Although I don’t have much to show for it yet, I have actually been working on my free inquiry project. As announced in my previous post, I’m going to be making YouTube videos conveying useful concepts in music theory for songwriting. For one thing I’ve generated the following very-incomplete list of topics that I’d like to cover in future videos:

  • Inverted chords (including a brief lesson on Rameau’s chord theory?)
  • Bass lines as melodies (including review of diatonic & chromatic movement)
  • Intro to vocal harmonies (emphasis on discontinuous harmonies)
  • Vocal harmony style study (comparison of the Beach Boys and The Band)
  • Surprise in chord repetition
  • The sweet spot between weird & normal (weird can be boring)
  • Playing with time: intro to messing around in the rhythm department
  • Shifting & switching tempos
  • Time signatures, simple and complex
  • Omitted beats (e.g. ‘Hold On Dear Brother’) & partial beats
  • Getting math-y: counting down (or up) with chord repetitions & beats
  • Setting words to music: word painting & assigning notes to words
  • Accommodating words to music (e.g. ‘Ps 16’)
  • Accommodating music to words (e.g. ‘Morrow Thought’)
  • Song structures
  • Writing from something simple that feels good to play
  • Writing from melody rather than from chords
  • Thoughts on instrumentation

Realistically, completing just 3 or 4 of these in a single semester would be a feat—and that’s what I’m shooting for. The ideal order in which to make these is still unclear to me, but I know that I’d like to start with an exploration of inverted chords and bass lines, and I trust the path will unfold from there.