How do we learn piano scales efficiently? Everyone knows they are essential. They represent the vocabulary that we need to tell our story. Can we add some fun in the mix though? Does it have to be boring? Will it take me a long time? I won’t lie. Attempts to make learning scales more fun […]

A lot of what was discussed in the article about Major Scale Chord Functions is also true for the Minor Scale Chord Functions and functional harmony in general. One of the big differences in the natural minor scale aka the Aeolian mode is that the seventh degree is a minor seventh. It is a whole […]

When we want to talk about the functions of chords and functional harmony, there are some things that we need to understand first. Chord functions and in this particular case diatonic functions are a theoretical way to understand why things move or flow in a particular way in music. It gives us some ways to […]

When we learn about Diatonic Modes, or as some call them, the church modes, we are told that those modes are scales on a degree of a major key. While this is true, it doesn’t actually give us a clue on how to use them or why it is even important to know about them. […]

Hey everyone, I think you will find this article very exciting. The goal of this post is to take the bland and basic chords of a song and to turn them into super nice voicings and variations. It will take your songs from sounding good to sounding absolutely fantastic and professional. To get your songs […]

When we study a new song for the first time, it is useful to know its anatomy. How is it built up? What are the tonalities that are used? How does it transition from one tonality into the next? What are the scales I can use in a solo? To answer those questions we need […]

In this post, you will get acquainted with everything you need to know about key signatures. That is useful when you need to know which notes to play in any given key and for both major and minor scales. You may be wondering what a key signature is? You can hover with your mouse over […]

Chord formulas can help you not only to play chords in any key, but they can also help you to understand chords on a different level. We can create formulas in a few ways: the diatonic formulas and the chromatic formulas. The big difference between those is: With diatonic formulas, you will know the mode […]

In this article, I will show you how to use chord inversions to transition chords smoothly within the song you are playing. This is to make sure that your hands don’t need to travel all the way to another segment on your keyboard just to play the next chord in your progression. We have all […]

In this post about the music theory of intervals, we will learn: what an interval is the 12 most important intervals how to recognise them by ear According to Wikipedia, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. In musical theory, an interval is a distance between two notes and is best expressed […]