Self learning Jazz Harmony

Preface

The more you know harmonics,

the more you understand

and appreciate music.

People love and enjoy music. Many aspire to the highest standards of musicianship, but sometimes due to their limitations, they become disappointed and lose their precious passion for music.

There are people with great performing skills but are weak in music theory. They have studied and learned music theory at school, just to passing music classes, but many do not know how to apply the theory to their own music and how to fully enjoy and love the music.

Music theory is not just a THEORY. But it is a study that allows us to understand the language of music. It helps us interpret musical compositions, communicate with other musicians. And understanding harmonics is the core of music.

If you understand harmonics, you can accurately analyze music. When correctly analyzed, you can expand the limits of performing skills and acquire an ability to create similar music, which you have analyzed. Thus, understanding harmonics helps us become confident in creating and performing music. You have to raise your musical standard from just playing notes on an instrument to having the ability to analyze musical pieces and knowing how to play them right. In order to truly enjoy the moment while playing a music, you have to know why there is a sharp sign(#) and a flat sign(♭), know how to modulation, know how the chord changes, and know which chords will produce the sounds and feelings that you have wanted. And also, in order to compose or arrange your own musical pieces, you must know the harmonics.

I wanted to write the book that music lovers can enjoy, easily understand, and easily access; free from the stress of learning and acquiring a difficult knowledge.

Playing or listening to music that you love brings a pleasure but you will get a true satisfaction in music when you find out underlying structures of music and be able to compose your own piece.

The purpose of this book is to show that learning harmonics makes music much more interesting. When you climb over a wall, you can find out what is beyond the wall. Likewise, when you study harmonics you will find a whole new world of music which you have not seen before. Don’t you want to be able to fully understand music and find a true and lasting satisfaction in music?

The joy of seeing what you haven’t seen, the joy of hearing what you couldn’t hear!

You will hear, understand, and appreciate music as much as you know.

The more you know, the more you see!

Chapter 01

1613059486173_3 Basic Theory

01 Learn the staff

02 Pitches are expressed as musical alphabets

03 Is there a difference between pitch names and solfège names?

04 Sharp raises a note by a half step, Flat lowers a note by a half step

05 Enharmonic

06 The intervals between E-F, B-C are naturally occurring half steps!

07 Understand ‘flags’ to understand music.

08 Magic of Tie

09 Understanding Time signature!

10 Recognize a ‘Repeat Sign’, to understand music.

11 Harmonic Rhythm

12 Music ends with ‘Fine’ and ‘Final barline’.

13 Tempo Markings

14 Understanding ‘Incomplete measure’

15 About ‘Musical form’

16 How to Build a Major Scale

17 Order of Sharps and Flats

18 Natural, Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scale

19 Understanding minor scale degrees from numbers

20 Relative key and Parallel key

Take a break!

Chapter 02

image671 Degree

21 What is an interval?

22 Finally, Major interval

23 Minor interval; a semitone smaller

24 Perfect Interval, It is Just a Name

25 Diminished and Augmented Intervals

Take a break!

Chapter 03

image227 Chord

26 What is a chord?

27 Major Chord

28 Minor Chord

29 Seventh chord, minor 7th chord

30 Major seventh chord

31 6th Chord

32 Sus4 Chord

33 Minor seventh flat five (m7-5)

34 Inversion Chord

35 Augmented Chord

36 Diminished Chord

Take a break!

Chapter 04

image257 Diatonic Chords

37 What is a diatonic chord? 178

38 Diatonic 7th Chord 186

39 Minor diatonic chords 192

40 Transpose 198

41 Chord progression in the interval of a fourth

42 Tonic and Subdominant chords

43 Dominant Chords

44 Modulation

45 Subdominant minor chords

Take a break!

Chapter 05

image285 Tension

46 Tension

47 Tension 9

48 Tension flat 9 (T ♭9)

49 Tension sharp 9 (T #9)

50 Tension 11 (T 11)

51 Tension #11 (T #11)

52 Tension 13 (T 13)

53 Tension ♭13 (T♭13)

Take a break!

Chapter 06

image325 Secondary Dominant

54 What is a secondary dominant?

55 Five secondary dominants

56 Using a IIm7 chord before the V chord

Take a break!

Chapter 07

image321 Scale

57 Major scale (Ionian scale)

58 Understanding Modes

59 Lydian Scale

60 Mixolydian Scale

61 Dorian, Aeolian Scale

62 Phrygian and Locrian Scale

63 Pentatonic Scale

64 Blues Scale

Epilogue

Answers

Take a break!

1 Listen to the audio tracks and play along on your instrument.

We are studying music theory right now. I urge you to listen to the audio tracks and play along on your instrument. You do not need to listen and play on your instrument if you are here to just learn a theory of music. However, if your goal is to become confident in creating or performing music by studying harmonics, it is necessary to train your ears through listening and playing along on your instrument. Even though you have memorized all the ways to transpose, if you do not play and listen, it will be hard to imagine sounds and feelings of different transpositions.

Listen to the audio tracks and play it on your instrument. Knowing is not enough; you must apply!

1 It gets better as you go further in the book.

Music is just more fun if you know more. The first few chapters of the book might seem tedious but what you will be learning from these chapters will enhance knowledge and eventually you will be having fun in later chapters. The stronger will you have, the more progress in learning music you will make. Make sure to finish the book. Study slowly, consistently and diligently. Small steps will take you far. Studying music is similar to studying math. Unless you study the basics, you won’t be able to understand more advanced concepts and solve more difficult problems. Remember to complete the worksheet. Learning the basic music theory is a challenging, but rewarding set of skills to learn.

1 Don't be disappointed at the example songs for not being the latest.

The songs used in this book are to help you understand the theory of harmonics. They may not be the latest but are well-known and loved masterpieces. There are reasons why people love these songs. The audio tracks also contain old and not well known jazz songs which are played by many artists. Don't just listen to the audio tracks, but search them on YouTube or online and try to find out why many performers chose to play these songs. In doing so you can train your ears.

01 Learn the staff

If you start studying anything, papers and pens are the basic necessities. The papers you use in music are, of course, the staves. Do you not have a blank sheet music with staves yet? The class has already begun. In this study, staves are the basic necessities. Have them with you, right now!

Staff

The staff is a set of five, horizontal lines joined together by barlines. On staff, musical notes are written. Just as novels and poetry are written in manuscripts and papers.

The staff comprises five lines and four spaces. Space is the interval between the lines. The lines on the staff are numbered from the bottom to the top. The first line is at the bottom, and the fifth line is at the top.

Clef

The clef indicates the specific pitches represented by the vertical position of notes on the staff. The two most common clefs are; the treble( 1 ) and bass clefs( 1 ). The treble clef is the most commonly used. The treble clef is also called the ‘G clef’ because the symbol at the beginning of the staff encircles the second line of the staff, indicating that line to be G. The bass clef is called the ‘F clef’. The interval between the two clefs is close to an octave.

In addition to treble and bass clefs, there are various clefs such as alto clef and tenor clef. But the most commonly used clefs are the treble and bass clefs.

Make sure to know these two clefs well, you can learn the other clefs when you learn to play various instruments.

Music notation softwares for neatly writing music.

There are Music notation softwares such as the Finale and Sibelius, which act as word processors in music, just as people use word processors instead of manuscripts when writing novels these days.

These programs are not composing software. Just as a good word processor do not write good novels, these programs do not create good music.

Like learning letters before using a word processor, learn how to draw music notes upon the staff first and then learn how to use of the musical softwares.

Try It out at www.finalemusic.com

1 Practice makes perfect!

Treble clef

Let's start by drawing the most commonly used treble and bass clefs. Most of them are drawn on the staff, but you should practice drawing. Look at the treble clef and draw it over and over. The most common clef today is treble clef.

The bass clef

The bass clef is used to indicate pitches below middle C and is often used for the bass guitar, tenor, bass and left hand of the piano. There might be times when you have to draw only the bass clef. The symbol that looks like an archer's bow (brace, curved bracket’s) will provide a visual connection between dependent parts (i.e. two piano staves) into a system.

Let’s draw notes on the staff. Trace the example. Get used to seeing a staff, which is spaces and lines.

Draw notes large enough so that they sit in the space between two lines, filling the area between two lines. If they are either too small or too big. it is not easy to read notes.

Draw quarter notes on the staff below. Practice copying the following notes, check where the C or F are placed on the staff.

When the notes exceed the limitations of the staff line, lines should be added above or below the staff along with notes to indicate pitches. We call it ‘ledger line’.

02 Pitches are expressed as ‘musical alphabets’

It is not accustomed to express sounds as symbols. The pitch of a sound is determined by the rate of vibration and can be expressed as the number of Hz, like 440 Hz. Expressing a pitch in the number of Hz is difficult, thus in music alphabets, such as C D E F G A B C, are used to represent pitches. This makes it possible to easily recognize a sound.

Denote by alphabets

Each country has its own way of assigning names for each note. German characters are used to name notes in Germany, Russian alphabets are used to name notes in Russia. C, D, E, F, G, A, and B are used to name notes in English. The terms used in modern music genres, such as pop and jazz, are all in English.

Among these, C,D, E,F,G,A,B,C and Do,Re,Mi,Fa,Sol,La,Ti, Do will be used in this book.

Musical alphabets

Notes are given letter names from A through G. This is called the ‘musical alphabet’. The pitch names in the musical alphabet are : A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. As you already know A is 'La' and C is 'Do'.

Take a close look at the letters on the piano keys. You need to be able to locate the letters on staff to the piano keyboard.

Do,Re,Mi,Fa,Sol,La,Ti

It is a small world. Each country has a different way of expressing music and has slightly different music terms, yet all music terms are expressed in English. Therefore, if you know the music terms correctly, you can communicate with any musicians in the world. Nowadays, there are lots of musical exchanges made around the world. Understanding the music terms, you will be able to share emotions, intentions, and meanings with others.

1 Practice makes perfect!

Instead of starting at ‘A’, a scale starts from ‘C’. We read the notes as C, D, E, not as A, B, C, etc.

Take a look at the keyboard below and write down the appropriate musical alphabets.

As shown the below, draw a line to match each letters to its position on the keyboard.

Take a look at the keyboard below and draw a line to appropriate note.

These are easy questions that anyone can solve. Still confused? Try it over and over. You must get used to the musical notes, solfège names (a syllable given for each pitch), and the piano keyboard.

To have all the musical alphabets and its positions on the staff in your head, you have to train yourself. Learn to read the music notes while training your ear to recognize them!

03 Is there a difference between pitch names and solfège names?

Do you know whether Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Ti are solfège or pitch names?

The pitch names and solfège names are similar but different. Knowing the difference is a great help when looking at the musical piece.