Hey Friend,
Are you ready to start learning one of the most important concepts in music?
I’m talking huge - a major epiphany?
This one concept will unlock not only your understanding of notes and melody, but it will clear up questions about harmonies and chord structures. It will also help you understand rhythm.
And once you latch on to this idea, you’ll also know what you can do to break away from musical constructs and create something completely new and original if you decide to.
Mastering The Puzzle
Have you ever done a puzzle? Sure you have.
Puzzles are fun because they’re a challenge to put together. All the pieces are different, but shaped pretty much the same. Each piece only shows a tiny part of the finished picture.
Getting started is tough, but once sections of the puzzle start coming together, it’s not long before you build momentum and can finally have the satisfaction of placing the last piece.
A song is like a finished puzzle. You start with a bunch of different pieces and figure out how to put them together to create a cohesive sound.
The pieces are all similar, but different enough that they have to fit together in a particular way. Try to put two pieces together that don’t quite fit and you’ll instantly know it.
So how do you know that the musical pieces fit?
You know because they sound right together.
Like puzzle pieces, if two pieces don’t have the matching pattern, they won’t fit together.
The same goes for notes.
Melody, harmony and rhythm follow established patterns.
Like I talked about yesterday, the primary building blocks for musical understanding and creation are patterns. If you learn the basic patterns that music is built upon, music starts to make sense.
It’s no longer just a pleasant distraction, like Alice’s White Rabbit. Once you start understanding how music is formed, you can’t help but follow down the rabbit hole.
You’re compelled to learn more.
Building Blocks
I showed you the first two patterns yesterday - the half-step (semitone) and whole step (tone).
These are the first two intervals, or spaces between two notes. When you start stringing together two or more intervals, you start building melodies.
A scale is a simple melody.
String twelve ascending or descending half-step pitches (notes) together, and you have what is known as the Chromatic scale.
If you string together a specific pattern of half-steps and whole steps together, you get a Major scale.
Tomorrow, I’ll lay out the specific pattern for the major scale.
Peace~
Dave
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