Music Theory

The next time someone asks you if you know all of your scales, ask them if they know the Hungarian minor or the double harmonic.

Don’t underestimate the power of these three chords, 1, 5, and 4, to paint an evocative landscape.

This chord progression is so useful, it basically has a name.

The seventh is the top note of your chord before it reaches the octave.

Diffusion and density.

The most slept on waveform in audio.

Here’s a cool little trick you can do that’ll help you with your ear and with your DAW skills at the same time.

Yesterday, in Keyboard Skills Elective, we did this.

This is a really useful chord progression to put on your fingers.

This is a tetrachord.

Most scales are created by taking the one you already know and starting on a different note.

(beep) - What’s happening here might not be exactly what you think.

There are vocalists out there that will never ever give you a good performance in headphones, but even seasoned vocalists sometimes have a hard time matching the vibe and the performance of a relaxed studio environment with the monitors on.

Here are 10 chords for you to chew on, centered around the key of C until you’re ready to join a beat kitchen class.

How tetrachords combine to form every mode and scale. Interval patterns, visual breakdowns, and practical applications.

Sometimes stereo is like an added byproduct of what you get when you use multiple microphones.

They say monsters aren’t real, but I’m not so sure.

Let’s do away with the notion that all major chords are bright and happy and all minor chords are dark and sad.

Not every A minor chord looks like an A minor.

All right, you want a tip find two quick ways to find stuff in logic.

This might be the easiest complicated chord progression you’ll ever learn.

Don’t assume that just because you start off in a minor key, that you have to end up in one.

This is a chord progression you might hear on a Sunday.

Here’s a C suspended chord, but let’s see if we can’t get you playing some hipper ones, like a D minor over a C or a D minor 7 over a C.

One of the things that’s foundational about blues harmony is that you’ll often hear a major chord swapped out for a minor one.

If you’re looking for a simple chord, one that sounds expensive, one that you’ll keep coming back to, look no further than this one.

Meet the Amen chord, the plagal cadence.

Here are two variations on one chord progression.

As your understanding of music deepens, one of the things that’s going to come into focus is the distinction between structure and function.

Here are some thoughts on the thing you might know of as the Hendrix chord.

This is a suspended chord and its third has been replaced with a fourth.

Now you think you know what this video is about, but I don’t think you do.

How many musical keys are there?

The Neapolitan 6th, it’s the first inversion of a b2 chord and it usually resolves to the 5 and then back to the 1, generally minor.

There’s a reasonable chance that the first minor chord you ever learned was an A minor.

There are four tetrachords, which are just four note mini scales that span a fourth.

I’ve got a broad definition of the term beat and beat making, but our students get a lot of theory.

If you don’t read music, you deserve to know you can understand and talk about music theory without knowing how to read.

If you don’t have a second engineer to work as your tape up, to start and stop the transport, and most importantly to slate the takes and document all the best ones, then finding the take that you loved can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Here’s a follow-up to the phase inversion trick I shared with you the other day to get you untethered from your headphones It works on a similar principle, but it’s a little different in this scenario.

Every diminished chord resolves to nine different places. Walk through all nine — the first eight follow a simple pattern.

What do you do with a diminished chord?

Check out this chord, I’m totally obsessed with it.

This cable goes one way.

So why can’t you use a guitar tuner on a piano?

I would argue that sampling has changed our modern conception of harmony and here’s why.

Is there a difference between a Bb and an A#?

I’m a guy who loves to get my hands dirty.

One simple way to approach a V chord when you’re looking at a 2-5-1 progression is to think of it like a suspended chord.

Major, minor, or diminished.

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.

If you want to put some friction in your chord, let’s have an easy chat about chord extensions.

If you’re just getting chords under your fingers, this is going to be the easiest complicated chord progression you’ve ever learned.

Let’s stop treating music theory like it’s a noun.

(playing bluesy music) Playing the blues in D, by a harmonica in G.

Let’s take a look at this descending chromatic line and ask ourselves what it has to do with the key of C.

The goal of the upcoming musician basics elective is to get you to recognize that you can stack a bunch of notes together and create a chord.

Producer, professional, beatmaker.

Learning music theory isn’t like learning a new language.

If you ever played a pretty chord progression in a minor key and then just switched to a major at the end, you probably just played a pickerty third.

It’s time I showed you how to wrap a cable.

Last night, I lay awake thinking about scales and modes so you don’t have to.

Here I am at the beach.

Let me simplify chords for you a little bit by telling you that on the piano there are only four augmented chords.

Today I’m gonna tune this monster.

The mighty mighty tritone Let’s get this out of the way in the middle ages It was called the devil’s interval which is kind of fun because it sounded dissonant to them So they discouraged it along with a lot of other stuff that turned out to be really awesome It’s called a tritone because it’s made of one two three whole steps put another way That’s six half steps out of a total of twelve.

If this is a fifth, what’s so perfect about it anyway?

Should I care about poly chords?

Paul McCartney's Blackbird is a masterclass in voice leading. The chord name doesn't matter — what matters is the function.

please, for the love of God, stop using decimals to rationalize intervals.

Cords and scales are a mystery because you're trying to memorize them like phone numbers.

This little moment holds a key to at least three important intermediate concepts in jazz harmony.

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 means holding a note in your mind even once you stop playing it.

A useful chord progression that compares a common tone diminished with a dominant chord. What do you call that chord?

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.

Another useful chord progression to put under your fingers — a common keyboard trope built on the 6/3 church resolution.

What is a borrowed chord?

An ear training exercise: identify the note that never changes and name the chord at the end — by structure or by function.

The most valuable piano voicing you can learn — a 6/4 inversion straight out of Miles Davis that exerts maximum force for minimum energy.

We see both experienced and beginner producers at Bee Kitchen.

I can’t believe I’m saying this.

John Carpenter's Halloween theme — 70% of you identified it as minor. But there's no third in the structure. Music theory isn't about a right or wrong answer.

Apparently, I have a lot to say about this chord progression.

If you ever notice that six steps up the scale this is a major sixth but if we invert it this becomes part of a minor chord.

When you’re arranging you have to think a lot like a mix engineer because every instrument is going to speak differently in every register So the chord that sounds great here May not sound great down here But this note sounds fabulous so we restructure the core And oftentimes when we’re looking at chords like this we’re trying to find the spot where the instrument growls without becoming overly dark *Music* *Music* *Music*

This may be one of the most useful chord progressions you can learn, and it’s deceptively easy, because if you can do this, then you can do this, and even this.

Getting comfortable with keyboard chords means getting comfortable with inversions.

Here’s another chord progression you should put under your fingers.

This is the simplest of riffs, but if you put it under your fingers on a little teeny tiny keyboard, it will be more useful than you can possibly imagine.

You’ll get unexpected mileage out of this suspended chord shape.

Writers. Music is also about narrative. And if you’re curious about how those two things intersect, so are we. Beat Kitchen is opening our doors to you. Three new products,…

This may sound boring, but this sounds a lot more exciting.

Stuff that confuses new producers.

A compressor reduces the level of a track, but one of the places people get confused is in understanding where it reduces that level.

When you’re playing on all white keys and you skip a note, you’re playing a third.

This is me watching everyone run around with their pants on fire because their plugin company went to a subscription model knowing full well you can do almost anything you want to with your stock plugins.

We say that when you hear a sound you’re hearing vibrations, but what does that mean?

Hey gang, look how far we’ve come.

Today’s Wednesday morning music theory workout had a few teachable moments, but this one was a surprise.

When you start out, you don’t know a lot.

Let’s look at some expensive sounding chords.

It’s time to hit the gym, but not this gym.

Sometimes the naming conventions in music theory almost seem cruel.

If you’re unfamiliar with the keyboard, this is about to be the best and the worst lesson you’ll ever get.

If you go to school to be an audio engineer, you’re gonna hear an awful lot about frequency.

Music always comes first, but music theory exists whether you believe in it or not.

A suspended chord is a bit of a chameleon.

The easiest way to start understanding chord inversions is to think of it like a cake with three ingredients.

Do you ever get confused about major or minor chords?

If you’re starting to make your own music, there will come a time when you find yourself scratching your head looking at a bunch of notes and asking what chord is this?

We think of scales as being linear, but a scale exists within the boundary of an octave, at which point it just repeats.

No matter what your beliefs, the way the universe sometimes lines up is so mind-bogglingly inspiring.

Real piano. Sample piano. Oh boy. Gone are the days when piano in a can sounded like this. There are lots of great options these days and if you’re expecting…

If you’re starting to make your own music, there will come a time when you find yourself scratching your head looking at a bunch of notes and asking what chord is this?

Here’s some good news.

By the way, did you know that logic has a key command to select the highest or lowest MIDI note?

You’re here to learn about music theory and you’re waiting for me to use words like Locrian and Neapolitan 6th And I’ve …

This Bb has an F in it.

Coming up with a good chord progression can be challenging, but it doesn’t really have to be.

Even in the blues, dominant chords tend to function like five chords.

I’ve discovered a new chord!

Three steps to identifying a chord.

I don’t know you, but your room is really bad for mixing, and I can say that because pretty much every room is really bad for mixing.

Did you notice I’ve posted every day for the last 150 days?

If you’re thinking about and grappling with scales, I would encourage you instead to think about targets.

Under normal use, I tell my students they want to tickle the meter on the compressor.

Sometimes I get asked if you can play notes that are outside of the scale.

If you know someone who’s making cool beats but they’re still adjusting stuff by ear, getting things sounding good without entirely understanding what those settings are doing, their success relies as much on luck as it does on skill.

I had the most delightful realization today, which is this.

It was the great Greek physicist Archimedes who said, "Give me a lever long enough and I’ll break your keytar." In my experience, a cable like this is pretty much guaranteed to break a jack like that, which is why in the time of the pyramids, they invented cables like this.

Music has rules, but the thing is, you get to write them yourself.

Co-prime sequences are a backbone for evolving variations in pattern-based music.

This might just be one of the most versatile structures in harmony.

The topics in this 10-minute video include the harmonic series and the physical nature of sound.

With or without an audio degree, you wouldn’t be the first musician to come to me, never having been told what key tracking is and what it’s for.

These two passages are indeed different and then stumped my ear training group in gym.

I’m gonna try and explain something in 60 seconds that’s taken me about 50 years to understand.

This old relic, this is your grandma’s motorized fader.

You know, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.

Michael Jackson’s Rock with You.

These voicings for fast car feature a natural third as well as a suspended fourth in the same chord.

When you play most chords, what you’re getting is a blend.

I’m probably not like you.

We had a lot of fun in Music Theory Gym today.

Do someone the great kindness of putting this little riff under their fingers.

Those of you who subscribe to this myth that somehow learning music theory is going to ruin you as an intuitive musician are buying into a false narrative.

After attempting loads of mouthcam videos, it was suggested to me that Jacob Collier is shooting keyboard videos wearing a hoodie turned around with the camera in the hood.

So basically the way our classes work, we try and get you in and out of a DAW class as soon as humanly possible because we want to get to the fun stuff, the interesting stuff.

The relationship between cents and hertz — how to convert between them and why pitch works logarithmically.

We made this in the beat building jam today.

As a lot of music theory conversations break down, when I realize someone’s asking, "What is this chord for?" Chords aren’t for anything.

This clock is accurate twice a day.

Like borders between nations, the borders between notes are arbitrary.

Learn essential chord progressions: A minor, E7, and B half diminished. Master the flat nine color tone and efficient chord transitions using minimal finger movement for better harmony.

In music, voice leading is the judo in which we can achieve meaningful harmonic twists and powerful turns while exerting the absolute least amount of energy.

Playing a chord, it’s easy.

Tetrachords show up in music theory at various times. Most commonly, we see them along the first half of a diatonic …

How many chords do you know?

Today I got diagnosed with something called "dupertrans disease".

Learn the difference between sharps and flats in music theory. Understand how accidentals work, key signatures, and why A# and Bb are functionally different in musical context.

I’m about to make another music theory reel to talk about my class that starts on Monday, but I wanted to address something that keeps coming up in classes and workshops.

After teaching countless people how to use programs like Logic and Ableton, I’ve decided to give up.

Music theory starts with your ear and learning the names for stuff doesn’t really matter if you’re not hearing with specificity I can help you learn the names for things and I would love to but you can train your ear for free by yourself I’ve been giving you about three chordals a week for like a year But you don’t actually need me you can do it in front of your own instrument.

Quick music theory tip: Why you can omit the fifth from chords. Understanding the harmonic series and how it affects chord voicing in music production.

With the holidays upon us, you may not see us as much over the next few days, but don’t worry, we’re gonna be back in the new year with new content, new instructors, and in case I don’t see you, I wanna leave you with this thought.

You will hear this referred to as an Arabic scale, but I prefer the term "double harmonic." Arabic scale is ambiguous and there are a few of them.

In the most basic sense, a chord inversion is a way of reorganizing the notes of a chord.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m incapable of passing up an instrument at a garage sale.

So here’s the riff. What we’re seeing here is this shape, which is a weird chord because it’s kind of like an A, like a 2, but I’m playing this…

Chord ID part 2. With the chord in its root position, most chords are going to sit solidly within these two pillars of a perfect fifth. This is a very…

A harmonica is an instrument that plays two chords, which makes it a perfect illustration of the plagal and the perfect cadence that I demonstrated earlier.

Learning music theory isn’t like learning a new language.

Hey, Producers! You need to know a little music theory. I’m going to be hosting a free Zoom workshop on the intersection of harmony and acoustics. It’s specifically for producers…

I’m Nathan and I’m the founder of Beat Kitchen and I really hope you’ve enjoyed this little piece on music theory.

Today is part three in our series on identifying chords and we’re looking at the edge cases.

Three steps to identifying a chord.

Chord ID part 2. With the chord in its root position, most chords are going to sit solidly within these two pillars of a perfect fifth. This is a very…

The breaking point between right and correct in music theory — why double flats exist and what they tell us about context.

What’s your first upgrade or purchase once you’ve set up the bare bones minimum for your studio?