Music Theory (Piano Lessons)

If you strip away a lot of the jargon and old conventions it becomes far easier to understand the ideas behind music.

Music theory is as simple as “when notes are related in this way, they create this sound”.

Michael New is a full-time music teacher, have a bachelor’s degree in music, and these videos are from him teaching what he know about music theory in the simplest way he know how.

He try to keep things very straightforward and simple, but at the same time give you a complete and thorough understanding of how music is put together.

Music Theory Fundamentals

1: How Basic Chords Work

This lesson is on chords, how they work, and the basic intervals that make them up. Learning the underlying music theory behind chords will not only allow you to find any chord you want, anywhere you want, it will also give you a solid foundation to build your entire understanding of music theory on.

2: How Seventh Chords Work

This is the second music theory lesson in this little series, and this one is on seventh chords (chords with four notes). For some reason a lot of people learn the basic triads (three note chords), but they never really get comfortable with the seventh chords. There’s no reason not to though. If you understand your triads then learning this is simple; you just learn how to find that fourth note and you’re done. They’re beautiful chords too, by the way.

3: Major and Minor Keys

More music theory! Working on major and minor keys this time. This is a pretty good place to start if you’re new to music theory, but you’ll need to know what “whole step” and “half step” means.

4: How to Fit Chords Into a Key

Starting to get into chord progressions here. Learn about how to figure out the different chords you can use when playing in a key.

5: Chord Inversions

This is a music theory lesson all about chord inversions. Inverting chords is a simple concept; you just play notes in different octaves so the chord gets sort of “flipped around”. You can use inversions to make a chord sound different (and a lot of times more interesting), but most importantly you can invert the chords in a chord progression to move smoothly and fluidly from one to another.

6: How the Roman Numeral System Works

The Roman Numeral system is a way of writing down and understanding the relationships between chords. It’s very simple, and understanding it will give you a better way of writing down your own ideas, mapping out what you want to do musically, and give you a clearer picture of music overall.