- Your piano teacher Tim here,
and today I'm gonna give
you the very basic concepts
you need as a piano player
to understand music theory.
Music theory, quite simply,
is the theory about how music works,
and by learning it you're gonna be
a much better piano player.
Let's get to it.
(upbeat piano music)
Okay, before you can
understand music theory,
you need to understand some
terminologies and basic concepts.
This is actually part of a new series
so I will be coming out with a video
that builds on the stuff we talked today.
But the first thing you
really need to understand
is the concept of pitch.
Now pitch is really quite
simple to understand.
It's really how low,
(playing low note)
or how high,
(playing high note)
the notes are.
So you can have notes,
(playing notes ascending)
that go ascending in pitch,
or you can have,
(playing notes descending)
descending in pitch.
And just like on the piano,
where when notes go up they get higher,
same thing happens on the sheet music.
(playing full scale)
Just like that.
So pitch is how high or
how low the notes are,
next thing I need to tell
you about is the rhythm.
Now a rhythm is basically the timing
of how you're playing the pitches.
So let me show you.
So I'm gonna pick a pitch here.
We're gonna say E,
so that's our pitch.
And I'm gonna play it in a certain rhythm,
so I'm just playing E,
I'm not playing any other pitches,
just to make it simple,
and say I play like this.
(rhythmic playing E)
You know, I added a rhythm to it,
it's like the timing on how it goes by,
even if I just play it,
(rhythmically playing E)
in a real, real simple,
you know, that is your rhythm.
Let me write out a
rhythm on the sheet music
just to make sure you got it.
This stuff luckily is generally
pretty easy to understand.
So, if I just had, you know,
four quarter notes here,
of B, that quite simply
would be your rhythm.
Doesn't really matter if you
have like other notes in here,
that's still rhythm, because the timing.
So as I was thinking about it like this,
that pitch is, on the staff
anyway, are up and down.
The rhythm is really a lot of
times looked at horizontally.
That's how I would think about it,
especially if you are just starting out.
So you've probably
heard a lot about chords
and you need to know what those are
to understand music theory.
Well we have pitches, you know the notes,
up or down on the piano.
However, a chord is when you're playing
basically multiple
pitches at the same time.
Generally three or more,
so you can play any chord.
I'm gonna teach you how to play chords
out the wazoo right now.
So all you got to do is you
gotta play a starting note.
And then what I recommend
you do is skip a note.
Skip a pitch rather.
Play the next pitch, skip to pitch,
play the next pitch, and
you play them all together,
congratulations you've
played your first chord.
And if you space them
out like that evenly,
the chord name is gonna be
whatever note is on the bottom.
So we've now just played a C chord.
If you wanna play an F chord you go to F,
and you space out a chord.
There you played an F chord,
you can do this anywhere.
You can play a B chord,
(playing B chord)
or a G chord, just like that,
or an A flat chord.
Now, it does get a little
trickier than that,
because there are many, many,
many, many types of chords.
And actually when you do
play them on different
parts of the piano, it will change
whether they are major
chords, minor chords,
maybe diminished, or the other type.
So you do have to keep that in mind.
But for today, in today's lesson
it's just simple, simple music theory.
You just play the starting note,
you skip a note, you skip a note in there,
boom, you got an A chord of some kind.
Boom, you got a G chord of some kind.
Boom, you got an E chord of some kind.
So I just recommend for this first lesson
playing up and down on the keyboard,
kind of just experimenting
with different chords,
and just kind of like a
preview into the next lesson,
if a chord sounds bright and happy,
(playing major chord)
it's major.
If a chord sounds sad,
(playing minor chord)
it's minor.
Now it takes time to
be able to hear those,
but just throwing that out there
if you wanna work ahead a little bit.
Okay, now I'm gonna
teach you about scales.
You've probably heard a lot about scales,
maybe your teacher has made
you play some scales before.
This is the most simple
explanation of a scale
I can think of.
So a scale is when you
have a starting note,
so let's say C, and you
play up that starting note
where it occurs again, cause as you know
there are many C's on the piano,
they just repeat over and over again.
And you play all the notes in between,
or all the, basically the white keys
stepping up in between.
(playing C scale)
So congratulations, you just
played your first scale.
We played a C scale of some kind.
Just how the chords work as well,
if you start on a different note,
play from that note, up
to that same note again,
we've played a D scale of some kind.
Now just like the chords,
there are different types
that we'll have to talk about,
but just for right now,
the most simple explanation
of a scale is that.
So if you wanted to play
some kind of G scale,
starting at G,
(playing G scale)
up to the next G.
Okay, this next part is where
things get a little tricky,
and they will get trickier in
the future lessons as well.
But I'm gonna teach you about keys.
Quite simply, a key, in the
simplest form I can say,
you've probably heard of
playing in different keys,
play in the key of G major,
play in the key of F minor.
So what does that really mean?
Well a key is the collection of notes
you're gonna most commonly
find in a piece of music.
So say we have the key of C,
and we just played the C scale,
happen to be the C major scale.
So in that piece of music that's
based around the key of C,
or even the C scale,
you're not really gonna
have a whole lot of sharps,
so you're not really gonna be dealing with
a lot of those black keys,
it's just gonna be all white keys.
And so say you had maybe the key of G,
and I'll explain this more later,
the key of G by definition,
or the key of G major rather,
has an F sharp.
So that will occur both in the
scale, and the piece itself.
It will give you what's
called a key signature,
telling you what sharps or flats to play.
Now, a key can have either
sharps, it can have,
or can have flats, or
it can have none at all.
It cannot have sharps and flats.
So what I mean by that is like,
you can have a key with three sharps,
or you can have a key with two flats,
but you can't have a key with
five flats and two sharps,
or one sharp and two flats,
you can't have a combination of those.
It's either sharps, flats,
or nada, nothing at all.
So that's really what
you need to understand
is the very basic of what a key is,
the collection of notes you're gonna find
commonly in a piece, and it's either gonna
have sharps in it or flats.
Let me show you about key signatures
to hopefully get a better
understanding of this.
Okay, so in your music, how are you gonna
tell what key you're in?
Well, by what we call the key signature
which is basically a sharp or flat,
or collection of sharps or flats,
written usually in the
beginning of the piece,
it can change key in the
middle of the piece, however,
and what this is telling you,
is see there's a sharp
there on that top line.
And if you had a note on that top line,
hopefully you know how to read music,
if not I have lessons for that,
that line is F.
So that is telling you is that
all F's in the whole piece,
are gonna be F sharps instead.
So instead of playing these guys,
(playing F note)
you're gonna be replacing
them with F sharps,
let me show you a couple
more key signatures.
Okay, so now we have a key signature,
instead this time we have three sharps,
we have, if we draw a line,
or a note where each of these is,
you have the notes, F, C and G.
And so that means whenever
we're playing the piece,
anytime we come across an F,
it's gonna be an F sharp instead,
C, C sharp instead,
G, G sharp instead.
Now you may be getting
pretty confused by now
because I know I sure was when
I first started learning this.
So all you need to understand today,
because like I said I'm gonna really go
through this in a future
lesson is basically
a key tells you what collection of notes
you're gonna have in a piece.
and what those notes are is designated by
what we call the key signature
which is like the visual
representation of the key,
and keys really apply to scales as well,
as I quickly mentioned before,
because, say you're
playing in what they call
the key of G major,
the key a G major by definition
has an F sharp in it.
So when you're playing the G major scale.
You wanna make sure that
you have that same note
that's also designated
in your key signature.
Now we're working a little
bit ahead right now,
and we're gonna get more in detail
about keys and things like
this in the next lesson,
but if you want, so
eventually you wanna memorize
what all of your keys are,
you're gonna memorize
like okay, the key of G
has one sharp, F sharp.
The key of D has two
sharps, F sharp and C sharp.
But if you don't have that memorized,
I recommend you check out this website.
Okay, this is key-notes.com,
I will remember to put a link for you
in the description here.
So let's just kind of walk through this,
and I'm gonna kind of really
explain what all this means.
So, we're taking a look here.
So say you wanna play
in the key of C major.
Well, here's your key signature.
This is the visual representation
of what's going on here.
There's nothing written here
on the key signature at all.
And what does that tell you?
That tells you any accidentals,
or what sharps or flats you have,
that tells you there's
no sharps, no flats,
and it makes sense because I showed
you the C major scale in the beginning,
and there were no sharps
or flats in that scale.
So for this week, you know,
just practice that C major scale.
Let's continue.
The next one down is the
G major scale, or E minor.
I'm not gonna get in the
minors too much right now,
to avoid confusion.
If you look to the left,
it has a sharp there.
Now you're not gonna be counting both
the treble clef and the bass clef,
you're only gonna be counting one of them.
So it's not two sharps
there, it's really just one.
And if you look between both
clefs, it's the same note,
so F sharp is the note that you have.
And like I just said, the key of G major
(playing G major)
has one sharp, F sharp.
Let's do one more.
The key of D major has two
sharps, F sharp and C sharp.
(playing D major)
So when you play them on the piano,
anytime you have an F,
or anytime you have a C,
you're gonna be sharpening it instead.
So I recommend you do
is maybe for the first
like three or four of these,
go through on your own,
what you're gonna do
is you're gonna look at
the key signature first
on all the way to the left of the page.
You're gonna look at
the key signature first.
You're gonna look at what key it's called.
That's gonna give you your starting note.
So look at the key signature,
then say we're doing the C major one.
Okay so C major.
So I'm gonna start on C.
And then what you're
gonna do is you're gonna
play from one C, up to the next C
with any of the key notes in there.
So if you don't have any you
don't have to worry about it.
The next one, you look
at the key signature,
there's one sharp there, F sharp,
you start on G this time,
you play up to the next G.
Except you're gonna play an F sharp.
So that's one way I really recommend
that you get used to
playing in different keys,
or getting used to, you know, really,
digesting what keys are all about
is just going through this chord chart,
or the scale chart rather,
and then going through each
one kind of charting out
where the sharps or flats may occur.
- Look, you have to have
a sense of priorities
in any piece you work on it.
- Okay, and like I mentioned,
this part of a new
series I'm probably gonna
make maybe four or five lessons of these,
just to explain the very
basics of music theory.
So make sure that you check
out the playlist right here
once the other lessons are ready.
Thank you so much for coming by today,
it's been your piano teacher Tim here,
and I'm gonna see you, yes
you, in the next lesson.
(upbeat piano music)
