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April 18, 2022 By Aron Bernstein 2 Comments

Weekly Music Challenge: 4/18/22

Show off 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:

Within the context of common practice music, the harmonic minor scale solves one problem but creates another. This week’s challenge is in three parts:

a) What problem does the harmonic minor scale solve?

b) What problem does it create?

c) How is this problem solved?

The red bracket is your clue!

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

ANSWER for 4/18/22

a) Harmonic minor exists for––you guessed it––harmonic purposes. It solves the problem of a natural minor scale, from which you can only build a minor V chord. This makes the authentic cadence, which requires a major V chord, impossible. By raising the seventh note of the natural minor scale, this gives the scale a leading tone, which changes the V chord to a major triad, thus making a true V–I authentic cadence possible.

b) By raising that 7th note to create the harmonic minor scale, we leave a large “gap” between the 6th and 7th notes, an augmented 2nd. To 18th-Century composers and theorists, this interval was just a bit too awkward, too difficult to sing, and (as befitting a rather ethnocentric West-European mentality) too “exotic” for a diatonic scale.

c) To “correct” the problem and smooth out the scale, we add a third type of minor scale: melodic minor. Raise the 6th note a half-step, and we iron out that large augmented 2nd and make the scale easier to sing, with just half-steps and whole-steps to contend with.

Want to Learn More?

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

Filed Under: music theory challenge Tagged With: breakingbarlines, classicalmusic, harmonicminor, harmony, music, musiceducation, musiclessons, musictheory, musicvideo, popmusic, scales

April 4, 2022 By Aron Bernstein 2 Comments

Weekly Music Theory Challenge: 4/4/22

Show off 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:

Below is an excerpt from a famous piece, but something’s been done to it. How has it been altered, and what is the name of the piece?

Listen to Audio

Post your reply and come back Friday, April 8th for the answer!

ANSWER for 4/4/22

Mirror, mirror on the wall. This is the fugue subject of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, but with all its intervals inverted (upside down). Many melodies yield surprising results when shown their reflections! Though Bach didn’t explore the technique of inversion in this particular fugue, there are many others in which he did.

Want to Learn More?

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

Filed Under: music theory challenge Tagged With: breakingbarlines, classicalmusic, music, musiceducation, musiclessons, musictheory, musicvideo, popmusic, variation

March 21, 2022 By Aron Bernstein 7 Comments

Weekly Music Theory Challenge: 3/21/22

Show off 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:

A whole-tone scale is just that: only whole steps, not a half step to be seen. Why does the use of this scale undermine common-practice harmony and tonality?

Post your reply and come back Friday, March 25th for the answer!

ANSWER for 3/7/22

Great comments on this week’s challenge! Common-practice harmony is centered around major-minor tonality. A whole tone scale undermines this because there are no perfect fifths, and so it’s impossible to create major or minor triads with this scale. Only augmented triads can be formed. Also, as Steve, Madison, and Brian said, with no half-steps, there can be nothing resembling tendency tones, the building blocks of common-practice cadences. Patricia and Robert correctly pointed out that there’s no sense of resolution, and that each chord sounds as much like a tonic as any other.

Because of this scale’s intervallic symmetry (based only on the whole step), it has been called a mode of limited transposition by French composer Olivier Messiaen. It can only be transposed once before repeating the same pitches, and so there are only two whole-tone scales. In the late 19th-Century, along with octatonic scales and a renewed interest in the old church modes, the whole tone scale was one of many tools that circumvented, and ultimately undermined, the rules of the common-practice.

Want to Learn More?

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

Filed Under: music theory challenge Tagged With: breakingbarlines, classicalmusic, harmony, music, musiceducation, musiclessons, musictheory, musicvideo, popmusic, scales, wholetonescale

March 7, 2022 By Aron Bernstein 5 Comments

Weekly Music Theory Challenge: 3/7/22

Show off 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:

When approaching a cadence, you’ll very often see a I chord in second inversion (I 6/4). It’s called cadential 6/4, and you can see it below in this excerpt from Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. What harmony does this chord really imply, and why does it function this way?

Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin
Listen to Audio

Post your reply and come back Friday, March 11th for the answer!

ANSWER for 3/7/22

A triad sounds most unstable in second inversion. This is because the bottom interval is a perfect fourth, which is technically treated as a dissonance because of its tendency to resolve down to a major 3rd. So near a cadence, a I 6/4 chord really sounds like a V chord with a couple of suspensions above the bass. The 4th, in particular, wants to resolve down to the 3rd of the V chord. So, near a cadence, a I 6/4 chord is really a delayed dominant, or, put differently, an expansion of the dominant harmony. You can also think of I 6/4 as a dominant that hasn’t put the other shoe in yet!

Want to Learn More?

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

Filed Under: music theory challenge Tagged With: breakingbarlines, classicalmusic, harmony, joplin, music, musiceducation, musiclessons, musictheory, musicvideo, popmusic, ragtime, scottjoplin

February 21, 2022 By Aron Bernstein 4 Comments

Weekly Music Theory Challenge: 2/21/22

Show off 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:

Listen to the audio for the first four bars if this Symphony (if you already know it, shhhhhh……don’t tell anyone until Friday!). Then, explain how we get the violins’ melody from the chain of falling thirds pictured below:

Listen to Audio
Violin Melody
Chain of Thirds

Post your reply and come back Friday, February 25th for the answer!

ANSWER for 2/14/22

This is the opening of the Fourth Symphony in E Minor, Op. 98 by Johannes Brahms. His very economical method of composing was what Arnold Schönberg would later call “developing variation.” Brahms derives the entire first part of this melody from the interval of the third, and twice inverts a falling third into a rising sixth. Another way of looking at it is octave displacement. Either way, Brahms constantly reinterprets these tiny building blocks to generate new ideas. The result is music that organically develops and evolves throughout the movement.

Want to Learn More?

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

Filed Under: music theory challenge Tagged With: #symphony, breakingbarlines, classicalmusic, music, musiceducation, musiclessons, musictheory, musicvideo, orchestra, popmusic

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