seven chord. notice we are now using the g major scale, and we're actually going to be using the one as our root note here. so, just like the dominant seventh chord that we just built, we're going to every other note from the base, which is our g, until we have four notes. this chord does not have a tritone in it, and it has a much different sound than the dominant seventh chord. you would notate this one: one major seven, because our root is g, the one, the root of the chord. notice that we have a major seventh in this chord, from the g to the f sharp, whereas the other chord, where we had an f natural, we had a minor seventh. knowing that taking a major interval, g to f sharp, and lowering it a half step makes it minor. next, let's examine what is called the sus four chord. the sus four chord is quite simple. it's it's another three-note chord, just like our original triad, except you trade that three for, guess what, the four. thus, sus four. take a listen.

[Music] sus two chords work basically the same way. take that three and switch it out for a two. take a listen.

[Music] next, let's examine augmented chords. augmented chords act kind of like diminished chords, except instead of lowering the third and then the fifth, we're actually just going to raise the fifth. so, using the g major chord, we're going to take that d and raise it up a half step to d sharp, and that gives us an augmented chord.

[Music] next, let's examine chords with notes added on past the octave. so, remember at the beginning of the course, i mentioned that sometimes when you come back up to the one an octave later, you call it an eight, and you actually call it an eight so that the numbers past it can be called numbers greater than eight. so two is now nine, three is now ten, and so forth. let's take a look at a one nine chord in g major. quite simply, we're just going to add an a in, but this a is going to be an octave above that bass note. take a listen.

[Music] now, let's say we call it a flat nine chord. well, that would just mean we take that nine and we flat it. take a listen. this logic can be used to make thirteen chords, flat thirteen chords, and so forth. any number above eight can be added. however, you will not often see a ten chord because ten is the same as three, and three already belongs to the chord. so you won't actually specify an extra note unless it does not belong to the original chord, regardless of its octave. let's examine diminished chords with sevenths added on to them. first, we're going to start off with g minor. you'll see the scale on the screen and also the g minor chord is circled. we're going to add the seventh of this scale onto the chord. so now we have a minor seven chord, simple. next, to make that minor chord diminished, we're going to take the fifth and we're going to lower it a half step, giving us g, b-flat, and d-flat. this is a diminished seventh chord, but it's only half diminished. to make it fully diminished, we're going to have to take that seventh and lower it still to an f-flat. now, you might think that's strange because e and f, there's only a half step, and really, there's no such thing as an f-flat. but in this case, theoretically, we have an f-flat because e would be six over g, and we we could not call it a seven. so what we have is our third, the diminished fifth, as well as the diminished seventh, a diminished seventh being a half a step smaller than the minor seventh. inverting an interval is pretty simple. essentially, you take the lower note of the pair and you make it the higher note. so you move it an octave higher. let's use the c major scale to display this. we have c to e, our major third. let's take that c and move it up an octave. now we have something that sounds different.

[Music] this is actually a minor sixth. if we were to pretend that the e is our new one, you'll see that that c is actually six notes above the e, and i happen to know that in the e minor scale, we have the note c. it follows that all major thirds become minor sixths. in fact, every interval has a kind of partner. all major intervals will become minor, thirds will become sixths, seconds will become sevenths, fourths will become fifths, and vice versa. all right, let's invert some intervals. starting with a major second, we're going to use the c major scale. so c to d is our major second. if we invert that, d to c, well, our major interval should become minor, and our second should become a seventh. so let's check the d minor scale for this minor seventh. since d is now our technically our root, as you can see it, in fact, does belong to the d minor scale. inverting our major second gave us a minor seventh. now let's take the minor third, d to f, and invert it. so our minor should become major, and our third should become a sixth. a minor third to a major sixth. let's check the f major scale, f being our new root for our major sixth, f to d. as you can see, that relationship holds true. now let's invert our fourth. using this f major scale, we get f to b-flat, our fourth. now, perfect intervals, when they are inverted, remain perfect. so we should get a perfect fifth out of this one. let's try it using the b-flat major scale. we see that we have a perfect fifth between b-flat and f, so that inversion works too.

[Music] next, let's invert a major sixth. b-flat to g is our major sixth. so if we take g and now make that our root note, using the g minor scale, you'll see that our major sixth just became a minor third, which holds true to the relationships we have previously examined.

[Music] lastly, we're going to invert our minor seventh here in the g minor scale. so g to f is our minor seventh. remember, minor sevenths belong to the minor scale. if we make f our root note and check the f major scale for a major second, we'll see that our minor seventh, minor, became major, seventh became a second. inverting chords is pretty simple. it works very similar to inverting intervals. you take the lower note, the bass note, and you move it up so that it's no longer the lowest. let's take a look at the c major scale as well as the c major chord, our first triad. this is what's called root position. it's actually not inverted at all. but if we take that c and we move it up an octave higher, the e will now be our base note.

[Music] the numbers on top represent the scale degrees, and the numbers on bottom represent the distance from the base note. so e is now our base note here, and it's still the third scale degree. also notice that the roman numeral one now has a six next to it. this is how you represent first inversion, and the six is actually simple. it's kind of the same concept as a seven chord, but there is an interval of a sixth from the base note e to c, being six. when we do second inversion, we're also going to take the e and move it up an octave. now our one has a four and a six. take a listen.

[Music] next, let's invert a seven chord. let's invert the five seven in this key. notice we're building this chord off of the fifth scale degree. first, let's take the g and move it up an octave.

[Music] notice we have a sixth and a fifth above the base. next, let's take that b and move it an octave up. when you put a seventh chord in second inversion, you're going to label it a four three, of course, because we have four and three over the bass note. now, let's put this in third inversion, where we move the d up an octave, and the seventh of the chord is now the bass note. in this inversion, we have a four and a two, and our f is in the base. the circle of fifths shown on the screen here is actually quite simple. starting on c, we'll take the c major scale. we'll move to g because g is the five of c. then we move to d, being the five of g. a, which is the five of d. then e, which is the five of a. then b, which is the five of e, and so forth, and eventually it'll take us all the way back around to c. i'd like to start by deriving the c major scale, which you'll see here on the screen. now we're going to take a look at what happens when you derive a scale a fifth up from there. so our five became our new one. that's always going to happen, being a scale of fifth above, using that fifth as the root note. but also notice that what was once our four, the f, is now sharp and it became the seven. that's going to happen every time I go to the next scale up in the circle of fifths. the five of g is d. so let's take a look at the d major scale. notice, just like last time, what was once a four, our c, is now sharp and it's the seven, a c sharp. we also kept the f sharp from the last scale. the five of d is a. so let's take a look at the a major scale. notice our four in d, which was g, is now sharp as the seven in a. we also kept our f sharp and c sharp. we're going to keep each sharp as we gather them, and we're going to gather them one at a time. the five of a is e. so let's take a look at the e major scale. you'll notice our four, which was d, is now our seven as d sharp, and we kept the accidentals from before. next, we're going to move to the five of e, which is b. notice our four, which was a and e, is now our a sharp, which is seven in b, and we've kept the accidentals from before. let's move on from b to the five of b, which is f sharp. now our four, which was e and b, is now e sharp. in the key of f sharp. now, i know e sharp is kind of silly because that really is just an f, right? but if we spelled it as an f, we would have two f's and no e. so we're going to spell it as an e sharp, which actually is a half step below f sharp. moving up to c sharp, our old four, which was b, is now sharp b sharp, and it's the same concept. now we have all of our sharps, and if we were to move further, we'd start getting double sharps, and that's just a headache. so let's not do that. we're going to actually rewrite c sharp as d-flat and take the d-flat major scale. now we have a much more manageable scale. so the five of d-flat is a-flat. and if we derive the a-flat major scale, that four is going to be sharped, and it will become the seven. but notice that the flat is just cancelled out. so we don't get a g sharp, we get a g natural. then the five of a-flat is e-flat. and again, the four, which was our d-flat, is now a d, it being sharped. the five of e-flat is b-flat. and again, our four is now our seven, and it's been sharped. so we get from a-flat to a natural. the five of b-flat is f. and of course, the four is now the sharp seven. so our e-flat becomes an e. next, our five is c, and that's right where we started. thus, the circle of fifths. this introduces us to the most important thing: key signatures. key signatures will always tell you what accidentals belong in each scale. so, first, let's start off with the order of sharps: f sharp, c sharp, g sharp, d sharp, a sharp, e sharp, and b sharp. it's helpful, helpful to use an acronym to memorize this. i used fine classical guitarists demand accurate execution because there's a million of them on the internet. use whichever one you like. so, in order to figure out the key signature of any given key, take its root note, so in this case, let's say at the key of d, and go a half step lower. you get a c sharp. that c sharp will be the last sharp that you see in the key signature. so the the key of d has an f sharp and c sharp. if we pick e and go down a half step, we'll get d sharp. f sharp, c sharp, g sharp, d sharp. okay, let's take a look at the order of flats. if i want to find any key signature for a flat scale, so a scale with any sort of flat root note, let's use b-flat for this example. i'll find b-flat on my order of flats, and that will be the second to last flat that i see. so i'll gather b and e-flat. so if i wanted to do this with a-flat, i'd have b-flat, e-flat, a-flat, it being the second to last, then d-flat. the only exception to these two tricks is the f major scale, which contains only a b-flat, and since it's the odd man out, that one's kind of easy to remember. when playing or composing music, you don't always use the same scale the whole time. in fact, it's very common to to borrow from other scales. so let's start by using what's called the secondary dominant. it's pretty simple. um, what happens is if you want to create more pull towards a chord that isn't necessarily your one chord, you're going to borrow a tritone from another scale and use that resolution to pull you to that chord. on the screen, you'll see c major chord progression with all of the right inversions labeled next to the roman numerals.

[Music] we're going to want to create more pull towards our five chord for whatever reason, be it artistic or just as an exercise. in order to do that, we're going to make a tritone resolve to our g chord, and we're going to take that tritone from the g major scale. the tritone in the g major scale is f sharp and c. let's go ahead and put that f sharp and c in the ii chord and see what happens. the f sharp and c circled in black here will resolve to g and b. the f sharp going a half step up, and the c going a half step down. listen to the resolution. now, they wouldn't resolve to other notes because the notes on the other side of these notes are more than a half step. so if we went f sharp down to e, that's a whole step, and c up to d, that's a whole step as well. so these things resolve by a half step. take a listen to the whole chord progression.

[Music] beautiful. also notice that the two's roman numeral has changed to 5/7 of 5. and that works pretty simply. d, being the root note of that two chord, is actually the five of g, which happens to be the five in our key. so if we were to pretend g is our new one, just for a moment, d would be the five. so the five of five creates a pull to the five, and it does so by using the tritone from the five g major scale. now, let's harmonize a melody that borrows from another key, as opposed to creating a tritone for this purposes of resolution. you'll see our melody c, d, e-flat, d borrows e-flat from c minor. so we're in c major, but we're borrowing one note from c minor, the e-flat. let's make that e-flat harmonize with an e-flat major. notice the flat three roman numeral. that roman numeral is capitalized, so we're going to be using e-flat major. the easiest way to derive this chord without thinking about it too much is to say, okay, e-flat major chord, that means i'm going to build it off my e-flat major scale. at that point, all i need to do is think about my e-flat major key signature, which has a b-flat, an e-flat, and an a-flat. so taking every other note from the e-flat, we have e, g, b-flat. i'm going to go ahead and fill in the rest of the notes of this chord progression. take a listen.

[Music] another way to modulate or borrow is to use a common chord between two keys and use it as a pivoting chord. so if you look at the diagram on the screen, you'll notice that the first two rows are c major, and the second two rows are g major. so we're actually trying to switch keys altogether. this is referred to as modulation. so in order to do that, we're going to use a chord that is common between both keys, and in this case, that would be e minor. there's a couple of other common chords, but e minor is the one i'm picking. so by using e minor as our three chord in c, but our six chord in g, we're going to pivot to the key of g major, and then do the b minor chord, which does not belong in the original key of c major. take a listen. modes are pretty much just as simple as everything else. they're different kinds of scales, but they're very easy to derive. so the easiest way to derive modes is based off of key signatures. so if i think about my g major key signature, it tells me all of the notes in g major, and we have one f sharp in that key signature. so if i start and end on a different note other than g, i'll be playing modes. on the screen, you'll see all of the modes names listed next to the scale degrees that they start on. the first one, g ionian, is another example of how we have multiple names for things in music. this is really just the g major scale, just a much older name for that scale. take a listen.

[Music] the next mode, the dorian mode, is called a dorian because it's the dorian pattern starting on a. take a listen.

[Music] next, the phrygian pattern. this one is b phrygian. b is the third scale degree. in phrygian is the mode you get when you start on the third scale degree of a major scale. take a listen.

[Music] next, my personal favorite, which is lydian, starting on the fourth scale degree, in this case c. so we get c lydian. take a listen.

[Music] next is mixolydian, starting on the fifth scale degree. this would be d mixolydian, and actually, mixolydian is very popular in the blues style.

[Music] on to aeolian, which actually is the same as natural minor. so this is e aeolian, but you'll find that is exactly, this is exactly the same as e minor. take a listen.

[Music] next, a very dark mode, locrian. this is f sharp locrian. locrian will always start on the seventh scale degree of any major pattern. take a listen.

[Music] as you can see, it's pretty easy to figure out any mode based off of key signatures, but it's also very, very, very helpful to understand how to alter a major scale to become a mode. so if i'm playing in c major and i want to switch to c dorian, for example, there is something i will need to do to that scale to make it dorian, and i can't necessarily go find the right key signature if i have to think quickly. so let's take all of the modes that we just observed and then compare them to the major scale starting on the same root note. we're going to leave ionian and aeolian out because these are just major and minor, and we already know how to derive major and minor scales. but for the other modes, let's take a look at what we alter in order to get a mode from its major scale. so first, let's to take a look at a dorian. first, notice a dorian is on top, second, a major is below. in order to make a major a dorian, we will have to flat the three, the c sharp to c natural, as well as the seven, the g sharp to g natural. so to take any major, any major scale and make it dorian, seven. when you compare b phrygian to b major, you'll notice that you have a flat two, c sharp to c natural, flat three, that d sharp down to d natural, as well as a flat six and a flat seven, the g sharp and the a sharp being flatted down to natural each as well. so if you flat the two, three, six, and seven, you will get the phrygian mode. in lydian, you'll see that you have a sharp four, that f being raised up to f sharp. for our mode, mixolydian, starting on the fifth scale degree, we have a flat seven. in this case, that's c sharp coming down to a c natural. and finally, with locrian, we see that we have to flat the two, the three, the five, the six, and the seven. this is by far our most heavily changed mode, which is why it has such a dissonant sound. don't forget to text i love ilovemusic24222 to receive your free music and guitar ebook or visit musicandguitarlessons.com for more awesome lessons.