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  • >> With our scales so far, we've been working sequentially.

  • In a linear fashion, sounding one note at a time.

  • But in fact, it's very common for music to sound notes, at the same time.

  • Just now when we were playing, Zack was playing, chords on the piano.

  • >> So this is what we're going to go and look at now.

  • But, before we do, it's going to be important

  • to recap, the difference between our C major

  • scale, and our A (Aeolian) mode, the natural

  • minor, the scale that we built from six degree.

  • So, here you have our C major scale.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And then, if we start from the sixth degree of that

  • scale and say this, play the same pool of notes, we get.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Which we called out natural minor or The Aeolian mode.

  • >> Right, remembering how God Rest Ye Marry

  • Gentlemen, did sound different from the major scale.

  • Let's have a look at some important relationship ships within this.

  • So looking at the, natural minor scale, the A minor scale.

  • Looking from A to E.

  • that's the note- the tonic up to note number five.

  • I can count tone, semi tone, tone, tone.

  • That would be three tones and one semitones.

  • If I break that down into semi tones, that will

  • be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven semitones.

  • [MUSIC]

  • That's the sound of the seven semitones A to E.

  • Okay, and back to the C major.

  • If I do the same thing and start on the tonic C and go

  • up to note number five which is G, I get tone, tone, semitone, tone.

  • The same except that the tones and semitones are in a different order.

  • But again, I'm getting seven semitones.

  • Let's hear those.

  • [MUSIC]

  • The C to G.

  • >> That one's from C to G.

  • And then, from A to E.

  • [MUSIC]

  • >> Right.

  • So, A and E to, and C to G both have the seven semitones.

  • They're the same.

  • That interval was called a Fifth.

  • And in fact, we can now give it a quality and say it's a Perfect Fifth.

  • And note also that the two notes sound nice together.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Now, going back to A, let's now have a look at A to C.

  • This is note one to three, the interval of third.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Here, we get a tone and a semitone, so that adds up to three semitones

  • however if I start on C and go from C to it's third note which is E.

  • [MUSIC]

  • I get two tones, which adds up to four semitones and there is the difference.

  • [MUSIC]

  • The second one, is the C Major chord.

  • And when you hear it, you'll probably find,

  • it's very natural to hear the major scale.

  • [MUSIC]

  • So there, looking again at our C major scale, we now isolate the

  • three notes the C, E and G and then we stack them up vertically.

  • Like this, and that is the C major triad.

  • Now, there are other ways of writing this.

  • If you play a lot of Rock music or

  • Jazz, you're used to using something called a lead sheet.

  • Where instead of writing the chords out with notation, as you can see here.

  • We use chord symbols. There are several different chord symbols: so for C major

  • it could simply be shown with a capital C like this, or

  • Cmaj, abbreviated for C major, or a capital C and a capital M.

  • All of those could be used, in different kinds of music.

  • Now, going to the A minor, the A

  • natural minor scale, again, we'll do the same trick.

  • We'll isolate the three notes of the A minor triad, so that's A, C, and E.

  • And again, we'll stack them up vertically to show the A minor triad.

  • And again, if you were using a lead sheet, this could be shown

  • with an Amin, short for minor,

  • or A little m, or A with a minus sign, that you'll find in jazz.

  • So if we take one, three, five starting on C and the key of C Major.

  • We've got C E G.

  • Now, we know that we've got seven semitones between the C and the G.

  • So it's a Perfect fifth.

  • And we've got four semitones between the C and the E, and that's a Major third.

  • Now because this has got three notes, it's a triad.

  • It's a simplest type of chord and what we're going to see is that a triad that

  • has a Perfect fifth and a Major third is a Major triad.

  • Let's start it on D.

  • We've got one three five.

  • D F A.

  • Now again, we've got seven semi-tones between the D

  • and the A, which gives us a Perfect fifth.

  • But this time, we've only got three semi-tones between the D and the F.

  • So this gives us a Minor Third.

  • Again, because it's got three notes, we're going to say that this is a triad.

  • But this time, we have a Perfect fifth and a Minor third.

  • So, we have a Minor triad.

  • Let's move on to E.

  • Again, we've got a perfect fifth between E and B, and our third this

  • time is G, which is a minor third, so we get a minor triad.

  • Move on to the fourth degree in this case, which is F.

  • We've got F A C so we've got, a Perfect fifth.

  • This time we've got a Major third, so, this is a Major triad.

  • G, B, D, it's built on the fifth.

  • So, we've got G to D, which is a Perfect fifth, G to B, which is a Major third.

  • So, in this case we get, a Major triad.

  • In each case, the name of the Major triad, is the same as the tonic.

  • So, this is the G Major triad.

  • [MUSIC]

  • If we go to the sixth degree, we already know this one, this is A, C, E.

  • So we got our Perfect fifth and then we've

  • got our Minor third, so we've got a, Minor triad.

  • The A minor triad.

  • Now, the next one that we need to look at, starts with B, and we've got B, D, F.

  • Now, some of you already, may be aware that that sounds different but

  • what we've got between B and F is actually only six semitones this time.

  • So, it's one semitone smaller than the Perfect fifth.

  • Now we actually call this a Diminished fifth

  • and we're going to talk more about this next week.

  • But we have a Diminished fifth and we've got a Minor third.

  • Now, a triad with a Diminished fifth and Minor third, is called a Diminished triad.

  • So, it sounds different and it has a different structure to the

  • rest of the chords within the key because of the, Diminished fifth.

  • So again, if you're a keyboard player, try them for yourself now.

  • Even if you're not, grab your keyboard app or even have a look at a

  • picture of a piano keyboard, just so you can work out where the notes fall, how

  • we're going to build the chords, and just think about the nature of the fifth and

  • the nature of the third and the quality, as we would say in music theory terms.

  • And from that, you can determine which type of triad, you

  • would be able to play, on each degree of this scale.

  • >> So, that last chord that Zack just showed

  • us, the B Diminished, looks like this, in notation.

  • And using lead sheet symbols, it could be written

  • as this, a B with a little zero after it.

  • Or B Dim, short for Diminished.

  • And what Zack's just shown us, in this last segment, are

  • all the triads that we can derive from C major scale.

  • And here they all are again.

  • And you can also find these in your handout, print them out and look at them

  • which you need to do, because you should sit down at a piano and play through them.

  • Just again looking at them, we can see that there are three major

  • chords the C major, the F major and the G major, so these three

  • chords all have the same internal relationship

  • between the three notes and then we

  • have three minor chords the D minor, the E minor and the A minor.

  • And again, they have the same internal relationship with each other.

  • And then we found this one, other different chord,

  • the B Diminished chord, which will be important later.

  • So, that's three kinds of chords from one set of white notes.

>> With our scales so far, we've been working sequentially.

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