How I wish HARMONY was explained to me as a student

hello my name is nari Sol I'm a Pianist composer and in this video I'm going to do my best to explain music harmony in the simplest way possible I think a lot of textbooks and music schools tend to over complicate this topic a bit so I was thinking to myself if I were to keep this under 10 minutes one of the most important points I would include to help make sense of this all so this may not be the most comprehensive guide but that's not the point I'd rather give you the context in which you can use this knowledge to help support your music making and more importantly break free from thinking like there are all these details that you need to be mindful of and all of these rules that you need to follow I also have a very special announcement to make so look out for that in this video Harmony is about how sounds vibrate together there are and there aren't rules that make these sounds vibrate well together it really depends on culture context and preference how these five notes vibrate together it's quite different than how these seven notes vibrate together foreign [Music] sets of notes in western music so much so that if you go to a piano and you just play the white notes you're already plugging in to the seven note scale which is called the major scale there are many ways to break up the distance between an octave a major scale is just one of the options [Music] and what gives it its identity is the unique spacing between the notes if you're playing single notes and you move them around there is already a sense of Harmony there so if a single note is like a rose a chord is like a bouquet of roses now we're operating with a larger unit we can use the same scale as before but now build the notes into chords now each of the notes are supported with extra sound [Music] if you have a Melody the chords can be supporting the notes of the melody [Music] the strongest note of a chord is very fittingly called the root and it's like the base of a bouquet of flowers it holds everything together so the root of this C major chord is the c when these root notes change with chords this is what we call a chord progression it's basically having groups of notes in succession of one another a lot of times in school we're taught to memorize these chords and we're thinking of them as a straight line but I like to think of them more three-dimensionally as if these chords are sort of orbiting around each other some chords have more gravity than others and that's also why some chords are used more often than others like breathing in and out having chords like one and five is like having an anticipation and then a release this tension and release is what gives music shape it's no different than how a good story has ups and downs and this is what keeps you engaged the amazing thing is that you can make these chords as big [Music] or as small as you want by the way if you at any point feel lost or you feel like you need to brush up on some music theory I just released my book called narisol's elements of Music I've done my best to compile a bunch of my knowledge when it comes to music and I've digested it in a way that hopefully is very practical to beginners and seasoned musicians alike I put so much heart and soul into this it would mean so much if you check out the link I've put it in the description below so definitely do give it a chance let's go back to how I was moving around one note to create Harmony what if I told you that there is already Harmony in that single note kind of like when you see a color such as purple it contains red and blue even though you can't see those colors pitches vibrate together to create a single sound the science of this has to do with something called the overtone series A lot of times when Harmony is being explained this is mentioned in the very beginning but to be honest I think this over complicates things a bit all you have to know is that when you're hearing a c all of these other notes are also vibrating it's hard to hear them unless you have a trained year but believe me they're all there thankfully mathematicians and musicians in history did groundwork and device tools and systems to help us utilize Harmony One of such tools is called the circle of fifths there are many ways to use this much like there are many ways to use a color wheel these symbols come from a system of music notation that lets us label all of these notes it also shows us how different key centers relate to one another [Music] again it's really all about how different groups of notes vibrate together this is what composers keep in mind to play with contrast think of the color wheel again sometimes we want to choose colors that blend well with one another and sometimes we want to choose colors that are in contrast with one another so that they pop out similarly sometimes we'll use key centers that blend well with one another foreign ERS that don't and this is a form of contrast [Music] now color is a very subjective thing it really depends on context it's the same with music what sounds harmonious and settled is what we call consonant [Music] and what doesn't sound harmonious nor subtled is what we've refer to as being dissonant the reason why something like this sounds more dissonant is because of the frame of reference we're in [Music] now let's hear a similar moment let's say that this is our sound world [Music] perhaps that felt different perhaps less distant even though in the previous example it felt quite a bit more dissonant [Music] the beautiful thing about utilizing Harmony is that these rules only exist as guidelines we can really follow them or we can break free from them much like fashion for example we can follow the traditional formats of dressing but we can also break free from that and experiment as an artist we can utilize some or all of the rules it really is up to us hopefully that gave you some extra insights into harmony if you want to dig deeper do check out my book nariso's elements of music there is a special discount happening thank you so much to my patrons on patreon if you haven't subscribed already do subscribe and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Nahre Sol

Views: 842,025

Keywords: piano, music composition, harmony, music theory, nahre sol, classical music, improvisation, pianist, film scoring, jazz, modern music, nahre sol harmony, how learn harmony, music lesson, piano lesson, simple music harmony, simplified music theory, learn music theory, learn music

Id: 3tuQrKWLCKc

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023