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Online Music Theory Lessons: Turn Sound Into Skill

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By Aron Bernstein Leave a Comment

A Farewell to Mary Kogen

There are teachers who genuinely make a difference in your life, and I was proud to have been a student and friend of Portland’s own Mary Kogen. In a career more than five decades long, she taught piano and pedagogy at Eastern Illinois University and spent 26 years on the faculty at Portland State, striving always for the humanity and self-enhancement in music. And as for Breaking Barlines, I can confidently attribute a good deal of my own teaching methods to her influence. I was one of countless music teachers whose lives were touched by Mary’s warmth, unmatched humor, and her commitment to bringing music into people’s lives and souls. Though her time is ended, the light she left belongs to us all, and it will not go out. Thank you, Mary.

To read Mary Kogen’s obituary in OregonLive, please CLICK HERE.

By Aron Bernstein 1 Comment

Weekly Music Challenge: 7/18/22

Test your theory chops with the weekly challenge from Breaking Barlines! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.

This Week’s Challenge:

Sound is a funny thing. Matter doesn’t just vibrate at one fundamental frequency. It also vibrates at a series of fractional frequencies called overtones. In pitched instruments, these are usually much weaker than the fundamental, but in double basses they can be unusually strong, and therefore audible. At left below is an A minor chord orchestrated for strings (all notes are at concert pitch). At right are the overtones generated by the double basses’ low A. What problem does this cause, and how can it be solved?

Post your reply and come back Friday, July 22nd for the answer!

ANSWER for 7/18/22

In this root-position A minor chord, the basses’ 4th overtone introduces an unwanted C sharp, which clashes with the chord’s C natural. Fortunately, the solution is an easy one: simply make sure that at least one other instrument has the correcting pitch. In this example, the first violins will actually do the job, provided they are playing louder than the basses. Their C will be more than adequate to drown out the offending bass overtone. A less ideal voicing would be this, in which the 4th overtone would be audible:

The reality of overtones often directs the choices made by composers. Until the late 18th Century, keyboard composers avoided anything other than octaves in the low bass, and for good reason. Try playing an A minor triad in close position way down at the left end of the piano keyboard, and you’ll get mush! That’s because the low bass strings have audible overtones, and with small intervals like thirds, each pitch’s overtone series will clash with the others:

Mozart and Haydn often wrote only octaves this far down. Beethoven was one of the first keyboard composers to actually prefer the muddy, gritty sound of low-bass triads, and you’ll hear them in works as early as the Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (the Pathètique).

Learn More Here!

With Breaking Barlines, fun music theory is no contradiction in terms! Have a look at the complete Breaking Barlines Course! 44 lessons and counting, each one grounded in the music you want to hear. Then sign up for a monthly subscription for full access to all video lessons, worksheets, and answer keys. New videos are always added, so stay tuned!

By Aron Bernstein 1 Comment

Weekly Music Challenge: 7/11/22

Test your theory chops with the weekly challenge from Breaking Barlines! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.

This Week’s Challenge:

The meter is running! This is one of my favorite gems from my favorite composer. As always, I’ll reveal the source on Friday, so so spoilers please if you already know it! I’ve blacked out the time signature, so that’s your challenge this week. What meter is this in?

Listen to Audio

Post your reply and come back Friday, July 15th for the answer!

ANSWER for 7/11/22

Believe it or not, this week’s challenge was brought to you by Johannes Brahms! This is variation 7 from Book 2 of Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. He chose to give this one two time signatures, 2/4 for the right hand and 3/8 for the left. To further complicate things, each left hand beat is carved into a triplet, making for a nice and simple NINE AGAINST FOUR between the hands! Even worse, Brahms actually starts each left hand triplet on a pickup before the first measure, so all the sixteenth note triplets are displaced backward, with beams crossing the barlines. However, the ultimate effect between the hands is 4 against 3, so it would have been more accurate to make the entire passage in 2/4 and have triplet quarter notes on the left, rather than triplet eighths. But don’t despair: if you’re interested in playing this, The next measures after these turn the right hand eighths into broken octave sixteenths. Who doesn’t need a little 8 AGAINST 9 in their lives? Brahms, you’re killing us.

Learn More Here!

With Breaking Barlines, fun music theory is no contradiction in terms! Have a look at the complete Breaking Barlines Course! 44 lessons and counting, each one grounded in the music you want to hear. Then sign up for a monthly subscription for full access to all video lessons, worksheets, and answer keys. New videos are always added, so stay tuned!

By Aron Bernstein Leave a Comment

Weekly Music Challenge: 6/20/22

Test your theory chops with the weekly challenge from Breaking Barlines! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.

This Week’s Challenge:

Augmented sixth chords make for a slick, chromatic approach to the dominant. The following passage by Friedrich Kuhlau has two of them back-to-back: a German and and Italian sixth. The question is, why not just approach V directly from Germany? Why does Kuhlau make a pit stop in Italy before resolving to the dominant? Hint: on the advice of counsel, I’ll take the fifth!

Kuhlau, Piano Sonatina in A minor, Op. 88, No. 3. Second Movement.
Listen to Audio

Post your reply and come back Friday, June 24th for the answer!

ANSWER for 6/6/22

Here we see Kuhlau deftly invoking (or, rather, removing) the fifth, to avoid getting pulled over by the theory police. The German 6th is the only augmented 6th chord that contains a perfect 5th above the bass, and, as you can see below, it produces the dreaded parallel 5ths if it resolves directly to V. For this reason, the German 6th usually resolves first to cadential 6/4. The Italian 6th, however, doesn’t contain a perfect 5th, so it can resolve directly to V with no voice-leading problems. So Kuhlau starts with a German 6th, then simply plucks out the 5th, instantly changing his passport to Italy and heading home!

Learn More Here!

With Breaking Barlines, fun music theory is no contradiction in terms! Have a look at the complete Breaking Barlines Course! 44 lessons and counting, each one grounded in the music you want to hear. Then sign up for a monthly subscription for full access to all video lessons, worksheets, and answer keys. New videos are always added, so stay tuned!

By Aron Bernstein 3 Comments

Weekly Music Challenge: 6/13/22

Test your theory chops with my weekly challenge! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.

This Week’s Challenge:

We’re playing it by ear this time! Here’s an excerpt from a piano sonata by Franz Schubert. I’ll tell you which one on Friday…no spoilers if you already know it! Listen to the audio and see if you can tell what time signature this passage is in. Hint: the actual beat unit value is less important than what kind of meter this is!

Audio–Franz Schubert

Post your reply and come back Friday, June 17th for the answer!

ANSWER for 6/6/22

This is the trio from the third movement of Schubert’s great Bb Major Piano Sonata, D. 960. The time signature is actually just a simple 3/4, but because the odd-numbered measures have a syncopation on the third beat, we have the effect of a hemiola. Two measures of 3/4 sound like a single measure of 3/2.

Learn More Here!

With Breaking Barlines you learn music theory the right way: fun, encouraging video lessons grounded in real music! Have a look at the complete Breaking Barlines Course! Then sign up for a monthly subscription for full access to all lessons, worksheets, and answer keys. New lessons are always added, so stay tuned!