Notation
Forte Numbers: A Name For Every Chord
Building Blocks: The Circle Of Fifths
Musical Espionage and the Bach Motif
Update: Plans For 12tone
No, Music Theory Won't Ruin Your Personal Style
How Many Notes Are There? The Theory of Quarter Tones
How's She Buying That Stairway To Heaven?
And The Bass Walks On
Building Blocks: What's A Chord?
The Problem With Minor Scales
Swapping Sounds: The Art and Practice of Chord Substitutions
Sweet Child O' Mine And The Hunt For A Resolution
How To Tell A Guitar From A Tesla Coil
TET for Tat: Why Do We Use 12 Notes?
Changes Like Coltrane
Building Blocks: Functional Harmony
The Other Side Of Triads
Blackbird Singing In The Dead Of Night
Theory In Practice: Playing With Pentatonic Modes
Tuplets: It's Complicated
Building Blocks: The Job Of A Chord
The Secret Bond Between Scales
Somewhere A Place For Us
And The Beat Blasts On
Three Tips For Writing A Great Melody
How To Play Notes That Aren't There
Building Blocks: Writing A Progression
Understanding Black Hole Sun
The Heart Of Dominant Function
When Chords Won't Share
Eye Heart Music: The Score As A Work Of Art
Building Blocks: Functional Harmony In Minor
How Do Youtubers Think About Their Favorite Songs?
Understanding Otherside
Why Do People Hate Music Theory?
Update: We Made A Store!
Harry Partch And The Genesis Scale
Building Blocks: Changing The Key
Q&A #1: Math And Music
Understanding "What I've Done"
The Captain Planet Theory Of Instruments
The Secret Of Six-Note Scales
Shakespeare's Favorite Poems
Building Blocks: Borrowing Chords
Understanding Comfortably Numb
A Theorist's Journey
When Melodies Combine
How Does Hamilton Work? (feat. Technicality)
Conlon Nancarrow's Impossible Piano
Building Blocks: The Modes
Where Does Music Appreciation Come From? Q&A #2
Understanding In Bloom
The Strangest Normal Scale
Can Music Be Bad?
Building Blocks: Secondary Dominants
The Most Terrifying Sound You've Never Heard
Understanding Total Eclipse Of The Heart
The Art of Articulations
Building Blocks: Secondary Dominants Revisited
The Broken Scales Of Wendy Carlos
Do Rhythms Resolve? Q&A #3
Can You Name These Songs?
Understanding The Imperial March
Building Blocks: Tritone Substitutions
How To Modulate Anywhere
Understanding "Hurt"
The Most Unwanted Song
Why Do Notes Have Names?
What Was David's Secret Chord? Q&A #4
Understanding "Life On Mars?"
A Whole New Scale: Exploring Jeths' Mode
Graphic Scores: Beyond The Written Note
How To Build A Scale
Understanding Hey Bulldog
What Is An Academic Musician?
George Secor's Miracle Scale
Why Do I Write My Roman Numerals Wrong?
Parallel 5ths Are Fine - Q&A #5
Understanding Toto's Africa
How To Write A Four Chord Loop
On Negative Time Signatures (A Response To Adam Neely)
How To Fake Harmonic Motion
Understanding Killing In The Name
The Mother Chord
Who Counts As A Musician?
What's The Best Key? - Q&A #6
Understanding Hotel California
Why Non Functional Harmony Isn't A Thing (Sort Of)
The Fanciest Major Scale
The Tonality Cube
The Music Theory Of Jacob Collier
Understanding The Trooper
The Opposite Of Leitmotifs
Update: Going Full Time
Making Mini-Scales
How To Succeed In Music School - Q&A #7
Understanding Message In A Bottle
Is Rap Music?
The Scales That Built Jazz
The Secret To Writing Lyrics
The Great Piano Mystery
Understanding Aretha Franklin's "Respect"
The World's Most Popular Rhythm
The Secret Structure Of Children's Music
Can Random Notes Make A Scale?
Understanding The Sound Of Silence
Who Named Heavy Metal?
What Even Is Music?
The Secret To Scary Sounds
Understanding "Like A Stone"
Transcribing The World's Music
Bela Bartok's Infinite Tonality
How To Analyze Songs
Understanding While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Is Music Really A Universal Language?
Understanding Aqualung
How A London Orchestra Broke International Law
Leonhard Euler's Magical Consonance Formula
A Scale No One's Ever Used Before (Probably?)
Understanding Pink Floyd's "Money"
The Furthest Distance Between Two Chords
My Favorite Chord Progression
The Black Sheep Of The Major Scale
Understanding The Immigrant Song
Can You Tell These Notes Apart?
I Had A Dream About Chord Progressions
Why Proper Scales Are Hard To Find
The Positive Impact Of Negative Harmony
Understanding Bennie And The Jets
What We Get Wrong About Genres
The Scale We Take For Granted
Could There Be A 13th Note?
Understanding Purple Haze
Why Most Cover Songs Fail
Cubes, Bugs, And The Ultimate Chord Map
What's The Opposite Of A Scale?
A Scale With Two Faces
Understanding The Chain
My New Favorite Chord
Can You Find This Note?
I Wrote A Thousand-Year-Long Song By Accident
What Did Ancient Rome Sound Like?
The Dance Music Of Wakanda
Can Animals Be Musicians?
Does Music Therapy Work?
Understanding Losing My Religion
The Moment I Became A Music Theorist
Do You Own The Sound Of Your Instrument? (A Response To Adam Neely)
Cats: My Favorite Trainwreck
How Facebook Helped Solve A Musical Mystery
Understanding Under Pressure
How A Pair Of Microwave Engineers Broke Music
The Dice Game That Lets Anyone Be A Composer
The Speech-To-Song Illusion
Understanding Thriller
Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap
The Chord That Made Jimi Hendrix A Legend
Playing My Favorite Music Theory Game
Understanding Enter Sandman
What I Got Wrong About Hallelujah
What I Got Wrong About Sweet Child O' Mine
I Fixed Music's Least Important Problem
Understanding Bring Me To Life
What's The Least Perfect Scale?
The Musical Invention That Time Forgot
Understanding Heart-Shaped Box
The Weirdest Music Fight I've Ever Caused
The Surprising Enemy Of Good Songwriting
Understanding Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
The World's Most Important Chord Progression
Why You're Wrong About Music Theory
Understanding White Rabbit
Why Modern Musicians Love The Four-Chord Loop
The Chord That's Made Of Everything
Understanding Behind Blue Eyes
14 Essential Scales To Improve Your Musical Vocabulary
What I Got Wrong About Black Hole Sun
Understanding Call Me
The Mystery Of The Phantom Chord Progression
Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Music?
Understanding Chop Suey!
Hip Hop's Greatest Invention
My Brand-New Take On Four-Chord Loops
Understanding Superstition
How One Instrument Defined A Generation
The 7 Levels Of Vocal Harmony (feat. A Capella Science)
Understanding Uptown Girl
Beethoven Sucks At Music
How Do Rappers Use Pitch?
Understanding Just A Girl
Can You Solve This Musical Puzzle?
What I Got Wrong About Comfortably Numb
Understanding Uptown Funk
How I Ruined A Childhood Classic
Why Classical Harmony Doesn't Work Anymore
Understanding Psycho Killer
Why Music Experts Are Fighting About Ludacris
How To Listen To Music Like A Pro
Understanding Iron Man
What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Pop Music
What I Got Wrong About "Hurt"
Understanding Toxic
Why *Those* Four Chords Are Everywhere
We Need To Talk About This Chord Progression
Understanding Jolene
I Guess I'm Not Done With Four Chord Loops (A Response To Patricia Taxxon)
Does Music Make You Smarter?
Understanding You're So Vain
We Need To Talk About Blues Lyrics
What I Learned At Music School (Besides Music)
Understanding Dream On
The Worst Genre Of Music
What Key Is Hallelujah In?
Understanding That "Rat In A Cage" Song
Rethinking Tonality
The Piano That (Almost) Changed Everything
Understanding All Along The Watchtower
How I'd Learn Music Theory (If I Had To Start Over)
Understanding Seven Nation Army
No, Today's Music Isn't Boring (A Response To Rick Beato)
You Don't Need Music Theory
Understanding Tiny Dancer
The Secret To Writing A Great Chorus
Understanding The Black Parade
You're Playing Bach Wrong
Understanding Carry On Wayward Son
This Is The Most Important Instrument In The World
Understanding The Man Who Sold The World
This Scale Is Impossible (But It Sounds Great)
Understanding Blister In The Sun
Solving James Brown's Rhythmic Puzzle Correctly (A Response To Adam Neely)
Understanding Bohemian Rhapsody
Understanding Bohemian Rhapsody's Opera
My Biggest Musical Pet Peeve
Understanding Under The Bridge
How Sheet Music Lies To You
Understanding Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Why Does Metal Have To Be So Loud?
Understanding Heart's "Alone"
Naming All The Chords For Some Reason
Understanding Landslide
Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Sound?
Understanding "The Middle"
What *Is* Butt Rock?
Understanding Free Fallin'
The Book That Changed Jazz Forever
Understanding Get Lucky
This Rhythm Is Impossible
Understanding Zombie
How To Write A Hardcore Punk Riff
Understanding The Safety Dance
What's The Point Of A Prechorus?
Duran Duran is good, I will die on this hill. Support 12tone on Patreon to help us keep making cool videos! / 12tonevideos The '80s were a weird time for rock music, and we're kinda still trying to figure out how to think about it. Was it corny? Was it good? Or was it both? And the thing is, it was definitely both. There's plenty of good examples of incredible rock music that came out in the '80s, but the songs that stood the test of time have mostly done so by avoiding many of the cliches of the era. But what about the songs that are '80s to the core and yet still rule? Well, if you're looking for that, then we're gonna have to talk about Duran Duran.
So, recently, Adam Neely decided to use his platform to weigh in on the debate about whether or not Cb and B are the same note, and surprising no one, he got it wrong. Wait, no, that's not true. He got it pretty much entirely right. But! I feel like there are important aspects of the debate that got left out of his video, and while I don't disagree with any of his arguments I found his conclusion unsatisfying, so now I'm making a really long video about why he's only mostly correct. Enjoy? Or I'm sorry? Whichever feels more appropriate to you.
If you were to write a list of the most historically important rock songs, odds are Smells Like Teen Spirit would be in the top 10. As the vanguard of the grunge revolution, Nirvana's breakthrough hit set the stage for the reinvention of rock music in the '90s, and it remains an iconic example of the sound that shaped my childhood. And it all started with a drunken scribble on Kurt Cobain's bedroom wall.
It's a common misconception that the goal of recorded music is to replicate, as accurately as possible, the experience of hearing that same music live. To an extent, that is often true: A song on a record should sound like the same song when you hear the band play it on tour. But the tools of the studio, and especially the mix, provide incredible opportunities for clever artists and audio engineers to enhance the listener's experience, creating a better, clearer, and richer experience that what could be performed live. A key component of that is vocal placement, or the use of different elements of the mix to create specific personas for the singers, allowing them to more accurately embody the song's story. It's an area that music theorists really haven't looked too closely at, but we're starting to see some really interesting approaches begin to take shape.
I was a teenager when Mr. Brightside came out, and if I'm being honest, most of the music that came out when I was a teenager didn't really have much staying power. Like, I still love a lot of it, but even the biggest hits of the era, at least in rock music, seem to have largely faded from the public consciousness. So why is Mr. Brightside different? How has it managed to so quickly establish itself as a timeless icon when it sounds so thoroughly dated? It's clearly of its era, and yet it's transcended it in a way that few other songs from that movement have. But why?
People ask me a lot of questions about music, but the hardest ones aren't the ones you'd expect. Dealing with complex musical structures can be tricky, sure, but some of the most challenging questions I've ever been posed were ones that pushed me to re-examine things I'd always taken for granted. In a recent episode of my podcast, I had to figure out how to explain major scale to someone with zero pre-existing musical knowledge, and I found the exercise so interesting that I decided to make a whole video about it!
Few songs have had quite the legacy of Rick Astley's debut single. When it was released in 1987, it became a #1 hit in the US, UK, and all around the world, but that initial success was nothing compared to what it would become with the rise of the internet. Over the last 15 years, the meme of Never Gonna Give You Up has refused to die, and at this point its opening tom fill may be the most recognizable drum part ever recorded, but with all that attention, it feels like the song itself has become secondary to the joke. Let's fix that.
Have you ever noticed how every video game winter level sounds kinda the same? Not identical, obviously, but there's definitely a characteristic sound, to the point where you can often tell a piece was written for a winter level without ever actually seeing the level in question. But how does that work, and why?
The Clash's London Calling is one of the most important albums in punk rock history, reimagining what punk was allowed to sound like and pushing the genre forward without losing any of its intensity or spirit. The title track is a scathing critique of contemporary British society, but more than that, it's an anthem for change, putting a voice to issues that have plagued society for generations, and it remains just as relevant today as it was in 1979. It's also a great demonstration of how much skill and craft goes into making an iconic punk song!
In 1969, GC Coleman played some drums on a song not many people would listen to. You'd be excused for assuming that was the end of the story, but over a decade later, his solo would be dug up by an enterprising hip-hop producer. That producer republished the song, sharing Coleman's drum break with the world, and the world went nuts for it, sampling, remixing, and transforming that humble, formerly obscure break into one of the most iconic sounds in music history. Let's talk about it.
About a decade ago, Carly Rae Jepsen's career exploded. She went from being a reasonably successful artist on Canadian radio to an international superstar practically overnight, all thanks to one lucky break. After the lead single for her sophomore album happened to catch the attention of another Canadian pop star, the world immediately fell in love with it, setting her on a journey that would see her local hit become an international sensation. But what makes it so dang catchy?
Rock is full of incredible riffs, but if you had to pick the most iconic, most instantly recognizable riff in the history of the genre... I mean, it's gotta be Smoke On The Water, right? That one four-note blues line established Deep Purple as rock legends, and even as pioneers in the developing world of metal, part of the "Unholy Trinity" with fellow hard rock acts Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. But how did it all happen?
Lyrics are the first thing most listeners notice in a song, and everyone has their own opinions about what you need to do in order to make your lyrics "good". But are those opinions... wrong? Maybe! Well, no, but I think they're often overspecified, and lyrics that are actually really good get overlooked because they seem, on the surface, to be incoherent, so instead of just letting other people have different tastes from me, I decided to invent a whole new category of lyrics in order to justify my own love of cool-sounding nonsense!
What is there to say about Tracy Chapman's devastatingly beautiful debut single? It's a powerful story told with incredible finesse and craft, supported by music that stays out of her way while also building the world of her story. It was a near-instant classic on release, and has remained relevant and beloved for decades since. Let's talk about it.
Music history is littered with great thinkers, bringing a broad range of unique perspectives to the exploration of the art form. But a name you might not expect to see on that list is Sir Isaac Newton, president of the Royal Society and leader of the Scientific Revolution. And for good reason: he pretty much never wrote about music. It wasn't an area particularly that interested him, and he rarely if ever listened to music for fun. But as a part of his well-rounded education, he did learn music *theory*, and a nearly-forgotten notebook from his college years tells us a lot about how he understood the subtle art of sound.
In the pantheon of legendary drum fills, few songs come close to the legacy of Phil Collins' solo debut single. But In The Air Tonight is about more than just a drum fill: The song is a perfectly crafted slow burn, patiently building up an overwhelming atmosphere before finally delivering on the implicit promise made by its slow crescendo. So let's talk about it!
As a metalhead, I've been calling things "heavy" for most of my life, but I never really stopped to think about what I meant. It's such an intuitive label to me, with such a clear meaning that neatly translates to the music I'm describing. But these days, stopping to think about what I mean when I talk about music is pretty much my entire job, so I think it's finally time to ask that question: When a metalhead calls a piece of music heavy, what are they actually saying?
Understanding In The End
So... About The New Beatles Song
Understanding Even Flow
The Doors are one of the most important bands in rock history, which is a strange thing to say when their music sounds so... unique. No one sounds like The Doors: Guided by the singular voice of Jim Morrison, the band played a pivotal role in the genre's reinvention in the late '60s, and while their career was short due to Morrison's untimely death, they left an indelible mark on rock music for generations to come, and songs like People Are Strange remain culturally relevant, if somewhat anachronistic, to this day.
Music theorists would have you believe that there is no best possible scale: Different scales have different uses, and are appropriate for different musical goals, so picking an objective "best" is not only pointless, it's actively counterproductive. And that's true... but what if it wasn't? What if we could work out the best scale, through the careful, scientifically grounded process of running a bunch of my favorites through a single-elimination bracket? Would that be a good idea? I mean, probably, right? 'Cause that's what I did.
When you think iconic saxophone songs, there's practically nothing in the same league as George Michael and Wham!'s Careless Whisper. Ok, maybe Baker Street. And Born To Run. And Giant Steps, in its own way. And... ok, look, the point is Careless Whisper has become practically synonymous with the sax in popular culture, taking on all the rambunctious, seductive connotations of the instrument, and I wanna talk about a saxophone so I'm gonna do it. Who's gonna stop me?
As I'm sure you all know by now, I'm kind of a fan of chord loops. They've been a primary focus of my own music theory work for years now, and I've done, like, way too many videos trying to wrap my head around them, so you can imagine my excitement when some professor friends of mine dropped a brand-new music cognition study that aimed to answer some of the questions I'd been asking this whole time. But the results were... well, let's just say I've been reconsidering some things, and I'd like to explain why.
What is pop music? It used to be a pretty simple question, but in the last few decades, changes in the landscape of music consumption and distribution have begun to dissolve the boundaries between genres, and not even the carefully curated landscape of pop has been safe. There are many examples of the increasingly obscure, esoteric, and divergent soundscapes that have come to define modern pop, but if I had to sum it up in one artist, I think the clear choice is Billie Eilish. So let's talk about her.
Was there ever any doubt? What makes a great guitar solo? How do you transcend beyond merely playing notes and create something truly sublime? Easy: Be Prince. The Purple One's guitar skills are legendary, but perhaps his crowning achievement came in 2004, when he joined an all-star tribute to George Harrison for the late Beatle's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Prince waited patiently for his moment, and as they reached the end of Harrison's iconic ballad, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, he stepped forward and made history, playing what is often described as the greatest guitar solo ever played. Let's talk about why.
Tommy is an... interesting project, with a complicated legacy. It's a challenging, fascinating work, and it revolutionized the music world by introducing the concept of the rock opera, with a long, interconnected narrative running through the album, the narrative itself certainly raises some eyebrows. That legacy and complexity have meant that, while Tommy is remembered for its historical importance, the actual music on it has mostly not survived in pop culture in the same way as other important albums of the time, with one glaring exception. Outside musical theater circles, Tommy is remembered mainly as the album that brought us Pinball Wizard, Pete Townshend's bombastic celebration of an arcade classic, shoehorned into the plot as an inside joke with rock critic and pinball fan Nik Cohn. That song has become emblematic of the album as a whole, and while there's a lot more to Tommy than that, I think it's a pretty good introduction.
So, a funny thing happened to me recently. I was watching the recent Polyphonic video about the death of genre, and suddenly, Noah called me out. By name! He challenged me to explain the academic perspective on genre, and I can't just say no to that sort of thing, so here I am stepping up and doing it. Musical genre's a really complicated thing, but it's also really important to how we understand and relate to the music we love, so let's dig in and try to figure it all out!
What makes a great love song? Time After Time has been covered so many times that it's easy to forget there was an original, but before it became a cultural standard, it was a simple last-minute addition to Cyndi Lauper's debut album, She's So Unusual. Even at the time, she and her cowriter Rob Hyman knew they had something special, and they treated the process of writing this song with a level of reverence and care that comes through in every aspect of the final production, from its hauntingly simple melody to its hollow, ticking groove. It's a timeless classic that transcends its origins while remaining intrinsically tied to them. So let's talk about it!
But it does. What's up with that? One thing I've always believed is that music theory is more than just a toolbox. It's useful, sure, but it's also an art form, a way of constructing new kinds of beauty and meaning, and when I get the chance, I like to try to show that side of it. There's lots of great examples, but one of my favorites has always been Jack Douthett's infamous Cube Dance, a deceptively simple map of triads that both hides a ton of insight about harmonic relationships and also just looks really frickin' cool!
Rock music is about many things, but in its purest form, I think it's often about performing rock music. The showmanship of rock is baked into its musical DNA, and that's especially true of the early hard rock era of the '70s, where the bombastic arrangements and aggressive, virtuosic technique were intrinsically married to wild costumes and elaborate stage shows that transformed bands from mere performers into ringleaders of their own audience circus. And perhaps no song captures that marriage quite like The Ballroom Blitz, an explosive rock song about how explosive rock shows can be, inspired by real events and transforming the studio recording into a proxy for the wild experience of an actual live gig.
The most overlooked instrument needs love too. Drums are the hardest instrument to write for. Or, rather, they're the easiest, and that's the problem. For arrangers without a lot of percussion experience, it's natural to just default to a simple pattern and leave it alone, or to try to overcomplicate things without understanding their purpose, and either way, the end result is often a pretty lackluster beat. But I'm also an arranger without a lot of percussion experience, and over the years I've had to learn a lot of drum lessons the hard way, so for all my fellow non-drummers, I thought I'd put together a little guide on how I approach the rock ensemble's most challenging instrument.
What do you do when you've spent your entire life working toward a single goal, and then you accomplish it beyond your wildest dreams? That was the conundrum faced by Pink Floyd after the release of Dark Side Of The Moon, and while each member had their own response, the overall answer seemed to be "mourn the loss of a purpose". They'd done it, and they weren't happy, so the band, led by their famously cantankerous bassist Roger Waters, decided to look inward. They didn't like what they saw, but as artists, they knew how to handle that sort of darkness: You turn it into more art. Wish You Were Here wasn't a passion project, it was a project of necessity, ground out of the band by a music industry that demanded a follow-up to keep the money flowing, and at the heart of the album, Waters struck back, laying bare all his sharpest critiques of the business that had destroyed his soul.