it all starts with C yes it all starts with the letter c do you see the C yes I do it's right here in fact I also see d e f g a b congratulations you now know all the white keys on a piano and you might be thinking what about this key right here well that's also a c and maybe this key right beside the C right here well that's also a b so is at some point it does just loop back around so how do you tell the difference between the C down here and the C up here obviously they sound different but I mean how do you distinguish them well one is an octave higher than the other okay an octave is when a key is the same note but they're different sounding more specifically this C right here has half the frequency of this C but it has double the frequency of this SE and you might be wondering what about these Black Keys up here I see them but they haven't been touched yet and they won't be touched yeah Okay I lied I'll touch them just a little bit this is C Shar dsharp FSH G Shar and a sharp they're also referred to as Flats depending on the context but just for now for Simplicity sake I'm just going to refer to them as sharp notes so now you know all the notes on a piano yes this series of notes is the same as this series of notes but it's at a higher frequency and these series of notes are the same as this series of notes but at a lower frequency more specifically half the frequency you might be wondering to yourself why there are seven white keys and five Black Keys I'm not really sure of the answer to that that myself but I think it is for the sake of organization for example if we go back to our white keys c d e f g a b c that is the most important scale you're going to learn it's the c major scale and just because you play all the white keys on the piano doesn't necessarily mean they're of an equal distance you might notice E and F don't have a little black key in between there and B and C also miss a little thing right there what I mean is that even though physically d and e and andf are an even distance away from each other on a piano sonically they have a different distance away from each other and to elaborate the distance between d and e is a whole step and the distance between E and F is a half step and it's just because of this little black key right here and most skills you were going to learn just because they follow in alphabetical order does not necessarily mean they have an even distance a half step is basically the distance it takes to travel to a note that you're beside the distance it takes to get to the D Shar to the D note is a half step but sometimes we want to get to the E note without having to travel to the D note this is when we introduced the whole steps so now we can travel from D to e and the major scale consists of multiple whole steps and half steps that collaborate with each other to create this pattern we start with C then go whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step and now that you know the c major scale from C to B I want you to assign a number to each individual note so C is 1 D is 2 e is 3 so on and so forth and you'll see why you want to assign numbers to these letterers but for now I want to introduce a secret little code it's called 135 so you remember those numbers we assigned 1 2 3 4 5 if we play all of these notes together we have a C major chord so you might be thinking a chord is when you play multiple notes on a scale for now I'm going to say yes but it can get out of control really fast but for now I want to look at the a note I mean it's the first letter of the alphabet I mean why is it like the six number here that's actually a very important number in terms of Music Theory because if we play this front to back within the range of the c major scale that's an A Minor Scale yeah C major and a minor are the same exact skill but they take a different journey to get to point A to point B and because they have a different Journey they end a different way you might notice a minor sounds a lot more Moody ooh that's a bit strange anyways you might remember the journey of the major scales starting at C you got whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step pretty easy to follow right but then you get to a and it's a bit strange you start at a but then whole step immediately jump to a half step whole step whole step another half step whole step whole step you might notice the difference between the first and last note on a major scale is a half step but when you get to over here the distance is a whole step I mean that's why I think it sounds different at least at the end there but I want you to take take that 135 pattern and just hold it there and bring your hand over to the a note so that way you have six 1 and three that is a minor chord it is a minor chord you might be wondering even though my hand is the exact same shape when I drag it over here and play something it sounds kind of different and that is because of the third not necessarily the third note played in a major chord but just the third note in the scale so I'm talking about this middle thing right here taking a journey you start at C and to get to the third you go 1 2 3 4 notes but to get to the minor chord the minor third you start at a and it only takes one two three notes and that's kind of just what makes it different it's a shorter distance between your first and your third and you might notice if you play every note front to back they'll have a different pattern just because of the series of whole notes and half notes it takes to get to point A to point B because of that each number assigned has its own name or a mode and the best way I can describe it is that there're scales within a scale for example on the major scale the number one we established on C is referred to as the ionian mode the second mode is referred to as the Dorian mode the third is frian the fourth is lydian the fifth is mixol lydian the sixth is aolan but it also functions as the minor scale and the seventh mode is also referred to as the lochan mode but it's also the scariest just because of how it functions now in the context of the major scale the lackan mode chord doesn't sound that bad on paper but if we tried to play this pattern over here it would sound like this not very nice not very nice at all now if we use the 135 pattern on all of our modes remember we're still in the c major scale let's say I want to play them in a different order I want to spice things up a bit maybe instead of starting at one I want to start at two and maybe I want to jump to five and maybe I want to go to three and four that is a chord progression now what gives chord progressions their voice is how they speak for example the number two if we notice the distance between 1 and three that's only three notes so it speaks in minor but our five the distance between notes is four notes so some of these chords are major and some of these chords are minor to help further distinguish this let's take our numbers make them into Roman numerals capitalize the major chords and decapitalize the minor chords well I understand the difference between the one and six needing their own mode but the five is the exact same chord as the one why does it need its own mode and it's when you get further down the line more specifically when we add more notes to a chord let's add another number to the pattern seven 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 that is a C major 7 oh doesn't that sound so sweet okay now let me just try using the same pattern on the mix of lydian 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 now that is a G7 chord not a G major 7 specifically but just G7 because it's not major but it's not exactly minor either speaking of this is what a a minor 7 sounds like basically if a C major sounds like this a C7 sounds like that if you want to distinguish a major chord and a minor chord you'll notice it's within the three but these two notes actually stay the same what I'm saying is that the one and fifth even though they're far apart physically they're actually kind of best friends with each other people realized this and they decided to make a graph out of it called the circle of fifths and basically the notes beside each other on the circle of fifths are kind of good friends with each other while the notes further away they're kind of distant not as well known the best way to put it is that if your head is a seed note it's a lot easier to touch your head with your G note hand than it is with your d flat foot but you can also see the similar between these notes if you look at their scales so we're actually going to learn a new scale so if you remember the whole step half step pattern of the c major scale we're going to use that same pattern but starting from the G note okay so starting from G you have whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step that's a new note that's the fshp we just jumped over F and have an fshp now oh my gosh that's what makes them do different that's what makes them so different and now that you know the G Major scale I mean the same rules pretty much apply remember 1 3 5 that's your your G Major scale and if you go to the six it's still a minor voicing but our fifth wait a minute the D that used to be a D minor on the c major scale but now it's a D major on this scale what the and yes because D is the fifth note on the G Major scale it's G's neighbor in the circle of fifths you know might as well just go to the D major scale since we have it okay whole step hold step half step whole step whole step whole step half step oh my gosh there's another sharp note it's C everyone it's C they join the party and if you're paying good good good attention the fifth note on the D major scale is an A so we've been so focused on this whole a minor skill why not learn the a major skill I mean we start at a then you do another whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step another sharp note and it's gshp this time oh my gosh and yes you remember how the a chord on the c major scale was minor well now it is Major and C doesn't even exist on the a major skill so it can just scram hey you want to learn something crazy what if I played the a major but I played it in a different order what if I didn't want to start at a I wanted to start at C sharp and work my way towards a so instead of sounding like it'll sound like so it gives it a little bit different of a voice sing that is called an inversion and what I played specifically is a first inversion so again I want to play a major but I want to start at e so it'll sound something like this and that's the second inversion basically it has the same functionality as your a major scale but if you want to give it a little bit more spice a little black pepper that's a good way to add some spice and there are different rules for different chords you know there's only been major and minor so far what if I want to play something different What If instead of 135 I can change it up and do 125 well that's a suspended second and this is a suspended forth and also there's not just a major scale there are different scales out there for example the pentatonic scale makes the major scale look a lot less threatening by using five notes instead of seven get it Penta pentatonic anyways it sounds like this a good frame of reference for the pentatonic scale is actually the F major scale all right now just take away all the white notes so if the major scale is used to represent all the white notes I think the Black Keys represent the pentatonic scale quite well and the great thing about the pentatonic scale you just you can't play Bad ever you can match however much you want and it it just it it just it it may it sounds good inherently it just inherently sounds good and in my opinion this sounds better than this and I actually forgot if you want to know the difference between a sharp note and a flat note for example F major it's technically called a g flat major just because it already has an F in the scale so uh just so it doesn't take up the same space on a piece of sheet music this would have been called a g flat anyways the only thing left to do is practice make chords inversions I don't care what you do as long as you're just doing it and having fun and this isn't exactly a scholarly video on how to learn music theory this is just how I learned it and applied it to how I make music so chances are there might be a professional musician or a jazz Professor who want to strangle me right now but this is how I learned music theory and I think I think I did pretty good for myself and that's all the music theory I think you need at least it's all the music theory I need to make stuff so if this helps you I good good bye all right you learn music theory