There are numerous ways musicians learn songs by ear. Some methods are faster and more efficient, others are time consuming but more accurate. This method that I follow can be a little time consuming. But following this method, not only you…
Essential and Nonessential tones
An essential tone is a note that belongs to the harmony (chord) that’s played on top of that note. On the other hand notes that don’t belong to the underlying harmony is labelled as nonessential tones. Nonessential tones are also known…
Consonant vs Dissonant intervals
In music, certain intervals sound melodic and soothing to the ears. whereas some intervals sound harsh and unresolved. The intervals that are soothing are labelled as consonants. This includes unison, major and minor thirds, perfect 4th, perfect 5th, major and minor…
Triads
When it comes to chords, I like to categorise chords in 3 broad categories. We have the different types of dyads which are 2 note chords, mostly used as power chords in rock/heavy music. Then we have the triads, the most…
Major 7th, minor 7th and dominant 7th chords
In general there are 5 different types of 7th chords that are often played by guitar players in different genres. Other than the three we are discussing in this post, the two other 7th chord shapes are called half diminished chord…
Secondary Dominant
Secondary Dominant refers to the use of dominant chords of any diatonic chord. Diatonic chord in simple and practical terms mean ‘in the key of’. So the diatonic chords in the key of C are: C Dm Em F G Am …
All related major and minor pairs
A musician needs to memorize all the related major-minor pairs as this is very useful for songwriting and improvisation. Feel free to create a mnemonic to make it easier to remember. I memorized these just by playing them over and over,…
Related major and minor for all the diatonic modes
The seven diatonic modes that we studied previously (click here) can be categorised between major and minor flavoured modes. Just how every major key has a related minor and vice versa, all the modes also have a related key which can…
Interval ear training – Ascending [Reference songs]
Using a reference song to recognise an interval is a very useful technique. Following is a list of all the intervals (ascending) with a corresponding reference song. The songs listed here are popular songs and therefore easy to remember. Minor…
Mixolydian mode
The third brightest of all modes is the Mixolydian mode. If you are not familiar with the ranking of modes from brightest to darkest, please read this before moving onto the Mixolydian mode. One very useful thing to remember is that…