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What is Diatonic?

Lesson 17 from: Music Theory for Electronic Musicians

J. Anthony Allen

What is Diatonic?

Lesson 17 from: Music Theory for Electronic Musicians

J. Anthony Allen

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Lesson Info

17. What is Diatonic?

Lesson Info

What is Diatonic?

Okay. Welcome, Teoh. The next unit here in music theory for electronic musicians. Um, in this unit, we're gonna be talking about diet like or progressions and inversions. Now, what that means is diatonic chord progressions. Basically what that means is ah, that is a solution to this exact problem. So you you're writing a song and you say OK, like I'm here. I'm I've written this song. I've got a verse, right? Like, what should I do for the chorus? Once you know what diatonic chord progressions are? What you can do is you can say Oh, okay, I know seven chords that work in this key just just like that. Um and that's because that's what a diatonic chord progression tells you. It tells you all the available chords in the key that you're working. So that's what we're gonna learn here. We're gonna learn how to just know what are all your options for that key. Let's see, you walk into ah gig and there's people on stage jamming and they say, Hey, we're in the key of e major. Then you can say, O...

K, I know seven chords just off the top of my head That are gonna be that are gonna work well in E major, right? That's what diatonic chord progressions tell us and inversions the other thing we cover in this section inversions tell us essentially, it's a trick. Teoh, make your core progressions sound less dumb. Kind of to be blunt, um, once we start incorporating inversions Ah, that's when we really start making music and the cords start coming together and really feel like a song and not just a series of court. So hold on, We'll get to that shortly. For now, let's talk about diatonic chord progressions and let's start with picking apart that term diatonic chord progression we just saw in the in Ah, the either the last Her two videos ago, I think Just the last video. Ah, what a court progression waas, right A chord progressions of syriza courts Um what diatonic means? Diatonic is a fancy word that means in key So when something is in key, it is diatonic. If I put in here a bunch of notes ueo, all of these keys are All of these notes are in the key of C major there Diatonic, They are diatonic Ah, in the key of C major, So diatonic just means that it's in a key. The opposite of diatonic is chromatic. Chromatic means it's not in a key. It's all over the place. Here's I'll give you an example of chromatic your trying to put notes like really close together. So here's what Here's chromatic line, OK, it's not really in any key. It's going between hold 12 keys or it's basically chromatic. It's any note goes, Ah, any notice fine to use. It's gonna be ugly and kind of dissonant. And what we want music to do is stay relatively diatonic. Meeting locked into a key. So we talk about a diatonic chord progression. What we're talking about is a series of cords that are locked into a key, all the available cords in a key

Ratings and Reviews

exoslime
 

this is great and very helpfull class, i make and wirte music for more than 2 decades and never gave much about theory, i trusted my feelings to what sound good and what not. Bu t recently i became interested but it all seemed very difficult to me and i didnt got the points behind music theory and how everyhing works together. This class was a game changer for me.. music theory is so simple if you have somebody to explain it in words so that you finally can understand it, and thats Anthony, he is a brilliant guy and he explains it in a simple way that you can easily understand whats going on. This is perfectly the case with this course, the sections are short and to the point, not much talking around and leaving the path, you can make fast progress end learn how music theory works, this is a 5 Star ***** course and hopefully there is more to come

Emane Filali
 

Fabulous course. As a person with dyslexia, trying to remember the notes and chords as letters only is impossible. I love the visual way the chords are demonstrated and explained. I was originally put off by the "electronic" aspect, thinking it was only for learning how to use piano edit roller. However, as a beginner in playing the piano, this course is applicable to all who want to learn and understand music theory in an interesting visual way. Looking forward to next lesson. Will definately be purchasing the course after. Fantastic tutor and course.

Giulio Lazaretti
 

Very good class!! Makes it much easier to understand and apply the rules of theory. Anthony is also very wise to suggest to trust your ears, even if what you've written doesn't fit into those same rules. I am so very grateful for you putting this together, Anthony, and for making it available for the general public, Creative Live. I am also very glad I was given the opportunity to learn english in my home country (Brazil), in which many barely know how to read and write in our own native language (portuguese) due to our public education being so bad (which, by its turn, has to do with the myriad of vile creatures that inhabit our representative chambers). Tks XoXo!

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