I found this progression in a book. It said it's in the key of C major. I'm not sure about that becuase only C chord in it is C7 and I think that Gm7-C7 part is transposed to F major. I played both C major pentatonic and A minor pentatonic scale on a guitar over the progression and they all sounded good to me, and sometimes I play a few notes and see which one sounds the most stable but it didn't really work this time.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Hey guys! I've just started my first year at the conservatory (I am kind of a late-comer) and I do have solid basis on theory, and I learn fast, but the problem is melodic dictations. I never get them right, and my teacher tells me to do my solfeggio, but I don't know if it will have a great effect and I feel like it's something more elaborate than that. What do you guys do during dictations? Like do you try to remember all of it before writing (for shorter ones)? Please give me tips.

What are the squiggly lines connecting the bass clef and treble clef notes in bars 14,15,16?

Some say that the shortest notes should come first, which is exactly how musecore studio defaults ties

but how does that actually matter to performers?

i do it this way bc im an odc suffering bitch, how is this wrong tho?

I personally don’t think there’s another way to write it but please let me know.

Is a 1/4 metronome track in double time the same thing as a 4/4 metronome without the accent on it?

I've seen people talking about using a 1/4 click in double time OR using a click without the accent on, in order to be able to record odd time signatures over one type of click when producing songs. A lot of people who don't really get time signatures too much tend to do this in the metal community especially (as far as I'm aware).

It made me wonder, aren't they the same thing?

Specifically, when this flatted 7th (A in the key of B), is played as a bass note, it gives a mysterious or secretive feeling to the key. What can be said about this? I like this.

i thought Eb6/C but i’m not sure that’s entirely correct. (please correct me if i’m using any wrong terminology) thx!

I have recently been studying jazz theory, and have been learning about the different additional notes that one can add to the different types of seventh chords. However, I have been wondering if the added notes are relative to the major scale, or to the scale that the key is in.

Let me elaborate: One of the notes that one can add to a major seventh chord is a 6. In C major, for example, the 6th degree is an A. However, in C minor, the 6th degree is an Ab. So, if I were to build a major 7th chord on the first degree in C minor, and wanted to add a 6th, would it be an A, or an Ab?

So, in short, when chord symbols refer to degrees of the scale (e.g, #11, sus4 add9, etc.), do they refer to the degrees of the scale that the piece is in, or do they refer to the degrees relative to the major scale?

This is the place to ask all Chord, Chord progression & Modes questions.

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• I wrote this chord progression; why does it "work"?
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Hey friends

I'm grieving a bit because lots of helpful screenshots,pdfs etc went down when one of my external HDDs broke.

One thing that I couldn't recover from memory nor googling is a chart that shows most note lengths, I think it looked like those note tree charts, and it showed a length like dotted triplet on one extreme and on the other extreme it showed the note length that differed the most from the other one, so it was super insightful because you could see how far off two note lengths are from each other.

That's the best I can put it, I'd give so much if someone could help me find that graph :(

I play over a 4/4 drum beat in Logic Pro, but one repetition of the verse only has three chords. So 4/4 time equally for each chord. So maybe a drummer would emphasize the last hit of the third chord, because then it repeats. But the drum computer thinks that he has to emphasize the fourth chord, so the verse played once and the first chord of the second repetition has been played and it emphasizes the last strum of the first chord. What do I have to change? The whole project is labeled as 4/4.

I’m assuming this means that this note is 1 and 3/4 of a beat long (not counting the tie) (in 4/4 btw)

ive looked online and seen where it goes c to b flat and then c to d flat. im a little confused.

If the c maj scale has no sharps and no flats. It’s all the white keys. What happens when you add a minor to it. Or multiple minors

For example

C D E Fmin G A Bmin Octave

 Is this still in the key of c because it still shares those same notes, but they have turned into a minor. Or does it change the key entirely. Or would they just be considered accidentals 

Another question 

If they are in the same key. Let’s say I was strumming Fmin, over top, like layering in a DAW. Could I pluck just a normal f shape on the fretboard. Or would I have to turn that singular note into a f min? 

Another question

 The e scale E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, D#

So if I where to make song with Eminor instead of just the e scale as the root could I could not play anything inside the normal e scale because it is Eminor???????

Is the e scale the same as the e minor scale? No right? Because the normal e scale is automatically e major

Because ‘D7 inverted on C’ or ‘D7/C’ is CDF#A, see what I’m getting at? Or can u not get more precise than this and name it so anyway?

The first bar (the anacrusis) is a triplet rhythm that has 2 beats right? (The triplet rhythm fits into one quarter note, so two total beats of eighth notes?)

And the last bar has 4 eighth notes, so 4 beats, so shouldn’t the anacrusis have 1 eighth note so the anacrusis and the last bar would be 5 beats total?

I guess my questions is.. in 5/8 time, is a triplet with eighth notes worth two eighth notes or one eighth note?

F
Out in the summer sun
Bb
                  
Am
  She was the only one
Bb
Days go by
Cm
In her eyes
Ab
                
Gm
Belle de jour in front of me
                    
F
No matter where you go
Bb
                        
Am
  There'll always be your shadow
 
[Chorus]
Bb
(La-la-la) Days go by
Cm
(La-la-la) In her eyes
Ab
            
Gm
Once, twice, Melody

the key seems to be C minor but it is not the tonal center

how does this function harmony-wise?

This might be the wrong place to post this but let's give it a shot. I love writing guitar parts to a 3/2 poly rhythm with the driving rhythm following the 3s and the melody falling on the 2s (dotted quarter note?). Because of this, the songs that I write with this rythm I write in 6/8, each 6th of the bar being 2 rounds of the 2/3 polyrhythm. I might be over complicating this but oh well. I wrote a song recently which is in 6/8 at 102bpm. Partway through the song I then change it to be in 4/4 at a swing, each beat of the 4/4 being equal to the dotted quater notes in the previous polyrhythm which equals 4/4 at 136bpm. I did not have an elegant solution to working out the bpm of the 4/4 other than changing the bpm of the 4/4 part in my daw until it lined up to the drum audio files that were already in there. What I want to know is, is there a mathematical conversion or something that can depict the relationship between the 6/8 and 4/4 in a where I can instantly convert between them instead of having to flex in my daw till they match (which isn't particularly elegant or time efficient)

Hi all. I am teaching myself music theory and have a question about sevenths. In the picture I included, doesn't "I7" indicate that it is a dominant seventh? If so, shouldn't the B be flat (a minor 7th above the C)? As written, wouldn't this be a maj7? I'm guessing I am missing something, but figured you all could help me sort this out.

https://preview.redd.it/agns93rnav1e1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72e6c2c0770a2129188ce79d6d8b9f0bbcd3bed7

in major keys, vii° is a diminished chord and bVII is major and a half step below that (in C major: B° vs Bb). In this case the bVII is borrowed from the mixolydian mode (?).

In minor keys, however, I've seen progressions like Bm-G-D-A, which I would write as i-VI-III-VII since the VII is major in minor keys, written as i-VI-III-bVII. Why the b? Wouldn't that imply Bm-G-D-Ab?

I’ve been a (very) casual musician for 15 years now. For most of them, I tried and tried to hear the chord progressions in songs so that I could play them on my guitar, but without much success.

One day, something clicked. I realized that every song that made me feel a certain way had maj7 chords in it. It’s so consistent that any time a new song makes me feel a certain way, I understand that it has that chord structure in it. I used to check myself, but no longer need to.

Since this realization, I’ve realized that I can do the same with many other chord structures, based on how they make me feel. My ability to play what I hear developed rapidly.

Did those of you who hear music and play it on the spot always mean that you could FEEL the chords, not hear them? I feel like I listened with the wrong sense for more than a decade.

I read the related chapter, the author themself is also not explaining the purpose and benefits of this method or I am missing it.

I uploaded the visuals from the p.168-169 from their book Music as Discourse. Here Agawu provides a paradigmatic analysis of the melody God Save the Queen. Graph is on the repetition of the pitches: this is the main aim, the repeated pitches. However, I don't understand the benefit of writing the pitches in an organised manner to show the repetition while disregarding the metrical positions and also (to me) anything else.

Thank you.

Documents:

https://ibb.co/TtcnY4F

https://ibb.co/k4VmJhw

Albeit much less common, modulating to distantly related keys using strictly diatonic triads as pivot chord was definitely a thing in CPP music. I do remember finding a few cases during analysis a few years ago. However when I am sitting here preparing some materials on this topic now, I cannot recall any of their names right away.

Could I get some help from this community? Thanks for your time!

Anyone have examples of songs where the vocal note clashes/is dissonant against one or more notes in the underlying chord?

I sometimes find myself writing songs where the vocal note is a semitone away from one of the notes in chord underneath. For example, singing a C# over a D chord.

I’m fairly certain the same thing happens in “you don’t know how it feels” by Tom Petty. In the chorus when he’s singing the sustained “to be meeeee” right before he goes back into the verse, I think he’s singing a G# over an A major chord.

Would also be super interested in ideas as to why this happens in western music sometimes, and why it “works” from a theory perspective

“Dirge” by Death In Vegas is just a i-V (E major and a minor) progression all the way through. David Bowie’s “We Are the Dead” shifts between keys but it sounds like it moves through an i-V progression sometimes too. Any others? I really love it and been trying to write something with it.

So I've heard a lot of music terms thrown around in my life, but I've never really felt like any real understanding has stuck because my brain just works different . Music is sound, and a sound wave in air can be described by real physical characteristics like Frequency and Amplitude. Can anyone explain all the common musical terms like Note, Key, Chord, Time Signature, Beat, Harmony, Melody, Octave, and any other common terms I would encounter when learning about music in terms of Frequency and Amplitude?

I know this might be a big ask, but I really can't find anything like this anywhere. If you create a robust definition of a note using those terms, and then want to use the word note when describing something like a chord, that's fine.

For example, in science we have just a few basic units with kinda axiomatic definitions, and from there we can build more complex ideas like velocity & acceleration out distance and time, and then we can combine those ideas with the fundamental unit of mass to get even more complex units like force. I’m looking for this kind of foundation for music.