I laughed when I just wrote the title of this blog post because it reminds me of a few axioms that I live by. You have heard me say them before but indulge me: Those that know the least know it the loudest. Those that know all the answers don’t know all the questions. And […]
Tag Archives: theory
NOTE: The theory prep course discussed in this interview is no longer available. In my opinion, theory is the gateway to real world music. Don’t get me wrong: you can play music without knowing hardly any theory if all you want to do is replicate classical music, and inexplicably, that is what often happens. However, […]
I posted a challenge to you guys to name a particular chord in my free arrangement from the other day. This is a big music nerd alert but I am going to talk about that chord today. Here it is (last beat in bar 17) Several people posted their thoughts on this page and by […]
Music is a complicated business but it is furthered complicated by the fact that there are various schools of theory that are used to try to explain it. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first reason is that the increased understanding over the centuries of how music works has sort of invalidated some of the […]
I cannot tell you how many musicians I hear from that feel overwhelmed. Many of them know how to play by rote (from books) but they feel as though they have a huge mountain to climb to be a real world musician. Let me explain what I mean by “real world musician.” Colleges churn out musicians by […]
I have had a number of questions about last week’s so today I want to talk more about the harmony. Let’s start with a definition. Diatonic chords are chords that are naturally derived from the key. In other words, all the notes in the chord are part of the scale of the key. If you […]
In case you missed it, here is part 1 of my interview with Faye Lopez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzQ4CK1CYtE Today, I posted part 2 which covers her arranging process and some tips about texture. If you don’t see a video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reCQzH-XrSQ
This weekend, I had a concert and because it was Mother’s Day, I was asked to play some from my project Heirloom. Typically, I don’t do any of that stuff in concerts because it is more designed to put people asleep than keep them awake. In fact, I haven’t played any song on that project […]
In a recent sermon, our pastor was discussing what Christians should do when they are in those periods where they are not sure what God’s master plan is for their lives. That is a good perspective. Doing God’s will is not about mystical feelings and fleeces. More often, it is just about doing the things […]
One of the challenging things about music theory is the fact that it is a moving target. In other words, it is not a clear cut discipline in the way that mathematics might be. In math, 2+2 will always be 4 regardless of the time period or culture. That is not true with music. I […]
I am going to give you a very powerful tip today and it will not take me very much time to explain it. It is very important though. Here is a bit of background first. I grew up playing classical music. I am thankful for the teachers I had but they were all very much […]