Music Theory Questions- Ask Away

Thanks for all the info. This. Is great stuff, and the way you explain it makes sense.

This thread should be made a sticky,

Any chance you have an book or ebook of theory available?

Ivan
 
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Ivan- Thanks, glad it's helping. I should put it all in a book, it would compliment the others nicely.
 
I got one more. How do you go about finding the key of a song, or better yet, of a classical or instrumental piece? It's not always apparent, especially if it's in a minor key.

And why is some music written in a flat key vs. their corresponding sharp key? Ie, B flat instead of A sharp?
 
I second the proposal for a book Aaron, I like your style! This is as good or better than any other how to book that I've bought...
 
Thanks a ton Aaron.

This should be "sticky'd"
 
OK, two good questions.

Most songs (but not all) begin and end on the same chord, which is the key of the song. So, if the song begins and ends on a D chord, the key is likely D. Also, melodies usually begin and end on notes that are in the I chord of the key. So if the song begins and ends on a D F# or A, it is likely in the key of D.

Or, if the chords seem to be different, but all the melody notes are in a certain key, it is likely in the key that all those melody notes belong to.

It is more common for a song to begin on another chord but end on a I chord. Such as midnight special, which is IV I V I or rag mama rag, which is VI II V I.


BUT!!!!

There are many exceptions!

The only good answer is, the more "puzzles" of this sort you solve, the more likely you can solve more. Is there a specific song/piece/tune/etude that you are trying to figure out?

Also, if it is written music, don't forget that the key signature is usually a dead giveaway.

Now, for your question of flats vs sharps.

Many pitches can be represented by either flats or sharps. For instance F# is also Gb. D# is also Eb. In a way, these issues are arbitrary. The note sounds the same, but we put a different label on it according to the context in which it is presented.

Because the classical guitar (which I notice you are studying) has open E A D G B E strings. (all of those keys have sharps in it) Guitarists are likely to play in keys that have sharps in it. Like G, D, E, A. That way, we get to use our open strings and play idiomatic things that fit well on our instruments.

Horn players like clarinet, trumpet, sax, french horn, trombone, etc...more naturally blow in flat keys like F, Bb, Eb, Ab or C (which has no sharps or flats)

That means, when people in each of these cultures extend themselves into foreign keys (like B, F#/Gb, C#/Db, G#/Ab, they are likely to use either sharps or flats to label it according to what is comfortable to them.
 
hi Aaron,
i run a ukulele club and we are having trouble with intro's and outro's, is there a simple way or rule of thumb way we can add a simple intro and outro to our songs because we get about 20+ players and even though i count them in on a song some tend to lose the beginning and then are behind losing the timing, hope you can help or point me in a direction where i can find help thanx in advance kaizersoza
 
hey folks

A good job Aaron.. real interesting. They should call you "the well spoken american".

Ladies and gents the man not only builds a world class uke... now he is posting the instruction manual..............


thx eor
 
Kaiser- The hard answer that you probably don't want to hear is: "They will get better as time goes by." Without hearing your group, it's hard for me to say what is going on. Sometimes without any singing happening (like in the intro) it is easy for people to get lost. Maybe you can try setting the intro as the same every time for a song. Such as "For Jambalaya, we will play four strums of C, four strums of G and four strums of F. Then we sing."
 
JimmyRoberts: Intervals have to be named something in order for them to be organized and understood. Here is a list of commonly used intervals in order from small to large

unison f-f
minor 2nd f-gb
major 2nd f-g
minor 3rd f-ab
major 3rd f-a
perfect 4th f-Bb
augmented 4th f-B
perfect 5th f-c
augmented 5th f-c#or minor 6th f-db
major 6th f-d
minor 7th f-Eb
major 7th f-e
octave f-f

the 4th and 5th might be called perfect because along with unison and octave, they are the purest intervals in western music.
 
There are a few reasons ... The main one in my understanding is that when you invert a perfect interval you still have a perfect interval.

i.e a perfect 5th upside down is a perfect 4th. When a Major interval is inverted it becomes a minor and viceversa

e.g C-G = Perfect 5... G-C = perfect 4. C-E = Major 3rd . E-C = Minor 6...

This is what gives it it's 'pure' sound.
(Also they have no real tonality they are open intervals ... )

Anyway my question!!

I don't know if you know but its been bugging me for ages!

Why do instruments transpose?? I understand harmonic series etc but why when they invented valves for the trumpet didn't they just rename the fingerings??

I'm not taking about making a smaller C clarinet, I'm saying why don't they just call their D fingering a C and then everyone is reading off the same page... literally!!

Hurts my poor little brain!!
 
thanx Aaron i will try it, great thread by the way very informative and explained in plain english, i have already learned a hell of a lot on this excellent thread
 
Stratman- The history of transposing instruments and why/how they transpose is a long and confusing one, with each family of instruments having its own reasons behind it. But, I will try to give the short and sweet version.

One of the main reasons to have an instrument transpose is too avoid the use of ledger lines. The piccolo is an octave higher than written and the double bass and contra bassoon are an octave lower than written. That also goes for alto sax and french horn. their natural range is right between treble and bass clef and would live in the ledger line land if read in concert pitch on either of those clefs. so, the horn is a 5th off from written and the alto a 6th. (By the way, this is the reason that the viola reads a c clef, it would ledger line too much in treble)

Another reason has to do with the historical nature of brass instrument construction. When brass was first used in orchestras, they had no valves. horns and trumpets only played the notes that were natural to the harmonic series or "false" notes made by plugging the end of the horn. Trumpets naturally blew in the Bb harmonic series and horns in F. If a composer required you to play in a different key, you would change a curl of tubing on your instrument in order to make the instrument a different length. Composers just notated everything so it looked like the key of C and then wrote in the upper corner of the page "horn in d" or "trumpet in A" or whatever. They did this at first because they brass always played the cadences with the timpani, which was just noted as tonic, dominant, sub dominant and then there was a note at the top of the page about what key to tune the timpani too. As valves developed and instruments were standardized, they kept the tradition of notating what looked like C major with the trumpets blowing in Bb and horns in F.

On a tangent, when I was in college I was a french horn major. Even though people could re-write the parts to be easier to read, it is still standard procedure to read the brass parts exactly how the composer wrote them. That meant that every orchestra piece still has a notation in the upper corner of "horn in d" or whatever. We no longer change our tubing, we just use valves, but that means when you read an Eb horn part, you transpose a whole step down from what is written. D horn was a minor 3rd down. G horn was a step up. C horn was off by a fifth. etc....It was good brain exercise!

Also, C pitched saxes, clarinets and trumpets used to be as common as the Bb pitched ones, but people just decided over time that Bb versions sounded nicer. So, instead of making them learn new fingerings for the notes, they just transposed the music.

When it comes to the sax and clarinet family, they wanted musicians to be able to play all the different instruments in the family (alto, soprano, tenor, bass, baritone etc...) without learning new fingerings. That means that they transposed their parts so that they could keep the same fingering system.

other reasons are just mechanical. Most instruments are written in the key of their easiest home scale, which is dictated by their finger systems and by the size of the main "tube."

Trombones and strings are different, they make use of multiple clefs instead. It is up to you what is easier, transposing the instruments and all reading treble clef or learning to read all the different clefs!!!

When I was conducting a lot, I got pretty good at looking down an orchestral score and being able to quickly see what was going on and who had the same parts. I also was pretty quick at analyzing the chord structure despite all the transpositions and clefs. When I was playing french horn in the big band, I could read trombone music, sax music or trumpet music and transpose in my head.
 
One more historical tidbit- Trombones were traditionally an important part of church music and only made it into the symphony around 1810! Before then, they were only used in sacred works. Their main job was to double the voice parts, so trombones had different sizes soprano, alto, tenor bass. each size just read along with the singers. over time, the tenor and bass sizes became the most common, but players are still expected to be able to read the other clefs of the obsolete sizes.
 
Thanks for the clarification on modes...
Like much stuff coming out here it will take some thrashing out and application to sink in...

Great stuff will look at this thread often :)

Chris
 
Awesome thread, and I have a question.

I know how to figure out 7th chords, minors, diminished, maj7th etc.
But if i know this, will I be able to find out b7th chords,bdiminished etc. Is it the same formula for flat chords that it is for regular chords? Im not really good at flats, you know. Haha :p

Thanks!
 
Vindario- I am not totally sure I understand your question? Are you saying that some chords are easy for you to figure out the extensions and alterations but chords based on flats are harder for you? I also am not sure what you mean by "flat chords vs regular chords" to me, chords like Bb Ebminor or Ab7 are regular chords. Maybe you just mean they are less familiar to you so they are harder.

Well, the process for figuring out which notes are in chords is based on knowing what intervals you need to make a chord. For instance, a major chord has a perfect 5th and a major third. So, if you are trying to build a Bb major chord, then you need to know what notes are a perfect fifth and a major third above Bb. When you get really into this, you begin to memorize these things, so it isn't so time consuming. but until then, here is the deal:

These are the basic intervals:

unison
minor 2nd
major 2nd
minor 3rd
major 3rd
perfect 4th
augmented 4th
perfect 5th
augmented 5th
major 6th
minor 7th
major 7th
octave

And here is the chromatic scale:
C
C#/Db
D
D#/Eb
E
F
F#/Gb
G
G#/Ab
A
A#/Bb
B
C

Remember the chromatic scale has each note separated by a half step. Here is a list of our intervals again but with the number of half steps that make it up next to it:

unison - 0
minor 2nd - 1
major 2nd - 2
minor 3rd - 3
major 3rd - 4
perfect 4th - 5
augmented 4th - 6
perfect 5th - 7
augmented 5th - 8
major 6th - 9
minor 7th - 10
major 7th - 11
octave - 12

So, if you want to know what a perfect 5th above Bb is, you count up 7 half steps up the chromatic scale and you get F. If you need a major third above Bb, then you count up 4 half steps and find D. Therefore, a Bb major chord is made up of Bb D F. This sounds long and time consuming, but after you learn a chord, then all of its permutations can be figured out quickly without having to go through the whole process. For instance, If you want to find Bbminor, you remember that you need a perfect 5th and minor third above Bb. You already remember that F is the perfect 5th and the 3rd just has to be lowered by half step to make it minor. That gives you Bb Db F.

Also, as you learn your major and minor scales, you remember the notes that are "regular" in each key. Then you can just take the 1st 3rd and 5th notes of that scale and you have a Bb chord Bb C D Eb F G A Bb. Bb D F= Bb major chord. etc...

I know this all sounds like a lot of work, but music notation and theory is a language just like any other. I spent years in college learning all the scales, modes, chords, intervals, forms, chord progressions etc...which are like the letters, words, phrases, sentences, grammar, syntax, cultural meaning, slang, etc...of music.

Also, keep in mind that many great musicians are ignorant of all of this stuff and it doesn't hurt them at all. But, lots of great musicians are greater because of the use of some of this knowledge.
 
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