Chords Aren't Phone Numbers
Cords and scales are a mystery because you're trying to memorize them like phone numbers.
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A Little Gospel Under Your Fingers
Here is a little gift because if you can play this you’ve got a little gospel under your fingers and that means you’re playing with inversions and diminished chords and if that’s new to you that’s going to open some doors.
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What's New: three lessons in jazz harmony
This little moment holds a key to at least three important intermediate concepts in jazz harmony.
Form: First Lessons
The biggest music theory hack has nothing to do with reading music or memorizing chord names. It starts with seeing the pattern.
Having a Key Center
Having a key center means holding a note in your mind even once you stop playing it.
Learn This Chord Progression: Wrong Answers Only
A useful chord progression that compares a common tone diminished with a dominant chord. What do you call that chord?
Two Similar Chord Progressions
A descending baseline over a minor chord appears in thousands of songs. But that little wrinkle at the end means you can't use a single scale.
Bread and Butter: 6/3 Church Chord
Another useful chord progression to put under your fingers — a common keyboard trope built on the 6/3 church resolution.
Phase on a Cylinder
Avoid misunderstanding phase by asking yourself: could a waveform exist across a cylinder? Where polarity and phase differ, it matters.
Recall Stitch
How do you manage recall?
Chord Thinking over Key Thinking
I favor chord thinking over key thinking, and here’s what I mean.
Borrowed Chord
What is a borrowed chord?
Compression: frequency or level
Does a compressor operate on level or frequency?
