Overview
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Professional musician Julian Velard covers the basics of music theory through the lens of songwriting. Explore intervals, chord progressions, voice leading, song forms, and more.
Syllabus
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Introduction
- Music theory fundamentals can help your songwriting
- What you should know before watching this course
- Why is music theory important and useful?
- The octave
- Seven white notes and five black notes
- The diatonic scale and the major scale
- Intervals: Perfect and major
- Intervals: Minor, augmented, and diminished
- The concept of key
- The circle of fourths and fifths
- Figuring out intervals
- Triads: The basics of chords
- Triad inversions
- Chord voicing
- Common major scale chord progressions
- Authentic cadences
- Plagal, half, and deceptive cadences
- Triads, chord progressions, and cadences in a song
- What is voice leading?
- Voice leading one note between triads
- The suspended chord
- Voice leading two notes and three notes with major triads
- Voice leading two notes and three notes with minor triads
- Changing the bass note of a chord
- Voice leading chord progressions in a song
- The importance of song form
- Beats, bars, and phrases
- The elements of song form
- The intro
- The verse
- The chorus
- The hook
- The refrain
- The bridge or middle 8
- The pre-chorus
- Familiar pop song forms
- Verse, chorus, and bridge forms
- Simple verse form
- Verse without chorus form
- AABA 32-bar form
- Through-composed song forms
- Looking at a song's form
- What comes next?
