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Reading Chord Symbols: The Language of Commercial Music
A chord symbol is a compact notation — sometimes just two or three characters — that communicates a complete harmonic instruction to a performer.
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A Short History of Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop
The history of jazz is one of the most distinctly American stories in music: a tradition that emerged from a specific neighborhood in a specific city and…
Read MoreThe Twelve-Bar Blues: A Living Form
The blues is a scale, a style, a form, and a philosophy. As a form, the twelve-bar blues is one of the most durable structures in the history of music: twelve…
Read MorePentatonic and Blues Scales: Five Notes That Changed Everything
The pentatonic scale is the most universal scale in the world. It appears in Chinese classical music, West African drumming traditions, Scottish folk songs…
Read MoreThe Church Modes: Ancient Scales, Modern Music
Before major and minor became the dominant scales of Western music, composers worked within a system of seven modes — ordered sets of pitches derived from the…
Read MoreSong Forms: Strophic, Verse-Chorus, and Through-Composed
Song forms are the structural skeletons songwriters reach for again and again, the shapes that make a song memorable, singable, and recognizable as a song.
Read MoreMotifs, Phrases, and the Architecture of a Song
A motif is a musical seed. It is the smallest fragment of melodic and rhythmic material that has an identity — something recognizable, something the listener…
Read MoreTonic, Dominant, Subdominant: The Three Primary Colors of Harmony
The primary chords of any key — tonic, dominant, and subdominant — are the three foundational harmonies from which all Western tonal music is built.
Read MoreComping and Improvisation: Harmony in Real Time
In a jazz or commercial music ensemble, the rhythm section — piano, guitar, bass — does not simply play the written notes. They comp.
Read MoreSeventh Chords: Adding Color to the Harmony
A triad is a three-note chord. Add one more note — a seventh above the root — and you enter the world of seventh chords: richer, more complex, and more…
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