The Music Theory You Actually Need

[00:00:00]You have a melody stuck in [music] your head right now. You've had it for years.

[00:00:04]You can ham it. You can feel it. Mine.

[00:00:10]Here's the thing. You want to be able to do what I just did [music] as fast as I just did. But every time you head onto your keyboard or your DAW, [music] it's the same old story. Your hands go somewhere else. The thing you had just dies on the piano roll. You just kept clicking because you know you cannot directly play what you heard on the keyboard. And so every session is just a guess game. Now listen carefully.

[00:00:34][music] That gap has a name. It's called the sound debt. Every piece of music you've heard [music] but cannot play.

[00:00:42]There's a solution. You need music theory. But you don't need music theory as much as you think [music] you do. So I'm going to do two things in this video. I'm going to give you the slice of music [music] theory you actually need. And I'm going to show you why theory alone would never close this gap and what actually does. Now, think of music theory as a huge pie. You need almost none of it. After teaching dozens of students how to play the piano by ear, I'm going to show you the exact slice that [music] matters. The rest is noise. Trust me. Now, take notes if you want and open your DAW or sit by [music] your keyboard next to this video and let's play. First of all, this is the keyboard or the piano and it's made up of white and black notes. White and black. And it is 12 notes that repeat themselves. [music] Let me explain.

[00:01:36]That is 12 notes. And it's the same thing here. It's the same thing here. Is the same thing here. It's the same thing here. And that's the same thing that is on your D AW on the piano room. Now if I rotate it like this, you see exactly. Now let's find the [music] key of C. And that is the easiest key to play in. And the way we do that is observe on the keyboard the black keys are broken down into twos and threes. Twos and threes. Twos and threes. Good. Now anytime you see two black keys grouped together, the first key before the first black key is the key of C. Yes. Now two black keys. C.

[00:02:19]Now two black keys. C.

[00:02:22]Perfect. Now this physical object is called the key. And the sound it produces is called a note. So this is the key of C. If I play it, that's the note of C. On to the next stage. Now the next thing is the whole step half step.

[00:02:37]You've heard that before. Or tone and semmit tone. Now let me explain. This is a note. And if I move from this note to the nearest note here that is a semmit tone. But now if I move two semmit tones I get a two. So this is a semmit tone. Another semmit tone that is a to. So that is a tone.

[00:03:09]That is a semmit tone. So now let's name the notes on the keyboard. We name the notes in alphabet. So from A all the way to G. We end at G. We don't have H. So if I'm to begin from C, it's going to be C D E F G A B C. Right? So when I ended at G, I started all over again. C D E F G A B C. Now when I go to C, the nearest note in front is called a sharp. Think of it like sharp. Go for it. Sharp. And then the notes behind is a flat. So if I take the key of C like this and I move a semmit tone up that is C sharp. And that is how we got the name C# sharp. If I'm a D and I go a semmit tone behind that is D flat or C sharp. Now if I'm on D and I move a semmit tone in front that is D sharp or E flat. You get the idea. So if I play the key of F like this and I move a semmit tone in front like that that is F sharp.

[00:04:34]So always think of sharp as sharp forward and flat as I'm flattening you flatten you backwards come back. Get it?

[00:04:44]Now let's go on to the next step. Like I said this is a note.

[00:04:49]If I play one note after the other sequentially, that's what we call a melody.

[00:04:57]Now, to make a melody cohesive or sound together, we pull it out of something that we call a scale. And the most common scale out there is the major scale. You've heard it before.

[00:05:17]Very common, right? Exactly. Now, there's another scale called the minor scale. These are the two skills that you should know of. Right.

[00:05:29]Exactly. Here's what I want you to do.

[00:05:31]When you're creating music is feeling first before all that theory. So, let's go back to the major scale. It gives us the happy vibe. Listen.

[00:05:46]You feel elated.

[00:05:48]That's what the major scale does. And this is the formula for playing the major scale. Take note of it. Now to the minor scale. Observe the feeling it gives you.

[00:06:08]See that dark gloomy sound? And here's a formula for finding the minor scale.

[00:06:15]Take note of that too. But here's what they don't tell you. When you are playing these scales or you don't just play them, feel them, sing them. Because being able to tell the difference between a major scale and a minor scale means that you are growing. means that that sound depth being able to hear and play what you've always had in your mind will now begin to actualize. Major scales feel bright and minor scales feel dark. Always remember that. Let's move on to chords.

[00:06:45]Chords are just a group of notes played together at the same time. Take a look at this.

[00:06:52]That is a chord. And in the chords, we have two main basic types. We have the major chord and we have the minor chord.

[00:07:01]Listen carefully. This major chord helps you feel happy.

[00:07:07]It's kind of like ah everything is just bright. But minor chord is dark and gloomy.

[00:07:15]Do you feel it? The most important thing I want you to do is not just to be learning the theory is to be feeling the sound because you feel before you are able to understand. Take note of that.

[00:07:27]Now with the major scale, if we're in the key of C, the key of C has only white keys like I played.

[00:07:39]So what you do here is that you put your hand on the key of C and you leave one space and you leave one space. That's it. That is the major chord.

[00:07:52]Good. And the minor chord, this is how it works. Listen to the feeling before you watch my hands.

[00:08:02]Stark, it's gloomy.

[00:08:08]Yeah. And this is the kind of chords you're going to be using in a lot of hip-hop, a lot of trap, a lot of afro beats. And the pop have a lot more major inside and even Latino songs, right? The Exactly. That is major. We're going to come back to what I just did. So, here's the formula for finding the major chord on any part of the keyboard that you put your hands on. Let's put our hands on C.

[00:08:45]Here's what we do. The formula is 43.

[00:08:49]And let me explain. You count four semmit tones. You remember what I said about semmit tones, right? So these are hands. Four semmit tones. 1 2 3 4. And then we count three semmit tones. 1 2 3.

[00:09:06]That's the major chord. Now for a minor chord, put my hands anywhere the same place. This time it's 3 4. You count three semmit tones, then you count four semmit tones. Let's go.

[00:09:22]3 1 2 3 and 1 2 3 4 That's it. [music] Exactly.

[00:09:33]You feel it? Now that we know what chords are, we now have to move on to what we call chord progressions. That means that we are progressing from one chord to another. And this is how we do it. Let's put our hands on C. We know the major chord right now. It's like this. The easiest way to play the C.

[00:09:52]Imagine that we're playing doi solid in chords. Now we play the C, but this time we're going to keep the same hands like that. [music] And then we're just going to go up the scale.

[00:10:12]And instead of doing, we're going to change it into numbers.

[00:10:18]So, it's going to be 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 back to the one because this is a C. Now, let's just play it this time. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1.

[00:10:36]We've come [music] back to the one exactly. Now, this is what we call the chord progression. I just progress from one chord to another. So imagine I progress from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 back to the 1. And the way we label chord progressions is in Roman numerals like this. Right? So if somebody tells you that you he wants you to play the 1 145, it just simply means play the one 1 2 3 4. Play the four 1 five. Play the five and back. It's the one.

[00:11:14]That's it. So that's all. That's basically it. Here's the thing most producers don't know about. Do you know how you can use melodies in your head to find different types of harmonies of the same melody?

[00:11:35]Let me explain what I mean. Take a look at this song. You know it.

[00:11:39][music] You look that much. You should go and lock yourself up the whole thing.

[00:11:48][music] Let me use a different harmony.

[00:12:03][music] >> [music] >> Do you see? Exactly. And that's one of the most powerful advantages you can have as a producer. And here's how it works. Now, think of every key as a country, right? This is the key of C.

[00:12:30]It's a country of USA. That means that if I find one American, that American can show me other Americans, right?

[00:12:39]This is another American. This another American, this an American. You see? So once I just find one note, I can [music] use that note, which is a melody, to find other notes that can harmonize together. And take a look at this. Now, this note, which is an American, likes tacos.

[00:13:01]Good. But now this note is from Canada, but he also likes tacos.

[00:13:09]That means they can harmonize together.

[00:13:12]And this note also likes tacos.

[00:13:17]See, we've created a different harmony from the same note. Now, let's take another note. This note here, he likes swimming.

[00:13:30]This note like swimming. This note too like swimming. This note too like swimming.

[00:13:41]You see? Exactly. Once you're able to open your mind to these possibilities, your creativity just expands. And after that, that's where advanced chords begin to come inside.

[00:13:56]And that's all you need to know about music theory. [music] You just learned notes, scales, and chords. If theory was the only answer, you already be playing the melodies in your head fast enough. Because melody in your head is a sound. Theory gives you the map. It does not give you the ears.

[00:14:17]The producers who play what they hear built one thing first, the link between the notes they hear and the finger that plays it. And they also understand relative pitch.

[00:14:30]da the relationship between the notes and the chords and that is not knowledge it's string. So yes, I'm going to play a major scale right now and all you need to do is tell me what the soul would sound like. Watch.

[00:14:46][music] Have you logged that in? Now what would the soul sound like?

[00:14:58]If it took you a while, that is the gap.

[00:15:01]It's a hearing gap and it's trainable the same way you train yourself to know the wrong notes in someone else's beat.

[00:15:08]Imagine how much time you could save if you are that fast. If this clicked [music] and you want to actually close the sound depth instead of learning more theory, you know where to [music] find me. I work with a small number of producers at the time. [music] We find the melody that you've been carrying for years and we train you how to play them, understand how to create them for yourself. If that's you, the link is in the description.

[00:15:41]Until then, be creative.