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Online Music Theory Lessons: Turn Sound Into Skill

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By Aron Bernstein Leave a Comment

Weekly Music Challenge: 5/23/22

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:

In counterpoint, describe the difference between the double neighbor and the cambiata.

Post your reply and come back Friday, May 27th for the answer!

ANSWER for 5/23/22

The double neighbor and cambiata are closely related as non-harmonic tones. They both involve two neighbor tones and skip away from a dissonance. But a double neighbor returns to the chord tone it started on, while the cambiata does not. Watch the video clip at right:

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!

By Aron Bernstein 2 Comments

Weekly Music Challenge: 5/9/22

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:

The late 19th-Century saw the rise of musical nationalism in Europe. Composers in Bohemia, Hungary, Russia, and, to some extent, in France wanted to liberate themselves from common-practice styles and rules, which were largely of German and Italian origins. So Smetana and Dvorak, Glinka and the Mighty Five, and later Bartók and Debussy set about using resources that predated major-minor tonality–the cornerstone of the common practice. They often reached back into their own folk music, which relied heavily on the old church modes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian.

So here’s the challenge: how do these modes help to undermine common-practice tonality? There doesn’t have to be one correct answer!

Post your reply and come back Friday, May 13th for my take on it!

ANSWER for 5/9/22

While renewed interest in modes wasn’t the only factor in the dissolution of common-practice tonality, it certainly helped. For me, the best example is Mixolydian, identical to a major scale except for the lowered seventh degree. This makes for a minor dominant triad, with which a typical authentic cadence is not possible. Other modes generate similar harmonic colors that, while beautiful and compelling, destabilize the primacy of the V-I relationship. Moreover, the growing reliance on color to carry a piece (rather than harmony, melody, or rhythm) became yet another rival to established common-practice rules. The purpose of tonal harmony is movement: tension and resolution driving the music toward a goal. With the lush, often modal soundscapes of Debussy, harmony has a very different function: immersion.

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!

By Aron Bernstein Leave a Comment

Impressions from Lewis and Clark College

This Monday I gave my music theory students their final exam. It was at that lovely, indulgent hour of 8:30 in the morning, because what would a stressed-out, existentially broken college student rather be doing at that time (besides just about anything else)? I’ve been teaching Music Theory Fundamentals at Lewis and Clark College since January. It’s been a privilege getting to know each of my students, and in the process I’ve vicariously relived the grind of academic life, the back-against-the-wall fight that’s your reward for educating yourself. I remember it well. Nearly a decade ago, I went for my masters program at Western Oregon University (while I was living in Portland, I might add). I worked four separate teaching jobs while commuting four days a week to a campus that was 65 miles from my home. I look back today and I still don’t quite recall how I made it through, let alone how many of my brain cells didn’t become microwaved popcorn. So was it worth it?

The truth is, yes. If you know what you want out of it, and you enjoy learning, it’s absolutely worth it. I reinvigorated myself as a composer, wrote the best and most ambitious music of my life, fell in love with Medieval and Renaissance music (eras I had always steered around), and got myself a masters degree. I see it now as a bubble of time and ambition that’s entirely mine, and it’s a good feeling. So what’s next for me, a doctorate? If you hear me laughing, those are just the brain cells I still have left.

I really do hope I’ve made a difference for those students at Lewis and Clark. It occurs to me that they’re about the same age I was when I first got involved in music, and it was not the easiest time for me. Crossing that threshold into your twenties, not sure what you want to do with your life–it can be a scary time. I was fortunate to have teachers who seemed to come into my life exactly when I needed guidance, and I only hope I’ve given some of that back this spring. I’m grateful to my students this term, every one of them as much a teacher as I was.

By Aron Bernstein 2 Comments

Weekly Music Challenge: 5/2/22

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:

In this excerpt from Jules Massenet’s Vieille Chanson, what is the name of the non-harmonic tones at the red arrows?

Vieille Chanson, Op. 10, No. 7 by Jules Massenet
Listen to Audio

Post your reply and come back Friday, May 6th for the answer!

ANSWER for 5/2/22

These are escape tones, also known as the échappée. They’re neighbor tones that do not return to the starting chord tone, but rather skip in the opposite direction to a new chord tone. For this reason they can also be thought of as a type of incomplete neighbor, leaping from a dissonance to a different chord tone from the one we started on. In this sense they’re the opposite of appoggiaturas, which leap to a dissonance.

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!

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!