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This is very cool! I have synesthesia and ‘see’ the textures and patterns of music the strongest. I also ‘see’ music in colour, but I usually describe the colours as appearing further back in my brain, sort of like how you’d recall a memory. I discovered a few years ago that I can figure out the key of a song based on the main colour of it (not always 100% accurate because keys can get quite complicated). It’s a fun skill but I doubt it’ll last. My synesthesia changes and evolves over time as I expand my knowledge of music. I can revisit a song many years later and see it completely differently than I did at first because people’s perspectives and understanding is always changing!
Possible analogy… Is it melted ice or condensation? Who cares. It’s still water… but maybe the story of how we got the water, or what’s likely to happen next is interesting. Or moot if you’re just thirsty… or just want to know where to put your fingers.
5:21 “Cb if you want enharmonic…” If you WANT?! But what if I WANT to call the whole chord… I’m sorry… I really do get the point of this video. I just found this little detail amusing.
For all questions, write me at tommaso@musictheoryforguitar.com (I can't monitor all YT comments!) You find Modulation Mastery here: www.musictheoryforguitar.com/modulation-mastery
I love this video so much and have to tell people the same thing all the time. The only bone I have to pick is that piano in particular has a specific path. The fact thst so many proplenapproch it this way ends up harming them, especially if they are looking toward a career as apianist where nearly the same breadth of skills are out there as guitar and basically most of them are increasingly expected. I will grant that the physical approach is slightly more varied for guitar. But so many pianist learn in the tradition way only to find out that memorized classical repertoire is not at all useful. Yheybhavr neglected not only sightreading, but playing by ear, being able to comp from charts, having functional theory knowledge, etc. And then there are the physical and technology aspects thst come with needing to play synths, and other key word instruments like those with unweighted keys which have a shockingly different technical approach comparable ro the difference between playing fingerstyle versus with a pick. The deficit also greatly affects many other instrumentalists (like trumpet players) and as the bar rises constantly in the working musician world this lack of rounded news is affecting even instruments you'd think only need to play in traditional styles...something I run into frequently when working with string playersbin a musical theatre pit which expects them yonhavr stylistic abilities they were never exposed to as well as extended technique relevant to those styles. That little bit aside, I absolutely love your videos and your extremely solid pedagogy.
Hello. I'm currently doing this exercise set. Currently finishing the 2nd one and for now I feel it has a positive impact on my skills. However, a question related to Ex. 5 and 6 came to my mind - should I prepare a new set of randomly selected notes each time i finish the sequence (going up and down). Greetings :)
There is a big difference between 7/8 and... 7/8. Is the eighth note the smallest value ? If it's not, you have 14 sixteenth notes in the bar. No fingering problem (sticking) for the drummer, piece of cake. If the eighth note is the smallest value, this will be way harder to play because we have to find a new rhythmic vocabulary, as we can't adapt our 4/4 idiosyncrasies.
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RhL_UJbvPi8.htmlfeature=shared oh man this is one of my favorite songs. i didn't realize i was playing it the first few minutes of leaning this sequence
Wow..get attacked by some You Tube PHD..toten Suna gun..lol..there is no other way to build a chord..Scale/Arpeggio/chord..I think ya'll have confused Arpeggiation /arpeggiator..with arpeggio...somethin like the Tremolo bar..lol its a whammy bar I have tremolo on my amp it doesn't sound anything like my whammy...My whammy pedal sounds like my whammy bar..Arpeggio i think sometimes called triads which doesn't tell the whole story..if it were only stack'n thirds how do we get sus 2 ..dim..aug..7ths tc..one builds them from the SCALE..Duh how come my 7th arpeggios have 4 notes..lol.. I can also play an arpeggio all at once..add/or not more of the same and then we call it a chord..shouldn't have earned a remark from the Internet intelectual society..remember when there wasn't so many musical geniuses..lol..Shut up and play yer guitar..
Really interesting! With a really well-done explanation. Liked. Bookmarked. Saved to my Songwriting folder. 👍 BTW, I'm a bassist first and pianist second.
I can understand the concept of chord invertions and it makes sense to me. But, just like a magic trick it's easy when someone reveals the trick. It's almost impossible to me to identify an inverted chord by myself.
I think we all learn in different ways. But internalizing is the right word, and it also takes time. I've learned over the years even if you are the hungriest guitar learner you have to pace yourself, and bit off the right sized bites to absorb and make them permanent. I never liked learning 10-- scales or appeggios all at once. Find one that you especially like the sound of and then play it into the ground for half a week, until you not only know it, you have a feel for how it sounds and just naturally reach for that stuff that made it a appeal to you. So its not a lick, its a mini-vocabulary. Learning is so fun, but if you don't internalize you forget it. When you start building what's internalized you will feel amazing. Takes patience. Its worth the time.
Great lesson. I've been looking into figured bass recently because I've realized that, being almost entirely self-taught in theory, it was always much easier for me to just think about the bass than think about all different kinds of inversions and extensions.
Figured bass is super underrated and so often viewed as an archaic tool for baroque composers... but I actually use it in my modern writing and lead sheets - it's an even faster way to quickly sketch out a rough bass line and I can write the intervals I want above it or to remind myself to invert it. Just a really nice shorthand. I also like that it forces you to think more about intervallic relationships than blocks of complete chords, just as many composers used to, which also gets you out of the mindset of viewing chords in an exact voicing formula (since figured bass intervals don't tell you how to voice the intervals in an exact order, just as long as those intervals appear somewhere in your voicing). It can also be an easier and less convoluted way of showing complex alterations and resolutions simply by just showing what intervals you want to alter above the bass rather than wacky parenthetical slash chord alterations haha. There's of course a time and place for writing out chords in the modern way, and I still do. I just love F.B. and think it's a rather useful shorthand that people are sleeping on! ;)
YES! I agree with every single word. In addition, I found it's an interesting tool for harmonic improvisation (write a bass line, add figures, improvise the exact voice of the harmony). For some reason (to me) it seems more "natural" than chord notation.
@@MusicTheoryForGuitar "it's an interesting tool for harmonic improvisation (write a bass line, add figures, improvise the exact voice of the harmony)" yes, I have recently started a book called Art of Partimento, have you heard of it? I'm only on the first chapter so I don't know much about it yet, but in summary it seems Partimento was the baroque and Italian tradition of improvising over figured bass. It's very interesting to realize that there was a pre-classical era when musicians actually improvised and reharmonized based on "standards" in the repertoire, not unlike jazz artists today with their Fake Book lead sheets etc. ;) Anyway I am looking forward to putting figured bass into my imrovisational practice too!
Hi Tommaso, I have a question : I’m into 2 part counterpoint in 1st species (so two notes played at the same time) and i struggle to make it sound a bit like harmony. It just sound like a random third and sixth intervals progression. How can I make this type of counterpoint more like an harmonic idea where we can hear chord progression implied ? Thank you 🙏
2-note chords have ambiguous harmony. When you have a 4th or a 5th, then there's only one choice for the third note if you want to stay in key. If you have a 3rd or a 6th, you have two. So one rule of thumb would be to not have too many 3rds and 6ths. If you want a harmonic progression, you really need to plan for a third note, even though it won't show up in the final piece. Another strategy might be to harmonize the original line with triads and then pick one note from each chord, so that the Counterpoint rules are obeyed. The harmonization would be based on a table that tells you "if you play this chord, then the next chord should be one of these," and then end on V7-I for the last two notes. (These tables can be found in many places; one commonly-used table appears in Walter Piston's _Harmony_.) The second strategy seems to have similarities with doing/creating crossword puzzles.
Hi Lenny. There is more than one strategy, but none that is easy to explain in a few lines. With a lot of handwaving: in "traditional" counterpoint, it all starts by writing a cantus firmus that actually can support a good "chord progression" (of course, in traditional counterpoint you are NOT thinking of chords per se...). For a more modern approach, it would start by thinking of a chord progression FIRST, and THEN writing the melody and the counterpoint.
I would add that it's ok to completely accept that what you describe is exactly what 2-part 1st species counterpoint will sound like- so you're doing it right. It's important to remember species counterpoint was primarily a pedagogical tool, so when you're getting started, especially with limited voices and movement, I wouldn't worry about it sounding like complete harmony, since that is besides the point. With 2-part 1st species, the primary point is understand how to work with intervals and at this stage you basically avoid dissonance. As a result, a vast majority of the more satisfying intervals will be imperfect consonance which are basically diatonic 3rds and 6ths. When you get comfortable with it, and perhaps you already are, you can then move through the different species which will introduce additional rhythms, and by the time you get to 4th species you can introduce dissonance, 5th species opens you up to a mixture of all including florid ornamentation. Once you feel comfortable with all that, you can then begin to apply all of that using 3 and then 4-part harmony. That is where the real fun begins, because you are able to start using complete triads and seventh chords, as well as suspensions and inversions. TLDR; - Don't sweat trying to make 2-part 1st species musical because it's really just a learning tool to build up your foundation of harmony. Once you get to 3 & 4 part your questions will be answered. Hope that helps! :)
2 Voice counterpoint IS a teaching tool... AND is also a compositional tool (of course one has to go beyond the first species...). It IS possible to make it sound good and like a "complete" piece. Jonathan makes good points (that I do not disagree with) I just want to make sure that we don't discount 2 voice counterpoints as a "serious" tool for composition.
The cool riff in Over The Mountain is Mixolydian. It was the first fast riff I ever learned, and still use it when I want that snappy fleeting feel mixo gets. It's pretty much the opposite of Phrygian in terms of darkness.
