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Music Theory for Songwriters: The Fundamentals

via LinkedIn Learning

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Overview

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Professional musician Julian Velard covers the basics of music theory through the lens of songwriting. Explore intervals, chord progressions, voice leading, song forms, and more.

Syllabus

Introduction
  • Music theory fundamentals can help your songwriting
  • What you should know before watching this course
  • Why is music theory important and useful?
1. The Building Blocks of Harmony
  • The octave
  • Seven white notes and five black notes
  • The diatonic scale and the major scale
  • Intervals: Perfect and major
  • Intervals: Minor, augmented, and diminished
  • The concept of key
  • The circle of fourths and fifths
  • Figuring out intervals
2. Triads and Chord Progressions
  • Triads: The basics of chords
  • Triad inversions
  • Chord voicing
  • Common major scale chord progressions
  • Authentic cadences
  • Plagal, half, and deceptive cadences
  • Triads, chord progressions, and cadences in a song
3. Chord Progressions and Voice Leading
  • What is voice leading?
  • Voice leading one note between triads
  • The suspended chord
  • Voice leading two notes and three notes with major triads
  • Voice leading two notes and three notes with minor triads
  • Changing the bass note of a chord
  • Voice leading chord progressions in a song
4. Song Forms
  • The importance of song form
  • Beats, bars, and phrases
  • The elements of song form
  • The intro
  • The verse
  • The chorus
  • The hook
  • The refrain
  • The bridge or middle 8
  • The pre-chorus
  • Familiar pop song forms
  • Verse, chorus, and bridge forms
  • Simple verse form
  • Verse without chorus form
  • AABA 32-bar form
  • Through-composed song forms
  • Looking at a song's form
Conclusion
  • What comes next?

Taught by

Julian Velard

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4.8 rating at LinkedIn Learning based on 583 ratings

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