Music Theory Comprehensive: Part 4 – Modes and Counterpoint

Welcome to the class! Lets start with a little overview video of what we will be covering in this class.

There are 2 tools we will be using throughout this course – and lucky for you, they are both free!

Print out a few sheets of this, and keep it handy throughout this course!

Lets do 2 quick review sessions – these topics will be essential moving forward.

For our second review, lets look one more time at the Diatonic Chord Progression.

There are a few tricks to modes. In this video I’ll walk you through how they work.

Modes of a rich and wild history. In this video we take a little break from theory for a quick history lesson.

Mode number 1: The Ionian Mode.

The second mode: Dorian.

The third mode: Phrygian.

Mode number 4, and my personal favorite, is Lydian.

The fifth mode: Mixolydian.

The 6th mode: Aeolian.

The 7th (and weirdest) mode: Locrian.

Here is a worksheet for you to download and use to practice. The answers are at the bottom, so check your work – and make sure you are understanding the concepts so far.

If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons, you might have noticed that the theme song as something a little quirky to it.

Here is the sheet music I used in the previous analysis.

A beautiful piece of vocal music – using this, we will examine another way to spot modes.

Here is the sheet music I used in the previous analysis.

Listening to this iconic Beetles song, there is something a little odd in the melody. It is something that makes the song very memorable, and it is a mode.

Here is the sheet music I used in the previous analysis.

In this video, a few tricks for spotting intervals quickly.

A compound interval is any interval larger than an octave.

A little review here on what we know so far about major, minor, and perfect intervals.

Remember inversions? In this video we will talk about the rules around inversions.

Before we get into the new intervals, lets run through everything we know about intervals so far.

Two new interval types: The Augmented and Diminished intervals.

The Tritone is a nasty little interval that we tend to avoid, although it has some useful properties.

This is a fancy term for saying “it sounds the same, but is written differently”.

Here is a worksheet for you to download and use to practice. The answers are at the bottom, so check your work – and make sure you are understanding the concepts so far.

Dissonant intervals are on their way to someplace else. A Resolution is where they want to go.

A broad term for intervals without quality.

In this video we will look at how to analyze intervals in a piece of music.

Here is the sheet music I used in the previous analysis.

Here is a worksheet for you to download and use to practice. The answers are at the bottom, so check your work – and make sure you are understanding the concepts so far.

Species, in this case, just means “type”.

Here come the rules! Counterpoint has a lot of rules.

And now for some melodic rules.

Some rules (and techniques) for connecting harmonic intervals.

There are only 4 ways we can connect notes – some are good, some are less good.

Here is the sheet music I used in the previous analysis.

The biggest rule of them all: Creating parallels.

Here is a worksheet for you to download and use to practice. The answers are at the bottom, so check your work – and make sure you are understanding the concepts so far.

The best place to start on a counterpoint like this is the first note, and the last 2 notes.

Once we have our first few notes done, we need to fill in the middle. This takes a little more time.

One of my favorite places to find practice material for this kind of thing.

Here is a worksheet for you to download and use to practice. The answers are at the bottom, so check your work – and make sure you are understanding the concepts so far.

You’ve come so far in music theory – but there is still more to come!

That’s it for now!