How to use music theory to actually write music!

hey everybody Welcome to a live stream I hope you're all doing well and uh I know I uh post a video or do something live so rarely on my YouTube channel here but here I am and uh I thought I would just do a fun sort of uh what did I call it you know how to actually use music theory to write music or something like that um and the idea today is I want to start with just the bare bones Basics um you know uh how to figure out the chords in a key and then how to use them to just make something that sounds interesting to you then we're going to try to expand into a couple different voicings and then think about how to apply that very basic information to a band situation in case you're you know jamming with a bass player I brought my bass out um and we'll get into a little recording software and kind of have fun with it and um yeah and I think a good starting point here would be to just hop over to my iPad which is this button and we got to pick a key first and I think what we could do here is let's pick the key of D major right so um if you remember your major scale formula if I just write out the the letters in order d e f g a b c d and then we go through and we write in our whole whole half whole whole whole half this is how you make a major scale the only problem is I just wrote The Alphabet we got to go through and double check so D to e is that a whole step I have an idea let's uh let's do this over here on the camera guitar because I can do it live so let's try this out if I grab a d here and I'm trying to get uh I think I can do this there we go perfect if I'm going to play a d to an E and that needs to be a whole step well it is so we're good now we need to go another whole step f is not a whole step so I actually need to go from E to F sharp so now I've got F SH now I need to go a half step F Shar to G good that's a half step then G to a is supposed to be a whole step to fit the major scale formula and it is so we're good then we go A to B that's another whole step and then B to uhoh B to C is a half step we need it to be a whole step so we got to Sharp that c and then then we got a we end on d a half step from there so if I were to punch this in as uh a nice little scale here we got d e FP g a b c Shar and d and so this is what it looks like sort of in music theory the little circle just shows you how that works if we want to play a D major scale on the guitar d e f Shar g a b c Shar D so here's where things get really cool um of course we know that if we're in the key of D major we can play A D major chord that goes with the scale right well a D major chord is made from taking every other note of the scale starting on D so we can go d f Shar a but we can also go e g b that's every other note starting on E that gives us an E minor chord we can also do the same thing starting on F F sharp a C sharp that gives us an F Shar minor chord do the same thing for G every other note that gives us a G major chord and then every other note on a gives us an a major chord every other note starting on b b d FP that gives us a B minor chord and then C sharp C Shar e and G that gives us a a funky diminished Triad so cool right so that was our D major scale but the chords in the key of D are D E minor F sharp minor G major a major B minor and C sharp diminished um if we're using Roman numerals just like uh who is that billing Tano said wait there's more than 145 yeah there's also two and three and there's your four and five right there then we got six and seven so if you know these chords that's great if you don't you can look them up or you can figure them out it's kind of fun um I got some lessons about how to figure that stuff out on my patreon today we're doing a little bit more of a fast track to get to writing but pretty cool right so here's our chords d E minor F Shar minor G major a major B minor and C sharp diminished and then we're back to D very cool now here is where things can get really fun um by the way in case you didn't know what it means to be in the key of D major because we talk about scales and we talk about Keys sometimes people use those terms synonymously but they're not really the same thing a d maj Maj scale is um let's see o what's the best here we go a D major scale is it's kind of like reciting the alphabet when we're going A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P you're not speaking English but you are putting the letters that we use to make words in the order that we usually recite them right uh a scale is kind of similar we're saying [Music] this is the alphabet we're choosing to make some music that's what it means to play a scale a scale is the linear you know played thing but if we want to be in the key of D we're not really playing the scale as much as we're using the scale to construct our chords and then we're using that scale to construct our [Music] melodies right I'm only playing those green notes that we already chose as our scale and when I'm choosing just those notes I'm staying in the key of D pretty cool but we got some some stuff to work on here because and of course I dropped my pen now that we've established this info which is you know some pretty useful info um you know any questions so far by the way it's always worth asking um now that we've got our chords what do we do how do you use this to write music this is where things can get kind of scary because the truth is you just pick a few that you like and then you pick a strumming pattern that you like and if anyone has any questions about how to write a strumming pattern I can give you a little crash course just let me know in the chat um I'm just going to make sure that things are still still going strong here yes they are very nice um yeah don't be shy feel free to ask some questions this is definitely a live lesson and I look forward to your questions but what you can do here is you can just pick a few of these chords and you can either think I'm going to pick the number and I'm going to mess around with um what it feels like to play this set of chords which would be D E minor a B minor and just see how it sounds see what you think check it out yeah um so here we got a D let's try this out and I'll I'll show you my guitar a little better here um let's see so here's D major here's E minor here's a major here's a B minor D major e E minor a major B minor that's a nice chord progression I like that so I did get a request from someone to Freddy King says um strumming pattern please yeah I'll give you a quick little thing to think about uh also someone asked about the hat I don't know I just felt like wearing a hat it's uh Frisco freeze a nice little you know old Burger Joint down in Tacoma where I grew up up um so we've picked a nice little progression here let's talk about strumming patterns for a second my the way I like to think about coming up with a strumming pattern is I start with a simple grid of one and two and three and four and and the way I like to think about strumming patterns is I like to do a little reductive method here um so anytime you're doing a strumming pattern um what you want to think about is this this little graph right here down up down up down up down up one and two and three and four and that's how you want your arm to be moving all the time anytime you're playing a strumming pattern so doesn't matter what chord I'm playing you want your arm if if you were to plug your ears and just watch your yourself playing guitar this is how your arm should look regardless of the strumming pattern you're playing with a very few exceptions so in other words if I'm playing something [Music] like you always want your arm to be doing this so the way you can practice is you can start with the full down up down up down up down up which sounds pretty intense right 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and that's pretty intense but if you remove a strum keeping in mind that your arm is still going to move up right there you're just not going to hit the strings all of a sudden it starts to sound more like a pattern 1 2 and 3 and four and all right then we can start removing more drums here how about down down up down up down and now we've got down down up down up down one 2 and three and four right and then if we remove one more how about this down right here now we've got and this is a really fun way to just craft your own strumming patterns is just start by strumming everything and then just remove a few strums here and there until you get something interesting so let's try this strumming pattern that we just came up with and then let's see if we can put this into some recording software so here I've got down down up up down kind of cool right so uh that's your Basics um sometimes people get scared about something like well which chord am I allowed to start with and there is some kind of funkiness going on where you might end up in uh what's called a mode uh where you're in sort of a different key that uses the same chords but when you're just writing music for yourself just starting out getting the hang of making stuff that sounds good you can take this set of chords you can grab any chord you want and just see how it sounds to play a few of them like how about E minor F minor G F minor that sounds kind of cool E minor F Shar minor G right there is um it's not that there are rules it's more that the more you get the hang of what sounds good to you um it music theory is really just about getting the hang of explaining um how other musicians should interact with something you've written um being able to explain what you've done but we're not going deep in the weeds today we're just trying to have fun with it so here is where things get really cool in my opinion once you have a chord progression like this and again D E Minor A B minor if you're playing by yourself um it's kind of nice to strum all the strings and to try to create like a nice solid Rhythm that you're carrying yourself but once you start playing with other musicians you can actually be a little more free you don't have to play quite as much and this is where I think it might be fun to make a little beat and sort of pretend we're in a band for a second here um I mean I'm also actually in a band but for the sake of this video we're we're pretending can you hear that okay here's my recording software and I'm just going to make a little beat let's see what's a good Tempo let's keep it slow we don't need to go too fast how about this is nice 102 that sounds good I'm going to turn these drums down for a second so I can hear that that metronome but two three [Music] four cool made a little beat and I'm just going to fix the timing because I don't need to be a perfectionist about that right now let's make sure it's all good here's [Music] my that sounds good so what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to record my guitar and I'll show you how we can have so much fun with a second guitar um by grabbing a cable here um let me see here so we'll do the most basic strumming pattern and I'm going to plug in this cool cool minty green cable here um yeah my My Philosophy about learning guitar learning music in general is you got to get to the point where you can write something as soon as possible because just like um music is a language and when you learn to speak a language uhoh that's fun oh that's me um the sooner you get to a point where you can express your own thoughts and feelings the uh the sooner you'll you'll sort of get the hang of like what it even means to play music it's great to learn other people's songs by all means do that do that for the rest of your life but also learn how to mess around with a chord progression like this and it'll it'll teach you things you never thought you needed to learn um and it'll give you sort of endless entertainment so what I'm doing here I'm going back to my software I don't know why this is opened so huge I got to make it smaller um this is just a little amp simulator software just so we can get something going here that sounds nice so I'm going to record the most basic sort of cowboy chord version of this progression that I can and I'm going to keep it very simple and I'm going to do that so that we can add some fancier layers on [Music] top that's all we need um I'm not trying to spend too much time on it it's a little sloppy that'll be okay we're just having fun we're not trying to write you know a platinum album or anything but I am going to I'm going to make it a little less spiky sounding so here's where things get cool cool and I'm going to go back over to the camera guitar and I'm sure I'm going to get absolutely Tangled Up in this web of cables that are attached to me here it's a I got a lot of stuff connected to me over here so if we're back in the key of D here what I was just playing the most basic open chords [Music] here and I'm not trying to be a perfectionist cuz I'm not writing a finished album right now I'm just practicing writing music and this is the this is what makes it fun if you get too perfectionist about it you kind of lose sight of the whole point which is to just make something you don't have to make it perfect uh just the idea is to make something so our first chord here is this D major chord and I played it down here but a D major chord is just made of D FP and a so I'm going to Loop that D chord for a second and I just want to show you some cool things you can do instead of just strumming the chords check it out so this is the the rhythm guitar right so what I could do is I could go up here and I could go wow unfortunately one of my guitars is not in tune I'm going to put a funny effect on it to just make it feel a little more in tune this is by the way something that can happen if you're not paying attention let's see if this that's better so here what I just did is I've got a d and a and an F sharp all the notes in Blue by the way are just the notes in A D major chord so instead of going doing the same thing that the other guitar player doing I can accent that chord up here or I can go or I can do something up here [Music] right the possibilities are endless um you just kind of come up with a little pattern like right that's the idea if we scoot over to the next chord which was what did we say it was E minor that's right um let me scratch that and now we're going to move into E minor well before I was doing something like now I can do very cool right and if I if I try that out let's see how it [Music] sounds and it turns out for the next two chords I can do something with those chords around the same area here I could go uh I keep forgetting what the chord is that's funny c e and a so I went this is the D chord this is the E minor and then the B minor chord is the next one see how I just grabbed a c Shar e this is why it's so cool to know just a little bit of theory if you know that an a major chord is made of a C sharp and E you can find those chords somewhere else uh Charlotte said is that a broken chord or an arpeggio it's really I'm just taking the tones of the chord and I'm just playing them individually in whatever interesting pattern I feel like um you could say it's it's an arpeggio although arpeggio kind of like playing a scale sometimes arpeggio means playing everything in perfect order and I'm just kind of not doing it in order but this is the kind of fun thing you can just kind of do whatever you want um this is this is the freedom that music theory gives you is it just says these are the notes in the chord what do you want to do with it um and the final chord here is a B minor which is b d f SHP so we go here so I'm going to turn these off so that um we're not uh watching One chord while all the chords are happening but we've got a D chord an E minor an A and A B minor so D chord E Minor A B minor check it [Music] out isn't that kind of cool I think it's cool um there's more we can do though and this is probably a good opportunity for me me to get my guitar in better tune so that we don't um keep having to fix it later so Paul hey yes this is a live session I'm doing a live writing session here and um just trying to have fun with it and I can get to your questions a little bit better if you want um oh that was the problem I'm very sharp let me turn off this funky effect there we go so just got to get in tune here and then we're going to talk about sort of you know writing Parts um when you have a band to support you you don't have to play everything but you also don't have to play just the little arpeggio things we were playing either let me just get in tune here you can see what I'm doing here if you want tune a little flat and then I tune up to the note cuz sometimes my strings get a little sticky see if that's close enough for a live [Music] stream so before I was doing your basic uh [Music] so before I was doing that and there's something kind of fun about adding uh even just adding a Bas player um because what a Bas player does is they will accent the root of the cord which and they'll also accent the low end of the chord and part of what's sort of tricky about being a guitar player um especially because guitar is such a sort of um there are so many different genres of guitar out there that it's kind of hard to figure out you know what's the right thing to do in any given situation there's so many different Traditions it can be hard to figure out but um is my Basse oh it's just [Music] not um yeah by the way I see some questions um Blan uh this is uh sort of some live fretboard software that I and a friend came up with and I'm not sharing how it works yet maybe [Music] someday yeah this guitar is missing two strings isn't it I learned my lesson earlier by just picking up the guitar it was very sharp so now I'm going to make sure that I'm in at least better tune here [Music] yeah so let's listen to this this is just a strumming pattern by itself and one of the cool things about [Music] guitar is that it keeps its own Rhythm so well that you almost don't even need that drum track guitar itself is kind of a little drum set which is why it's so handy for just backing yourself up solo but now if I'm going to add bass it actually frees my guitar up to not have to do so much intense drumming so if I'm [Music] going oops of course I forgot the chords I have them right in front of me here and I keep forgetting it's D E Minor A B minor so I'm going to come up with a little Bas line here um I guess maybe it'd be more fun to watch my hands than to watch the software um and my goal is to Accent root [Music] notes um and then I'm going to Accent fifths of the chord so uh a Triad is made of root third and fifth uh like the d f sharp and a of a D major chord that's D is the root f is the third and um a is the Fifth bass players tend to accent roots and fifths and uh don't always there's never any hard rules but typically avoiding thirds is a good idea so I'm going to I'm going to Accent Root Root Root fifth root Root Root fifth yep root fifth root Root Root oh you can't hear the bass well enough let me here's what I'm going to do I'm going to I'm going to put an effect on the Bas so that everyone can hear it a little better I'm going to throw a little compression on here we'll do a slow attack do a fast release and we're going to do [Music] this there we go that should be a little louder and let's do this D E Minor A B minor [Music] I got a little sloppy there we [Music] go so that's the gist and now now if we listen to that let's listen back to it and see how it sounds that's just a rough Baseline um which reminds me I'm wearing the wrong headphones for I got these tiny headphones I'll have to switch if I'm trying to get a little more detailed here so I can hear better [Music] but [Music] so that sounds great just with the open chords but let's see what happens if instead of playing the cowboy chords if we play some higher up voicings and actually I'll go back over to the camera guitar for this and uh I'll hit this button and let's see what happens here so let's see I'm going to set this up so that it uh so that I have a little count in every time that should do it so here we are in the key of D and we were playing which is D major E minor a major B major B minor excuse me that's a very much a minor chord um so let's just hear how that sounds and see what it looks like just and then we're going to move on to something else so we've [Music] got it sounds all [Music] right right that sounds fine but um oh Lewis has a good question I'll get to it in a minute I like it um so we were doing that and then before we were going but if we listen to that just that with the bass let's see how that sounds it might feel like there is it needs more space and we're going to find a little middle ground version where we're not doing the whole open chords and we're not doing up here but let's just see how it sounds 2 3 [Music] 4 that's kind of nice actually but it does feel a little bit empty so this is where we get into um moving from here into maybe a little more interesting voicings and that could be um that could be just uh the way I like to think of it basically is just just playing fewer notes um but not uh not way up the neck so if we're going like that's kind of fun you get to add a rhythm that doesn't keep your arm going the whole time and lets it kind of almost like breathe with the drums a little bit more I don't know if that's the one but let's see how it sounds sounds so I'm [Music] going that's kind of nice but do you see how that just kind of opens it up compared to the Cowboy chords and I'm still playing the same chords I'm just playing them in a different location on the neck that's pretty cool right makes a little more fun I'm not in love with that pattern though let me find something sometimes just hitting on the snares of the drum kit in other words this is the drums that's the snare it's always hitten on two and four if we in 44 and by always I mean usually in rock and soul and Funk um but let's see how it sounds to just hit on the snares with the base I bet it's going to sound nice slash I know it is but let's let's see what [Music] [Music] happens pretty cool right so here's what I'm going to do woo so many cables in here I am going to take a break from writing music here tinkering with this kind of stuff I'd like to move on to uh someone brought up what about sths and 9ths and 11ths and stuff this is also where music theory makes makes things so fun and cool um but I'm going to move on to that in a minute cuz I got a few questions here including uh long time commenter on my channel Phil James says do you feel that the quality and ability of the Kai lpk25 uh keyboard is sufficient for the needs of the average computer user yes this is actually my second one my first one I thought it broke but I actually had such an old computer that one of the USB um inputs just gave out I love this thing it's very travel size it looks big because of my camera here but it's it's quite tiny um and it fits in a backpack and um I love it I'm not a piano player I'm a guitar player but this for just doing basic inputs of drums is great so highly recommend uh the aai lpk25 it's great it's cheap um TJ Anderson said how do you write down the strumming pattern of the bass hypothetically you know most bass players that I know would either e um listen to the record and then just memorize how it sounds or they'd write it out in like proper sheet music or um they would make something up uh that's in the style and there are sort of stylistic things that are pretty common um for example you know your classic bass uh go-to in other words the most basic thing you can do on a Bas is to to start by just hitting root notes on the kick so if you listen for the kick hear that and now if you listen to the Baseline that I wrote I'm basically just following that [Music] kick and that's often you know I mean of course we could talk for hours about bass but that's a really good starting point if you're playing bass is just listen for the kick drum in general if you're a bass player you always want to listen for the drummer as closely as possible and almost ignore everyone else but Lewis asked a great question Lewis said Scott I have seen that chord progression changes in choruses is there a guideline for this part as well I don't know if I'm being clear so I think you're being clear enough and it sounds like what you're saying is usually when you get to the uh chorus in a song it's a different chord progression than the verse and that's true and maybe that's a good chance to move on and try to write something else here although I just wanted to see um Paul Richardson said can you do an overview of how to use apple Garage Band I actually have a whole course on it on my patreon it's like 12 bucks a month um and I've got I think over 200 lessons on there so far um and I have a live Q&A where many many fewer people are asking questions and I answer them all every week just like this with the camera guitar and everything um but yeah it's a great course um and I also have tons of community challenges where my uh my patrons get together and write some music based on a theme it might be something simple like write something in an A Minor or it might be something like um write something sad or write something in mix lyan mode which you can also learn how to do on my patreon it's pretty great it's not a donation site it's a it's a music school um yeah I don't know how to say your name faciity said do we have to play the chord tones along with the chords or can we play the whole scale as well I would say watch my latest video called five levels of soloing because in there I talk about this sort of concept where if uh the rhythm part is is a d chord um it's probably ideal to start your phrases on just a note in the chord so there I started a phrase on a note that's part of the D chord and then I ended the phrase on a note that's part of the D chord and the idea is you have not just the whole scale available to you but all 12 notes available to you as long as you sort of have a hierarchy of which ones um you know you take more seriously you weigh those notes a little more heavily um and that's the idea of sort of soloing over chord [Music] tones um maw yeah I'm sort of uh not necessarily gearing this just for beginners but um you can learn everything I'm talking about over on my online school I'm not going to promote it all day but yeah um man so much support and kindness thank you everybody so two things I want to do next one I want to talk about uh seventh chords and Ninth chords and how they can make your chord progression so much more spicy which is really fun and then the second thing I want to do is come up with another chord progression that goes with this one because this is sort of how verses and choruses work so we're going into the iPad again and I'm going to sort of yeah here we go I'm going to try to reveal my set of chords over here um so this is one set of chords I'm actually going to squish them together so I have room to put another chord progression here and what do we want to do for our other section and when you're writing music by the way first of all I feel like so many people are afraid to write music because they're like what if I suck at writing music and the reality is you're probably going to suck when you start out because writing music isn't a magic skill that people have or don't have it takes practice just like learning guitar takes practice nobody picks up a guitar and is like wow my fingertips feel great and I can totally do everything I wanted to do by just reading a book and playing no everything takes practice learning the instrument same thing with writing songs so while we are going to talk a bit about choruses um a lot of it comes down to Personal Taste how do you like to craft the difference between a verse and a chorus and the way you even get to a point where you could think that way is by just mashing together different chord progressions and talking to yourself about what you like or don't like about them so we're going to do that here we've already got let's see something that's always fun is to sort of weigh a new chord that you haven't used yet for example we haven't used G yet we haven't used F minor and that's that's about we haven't used the diminished chord but um though they don't make their way into popular music quite as much as other things so what I might do is I might try to emphasize these two missing chords in my second section or I might try to make an even more simple chord progression so and awesome creeper 54 I see your question I'll get to it on my next break here so let's see how would it sound to play G F minor that's kind of interesting I just did g f Shar minor G and D that's nice I don't know if I love it though but yeah I don't know this is also a normal thing I know I like this g o well there we go G F minor G let's do that um maybe for our second section here we're going to do this actually we're going to go uh GF minor GD and then the second time through we're going to go G F minor a a this by the way is an awesome way to think about writing chord progressions what I did is I wrote I wrote one thing that I kind of liked and then I just sort of split it in half for fun and then the second time I went I'm going to keep that first half but I'm going to change the second half and this little chord progression by itself is going to sound pretty nice because once you get to this second F minor you're expecting to go GD but instead you're just hanging out on a so it sounds like this um and I think here we [Music] go [Music] that's kind of nice let's see how it sounds um compared to the other progression so here's the first progression E Minor A B minor now I'm going to the next one [Applause] yeah that's nice I like it and also I don't know if you noticed but I changed the strumming pattern a little bit on my other section here it's kind of cool um th this is the basic idea of how to do it and the thing that I just I cannot emphasize this enough you don't want to set out to write one Perfect song and then move on to the next song you want to create almost like a a junkyard of half-written things because that means you're practicing you're trying you're tinkering you want to be much more of a tinkerer if you want to have fun writing music um if you you know if you're the kind of person who's like I need to finish everything I start you're probably going to have a hard time being a songwriter because you're it it's it's healthy and fun to have a Boneyard of Unfinished things and that's just cuz you need to practice you it takes practice to figure this stuff out so what I'm going to do here is I've already got my first chord progression here we [Music] go and I can't remember if I redid this so it was in tune I don't think I did so I'm going to I'm going to re-record the first one so it's in tune and what I'm going to do here is I'm going to take the little drums that I wrote and I'm just going to change them a little bit for the second time through you don't have to be a drummer you you can just kind of Tinker with making things a little different and I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this called a ride symbol and I'm just going to scoot it down to uh high hat just just gives it a different sound right so now we've got these two sections and I'll play along with my Baseline that I already wrote and then um on the guitar here I'm going to play along with my Baseline and then I'm going to uh I'll I'll just kind of experiment with how I want to do that second chord progression um and keeping in mind that I'm I probably need to do some cutting and pasting if I want this to be a full song but for now we're doing good and uh yeah let's see here uh what do we have so let me do this since I recorded it Out Of Tune first I'm just going to record that that first part and maybe what I'll do is I'll record it the way that we that we um if you were watching earlier we fig we found a middle ground between just playing Cowboy chords and just playing um and instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to play something [Music] like um because I'm not playing the low strings and that's a good thing if you're playing with a bass player guitar is weird because the lowest strings are almost in that base territory and it can make your mix sound kind of Muddy which a mix isn't just for the recording studio it's also for a live gig a Bas player will love playing with you if you avoid those bottom strings as a general rule you don't have to do it perfectly but here we go so [Music] so that'll do for that first [Music] section sounds good I'm going to move on to the next section here and figure out you know how do I want to get these get this next chord progression which looks like this G F minor G D and then G F minor a a and this one I might get a little more creative with it generally speaking for me when I think about comparing a verse in a chorus or just a section of a song with another section to create a little bit of contrast if I'm doing there's a lot of space there maybe in the next section I'll try to leave a little less space just as a comparison so I I might do something [Music] like something like that um it's just a little more constant but let's see see if that actually [Music] works [Music] that's nice it's a little sloppy I should probably switch to my other headphone so I can hear better but [Music] whatever honestly it would probably be beneficial to whip out these headphones just so I make sure that the mix sounds good enough for uh YouTube it would be it would be sad for me to listen back to this later and go oh that doesn't sound very [Music] good that sounds pretty good so now what I can do is just like we were talking about before with uh our Baseline if we want to um match the kick drum we can um but let's listen to what we were doing the first time through here that sounds good [Music] so the question here is to create a little contrast I kind of like the guitar parts how different they are they're similar but they're not the same this one's kind of a little more constant this one gives a little more space this Baseline it's a little more constant let's see I don't know I'm just going to play with it for a [Music] minute that's kind of [Music] cool I kind of like something like that so this is a kind of a sneaky thing I started on G and I walked up g a b but I ended up on D so remember I was saying you don't usually play the third of the chord in this case I walked up to the third of the chord and then I jumped to the root note of that FSH minor so my G chord and then F [Music] minor um yeah [Music] and I kind of like that so let's try [Music] this [Music] yeah there we go cool so that is kind of what it looks like to write a second section so now I'm going to make it uh a little bigger here um a little bigger that's a very detailed word I'm going to make the whole I'm going to make the first section longer so we have this nice little back to back [Music] here here's the next [Music] section [Music] hey that's kind of fun huh so that's the nice uh that's a good starting point I think wow we've gone we've been going an hour already um man yeah why don't we just keep it going I don't know sometimes it's just too much for people to go oh my gosh a 2hour stream I don't know if that sounds fun but maybe for the right person it will um I'm going to take a break for questions here though so ma aw says what's the name of the program you're using um this is called logic pro and it is my favorite recording software um it's uh it's made by Apple and um I've seen it in a few Pro Studios uh it used to be what like 10 years ago I don't think it was in any pro Studios but it's it's uh you know it's it's gotten to the level where a lot of people prefer it I like it for doing this kind of thing which is when I'm writing songs I'm I'm not worried about getting the most perfect performance um I and this copy and paste kind of stuff to just get a song Started is one of my favorite things to do um I can always go do a perfect recording in the in the studio when it's time to like get those perfect recordings um or for fun for practice if I want to but you don't need to it's great um oh it's not an hour we started late that's a good point um yeah let's see we could we could do some targeting cord tones a little bit uh Lauren if you're not Apple there's great software called uh Reaper re e a p r that um I think it's free to start using it and then it's um 60 bucks to buy there we go and uh a lot of uh PC users have really liked that yeah there you go couple couple glowing reviews right there did we get any other questions before I move on to the next section here um just thanks for all the compliments dang [Music] um yeah so let's see Henry Hood says can you explain where and why nine chords can be used in a key as in which chord number can be a nine chord um yeah sure I mean that's what we're going to do next it's kind of fun anyway so check this out um I am going to going to go back to the iPad I'm going to scoot some things around and I'm going to do this I'm going to make a scale Circle um and d e fshp g a b c so this is what I like to call a scale Circle because it is a scale in a circle um and you know if you put in your uh I'll do it tiny whole whole half whole whole whole half we know that um moving from here to here two whole steps the distance between D and F is a major third kind of cool the distance between here and here is a minor third because it's a half step and a whole step and anytime you start with a major third and then attach a minor third to it that is always going to be a major Triad um this is where things get really cool if you take this same Triad um which we've we've created it by jumping every other note of this major scale well if we jump one more every other we've added a fourth note to our chord it's no longer a Triad it is now a seventh chord and in this case we've added a major third to the end of this major Triad which is very weird and it's so weird that I'm going to use the camera guitar to help explain um but just like we were talking about earlier here's the D root note check out the circle I'm skipping a note to play the third of the chord then skipping another note of the scale to play the fifth of the chord and then that is the seventh of this D major chord turning it into a a D major 7 chord and wow what a beautiful chord it is and here's one of the weirdest things about music theory in general if I and Rado I see your question I think we'll try that later if we can um if uh someone said can you write something less churchy I can I was trying to write something simple and somehow that ended up sounding churchy but whatever um when you're thinking about chords as Roman numerals um what this sort of frees you up to think about and I'm going to go back to this is this has gotten very messy here but I'm going to is this the right button here we go these chords 1 two 1 2 3 4 5 six and seven a Roman numeral just represents the the chord made from the first note of the scale it doesn't necessarily mean you have to play Just root third and fifth means you can also play the seventh if you want to um and if we did that on top of what I just played here it might Clash a little bit but it might not let's see here I'll just I'll just get that first D major chord and see what happens what do we have here yeah so in this case because I played this chord it's going to sound a little clashy um just cuz my highest note is this chord but if I and let's listen to this [Music] Baseline so these are the first two [Music] chords so instead of playing if I played this suddenly it's going to sound a little a little fancier a little spicier and then instead of playing just an E minor chord for the next chord I could play an E minor 7 chord which is uh let me show you how that works real quick so in the same sense that we did every other and then we just did one more every other that gets us the seventh chord that fits in this key in this case and in every case the one chord in a major key is always a major 7even chord if we go to the two [Music] chord that would be e g and B if we were going to do another every other from there we would be adding a d to our chord and now we can play an E minor 7 chord and it just gives you a little richness a little fanciness so um I'll play these two chords back to back the original way first and then I'll play the fancy way and you tell me if it if it sounds a little more Jazzy or a little more kind of sultry or more I don't know more interesting two three [Music] four kind of cool right here's the original way we're coming up on it three 3 4 so this is original and then here's the seventh [Music] chord is that kind of cool looks like all my notes were not perfectly appearing every time but isn't that kind of cool um this is you know I have a lot of lessons about this kind of stuff where you can really dive in and get to know this concept a little bit better but in general the idea is you're just playing every other note till you get three and that gives you the Triad and then if you do another every other that gives you the seventh chord it's pretty cool um here's your Minor 7 and then the the F minor gives you another Minor 7 this is sort of the the complicated way to think about it the easiest way to think about it is find your highest root note and then go back to the next note in the scale behind it and that's how you convert any chord in the key to a to its seventh chord so in this case in the key A has to go back a whole step gives it a excuse me what the there we go and then the G chord [Music] here just went back half a step of course some of you might be like what the heck is he talking about right now this is kind of a big concept um I have a course on my patreon called music theory for guitar that brings you up to speed on the absolute basics of how to make scales major scales and minor scales and then uh how why they are in why do they need Sharps and flats at all um and how they fit into the circle of fifths and then how to make major minor Triads and also diminished and augmented Triads it's kind of cool um and that sets you up to learn chords in a key really really well which is great um but yeah I think because of the way I recorded it I don't you the original guitar I don't think it would sound very good to have a um seventh chords over the top of that one [Music] um this section might sound cool to have some seventh chords uh let's see yeah if they were really high up um that might sound cool let's see what happens in this [Music] section that's kind of nice I like it in the second section the first section just it's hard to add another high up guitar on there um cool cool so let's see does anyone have any more questions for me I think that uh yeah Rado this isn't the best idea uh this isn't the best version to to uh to write uh a second guitar on top but I did mention something earlier about how like kind of how to set things up to write a second guitar um yeah I'm not seeing a lot of questions so I don't know do you have got any for me um don't be shy Oh Henry nine chords yes of course all right fine let's do it fine pretending to be upset about teaching more stuff okay so this is very cool um we're going to this mode again so uh I'm going to give you a I'm going to give you a quiz we got root 3D Fifth and seven if we want to play a seven chord and there's a hint in there right 1 3 5 7 what do you think a d uh the nine chord of a d chord would be we're going to do every other another time so we have root 3D fifth 7 and nine and this is where things get sort of Jazzy complicated convoluted um and I don't need to go there I'm going to give you the cheat code that that just gives you like a cool thing to think about here and this is in the same sense that if you play any major chord or minor chord in a you play any major chord or minor chord in a key and you'd find the highest root root note you can find and you just go back a note in the scale it's got to be in the scale cuz we got to stay in the key right that gives us a uh a major seven chord or some kind of seven chord let's not worry about names for now it gives you some kind of seven chord so if I were to go up to this G chord here I found my highest root I go back a note in the scale and that gives me the seven chord for the G in the key of D um if I want to find the nine of a chord it's it's a different thing we find that root note and we go up one note in the scale and now I have some sort of D chord with a nine and nine chords they're very cool in this case this is called an ad nine because I've just taken a Triad root third and fifth and then I've just added nine that's what it means when you play an add chord if I want to do this with an E minor chord um I can go like this but I lose my third this is where it gets tricky I can go like this it's not very fun to play but this is an E minor ad n uh there's a nice open chord version it looks like this E minor add n um let me do a little zoom in here you go you can look nice and close here yeah play an E minor chord and then we find this e scooted up a whole step cuz we found a root note right and we just go up a note in the in the scale now I've got this devastating beautiful chord or we can go up here and add it up here also very tasty and this is the the easiest way to think about nine chords and if I was going to play this progression with nine chords oh and then I want to show you something very cool ooh this is going to be fun um if I want to play this progression with nine chords I could go uh and then go down to and then we add an a chord that's kind of nice let's see how it sounds uh let me make sure I'm on the right track here two three o I didn't get there quick [Music] enough there we go I'm jumping too far but I could go what is this up here isn't that kind of fun um yeah that's very cool right I think I don't want to get too far in the weeds with this but just remember you play a chord you find the root note if you go back half a step that's the seven uh you can either think of it as that's like I don't think I can condense hours and hours of Concepts into you know a quick little thing here but the idea is find the root note go back to one note in the scale and that is the appropriate seven for that chord in that key or go up to the next note of the scale and that's the appropriate nine for that chord in the key that's the gist there are different ways you can um different names for those chords depending on the situation you're in uh depending on what other notes you include or not but I don't want to get into that um right now so yeah I think I'm going to grab my my little sparkling fancy water thing here and uh I see I see some good questions here and I think maybe I'll just have to save them for next time but I I also want to let you know that if you like this kind of format um imagine instead of uh what looks like hundred something people that you have to fight with to get your question answered it's uh something teen number of people um and I make sure to answer your question as thoroughly as possible um that's what my weekly office hours is over on my patreon um 12 bucks a month for some people I think just having weekly you know your weekly questions answered is a good is a good deal for 12 bucks a month but I also have you know 200 plus other lessons available and and um you know courses that you can work through and uh it's uh you know it's kind of been my life's work I've been really pouring out everything I possibly can um you know the nuanced tricky things that are weird to talk about I've tried to figure out how to make those things make sense my goal is to just help people be like the most holistic musician they can be um I'm not just teaching Theory I'm trying to help you understand how to use music theory to make music like this um I do deeper Dives than this um and um you know I'm just really trying to make it a place where you can become a musician and have fun doing it at the same time I've got weekly writing not weekly every other week writing challenges um it's a lot of fun come check it out and in the meantime I think I'm going to try to do more live streaming on my YouTube channel here just to let people know I'm still alive I'm still actively making lessons I'm just not doing it on YouTube as often um yeah TJ I understand you know uh that sucks that it torn Tado destroyed your house definitely don't join my patreon until you feel like you can afford 12 bucks a month I'm not trying to be pushy or anything I'm just trying to let you know if you like my channel here I think you'll really love my online school that's all smash that like button folks you know now that we're at the end of the stream I got to confess that I was I was tempted to do the uh the the the most UN unfitting thing for me which was as soon as my live stream started I was going to go what's up guys welcome to my channel that that really stresses me out I like I like just keeping it chill you know um yeah oh namara Allen I will say it's very rare that it sounds good for a baseline to add nine um and seventh chords work on on some chords like a minor seven chord or a dominant seven chord you can include the seven and it frequently happens in um in Funk and soul especially like uh of course I was going to end things and now I'm answering a question that I like um your basic base sort of hangout Zone um at least in my opinion coming from like a just being a big fan of funk and soul is here's your root note here's your fifth here's your octave higher root and then back here is your seven and because we don't have a third in here this this little simple Baseline works for either a uh a major a do I should say a dominant chord um or works for a minor seven [Music] chord and that's using root 57 root 57 five root you know like that's um just sort of classic funk area um lad by example 108 says what's a healthy amount of practice per day or week can you practice too much you can hurt yourself if you are using too much pressure or if you are ignoring signs of pain you can definitely practice too much from that point of view um however I I don't think you can practice too much I think that sometimes you can practice without being very mindful about what you're doing and I'm a big believer in in um practice being either deliberate sort of um performing a song trying not to think too hard and then deliberate really mindful thoughtful what did I do wrong how could I do it better let me let me like really think through as specifically as possible how I could have done that better and then practice really specifically the specific detailed things that are going to help with the specific problem areas most people don't practice well because they don't describe to themselves specifically what they're doing wrong and they just keep trying over and over without stopping to assess why it's not working um but you could do that all day without hurting yourself as long as you're just paying attention to your hands and your fingers and stuff um all right everybody I think this is a it's a good time to call it a day thanks for hanging out um I'm going to try to do this again soon um and uh yeah thanks for hanging out see you [Music] later [Music] he

Channel: Scott Paul Johnson

Views: 203,412

Keywords: guitar lessons, guitar tutorial, music theory, guitar theory

Id: YK0wkD5CUkU

Length: 79min 38sec (4778 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2023