Music Theory is SIMPLE....(when it's presented like this)

hey guys brian kelly here from zombie guitar here in today's video we're going to talk about something called the tonics chart so this is not a super popular thing and i know this for a fact because number one someone emailed me about this a few months ago and they said hey brian would you mind making a video about the tonics chart i would love to hear your take on it when i got that email i'd never heard of tonitz before i went i looked it up i studied it i learned the practical application of this chart and i was like wow that's really cool how have i never heard of that before i then made a post in the zombie guitar members facebook group last week i said hey guys i'm going to do a video on this tonics chart thing if you guys are interested it's going to be coming out next week which is this week now and a hundred percent of the people that commented on that post had never heard of it before either this leads me to believe that this is not a super popular thing not like the circle of fifths i refer to the circle of fifths in almost every single one of my videos which by the way if you haven't seen my recent video about the circle of fifths which is called the 16 practical applications of the circle of fifths i will post a link to that below i highly advise you to check that out if you are interested in learning about the circle of fifths but anyway that's just a side note in this video we're going to be talking about this tone it's thing number one i'm just going to give you a quick whiteboard presentation just explaining to you why the notes are laid out in the way that they are and that way you can kind of replicate this tone its chart if you ever need to so you need to understand the why and then we're going to talk about the practical application that's going to be the second thing once you know how these notes are laid out and arranged there's just so many practical uses for this chart so um i have some extra room on my arm i have my circle of fits here on my arm who knows maybe one day i'll get a tony's chart on the other side or something i don't know super super useful let's get into it all right so i have a whiteboard opened here and the first thing i want to do is explain to you why the notes are laid out in the way that they are on this tone its chart so the thing to understand is that these this to this tonage chart it goes on for infinity in both the x axis direction and the y-axis direction so technically you could start on any note you want in either direction and it just keeps on going and going and going but we're going to start out with the note g that's what most of the charts that you find online are going to start out with so we're going to start out with the note g so we're going to write that right there so we're going to label some notes in this direction here so we're going to call this the y-axis but you're going to put it on a sort of diagonal line here so the way that it works is these move in major thirds all right so major third above g is b so you put a b right here and now a major third above b is the note d sharp so we put in a d sharp right here now if you don't know what your major thirds are you can use your circle of fifths to help you out let me pull up a circle of fifths here so starting on the note g if you count four in the clockwise direction so starting on g one two three four the note b is a major third above if you then count four again one two three four that's a major third above that's the note e flat e flat is the same note as d sharp talk about all the sharps and flats in this chart momentarily so anyway you're starting on g one two three four b that's a major third above one two three four e flat d sharp that's a major third above one two three four you're back at g again all right so when you're moving in major thirds it's just going to cycle indefinitely all right so now we're going to go in this direction so in music you have sharp notes and you have flat notes so this tonics chart takes into account both the sharp notes and the flat notes so in order to keep this major third sting we're going to have to find an equivalent to the note d sharp right here so right here you're going to put the note e flat all right because you want sharps and flats in this chart so then right here you're going to need an equivalent for the note b but we're going to put it in terms of some sort of a flat note so it's going to be called c flat take the note c one less than the note c is c flat there's really no such thing as a c flat we just call it a b but for the purposes of this chart we're going to call it a c flat and then we're going to do one more i'm running out of space here so that's going to have to be the equivalent of the note g but put into some sort of flat name so the the name for that is going to be a flat flat take the note a one less than the note a is a flat one less than the note a flat is a flat flat otherwise just known as g essentially what we have is g b d sharp g b d sharp but we wanted sharp names down here and we wanted flat names up here and that's why we gave it a flat flat c flat and e flat name so that would be essentially the y axis but it's diagonal it's the up and down axis made diagonal so that's the y-axis now we need to go in this direction so going in this direction you're going to go a fifth above every note so starting on the note g a fifth above the note g is going to be the note d the fifth above the note d is going to be the note a so again if you don't know your fifths you can use the circle of fifths to help you out with that that's how the notes are arranged on the circle of fifths they move around the circle counterclockwise in fifths so let's pull that up again so here you see the note g a fifth above g is the note d a fifth above d is the note a a fifth above a is the note e so it just moves and fits so if you need to use the circle of fifths to help you make this chart you can do so so fifth above a is going to be the note e the fifth above e is going to be the note b and you can just keep going indefinitely for as long as you want you can do the same thing starting on the note b a fifth above b is the note f sharp and again you just keep moving in fifths in this direction but you want to keep in mind that anything on the this lower portion of the chart is going to have sharp names anything on this upper portion of the chart is going to have flat names because you want to take into account that you need both flats and sharps on this tonics chart all right so now it's time for the practical applications of this chart so as you can see here this chart has already been completed i already showed you the g move up a third b move up a third d sharp and then you just do the same thing but in their flat names and then moving in this direction it moves in fifths it moves up fifths so g d a e b starting on b f sharp c sharp g sharp and so on and then all of your sharp notes are down here and all of your flat notes are up here so this would be a completed tone its chart all right so the thing to understand about these notes is that the interval between notes is always going to be the same no matter what the starting point is this is called equal temperament so we have 12 evenly spaced notes in music if you look at a piano you have 12 notes you can call these notes by either their sharp names you can call them by their flat names but it's one semitone apart so each note from one note to the next is one semitone apart that's the chromatic scale the 12 note chromatic scale is just 12 equally spaced notes and that's it that's equal temperament so this just arranges these 12 notes you have your flats you have your sharps now you have this chart let's look for the practical application of this stuff now so let's start out by um making some major chords so major chord is just it's known as a major triad three notes so a c major chord c e g find your note c so here's a c here's an e here's a g so that little downwards triangle like that is going to apply to any note let's say that you want to determine the three notes of an f major triad start on the note f f a c it's a little downward triangle what are the notes of a d major chord started on the note d d f sharp a you see what i mean so all of the it doesn't matter what your starting point is you just do the same little downward triangle and that gives you your major triad what if you want a minor triad let's try that so start on the note c so c e flat g those are the three notes that form a c minor triad what about an f minor triad f a flat c so the minor triads are always going to form this upward triangle on this tonic chart d minor triad d f a so you can use this for parallel minors or parallel majors as well so what does that mean c major c minor that is a parallel major minor pair so c major is a downward triangle c e g the parallel minor in comparison to c major would be a c minor so the downward triangle is c e g the parallel minor is c e flat g so let's try it for another one f major versus f minor f a c is f major f a flat c is f minor this will work for any of them a major a minor a major a c sharp e a minor a c e all right so that gives you your parallel relationship so this also gives you a relative relationship as well you've heard c major has the relative minor of a minor or a minor has the relative major of c major relative major minor pair all that can be determined on this chart as well too so c e g what's the relative minor of c major it's a minor so c e g a c e so your relative relationship is kind of right next to each other like that so let's try another one let's try g major what's the relative minor of g major well you just use the same shape so g major is g b d that's that downward triangle thing and then the triangle in this direction e g b that's e minor so g major e minor that's your relative major minor pair there it works for any relative major minor pair it's always going to be those two triangles what are the notes of the c major 7 chord let's find out so the notes of a c major chord are c e g b alright so you just remember this down up down thing so now you can determine the notes of any major seven chord what are the notes of an f major seven chord f a c e what are the notes of a d major seven chord d f sharp a c sharp it's always going to be the same shape what are the notes of a dominant 7 chord let's figure it out c e g b flat alright so you have the downward triangle but then you keep going up so that's how you determine the notes of a dominant 7 chord let's try to find out an f dominant 7 chord f a c e flat let's try a b flat dominant 7 chord b flat d f a flat see how this is working what are the notes in the c major scale let's figure that out okay so every note c f is part of the c major scale a is part of the c major scale e g b d all right so it looks like if you start on your your starting note of the major scale in question right there you move in that direction and then you just kind of go like this that gives you notes of the major scale in question so the notes of the c major scale are those notes 1 two three four five six seven put them in alphabetical order that's your c major scale so that's going to give your answer for any major scale in question what are the notes of the f major scale okay so there's your note f start there one two three four five six seven put those in alphabetical order there's your f major scale it's going to work for any major scale on any starting point so what are the notes of the a natural minor scale so let's figure that out so you start on the note a so there's a note these are all notes of the a natural minor scale right here all right so i know that if i start on the note a i move in that direction that's one of the notes and then i know if i do this down up down up down up thing that's going to give me my notes of the a natural minor scale put them in alphabetical order starting on the note a a b c d e f g there's your a natural minor scale what are the notes of the d natural minor scale do the same thing there's the note d so start there down up down up down up those are notes of the d natural minor scale it's going to work for any starting point so what about the pentatonic scale notes so what about our a minor pentatonic so the a minor pentatonic scale is a c d e g so we start on the note a a c there's an e there's a g there's a d all right so it looks like if you kind of do this then you have your minor pentatonic scale notes what about major pentatonic scale so the the c major pentatonic scale is going to be the same notes as the a minor pentatonic scale you just start on the note c and then play the same five notes that's your c major pentatonic scale so c there's your a there's your e there's your g there's your d so there's your a minor pentatonic scale notes there's your c major pentatonic scale notes so just memorize that pattern you can easily find your five pentatonic notes for any given starting point point being is that you can stare at this chart and you can just find all types of information from it so you determine the pattern whatever it happens to be whether it's an upward triangle or downward triangle or you know moving in whatever you figure it out for one key or for one chord or for one note or whatever and it's going to work the same way for every other key every other chord every other note the pattern is always going to be the same since all 12 notes in music are equally spaced from one another this chart is just a very convenient way of laying them out all right guys hopefully you could see the usefulness of that chart you know you could do this for anything any scale you could possibly think of any chord you could possibly think of diminished chords augmented chords ninth chords minor ninth chords whatever every single note is created equal the distance between every single note is equal to one another regardless of the starting point the thomas chart goes for infinity in both the x direction and the y direction and that's in a nutshell so hopefully you guys like this one thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 270,223

Keywords: zombie guitar, music theory, pentatonic, diatonic, tonnetz, circle of 5ths, intervals

Id: DhxxcRdA70o

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022