OK—I have a topic for my free inquiry project.

A couple of years ago, one of my brothers (Richard) was writing a song about Toronto, where he lives. At the time he was looking for interesting chords to “go to”—meaning he was creating a progression of different chords and he wanted it to not sound too boring. He asked me for ideas, as I had more knowledge of music theory and experience making songs than he did (although he had already written a number of songs himself). I wanted to help, but rather than tell him what to do I was inclined to try to transmit some of the creative tools I had acquired, for his own use. Sort of a “teach him to fish” approach.

The result was a series of videos on music theory geared towards songwriting—not how to understand and use music notation, not how to play a given instrument, but mostly how to create interesting chord progressions. The videos were originally intended for my brother, but as I could imagine others finding them even more useful, I decided to post them on my youtube channel and add to the playlist periodically. I did so in spurts for awhile and at this point it’s been about 10 months since making one.

I never consciously decided to stop making them, but one of the reasons they stopped being made in what free time I had was that as the concepts being discussed became more advanced, they became more and more interesting to me, and closer to how I actually think about songwriting. While this may sound like it would be more motivating (which it was, in one way), it was simultaneously more daunting, as I was entering into territory that was somewhat more personal and for which I held myself to a higher standard.

Anyway, what I’d like to do for my free inquiry project is to have another go at making the next set of these videos. This will involve learning, largely through trial and error, how to communicate with clarity and efficiency concepts heretofore unarticulated by me. Some aspects of what I’ll be discussing will be firmly rooted in traditional Western music theory while other aspects will be more purely aesthetic and subjective . Some notions will be inevitably nebulous while others will be more concrete. But all of it must seem to me useful and watchable. That is the plan.

As for my brother Richard, he finished and published his ode to Toronto long ago with little to no help from me or any of my videos, and to impressive local renown:

https://www.blogto.com/music/2020/07/music-video-while-riding-bike-around-toronto/