Music theory practice, chord progressions, keys and scales:

A music production college I worked at in London a while back asked me to teach a Music Theory and Music Composition course with chord progressions, keys & scales. I know my way around a fretboard of a guitar and used to play in jazz bands before I discovered turntables, so I thought I give it a whirl!

I looked on the internet for ages for good simple rules for chords, scales and extended chords but couldn’t find anything that I thought would be easy for the students to understand, so I wrote my own. These are recap notes written so students can refer to them after my lecture so you probably need to have some knowledge to begin with or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course.

Working out basic chords quickly using semitones:

Major:             Root + 4 (3^rd) + 3 ( 5^th)

Minor:             Root + 3 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

Dim:                Root + 3 (3^rd) + 3 (5^th)

Augmented            Root + 4 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

To flatten a note you go down one semitone and to sharpen you go up a semitone.

Important:-

-                  Semitones are always the next key up or down on the keyboard; black notes AND white notes included. COUNT THEM ALL! We use semitones in the example above.

-                  Tones are two semitones (really?!) or two steps on the keys so a tone up from the note of C is D. A tone up from an E is an F sharp.

-                  When I say notes, I am referring to notes in a scale so you only count those. You will need to skip notes that are not in the scale. You will probably need to refer to a major scale chart or the first url in this work sheet to figure out which notes to count while working out more complex (extended) chords explained in the example below.

-                  Start off working out extended chords which are C. ie C11 or Cmaj7 etc.

A brief rule which you can use without the need for a chart is:

Root, +tone, +tone, +semitone, +tone, +tone, +tone (and +semitone to resolve back to the root up one octave)

For ‘Sound of Music’ fans, the notes should sound like:

Doh, ray, me, far, so, la, ti, doh!

Note that the “Doh” and the “doh” are the same note but one octave apart.

Okay, that’s enough of Music Theory for now. I will do extended chords next time…

Songwriting, Music Composition writing chords and bass lines:

Yesterday was my last day with my Song Writing and Music Composition students before leaving to set up my own music production school. In the course we covered chord sequences, melody, structure and rhythm, lyrics, arrangement, extended chords, bass lines, rhythmic parts, vocals and harmony.

It was a great course to teach but tricky in that they all didn’t want to learn all of the course. For example, most DJs wanted to learn about chord progressions and basic music theory for their productions, but were not interested in lyrics or any of the basic song writing production tips. Some of the out and out songwriters would’ve been happy to talk about lyrics for 12 weeks! I balanced it by splitting the group up and did as much one to one tuition as I could. I have broken up my own Song Writing and Music Composition Music Production Course into two shorter courses so no-one will feel like they are wasting time and money learning things which they feel is irrelevant to them.

Being a guitarist and not a keyboard player works out rather well, I am able to demonstrate the pros and cons playing in different keys with both instruments. With a guitar, it’s all about the shapes, and the same shapes up and down the fret board is the same song in a different key. With a keyboard, it’s all laid out in front of you from the left to the right. When I first took on a Songwriting and Music Composition course I was mildly concerned that piano not being my first instrument may be a hinderance, but in fact, it’s benefit!