Understanding and interpreting your piano music allows you to bring your own unique flair and personality to a piece. Here we explore the famous Ab Impromptu by Schubert, considering the key elements of interpretation. An overview is...

Understanding and interpreting your piano music allows you to bring your own unique flair and personality to a piece. Here we investigate this famous Arabesque written by Debussy during his early career and explore the hints of the...

Discover how to harmonise a fast moving melody with chords. The temptation is to harmonise every note, resulting in a harmonic rhythm that moves too quickly. We explore how to determine which notes are harmony notes / chord tones and...

How to extend basic triads into chords using added 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and 13ths. Having considered how to construct these chords we explore how to use extended chords in four part harmony, discovering which notes we can omit from each...

We examine the introductory section of Beethoven’s final Piano Sonata, op.111. Having given some background context, this video takes us through the fascinating harmony and key movement, and references this to other aspects of this...

Learn how to write a canon by augmentation. In a canon by augmentation one part begins then the second part follows on several beats or bars behind using the same pitch as the first part but presented in notes of twice the value. This...

Resolving Neapolitan flat II chords? It's all about chord progression. This music theory lesson explains why the choice of resolution chords are limited, essentially because the chord functions as a pre dominant. We consider matters of...

This music composition lesson begins with a reminder of how to form an augmented 6th chord with its three variants, the Italian French and German 6ths. The video goes on to explain which are the most common resolution chords,...

Here's an idea for writing a sequence based on using a chain of suspensions above a descending scale in the bass line. Descending scales in the bass can be awkward to harmonise satisfactorily without generating parallels. This pattern...

In this music composition lesson we review how to form 7th chords and remind ourselves of the traditional function of standard 7th chord progressions. The video goes on to consider the effectiveness of using 7th chords back to back...

This music composition lesson demonstrates an idea for alternating inversions and an associated melodic pattern above an ascending scale in the bass line. Ascending scales in the bass can be awkward to harmonise satisfactorily without...

Learn how to harmonise a chromatic scale. Starting with harmonising diatonic scales, the video moves on to using secondary dominants then to using chromatic chords and to using chords in a less functional way. This music theory lesson...

Discover three harmonic surprises that occur in Mariah Carey’s famous Christmas hit, “All I want for Christmas is you”. Many song composers find themselves using familiar and predictable chord patterns, and they would love to discover...

How to write simple harmonic sequences over a bass line that is derived from the pattern of the circle of 5ths. By alternating intervals of the 4th and the 5th in the bass a descending bass line is created above which a systematic...

An idea for elaborating an upper melodic line over an ascending scale in the bass line. Ascending scales in the bass can be awkward to harmonise satisfactorily without generating parallels. This pattern illustrates one way of handling...

Have you ever had the frustrating experience of hearing a musical idea you want to work with as a player or as a composer but have struggled with being able to write it down? This lesson is an exercise in hearing a two part passage and...

This music composition lesson explores one idea for writing a sequence based on a pattern in the bass line. In this case, the bass alternates falling thirds with rising seconds to generate a melodic pattern at the bottom of the...

We explore one idea for harmonising a descending scale in the bass line. Many people find it easier to harmonise an ascending scale than a descending scale and most people find it easier to harmonise a scale at the top of the texture...

Today I want to talk about seventh chords. Seventh chords are a type of four note chord used in western music. The two types we will talk about today are the Major Seventh and the Dominant Seventh. We will go over how to build them note...

Sometimes you need to have two different music parts to be playing at the same time in the same staff. Or, you might want to save space by having two voices share a staff. One of the best ways to achieve this is to use the voices feature...

In this lesson we will go over three more complex versions of the seventh chord - minor, augmented, and diminished. We will go over the different scale degrees used in the chords and how to build them. We will look at examples of each...

A video showing proper hand grip of mallets when playing the glockenspiel.

Award-winning violinmaker and acoustician Joseph Curtin describes how many musicians would benefit from learning to listen like recording engineers.

Colour in music can mean a number of different things. Some musicians experience Synesthesia in which particular notes, keys or chords are experienced directly in relation to particular colours. We talk about the Blues or about white...