The Problem With Minor Scales
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- Опубліковано 16 лют 2017
- Minor's great when you want to write something dark and sad, but for such a common sound it really seems to clash with our understanding of how music is supposed to work. It just doesn't want to line up with standard functional harmony, and over the years we've had to come up with quite a few ways to reconcile the two. The Neapolitan Scale is a particularly interesting (albeit confusingly named) example, blending things like dominant function, tritone substitutions, and the phrygian mode into one great ball of notes that manages to carry both minor's characteristic darkness and major's famous functionality, with some cool new chords thrown in for good measure. Check it out!
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-"Leonardo Vinci"
-"Da Vinci!"
-"No, not the same one"
-"Oh"
0:58 "comes with some nasty chords"
You pronounced "tasty" wrong. :-)
I mean, little of column A, little of column B...
Somebody that gets me.
was scrolling down to comment this XD
i love minor major seventh chords, they are very powerful when used in the right time, not only the with the tonic also with the flat sixth
Stick with basic scales and chords.
How many songs have you written in the Napoletano Scale?
There's been thousands and thousands songs that's been written in Sicily and Southern Italy.
Maybe you need to learn West African music playing Congos and Bongos.
Neapolitan minor scale is called kurdilihicazkar in eastern music and has been extensively used. Phyrigian mode called kurdi also is very common.
I wish i had the ears to get western modes , i'm Turkish so whenever i play something like harmonic minor i want to , nay i must resolve on the 5.
Phrygian dominant ftw!
That's awesome, I love Phrygian dominant!
Not really awesome because i want to explore the dreamy world of Lydian. And when i play F lydian , and try to resolve on the F , the tension between that and E note takes me to my ancestral roots of Phrygian Dominant. Also known as the Nihavend maqam in Turkish music.
Do you have any suggestions for me to try and somehow get used to being able to play Lydian?
Hmm... Probably the best thing I can think of is to look up jam tracks on youtube that are set in lydian and try to improvise over that. A quick search turned up this (ua-cam.com/video/i7wEBszqqHo/v-deo.html ) which seems pretty good, maybe try just jamming in E lydian over that and see what happens?
Olcay Alp Bayram you should actually avoid the F if you are playing in F lydian. Just play all the other beautiful floaty lydian notes. Let the drone handle the tonic.
I had the same problem as you years back when I was first getting into theory, when I learned harmonic minor I wanted so badly to resolve as if I was in phrygian dominant and anything else felt open ended and unresolved regardless of harmony. Funnily enough I’m American, but my dad was a huge fan of gypsy jazz/flamenco so this probably created the habit of resolution. Regardless, if I could break it, I’m sure you can too.
Nice video :) I think there was a point where the entire page was elephants and other doodles and there were maybe 6 notes on the page lol
If I'm counting right, the first page has 13 elephants on it which... sounds like a lot, but given that a real elephant herd can have up a hundred I think I'm in the clear.
lol nicely justified. Just admit it this music channel is really just an excuse to draw tiny elephants without anyone questioning it
It's true, I don't actually know anything about music. I've just been hoping that people get so distracted by the elephants that they don't realize that everything I say is meaningless gibberish.
well it works a charm
Oh, so that weird creature is an elephant. Didn't know that.
You have such a friendly, calming voice. It's hard to imagine you as a metal singer lol.
Hes in a metal band!?
You know you're starting to understand music theory when you watch a video on something you haven't head of and it makes perfect sense.
Great video, btw
Learn more about theory from this than my theory class at school 🙃
^_^
This video was amazing for reminding me about the differences between the basic minor scales; I could recall each, but the context drove it home again.
Love Phryggian.
Fantastic discussion, thank you! Neapolitan Major isn't talked about much, but it makes for an interesting sound.
Another great scale to use is the so-called "Dorian b2" scale, which has a phrygian pentachord on the bottom and Dorian on the top: C Db Eb F G A Bb C. In other words, the second mode of melodic minor.
Yeah, that one's a lot of fun too! We actually did a video a while back about the various modes of melodic and harmonic minor, (ua-cam.com/video/QhwIdBNFCQM/v-deo.html ) there's a whole lot of awesome scales to be found in there.
Your videos are just mesmerizing.
Thanks!
You are probably the easiest to understand theory teacher going - thanks for not over complicating :)
Aw, thanks!
LOVE THIS CHANNEL!!
Thanks!
This is your best video yet!
Aw, thanks!
My man THANK YOU! Best EDU channel on the youtube
Subscribed as your content is always educational and fascinating. I found your Black hole sun video inspirational.
Thanks!
Interesting and learned stuff, most of it way over my head unless I slow it down. Man, you really draw fast. Kidding. But seriously, using the pause button often, you offer some fun practicing and learning. Good job, and thanks. Truly, one could spend a lifetime on your Coltrane chords alone.
Thanks! If it helps, youtube actually lets you slow videos down too. In the video settings pop-up (The gear icon, where you set image quality) there's also a "speed" menu that lets you drop it down.
3:34
first 3 chords of Nardis
Tonhüb what's Nardis ?
True, it's even in the same key as the Miles recording. The only difference is that the neapolitan chord in Nardis is a Maj 7th instead of a triad
Nice video! I often find myself using an N6 as a nice little pivot chord also. Works out great and there are soo many applications. You should look into making a video about the German, Italian, and French sixth chords if you haven't already. I ad them in and use them similar to the way I use the neapolitan. It ads some nice color!
Thanks! Yeah, it's a great pivot chord, opens up a lot of new options if you do it right. As for the Augmented 6ths, we did actually talk about them at the end of our Tritone Substitutions video: ua-cam.com/video/4FKWb2YCNLE/v-deo.html They're a really interesting application, though, and we might have to talk about them again at some point!
Interesting video 👍
Do you have any tips for writing jazz melodies? If so can you make a video on it? Great content by the way
wow this channel .. amazing
Excellent video :)
Thanks!
2:56 My understanding was that the name comes out of the tetrachord system and major or minor refers to the second tetrachord rather than the major or minor scale as such.
Your music reviews & analysis in these videos are so impressive.
I would absolutely LOVE it if you could make a video about Meshuggah's music/approach/ how it works/your thoughts on their meticulously made heavy metal music. My personal favorites, Obzen, Future Breed Machine, Dancers to a Discordant System.
I know their vocals are a niche acquired taste but if you give them a chance you'll quickly realize their music is very well written.
Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion! At this point, though, we receive so many song requests that we can really only focus on the ones from our Patreon patrons. We just don't have the time to look at every song that comes in, unfortunately. There's a link to our Patreon in the description if you're interested in checking it out, though!
When I was an older toddler, the only way to get me to relax and go to sleep was to play something in a minor scale. It still works, but to soothe the savage beast.
The 6th that's not a 6th but is in another sense(milia)? Your videos have helped my theory a lot, and one of these days that mess of notes I play will form jazz the way jazz wants to come out of my instrument.
Awesome!
Hey man, I really dig your channel. Such well done video's... I'd like to link to your's
Thanks, feel free!
I like harmonic minor most. It has a diminished 7th chord, an augmented triad, a hidden bVIm and a tritone substitution via IVm7b5. And the augmented 2nd need definitely not be a weakness; the more varied the scale steps are, the more interesting the scale will be, which is why the chromatic and whole-tone scales tend to signify tonal ambiguity.
This got recommended to me recently, and I'm curious if you had any plans to ever explore the minor triad/major 7 mentioned around 1:00? Because I'm fascinated by that chord, want to work it into my own music, and would love to hear you talk more about it.
I saw Carlos Santana live, he played in lydian for about 20 seconds max. the rest of the show was natural minor only. no, it wasn't boring, not ever.
It was probably 20 seconds of Lydian, a minute of Aeolian, and an hour and a half of Dorian. Santana loves those major 6 bends over minor chords B)
Thanks for pointing out the figured bass origin of the name Neapolitan Sixth. Its name had long puzzled me.
Yeah, it confused me back in school too until my teacher explained that!
(Question will follow) I can't say how much I like your videos. I like the fact that they dense with info, packed, concise, and that you came up with your distinguished style. I doubt you can answer all the questions here, but I try anyway: one of the features explained about the Neapolitan major is this major triad on the second. In the example of Em, it would be F. It is shown to have a subdominant property, and then it is shown a sequence to B7. But, I wonder, B includes the F# as its fifth, which is not in that scale. So my question how to interpret this? I mean, if we are at liberty to do so for scale interpretation, then why don't with the problem of the 3rd chord of the harmonic minor in the first place? Not intended as a resistance to the explanation. I am just exploring what I am missing. And once again, congrats for your amazing channel. I shared some of your work on my socials. Cheers!
Good question! Honestly, a lot of these minor-type scales are used fairly interchangeably, so being in Neapolitan Minor one second and then Harmonic Minor the next isn't uncommon, but yeah I probably should've used B7(b5) to better illustrate the sound of the scale.
Very cool scale and description. However, I believe you are incorrect about the naming of the Neapolitan chord. It is called an Augmented 6 chord because in classical theory, the interval from the root to the top note is considered an augmented 6th as opposed to a dom7 . So, in C major, the chord is spelled Db F B, not Cb on top. This would technically be an Italian augmented 6 (It+6)chord. If you add G to the chord, it is now a French +6, and adding the 5th, Ab, makes it a German +6. These function like SubV7/V, resolving to the V7, but are typically in first inversion. All that aside, messing around with the 7th chords from Neapolitan minor is now going to be my new winter project-thanks!
My favourite thing about the neaopolitan chord is how easy it is to modulate with it. Any key has a neaopolitan chord that is the same as a chord from another scale. For example The neapolitan of D minor is the V of Ab major/minor.
Tbh, bIII+ and iMaj7 always sounded to me as the coolest chords of the harmonic minor scale
I don't understand these 'problems' - I mean, I do understand your explanations of these, I just don't get why are these bad things. I like the augmented second in the harmonic scale, It gives the scale a bit of an exotic feel. I didn't know the origins of the scale, so I have always assumed that it was intetional.
Another 'problem' I don't get is that there is no half-step between the 7th and the tonic. So what...? Until you told me that it is 'wrong' I enjoyed finishing a melody with a whole step more than with a half-step.
Maybe that's why I never enjoyed the 'classic' classical music very much ( with the exception of Beethoven ), preferring the XIXth century romantics or contemporary music, which is so full of these wrong, wrong harmonies and melodies... :)
Totally fair! In the end, it all comes down to whether you think it sounds good or not, so if whole step resolutions work for you, then use them!
Often, it is only a problem once you try to apply functional harmony, which was in wide-spread use from about 1650 to the late 19th century, to melodies built from those "exotic" scales. However, you will find that much folk music from this period does not follow these "rules" (i.e., by using a whole-step below the tonic instead of the leading tone when resolving to the tonic). But, you will find that trying to apply functional harmony to such folk melodies is problematic for this reason; they were never meant to be harmonized according to traditional harmony.
That's why I like harmonic minors(espetialy G harmonic minor) because you can create dark, eerie and mysterious melodies and songs.
Yeah, harmonic minor is a really fun scale to write in!
Subdominant doesn't mean "before a dominant chord", it references the fact that the fourth scale degree is a fifth below the tonic, like a "below-dominant". The word you're looking for is pre-dominant.
Well I didn't understand any of that . . . but I like minor scales! Cool video!
I do like your analysis. But it bears keeping in mind that these are very much Western "problems". Lots of musical traditions have flourished with either extensive use of augmented 2nds or no leading tones at all.
Here in Europe (Austria specifically) it is actually very frowned upon to revert to natural minor on the way down if you play melodic on the way up. We rarely if ever use that for songs in melodic minor.
Allow me to summarize. When in a minor key use a dominant (major by definition) for the V chord. Any questions?
Not that it matters, but I read that thinking of "the" minor in the sense of three distinct scales is a modern convention, since especially (pre) baroque music in minor did almost never use one of these three, but all notes from them. Only since roughly the classical era minor became "minor" and its harmonic and melodic variants were invented.
You mentioned that minor scales/modes have a m3 and p5. What would that make the locrian mode since it doesnt have a p5? Obviously it still sounds minor, is there a different classification for scales with diminished 5 instead?
I tend to think of them as diminished scales. That's a bit of an ambiguous name 'cause you might expect a diminished 7th, not a minor one, but really there's not a lot of scales out there that use diminished 7ths so I don't worry about it.
There's alot of classifications for scales. It's more than just dim minor, major and augmented.
But that's a good place to start.
They all have different 7ths also
Dim7 (bb7),
dim b7 (min7b5),
dim nat 7
Min7
Min/maj7
Dom7 (maj b7)
Maj7 (natural 7)
Aug7 (b7)
Aug/maj7
In phrygian, couldn't you just use the flatted second as a leading tone rather than raising the seventh degree? It seems a lot easier to me, since it keeps the same simple chord structure of the diatonic modes and avoids the nasty melodic issues of raising the seventh. I also find that if you raise both the sixth and the seventh degree of a minor scale, that just starts to sound more like a major scale than a minor one. Phrygian seems like the best answer to this issue to me.
You can! Generally, though, descending by half step doesn't feel as strong as ascending, at least not to ears trained by modern western music. There's just something about the pull upward that makes it feel more like a resolution. It's probably at least partly cultural, but I'd guess that it has to do with the tendency to associate rising pitches with an increase in energy, so a half-step resolution going upwards feels more powerful whereas a descending one feels kind of like it's wasting away. If it works for you, though, definitely use it!
12tone, this is also why modal music is different. It does not have the strong cadences of the functional harmony we're used to with the major and minor scales.
Amazing videos dude. :) Can I talk with you one day about an idea that I have in my head for do a piano piece ? (I'm from Spain, sorry if I have mistakes)
Thanks! I'm not sure how much help I can be, but if you want to throw some thoughts at me, I'd be happy to take a quick look!
Okay, thanks.
Does this scale have anything to do with Naples?
BTW, could you do Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" (Those descending chords in the bridge grab me every time but I don't know why.) and Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out," which somehow seems to have a sad undertone in spite of its relentless upbeatness.
you're the best :'(
Aw, thanks!
Minor/maj7 scales
Melodic minor
Harmonic minor
Hungarian minor
Neapolitan minor
Neapolitan major
Lydian b3
Neapolitan minor #4
Neapolitan major #4
Harmonic minor b4
Melodic minor b4
Locrian nat7 bb6
The Dominant diminished scale
Wasn't there a video where you talked about augmented 6th chords? I swear I remember seeing it, but I can't find it.
We covered them briefly in our video on Tritone Substitutions: ua-cam.com/video/4FKWb2YCNLE/v-deo.html
12tone . Ah, okay, thanks!
in Neap min we got bIII7(#5) and V7(b5)
are 7(#5) and 7(b5) a dominant chords?
They are Altered dominants.
That's why the altered scale is used alot over altered dominants. It has b5 and b6 The b6 is the same note as #5
W/h dim is good over alt dom chords... it has b5 and b6 also.
There's alot of different kinds of altered dominants and a whole lot people like to use over them.
Neapolitan sixths = too much icecream!
Great Video! But I have one question:
At 0:58 you say that the chord the scale produces is a bIII chord. But... Isn't It just a natural III chord? I mean the root of the chord is not flattened in respect to the natural minor scale.
Thanks!
It's with respect to the major scale, I think. I've seen people say the same when talking about scale degrees in natural minor.
To say that the melodic minor has a raised sixth and seventh when going up and a lowered sixth and seventh when going down is far too much of an over-simplification of the issue; it depends far more on the harmonic context: i.e., during a dominant harmony, the melody will use the raised sixth and seventh, whether moving up or down.
Depends who's using it! The specifics weren't really important there, though, and honestly I'm not a huge fan of the variable scale anyway, but some people are so I wanted to mention it quickly.
It's always strange finding new names for scales you already know. I first heard of this referred to as double harmonic minor
That's interesting. I've usually heard "double harmonic minor" as harmonic minor with #4
@@anirudhsilai5790 Neapolitan minor could be called phrygian harmonic
Lydian harmonic is 123#45b67
Locrian nat 7?
Locrian harmonic?
Everyone knows harmonic minor and harmonic major.
Then double harmonic minor and double harmonic major
The last one to check is harmonic altered?
Altered nat7
1b2b3b4b5b67
I’ll not have you slander the minor major 7th that chord is cool
The only difference between Dorian and Mixolydin is the third, right? Are there any pieces that are ambiguous between the two modes, or perhaps switch between them (sometimes using the major third, sometimes the minor third)? I ask because I've come up with a little melody that does just that, and I think it sounds cool, so I want to know if other people have done this before.
Writing the Dorian scale as 123b4567b8, the melody is this (all in eighth notes, 160bpm):
1887b 5645 | 1887b 5443 | 1887b 5645 | 3b43b2 0b11.
(I actually have two versions; this one is like a compressed version of the main one.)
Yep, just the third! I can't think of any songs that mix the two off the top of my head, but if you've got something you like with it, that's awesome!
Blues in G you could play G Mixolydian and when it goes to C7 play G Dorian.
Well that's how I've always played mixolydian. I play Dorian and bend the 3rd. Most blues players do. Alot of blues players manipulate the 3rd switching back and forth.
That's why alot of people look at major and minor as the same.
I really wish I took an opportunity to attend music school when I had it. I'm 26 and now everything is waaay too late.
My brain HURTS
Yeah, but I keep wondering: why elephants?
Lets be real here, harmonic minor is the best melody minor. Its just so cool! Raise the fourth up a semitone as well and oh my!! perfection! cOolesT sCALe EVeR
Harmonic minor #4 is Hungarian Minor (fourth mode of the double harmonic scale), IIRC.
You also can also get creative with how you do resolutions with added textures. D doesn't half-step resolve to Em, it half-step resolves to G. So how can you get the flavor of that while playing a minor chord? Easy, add a seventh to your tonic minor chord, Em7. Adding that tone means that each time you resolve to minor tonic the chord itself contains the major tonic, so you can do a lot of cheating with your resolutions, and the only consequence is harmonically denser music.
Interesting! I'd seen bVII resolving to Imi before, but I hadn't thought about it like that. Thanks for sharing!
2:38 TIL the Heffalumps and Woozles song from Winnie the Pooh is written in Neapolitan minor.
1:02 James Bond
Pink Elephants on Parade from Dumbo: 2:39
"We're not that hard to find." Considering I just found this video 3 years after posting I'd say that's incorrect XD
Of course with Reznor/Swarmatron scales, you won't have much of a problem w/ minor scales or really any scales cause this implies that you need absolute precision to correctly line up the notes that you play to the minor scale derivatives. Fortunately, the ultimate answer to having a dark tone w/o worrying about scales is to pick an instrument that has an inherently dark texture/timbre, but picking the best instrument with such a dark timbre is easier said than done.
In other words, the primary issue w/ minor scale is that they only have a _minor_ effect in delivering a dark musical tone when compared to the timbre provided by the primary instrument and the superposition of other instruments with conflicting tones that result in startling modulations. I should know cause I've had my hand at playing/analyzing digital dark ambient/industrial pieces in my time ^ __ ^
True! Timbre and instrumentation also play a huge role in the overall feel a of composition, although I'd argue that you may be underselling the role scales play. I think they're both important, but there's definitely a lot you can do just with timbre and range!
Video Topic Suggestion: How Many Scales Are There?
You are talking modes, nice. But I have a request. Talk and teach on the locrian mode.
Lydian Dominant video?
We've talked about Lydian Dominant a couple times (ua-cam.com/video/6wSGXpZmxf0/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/QhwIdBNFCQM/v-deo.html ) but we haven't given it a whole video yet. I'll add it to the list!
Well, friends: a bit frantic, but that's better than a wordy drone. Don't know about all that doodling, guess it helps some remember(?) Anyway, good information, and certainly succinct.
Thanks!
I thought i knew quite a bit about scales but this neapolitan scale and its major version were complitely new to me. it seems like this scale is used in radiohead's pyramid song?
edit: doesn't quite fit because it starts off with a major song but it's pretty close
Interesting, I'll have to check it out!
Woah woah woah! Easy, mate!
^_^
12tone Haha. jk. the information you provide are priceless.
2:40 Yea cuz Phrygian is part of the Trap
Great vid
Thanks!
Why do you switch?
As someone that literally just started getting into music.... Wha..... I don't understand how these groupings of sounds makes it sound trapped and I hear no differance between some of the scales
Just realized you're left handed! How do you not smudge when you write/draw???!!!
Your accidental sharp sign before the F in the Neapolitan scale really confused me! I had to pause the video and work out what was going on.
Whoops! Yeah, sometimes I make mistakes while filming, and since we do it all in one take fixing them is a huge amount of work. Sorry about that!
No biggie! :)
Amazing video, man. One question:
at 2:40 when you say "an uncanny, almost trap sound," do you mean that it sounds like you're trapped or that it could be used in trap music?
Thanks!
Good question! I meant "trapped", as in it feels enclosed. I'm not an expert in trap music, though, and it could certainly be applicable there too!
akaorenji He ment "trap" like it's squeezed in between two scale tones a whole tone apart in the scale, making three consecutive semitones.
You're both wrong, it definitely means trap music, like KILLAAA, WEST SIDE NNNNeapolitan major.
well, what would be of music teachers if they weren't able to mystify you at the same time they help you learn?! a good thing here is that we at least learn more than we get mystified...
Maybe the neapolitan major got his name, because the upper tetrachord is similar to major (the same with melodic minor)?
Could be! My guess was that it's just describing the 6th ("The neapolitan scale with a minor 6th" vs. "The neapolitan scale with a major 6th", then those two got shortened to just the salient details.) but I'm not a historian so I'm not sure!
I would like to know why you were writing from right to left sir.
Basically because I'm left-handed, so if I write from left to right then my hand covers up whatever I just finished writing.
12tone that actually makes plenty of sense, I'm left handed as well but I never do anything like this so it never crossed my mind. Nice video though.
Thanks! Yeah, if you look at the videos I did right after I took over animation, I'm mostly working from left to right, and it's pretty impossible to read anything I write until like 30 seconds later, which is... unideal.
hey i have an idea. for your highest tier on patreon you should include email pdf copies of your papers that you draw in your videos :P let me know if this is a good idea :)
Thanks for the suggestion! We actually used to do that for our mailing list subscribers, but it got to be a bit too much effort and we fell really far behind so we gave up. I keep meaning to go back to it, though...
Haha! Yeah that makes sense :P That would be a lot of work :)
Wow... I don't know but this is the content we are not deserve lol..))
Are these characters in your drawings pigs? Btw great and educational videos nonetheless
They're supposed to be elephants, but I can't be bothered to draw a whole trunk so I've heard people call them mice before too. But yeah, pigs work!
I have to ask...why do you use the little elephants for faces? There has to be a reason for you to be doing it so often.
Because they're cute!
aw man i was hoping there was a neat story behind it haha
It comes from a mnemonic for the treble clef: Elephants Grow Big, Dangly Faces. But mostly they're cute.
yeaaaah they are cute but that mnemonic explanation does satisfy my curiosity =)
I SHOULD BE REVISING BIOLOGY ........................
Speaking of "Neapolitan" scales, here is a whole family worth of them: xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/edIX. In spite of the "Neapolitan" name, though, the "patent" key tuning of these scales is not really equivalent at a "minor" ninth unless one pretends that ~9\8et is a "minor" interval.
Huh, that's really interesting! I hadn't seen those before, thanks for sharing!
Nathaniel Harmel
Wait WHAT??? You mean Phrygian is pronounced with a "J" sound??? Well there goes my entire perception.
It's Greek so technically speaking it isn't supposed to be a J sound, but most English speakers will end up pronouncing it that way.
What makes a scale minor ?
A tonic triad with minor 3rd and perfect 5th
I don't think the people who came up with the harmonic and melodic minor scales had the intention to do chords more complex than triads, sus chords, and 7th chords. Nevertheless, looking at it as a possible scale to build harmony around it of anything anyone wants works 100% today. Back then it must have been weird that they were purely taught this scale from a 'voice-leading' point of view.
However, I am starting to understand that scales showed simply as scales simply described as "the notes to build harmonies and melodies from" isn't effective enough for most beginners and in the end doesn't really matter all too much unless if one wants to solo completely free and fast with whatever aesthetic/sound from the chosen notes he/she wants (e.g.: a dorian aesthetic or a double harmonic scale aesthetic). Too many names for every possible order of notes (thanks to Slominsky, the Church modes, and etc.); however, I do recall when I discovered the modes and it made me question my understanding of music and I, as an artist, wanting to evolve, loved it since it sparked excitement indeed. Remember the the days, a decade ago around, I was simply just jamming in Dorian along with So What.
So I'll contradict myself that perhaps it isn't completely ineffective since it can spark curiosity, excitement and so forth, but I do find all these names to be nothing short than pedantic jargon at most times that don't really teach all too much except just another name for another exotic scale. To make an analogy from music to language: Sentences teaches more than simply only showing the words (meaning one needs to the see the function, not only the tools).
I like to look at it like it was a coincidence that the major scale had all the tools of functional harmony (tonic, dom. and subdom. harmony) due to the rules of voice-leading. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence, but a phenomenon (whether it's explainable with mathematics or physics), but it's coincidence in such a way that from my experience most people mistake teaching the major scale (or any scale) without first and also teaching its harmonic functions/motions; however, I understand one can teache scales as technical exercises at first before getting into the theoritcal side of things. One should look at it as the major scale deriving from functional harmony, and not as the major scale forming the chords where then functional harmony comes afterward.
All scales come from harmony and its functions that can be manipulated for whichever aesthetic one wants. Harmony is a palette full of the particular colors/notes chosen by the artist that can span from dark to bright that can spell out any aesthetic/scale.
Good points! I agree, the modes definitely made things a lot more complex for me too. I've had a lot of people ask why, if C major and D dorian are all the same notes, that we can view them as different scales, and it's not always easy to explain how important the functions of those notes are. I like your sentence analogy: You can sometimes build multiple different meanings out of the same set of words if you just rearrange them.
12tone
Thanks for reading! Thanks for transforming the analogy into a better one also aha
I like the structure of this UA-cam channel, borrowing from the styles from many other mostly science or pop-science education channels, and turning into music education. I also want to get started as well, so I have perhaps a few difficult questions:
What works for UA-cam to seek an audience? How do I find the style that works for me and music education? Do you work with a team (I assume due to all the work put in here) since I'll be more interested in seeking out partners if so. For the meanwhile, I'm just mostly writing music theory papers and working on a book also, but I really want to give this UA-cam thing a shot. The music educators of UA-cam is starting to be a great community also that I'm admiring and want to try to become a part with.
That's awesome! Let's see... Seeking an audience isn't really a strong suit of mine. I made some connections with other creators, but mostly I just put stuff out there and waited for people to stumble onto it. As for finding a style that works, one of the nice things about being a small channel is you can experiment until you find what works for you. Try stuff out, see what you like, and go from there. And technically yes, I work with a team, but it's just two of us, and I do about 90% of the work myself. I just have my brother helping out with filming and reading scripts to make sure I'm not getting too technical. Besides that, my biggest tip is to do it for yourself, and don't stress too much about the parts that aren't fun, like analytics and SEO. If you're having fun doing it, you're gonna keep doing it, and eventually that'll pay off. Anyway, best of luck, and feel free to send me an email once you've got it up and running!
Ice cream scales to go with ice cream chords?
Heh, I'm not sure they'd sound good together, but might as well try!
Here's an article that explains why minor chords sound sad:
www.omicsonline.org/open-access/why-do-minor-chords-sound-sad-the-theory-of-musical-equilibration-and-the-emotions-of-chords-2161-0487.1000139.php?aid=24803
Bernd Willimek
very informative, but this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy ... or I take a modern art approach and say you can do what you want... I make my own rules it gets a bit complicate to communicate with other people... but so what?
Harmonic minor is the juciest scale ever it is the found of diminished chords it's a Minor with a raised 7 has a dark Halloween feeling
WANTED SHARP 7TH DEAD OR ALIVE
I discovered Neapolitan Major completely independent of this video. Hmmm.
Nice!
Better to teach modal counterpoint, then continuo, then tonality, so as to not confuse students.
Why? Tonality is the thing most of them are familiar with in their everyday musical experience.