Music Theory For Digital Audio Workstation 2.1

Music Theory for Digital Audio
Workstation
By:
Catherine Schmidt-Jones
Music Theory for Digital Audio
Workstation
By:
Catherine Schmidt-Jones
Online:
< http://cnx.org/content/col12061/1.2/ >
OpenStax-CNX
This selection and arrangement of content as a collection is copyrighted by Catherine Schmidt-Jones. It is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Collection structure revised: September 12, 2016
PDF generated: September 12, 2016
For copyright and attribution information for the modules contained in this collection, see p. 68.
Table of Contents
1 Learning by Doing: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Music Theory for DAW: Course Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Theory for DAW 1: Pitch and Octaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4 Theory for DAW 2: Drone Accompaniments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5 Theory for DAW 3: Harmonic Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6 Theory for DAW 4: Open Harmonies and Power Chords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7 Theory for DAW 5: Major Chords and Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
8 Theory for DAW 6: Major Chord Progressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Attributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
iv
Available for free at Connexions <http://cnx.org/content/col12061/1.2>

Chapter 1
Learning by Doing: An Introduction 1
1.1 Learning-by-Doing: Practical Tips for getting the most out of

these courses
Many courses teach you the theory rst and then (maybe) let you practice using them in carefully controlled
situations to do things that teachers expect you to be able to do. If you are expected at all to apply the
idea in the messy arena of the real world, it is only after you have nished the approved learning. As
discussed in detail below (Section 1.2: The Philosophy behind Learning-by-Doing), learning-by-doing turns
the best way to begin learning about theoretical
this traditional approach on its head. It assumes that
concepts is to use them to do things in the real world that you want to or need to do. The end
result may be that you know the theory less thoroughly (so learning by doing may not be ideal if you need
a thorough conceptual background), but you understand the most useful concepts more deeply and can use
them in the real-life situations that matter to you.
note: At the time of publication, I am also publishing ve learning-by-doing courses in the area
of music: a course on Reading Rhythms
2 written in common notation, suitable for any instrument
(including voice and body percussion); a course that helps guitar tablature readers learn common
3
notation ; and three courses that can be used without learning to read common notation:
4 5
Music Theory for Digital Audio Work Station , Music Theory for Guitar , and an Exploring Music
Theories
6 course for those who would like to learn more about unfamiliar music traditions. Please
note that these are all short experimental courses. Feedback is much appreciated, and I will expand
and rene the courses based on reader response and interest.
To get anything out of these courses, you must do some of the activities! Do not just read about
them, and do not just imagine yourself doing them. Because human beings have very vivid imaginations, it
is actually quite easy to imagine doing something well, and thus fool yourself into believing that you get
it, when in practice you would actually struggle to do it or understand it. Simply reading about an idea
without experimenting with it yourself is about as useful as watching an exercise video without doing the
exercises. You don't have to do all the activities suggested in a module, just the ones that are most
enjoyable or most closely related to things that you need to or want to do with music in your real life. And
in the spirit of learning by doing, you should always feel free to adapt the activities to better t your
immediate music-learning projects and goals.
1 This content is available online at <http://cnx.org/content/m62540/1.2/>.

2 Reading Rhythm: A Learning-by-Doing Course <http://cnx.org/content/col12057/latest/>
3 Common Notation for Guitar Tablature Readers <http://cnx.org/content/col12059/latest/>
4 Music Theory for Digital Audio Workstation <http://cnx.org/content/col12061/latest/>
5 Music Theory for Guitar <http://cnx.org/content/col12060/latest/>
6 Exploring Music Theories <http://cnx.org/content/col12058/latest/>
1
2 CHAPTER 1. LEARNING BY DOING: AN INTRODUCTION
Also, be prepared to take the course slowly, as if the point is to enjoy the process rather than
to get to the end of the course. Concepts are introduced one at a time, with invitations to explore each
one before proceeding to the next. The payo to the slow approach is that whenever you take time to let an
idea become familiar, it not only becomes more useful for real-world activities, it also becomes more useful
for learning about other concepts! Over the long run, you are laying down a foundation that will eventually
help you understand the more advanced concepts more quickly and easily. As each concept becomes useful
and familiar, it is also less likely to be completely forgotten, and easier to re-learn, even when you set it
aside for months or years.
If a concept is familiar to you, it is of course ne to move past it quickly or even to skip it altogether.
How do you know when a music concept is familiar enough to move on? Can you:
• Recognize it when you hear it in real music?

• Write out an example of it, or point out an example in written music?
• Demonstrate it using your body (for example by singing, humming, or clapping)?
• Play an example of it on an instrument?
• Demonstrate a counter-example? In other words, can you hear or sing or play something that is
denitely NOT an example of the concept, and explain why it is not?
If you cannot easily do at least two of the activities in the list, with condence that you are
correct, then don't be in a hurry to move on. Play with the idea more than once, over the course of
several days or even weeks, until you can condently recognize and DO (hear/play/write/sing) the concept.
The slow pace should not be frustrating if you choose activities that are at an interesting level (not so easy
that they are boring, and not so dicult that they are frustrating) and that are related to your own music
goals. Do you want to be a more knowledgeable listener? A better improviser? A better music reader? Do
you want to play by ear? Compose or arrange music? You'll know you are really learning-by-doing when it's
dicult to draw a line between learning about theory and doing your favorite or ideal music activities. To
help you out with this, there is a wide variety of activities to choose from in the modules in these courses,
and most of the activities are described in general terms, so that you can easily adapt them to your goals
and situation.
Finally, the activities come with suggestions for gathering feedback, so that you know whether your use
of the concept ts with other people's understanding of it. Take the feedback steps seriously. One of
the main uses of music theory, notation, and acoustics is that they are useful for discussing music with other
people, so you will want to make sure that your interpretation of the concepts is reasonably similar to theirs.
Shared concepts can also help you create music that other people like, so again, you want to make sure that
your idea of how to use a concept is in line with what other people expect and enjoy. Again, the key to
not getting frustrated is to not be in a hurry. If feedback, from others or from your own careful listening,
suggests that you might be misunderstanding a concept or not using it well, try to work out a way to make
the activity easier, or to get some help from a more experienced musician, or to switch to a dierent, easier
activity for a while. Also, if feedback suggests that maybe you don't understand an idea or term that you
thought you already understood, don't hesitate to go back to previous modules and try to work out what is
causing your confusion. From the perspective of learning, it is particularly worthwhile to work through your
confusions until you have found the root of the problem, because the resulting aha moment is usually a
signicant step forward in your understanding.
Please note, however, that negative, unhelpful feedback on your personal projects can be terribly demo-
tivating, and psychologically harmful. See Providing Constructive Criticism in Music
7 for information on
how to provide or ask for feedback that is both useful and psychologically positive, or, when you cannot
get feedback from others, how to usefully critique your own work. The activities in this course also include
plenty of pointers for keeping feedback positive and useful.
Here is a quick summary of the above tips:

7 "Providing Constructive Criticism in Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m43427/latest/>

3
• Whenever a concept is not already familiar and useful to you, do some of the suggested activities
regularly until it becomes familiar and useable.
• Don't be in a hurry to move on. Try to nd activities that you enjoy or want to be able to do, so that
you will be content to explore each concept until it becomes very familiar and easy to use.
• Gather positive, useful feedback in order to make sure that your understanding of the concept is well
connected to the understandings and preferences of others.
1.2 The Philosophy behind Learning-by-Doing

You don't have to understand the philosophy in order to do these courses; feel free to skip the
rest of this module and move on to the hands-on modules if this does not interest you. Read on if you are
not sure whether this approach is right for you, or if you think that understanding the philosophy will help
you be more successful in using it.
The goal of a learning-by-doing course is to help you make useful connections between the activities that
you actually need to or want to do in the real world and the relevant theoretical concepts and terms that
can help you organize and think about those activities. The basic ideas behind learning-by-doing are:
1. All theoretical concepts are somehow useful for real-world activities.

2. General theoretical understanding always begins with specic real-world understanding.
3. Practical activities that you actually want to or need to do are the best place to begin understanding
the concepts.
4. Getting feedback on real-world projects is also the best way to check whether or not you have a good
understanding of the concept.
1.2.1 1. Using theory to do things in the real world

All theoretical concepts are somehow useful for doing things that people need to or want to do; otherwise
nobody would have bothered to invent and share them. (Some of them might only be useful to professional
physicists or linguists, for example, but they are all truly useful to some group of people!) The real-world
uses are actually the main point of the theoretical concepts. Even if you have studied a concept to the point
that you can dene and discuss it, if you haven't actually used it to do something that "needs doing" (as
opposed to "doing" a coursework-type problem), you really have only a vague idea of what you are talking
about. That vague idea might be so limited or misleading that when you do nd yourself in a situation
in which it could actually be useful, you may not know how to apply it, or may not even realize that it is
applicable!
A theory-only concept is, by its nature, a weak spot in your understanding. Because it is weak, it is
dicult to build on. Consider, for example, these two fake denitions: A mibble is a brown animal with
a long tail and A iss is a deciduous angiosperm with an actinomorphic calyx. Although the denition
of mibble is not real, you could probably use it, because it is based on familiar concepts like brown and
animal. If required, you could use it to:
• name examples of mibbles

• decide whether any specic animal can be classied as a mibble
• answer simple questions about mibbles (such as Do any of them make good pets?)
• understand mibble-dependent concepts (such as a mibble-ty is a mibble that can swim)
Unless you know a lot about plants, you are probably having more trouble with isses. Even if you memorize
the denition and look up the meaning of all of the words, could you decide whether or not a certain plant
qualies as a iss? Could you answer simple questions about them (such as Do any of them make good
house plants)? How certain would you be of your answers? The problem is that terms like deciduous are,
for most of us, a bit theoretical. Even if we see deciduous plants every day, we don't use the idea deciduous

to do things in their own lives. Brown, on the other hand, is an idea that we use to do things in our own
lives, such as deciding which pair of shoes to wear. Brown is not a merely theoretical concept; it is practical,
useful, familiar and comfortable.
Of course, if your job involves deciding what type of trees to plant, then deciduous becomes a very
useful and comfortable term, too. If you want music theory to become familiar and comfortable, this practical
approach is just what you want. For example, you probably hear "perfect fths" in music all the time, but
you don't think of them in those terms, just as you don't think of the trees that you walk past as being
deciduous. But if you start using the term perfect fths to do things, such as deciding what notes to use
in an improvisation, perfect fths will eventually no longer be a vague theoretical concept; it will become
a practical idea that you are comfortable using to describe the sounds that you hear or make.
important: You should note, however, that learning all of the conceptual information at once, in
a clear, formal, structured format, is usually faster and more ecient, so if you are certain that you
will need a wide and deep conceptual understanding of a certain area (for example, if you will need
to be able to formally analyze contrapuntal music), you may nd traditional-style courses to be a
better option for you than learning by doing.
1.2.2 2. Starting with specic understanding

General understanding starts with specic understanding. Nobody's understanding of an unfamiliar concept
begins as a complete overview. You start with one or two clues, based on a formal denition or a few
examples or the way someone else uses the concept. Your rst idea of it will almost certainly be incomplete
or even partially mistaken. As you start trying the idea out for yourself, you and other people may notice
mistakes in your use of the concept that are caused by incomplete understanding, rather than by a simple
need for practice. The mistakes can be frustrating, sometimes even embarrassing, but they help you get a
clearer, more complete and accurate idea of what the concept means and how to use it.
As you get more comfortable with a concept, you may start to notice that there are dierent ways to
use terms, or that dierent people use dierent terms for the same ideas. This is because they have had
dierent experiences with the terms and concepts, for example using them with dierent groups of people,
dierent styles of music, or dierent instruments. The more comfortable you are with a concept, the easier
it becomes to work with other people who have had dierent experiences or use dierent terms to talk about
it. Four-year-olds who have had dierent experiences with plants may have trouble discussing plants with
each other. Biologists who have had dierent experiences not only have little trouble using the term plant
with each other, they also have little trouble accommodating a four-year-old's understanding of the term.
You will nd the same is true for music theory; the more you learn about how it is relevant to what you do,
the easier it will be to talk to all kinds of musicians about what they do.
1.2.3 3. Doing things that you really want to or need to do

Using theoretical concepts to do practical things that you actually want to or need to do is the best way
to get to know the concepts, because it helps you understand what the concepts are for. This big picture
understanding will also help you recognize other specic ways that you might be able to use the concepts in
your life, which will help you keep them in mind rather than forgetting them. Working on something that
really matters to you personally will also help you work through those moments when you realize you are
doing something wrong, instead of quitting in frustration or deciding that you are not good at it.
Note that needing to do an assignment for a class does not count as learning-by-doing,
unless you feel that the goals of the course and of the assignment are relevant to your real
life. (And getting a good grade in the course does not count as a learning-by-doing goal, because in that
case, what you are doing is getting good grades, not making music.) For example, if the goal of a course
is to be able to write a chorale in the style of Bach, then this is not learning-by-doing unless you yourself
need to or want to write Bach-style chorales, or unless you know how the assignments will help you reach

5
your own goals. If you will need to write Bach-style chorales for your dream job as director of a choir, then
that is learning-by-doing. If your goal is to write Chopin-style etudes, or Beatles-style songs, and you can
see how the exercises in functional harmony and voice-leading will help you do those activities, then that is
also learning-by-doing. On the other hand, if the teacher knows how the assignments could help you reach
those goals, but you don't know, that does not count as learning-by-doing. In that case, the teacher has the
practical knowledge, not you. To you, the ideas are still theoretical; they are about how someone would do
that as opposed to how I could do this.
Learning by doing is not a new idea at all, nor is it particularly controversial; the ideas behind
this course have been explored by educators and approved by psychologists for decades. (If you would like
to learn more about the theory behind these courses, I recommend reading about inquiry, inquiry-based
learning, project-based learning, or active learning. The writing of John Dewey is a personal favorite of
mine.)
However, the ideas can be challenging for teachers to implement in traditional school situations. It is
dicult to provide students in school with the opportunity to do the things that directly interest them,
because dierent students in the same class are probably not going to be truly interested in the same
activities. So formal education sometimes simply gives you the theoretical concepts, without making you
use them at all. When this is the case, unless the information itself catches your interest, you usually forget
it as soon as forgetting is allowed (in other words, after the nal test).
Good formal education include activities that interest some people, usually the experts in that subject
and those who want to become experts. For example, you might be asked to use physics to design a safe
bridge, or to use literary skills to analyze Shakespeare, or to use music theory to write a chorale. These
activities help you to make sense of the concepts, which helps you remember them. They also give you some
idea of what the concepts are for, but these expert uses may not give you much idea of what you yourself
might be able to do with the concepts in everyday life.
For example, you might use physics to help you do skateboard tricks, use literary skills to discuss a
favorite novel at book club, or use music theory to write a rock song. Often, teachers are so familiar with the
concepts that such everyday uses are obvious to them. They may not realize, or may forget, that everyday
uses are not obvious when concepts are new and unfamiliar; or they may feel that everyday uses do not
belong in formal education. However, if you don't start using the concepts yourself in everyday life, then
without practice you eventually forget the concepts or forget how to use them. So, once you decide to learn
more about a subject on your own, it is useful to abandon the formal-education approach and set out instead
to nd ways to use the concepts in projects that you want to or have to do as part of your own real life.
Modern technologies are making it easier to oer learning-by-doing within a course setting, but many
courses use modern technology for other reasons. If you prefer this type of learning, or want to try it out
while guided by an experienced teacher, look for courses that are so exible that students are expected to
help set their own goals, activities, texts, and materials for the course. Note that if there are courses that are
closely aligned with your own goals, a traditional-style course may be a better choice, because it is carefully
designed to get you to the goal as quickly and eciently as possible.
1.2.4 4. Getting feedback on real-world projects

Again, in a formal-education setting, getting feedback usually means being told that you are right or
wrong when you discuss or dene the concept, or use it to solve a clearly-dened, expert-use type of
problem. Since this is feedback on a theoretical level, it doesn't give you a good idea of whether your own
understanding of the concept is useful for the not-so-clearly dened problems you meet in the real world. In
contrast, feedback on your own projects is feedback at that real-world-usefulness level.
The real world itself may provide all the feedback you need; for example, if you misunderstand the
physics of skateboarding, gravity and momentum may supply some very practical and memorable feedback.
Similarly, if you try to use concepts from a write-Bach-chorales course to write a pop song, your own ears
may tell you that something about the way you are using the concepts is not right.
However, if the concepts you are trying to learn have a large social component, then feedback from other
people is also very useful. For example, the reactions of other people to your pop song are a source of useful

information, and feedback from another musician who can perhaps help you locate specic reasons why the
song isn't working well can be extremely useful.
Interestingly, there is a lot of evidence that feedback does not have to come from experts to be useful.
This is why, for example, so many rock and pop musicians manage to teach themselves how to play simply
by being in bands with other musicians who are at the same level as them. Band members give each other
helpful and encouraging feedback, because that makes the entire group sound better, and in this way they
simply work out together how to make music that sounds good to them and to their fans.
However, such self-taught musicians often don't have a clear understanding of theoretical terms and
concepts. A knowledgeable musician can more easily provide useful help in this area, perhaps even to the
point of being able to explain to you what you are misunderstanding and why and how that is aecting
what you are doing. But when such feedback is unavailable, keep in mind that anyone who understands
the principles of constructive feedback
8 and is willing to listen carefully can provide clues that will help you
better understand what you are doing.

Chapter 2
Music Theory for DAW: Course

Introduction 1
This is an open, experimental prototype learning by doing (Chapter 1) course. It is intended for people
any
who do not have much formal music education but do have some experience creating music using
digital audio work station (DAW) that has a piano roll editor (for example, FL Studio, ProTools,
or GarageBand).
important: Note that some audio editors, such as Audacity, do not have a piano roll editor,
which makes them incompatible with this course. I cannot recommend a specic commercial DAW,
because the ideal software for you will depend very much on your personal preferences and goals as
a musician, composer, and software user. Most commercial DAWs will have a free trial option, to
help you decide. If you want to take this course without spending money on a DAW, (at the time
of publication) LMMS oers a free, open-source DAW with a piano roll editor.
Knowing a little theory can open up your options as a music composer, arranger, and producer. Many people
who love to work with DAWs cannot read music. If this describes you, you may have encountered an extra
challenge when you want to learn useful music theory concepts. It is dicult to discuss the concepts without
being able to point to specic examples in music, but music theory concepts are typically presented using
notated music. Spotting the concepts in a picture of the sound, such as a spectrogram or waveform, can be
This course explains
just as dicult for the beginner as listening for the concept as it goes by in the music.
some basic music theory using the piano roll view to explain and illustrate the concepts. You
do not need to be able to read music to learn the theory concepts that can help you exercise more
knowledgeable creative control over your digital music projects.
If you would like general information about learning-by-doing courses, including practical advice for
getting the most out of them, please see Learning by Doing: An Introduction (Chapter 1). Please note that
these are short, experimental courses. Feedback is most welcome, and I will develop and expand the courses
based on reader interest and feedback. You will nd below:
• What kind of music theory is featured in this course? (p. 7)

• What will knowing this theory help you do? (p. 7)
• What do you need to take this course? (Section 2.2: What do you need to take this course?)
2.1 Music Styles and Genres in Common Practice

The most widely useful music theory was originally developed to help musicians understand the complex
classical music that rst developed in western Europe. However, the theory can also be used to discuss
7
8 CHAPTER 2. MUSIC THEORY FOR DAW: COURSE INTRODUCTION
and understand any other style and genre of music that is organized using the same basic principals. This
includes many modern pop, rock, and jazz styles from around the world, as well as many of the folk,
country, and traditional music styles of some countries. The basic elements of this traditions can be
Western or common practice. If the type of music that you would like to create features a
called either
melody against a background of changing chords and a steady underlying beat, then it is likely
that you will nd common practice music theory concepts useful.
Harmony based on changing chords, often called functional harmony, is one of the most fundamental
aspects of common practice music, and also one of the most complex and dicult to learn without help. So
this course focuses on introducing the most basic and useful harmony concepts, in a way that
lets you experiment with them and begin to understand how to use them on your own. You will nd the
concepts most useful if you are interested in creating music that features melodies against a background of
changing chords. If you would like some examples of the types of music that feature functional harmony,
search for music labeled as:
• rock
• jazz
• reggae
• pop
• country and western
• Baroque era
• Classical era
• Romantic era
• Celtic
• Folk tradition of a Western European country, or of Western European settlers in Australia or the
Americas
If you would like some examples of the types of music that do not feature functional harmony and for which
this course will NOT be useful, try searching for music labeled:
• Classical music of an Asian, middle Eastern, or African country

• Folk tradition of an Asian or African country, or of an indigenous American or Australian people
• Medieval European chant
• modern Western classical genres such as twelve-tone and musique concrete
If you are more interested in creating music that is not in a common-practice genre, you may nd the
Exploring Music Theories
2 course to be much more useful than this course.
There are also many contemporary popular styles that are fusions of common-practice and other tradi-
tions. Specic pieces in these styles borrow elements from each tradition, so they may or may not feature
functional harmony. For example, jazz was originally a fusion of African and European traditions, and chord
changes are central to most jazz genres. However, there are more modern fusions of European and African
traditions in which rhythm is more central than harmony. Some modern Indian pop uses functional harmony,
while some is more rmly rooted in the local raga-over-drone tradition. Similarly, chord changes can be more
or less important in rap genres, depending on what sounds the loops feature and how they are used. If you
are interested in these types of music, it may be up to you to research the styles you enjoy the most and
decide how important it is to you to learn about harmony and chord changes.
2.2 What do you need to take this course?

What you do NOT need:
• You do not need to be able to read music.


9
• You do not need any prior knowledge of music theory.

• You do not need to be able to play or record real-world instruments; working entirely with MIDI,
virtual or software instruments will be easiest.
• You will not need to use pre-recorded or downloaded loops, although you will have the opportunity to
use them if you like.
• You will not need to create or download drum tracks, although again, you will be able to use them if
you like.
• You will not need an instructor. Although the course can be used in formal teaching situations such
as a course or private lessons, it is designed to be doable as a personal exploration of the concepts. If
you nd it dicult to work alone, and an instructor is not available, you might want to consider doing
it with friends who also enjoy making music with DAWs.
What you DO need:
• You will need access to a digital audio workstation (DAW) that lets you manipulate specic notes
using a piano roll view, because piano roll will be used instead of notated music to illustrate the
concepts. Most commercial DAWs (for example, FL Studio, ProTools, or GarageBand) include a piano
roll view. Which is best depends a lot on your personal preferences. Many are priced very reasonably
and have a free trial version that you can use to nd one that has the features that you want. If you are
not prepared to spend any money at this time, be aware that Audacity, the most popular open-source
sound editor, is not really a full DAW, and does not currently oer a piano roll option. (At the time
of publication,) LMMS is a free, open-source DAW.
• This is not a how-to-use-your DAW tutorial; how to directions are simply too dierent for the
various DAWs that are available. It is assumed that you have already gured out how to (1) use an
available DAW to create a track that includes notes from a virtual instrument; (2) edit the track (for
example, move notes around) using the piano roll editor; and (3) save your work. If you have trouble
doing [Activity 1 in Lesson 1], look up tutorials on how to use your DAW and practice that activity (or
any music-making project that appeals to you) until you can do these 3 actions without frustration.
At that point, you will be ready for the rest of the course.
• The music for the activities will not be provided; the learning-by-doing assumption is that you would
prefer to work on pieces that you choose. This will require you to be a little resourceful, but you also
get to choose how to get your resources. Can you compose or improvise tunes that you like, using MIDI
or a virtual instrument? Can you use MIDI or a virtual instrument to recreate, by ear, a favorite tune?
Can you nd a source of tunes that you can load into your DAW and edit in piano roll view? Can you
decide by ear whether a harmony sounds good with a given tune? Can you nd chord progressions
for some of your favorite tunes? You won't need all of these skills, but if they all sound too dicult,
you will probably nd this course too frustrating. You may be able to locate a course or instructor
that chooses music for you and provides specic materials, directing questions, and right answers to
smooth your way. Or with some practice and patience, you may be able to develop a few of the needed
skills.
• You will need to do the activities with an attitude of taking time to explore the concepts and learn
what they sound like and how to use them in your own creations. If you try to simply read the
lessons quickly, you will likely learn very little. Music theory is not a memorize the facts type of
knowledge. It is a learn how to type of knowledge. Like learning to play an instrument, it takes time
and practice, but the result is that you can do something that you could not do before: purposefully
construct melodies and harmonies that are in the musical styles that you like.
• You will need a reasonable amount of time. Each lesson features a concept that is central to common
practice theory, and includes several activities designed to help you understand how the concept is
used. Most musicians will need to take a break between activities, so plan on needing several sessions
to complete each lesson. In addition, each lesson also includes a number of suggested additional
activities. These suggested activities are not necessary, but are designed to help deepen and strengthen
your understanding of each concept, making it easier to use it as a base to understand further concepts.

10 CHAPTER 2. MUSIC THEORY FOR DAW: COURSE INTRODUCTION

Chapter 3
Theory for DAW 1: Pitch and Octaves 1
2
note: This lesson is part of Music Theory for Digital Audio Work Station , a short, experimen-
tal learning by doing (Chapter 1) course intended to help digital music creators expand on their
capabilities by learning a little harmony theory.
You will nd in this lesson:
• What is pitch? (p. 12)

• What is a melodic line? (Section 3.1: Melody)
• What is harmony? (Section 3.2: Harmony)
• What is an octave? (p. 14)
As discussed in the course introduction (Chapter 2), it is expected that you are already familiar enough with
your digital audio work station (DAW) to create a track using a virtual (software) instrument, alter it using
the piano roll editor, and save it. For this course, the piano roll view will serve not only as your editing
interface, but also as an alternative to written music, as a way to visualize and work with specic music
understand what each concept sounds like and how it is
theory concepts so that you can begin to
used in the kinds of music that you like.
3.1 Melody
The rst activity involves creating a melody track that you can use in later activities to start experimenting
with and listening to music theory concepts. The melody, or melodic line of a piece of music is what you
would hum or sing if asked what does that piece (or song or tune) sound like? You can only sing or hum
one note at a time; one-note-at-a-time is a dening quality of melody. There may be more than one line
of notes happening in the piece; the one that seems to invite you to sing or hum along, or at least pay the
most attention, is the melody.
You should always feel free to spend as much time as you need on a learning-by-doing activity, but that
is particularly true of this rst activity. You will be using this track as a starting point for other activities
in this course, so you want to create something that sounds good to you. If that seems to take a long time,
remember that the process involves learning how to use your DAW to create melodies that you like, a skill
that you will nd useful! If at any point during the course you get tired of using this track, feel free to create
and use a dierent one, or to continue editing this track to make it more to your liking.
Activity 1: Create a Melody Track
1. Begin a new project in your DAW.

11
12 CHAPTER 3. THEORY FOR DAW 1: PITCH AND OCTAVES
2. Create a track in which you can input individual notes either using a MIDI instrument, or by entering
For this course, always
the notes manually (for example, using the DAW's virtual keyboard).
choose instrument sounds that are simple enough to let you hear harmonies clearly. For
example, avoid distortion eects, reverb, and virtual instruments that have a buzzy or "metal" tone
quality. This will help you hear the pitches more clearly and train your ear to hear and choose harmonies
that you like.
3. Choose a melody that you would like to work with. It can be one you have composed or improvised,
or one that you have borrowed from a favorite piece. (If you use a borrowed melody, please be aware
of copyright issues (Note, p. 20).) If borrowed, it does not have to be an exact reproduction. Whether
you choose to shorten or simplify or jazz up or just alter the tune, using your own version of it is just
ne.
4. Using your chosen virtual instrument sound and the method of note entry that is easiest for you, create
a short track that consists only of a short section (around 15-20 notes) of the melody.
5. Listen to your track using good constructive criticism
3 practices. Feel free to delete tracks that do
not seem worth working on. Start over as many times as needed to get a section of melody that you
like and want to work with. If frustration levels start to rise, keep things simple! A simple but strong
melody will be much easier to work with than a more complex one that you feel is not developing well.
With more experience, you will be able to create longer, more complex melodies.
6. When you get a melody that you feel is worth working on, listen to it again with a critical ear, to
locate any aspects of it still bother you.
7. Using the piano roll view of the track, edit the melody so that it sounds even better to you. Move
notes left and right as needed to give the melody a compelling, persuasive rhythm without audible
hesitations, hiccups or rhythmic distortions. If a few notes sound wrong, experiment with moving
them up or down to see whether you can nd a note that ts the melody better. Add or take away
notes if you like. If you have diculties making any of these alterations, refer to a tutorial for your
DAW.
3.2 Harmony
Unlike melody, harmony happens when dierent notes are heard during the same period of time, rather
than in a one-at-a-time sequence. A good place to begin studying harmony theory, then, is by asking: When
are notes - in theory - dierent? In common practice, the answer is not as obvious as you might expect; it
is possible for two notes that sound quite dierent to be, in theory, the same note.
important: In order to be considered harmony, the dierent notes do not have to begin and end
at precisely the same time. They may begin and end around the same time, or they may only
partially overlap. Harmony can be created by holding a note or chord for a long time while many
dierent notes happen in the melody, or by playing dierent lines such as the melodic line and
the bass line at the same time. It can even be created by playing notes in a pattern that causes
the listener's ear to group them together as the chord for this period of time. All of these can be
legitimately considered harmony.
In common practice, another dening quality of both melody and harmony is that each note is named as a
pitch. Pitch refers to the frequency/wavelength aspects of the notes, which we hear as the "high" or "low"
aspect of the note. Notes with a higher pitch (a higher frequency) sound higher. (If you are not certain what
is meant by a "low" or "high" sound, nd an app or online site that plays sounds with specied frequencies
and experiment with listening to dierent frequencies.) You can sing or hum a melody, making the pitch
higher and lower as needed, and several people together can sing or hum harmony, but nobody can clap a
melody or harmony, because a hand clap does not have a specic pitch.

13
note: In this course, you will get a chance to learn the names of the pitches you are using, but if
you prefer, you can choose to learn to use them based on their sounds and their relationships to
each other, rather than on their names.
Activity 2: Explore Pitch
1. Use the piano roll view to look at the melody you created in Activity 1. (For the rest of this course,
use piano roll view whenever told to look at a piece you are working on.)
2. You have probably already noticed that the left-right direction of this view shows time; in other words,
the melody can be read as a sequence that is played from left to right. Since it is a melody, there will
be no same time note that is above or below another note.
3. The up-down direction is pitch. Notes that look higher, sound higher. Notes that are on the same level
have the same pitch. Your piano roll editor should include horizontal lines or shading that help you
determine quickly whether or not two notes are the same pitch. Look at your melody carefully. Does
it have any notes that are on the same horizontal line? (See the example below (Example 3.1).) Find
all of the examples in your melody of notes that have the same pitch. If there are none, add some.
You can add more notes on the end of the melody, or jazz it up by adding notes in the middle and
changing the rhythms, or simply divide one note into two separate notes that together are as long as
the note was before you divided it.
4. If the changes you make do not appeal to you, listen to them but do not save them. If you like the
changes, you can save them as your new favorite version of your melody or save them as a separate
melody idea to work on later.
5. Play your melody while watching it. Listen carefully to hear what it sounds like when a note looks
just a little higher or lower, a lot higher or lower, or on the same level, as the note before.
note: You should feel free to use any appropriate instrument sound for any activity in this course.
The audio examples are all created using a basic piano sound available in LMMS, a free, open
DAW. The piano sound should allow you to hear the harmonies in the examples relatively easily.
If you wish to recreate any examples for yourself, in order to experiment with them, it should also
allow you to compare and hear whether you have recreated them accurately.
Example 3.1

Screen Shot of a Melody in a Piano Roll Editor
Figure 3.1: Since the notes happen one at a time (from left to right), no note in a melody is above
or below another note. The higher the horizontal line that a note is on, the higher the pitch sounds.
Melodies in your piano roll editor may look slightly dierent; for example, the notes might be a dierent
color.
This media object is an audio le. Please view or download it at

<DAW1-Ex1.wav>
Figure 3.2: Listen to see whether you can hear that notes on the same horizontal line have the same
pitch.
In music theory, notes with the same pitch are considered to be the same note. It does not matter
whether they are sung or played by dierent people or instruments, or have dierent tone qualities, or are
held for longer or shorter amounts of time. They are given the same name, and if they happen at the
same time, they do not create harmony.
More surprisingly, there are also notes that are much higher or lower that also have the same name.
When one pitch is exactly twice the frequency of another pitch, it is called one octave higher. To the
human ear, notes that are exactly an octave apart sound surprisingly similar; for example; when women sing
a melody at the same time as men, but one octave higher, everyone will agree that the men and women are
singing the same thing; there is no harmony! We can hear that the pitches are dierent, but in common
practice theory we say that they are essentially singing the same notes; we even give the notes the same
name, soevery octave in other words, every time the frequency of the pitch doubles the
same notes repeat, over and over again, throughout the range that humans can hear.
This repetition is a fundamental aspect of common practice (Section 2.1: Music Styles and Genres in
Common Practice) music, and a very useful one for composers and arrangers! For example, if the tone
quality of a line is not ideal, moving the line to a dierent octave may x the problem. It is also very useful
to performers, so the octave repetition is always a visible feature of keyboard instruments. The black keys
are grouped, two, then three, then two, then three, and so on (see Figure 3.3 (Three Octaves on a Piano

15
Keyboard)) among the white keys. In all there are 12 dierent notes, ve of them black keys and seven of
them white, within each octave. (It is the seven white keys, plus one more to get to the same note, that
is the reason that the octave has a root that means eight.)
Three Octaves on a Piano Keyboard
Figure 3.3: The further left a note is on a keyboard, the lower its pitch. After 12 dierent notes - 7
white keys and 5 black keys - the cycle of names repeats.
That same pattern is reected on your piano roll editor. Look at the left-hand side of the piano roll
view. You should nd there a diagram of a piano keyboard, extending toward the horizontal bars that notes
are placed on, to indicate where the note would be found on a keyboard. Any note names (for example,
C) indicated on the diagram repeat every 12 notes. Anything that does not repeat will be an indication of
which octave you are working in. (See Figure 3.4 (Three Octaves in Piano Roll View).)

Three Octaves in Piano Roll View
Figure 3.4: This is a diagram (rather than a screen shot) of the view in a piano roll editor. The
background colors correspond to the octaves on the keyboard in the previous gure. The grey horizontal
lines correspond to black keys, and the other colors to white keys on a keyboard.
Your piano roll view also probably includes an indication of which octave the notes are in; for example
C2 is an octave higher than C1, but for this course it really does not matter which octave you choose to
work in. There are several dierent ways of naming octaves, and for purposes of basic music theory, it does
not matter which octave a note is in. Octave is more relevant to other aspects of the sound, such as balance,
4
timbre , and [voicing].
Activity 3: Add notes one octave higher or lower
1. Open the melody that you created in Activity 1. Copy it to create a dierent project, a dierent track
in this project, or a repeat of the melody in the same track, so that you will still have your original
melody as a starting point for other activities.
2. Counting the horizontal lines on the piano roll carefully, locate the one that is exactly 12 places higher
or lower than your rst note. Double-check that this line is in the same place in the light-dark pattern,
one octave higher than your note.
3. When you are sure you have the right place, add a note of the same length, on this line, precisely
above (or below, if you prefer) the rst note in your melody. (Use whatever method is easiest for you
to create new notes using the piano roll editor; consult a tutorial if needed.)
4. Now triple-check that you found the right note, by listening to the track. You should hear that the
extra note adds a bit of shading, perhaps changing the timbre or resonance of the note, but does not
add any harmony or dissonance. (Dissonance is two dierent notes that don't sound harmonious
when played at the same time.)
4 "Timbre: The Color of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11059/latest/>

17
5. Continue adding notes precisely one octave above (or below) each note in the melody. (See Exam-
ple 3.2.) You should gradually see exactly the same melody line the same pattern of higher and lower
notes appearing above (or below) the original melody line. Alternatively, if you know how to copy
and paste groups of notes in your piano roll view, you can use this method to copy large sections of the
melody one octave higher; simply make certain that the pasted sections are lined up precisely above
the original melody, 12 line higher.
6. Check your work by listening to the track; again, the timbre or resonance of the melody should sound
a bit dierent, but there should be no dissonance or harmony. Save this project to use in Activity 4.
Example 3.2
Melody in Octaves
Figure 3.5: This is the rst phrase of Beethoven's famous "Ode to Joy" melody. It is shown in two
octaves, with the higher octave where women might sing it, and the lower octave where men would be
more comfortable singing.

<DAW1-Ex2high.wav>
Figure 3.6: Melody in higher octave.

<DAW1-Ex2Low.wav>
Figure 3.7: Melody in lower octave.


<DAW1-Ex2both.wav>
Figure 3.8: Both octaves together. Note that the lines are so similar that they do not create any sense
of harmony when played together.
In Activity 3, you doubled the melody at the octave. Another term for doubling a melody is parallel
motion; a second line moves in parallel with the melody, rising or falling by exactly the same amount with
each note.Parallel motion at any distance other than octaves is normally not used in common
practice music, but it is common in some other traditions, such as medieval European chant, and you may
nd it an interesting way to add a harmony eect when you don't want to use functional harmony.
Activity 4: Parallel Harmonies
1. Open your project from activity 3.

2. Leaving the melody where it is, move all of the notes from the parallel octave to a dierent distance
from the melody. You can try any distance you like, but most composers prefer parallel harmonies
that are four, ve, or seven lines above or below the melody.
3. Check to make sure that all of the harmony notes are exactly the same distance above or below the
melody notes that they double. The two lines should also look parallel, in that the notes always
move up or down by the same distance. (See Example 3.3.]
4. Listen to the parallel harmony eect. Try dierent distances to see which ones you like best.
5. If you like the eect, but think just a few of the notes sound wrong, feel free to try moving the
wrong notes up or down a line, to see whether you can come up with a nearly parallel harmony
line that you like. Unlike strictly-parallel lines, nearly-parallel harmony lines are very common in some
common practice styles and genres.
Example 3.3

19
Parallel Harmony
Figure 3.9: This is the "Ode to Joy" melody again, but in a parallel harmony with a pitch distance of
seven lines, rather than the 12-line octave distance.

<DAW1-Ex2fths.wav>
Figure 3.10: Notice that strictly parallel harmony does NOT sound like common practice harmonies. It
may, however, remind you of European medieval music or other traditions that do use parallel harmonies.
In this course, you can always skip Further Explorations if you have no interest in them
or do not know how to do them. They are simply extra suggestions if you like the sound of a concept
and want to explore it a bit more, before going on to the next lesson. You can start a new project to try
these suggestions, or try them with any project that you have been working on in or outside of this course.
Remember to always save back-ups of any version that you like of a project that you like, in case your
explorations make it impossible to restore it to that version!
Further Explorations of Octaves
• Try emphasizing or changing the quality of a part by doubling it at the octave, in the same way
that you did in Activity 3. Compare the dierence in sound between adding notes an octave higher,
as compared to adding notes an octave lower. When do you prefer doubling a line an octave higher,
and when do you prefer doubling it an octave lower?
• Try moving a part of the piece up or down by an octave. In other words, rather than adding a parallel
higher or lower part, move all notes in the part up or down by an octave. The part could be any group
of notes, for example a melodic line, a bass line, or an idea that gets repeated in the accompaniment;
or it could simply be all of the notes in one section of the piece.
• If you found a parallel harmony that you liked in Activity 4, you can add to that project by doubling
either the original melody or the parallel line, or both, one octave higher or lower.

• If you like any of these octave eects, try lengthening some of your ongoing projects by repeating
sections, using octave dierences or doublings to make the repetitions fresh and interesting.
• If there is anything about the sounds of octaves or parallel harmonies that inspires you to do some
composing or arranging on your own, or to make changes to your own music, take time to pursue your
own creative projects before going on. Working on your own "real music" will help you get accustomed
to this central concept, and any diculties or questions you encounter while working on your own
music may help prepare you for the concepts in upcoming lessons.
note: This is not intended as legal advice, but be aware that copyright law, in the US and other
countries, makes a distinction between educational and publishing purposes. For example, you can
borrow short sections of melody for the purposes of learning, in private, about the theory that is
used to construct that melody; but it is illegal to borrow recognizable sections of a copyrighted
melody for any piece that you plan to publish. In order to avoid copyright hassles, if you plan to
share your work with others, create your own melody or borrow one that is in the public domain
or under a Creative Commons license .
5
5 "Choosing a Publication License: Four Activities for the Creative Classroom" <http://cnx.org/content/m44907/latest/>

Chapter 4
Theory for DAW 2: Drone

Accompaniments 1
2
note: This lesson is part of Music Theory for Digital Audio Work Station , a learning by doing
(Chapter 1) course intended to help digital music creators expand on their capabilities by learning
a little harmony theory. It is a short experimental course that will be rened and expanded if there
is sucient user interest and feedback.
This lesson includes
• As a term in music, what does "drone" mean? (p. 21)

• What is harmonious or consonant? (p. 21)
• What is discordant or dissonant? (p. 21)
• What parts are the accompaniment? (p. 24)
• What is a bar, or measure, of music? (p. 24)
The simplest way to add harmony to a melody is by adding a drone. A drone is one or two notes played
for a long time. When a melody is played at the same time as the drone, this creates a simple harmony
eect. A drone can sound continuously, as a single very long note, or simply be repeated constantly, with or
without a regular rhythm. It can be held for the entire piece, or only for a long section of it. Drones can be
loud or quiet, but, in order not to overpower the melody, the drone is typically in a lower octave, and often
played by a dierent instrument, so that it has a tone quality or timbre
3 that is dierent from the melody.
(To nd some examples that appeal to you, try searching for "drone" on your favorite music sites or "music
drone" at general sites such as YouTube.)
In some music traditions, drone notes are so common that there are instruments that specialize in them.
(For examples, listen to music that uses Scottish bagpipes or Indian tambura (or tanpoora.) Common
practice (Section 2.1: Music Styles and Genres in Common Practice) music typically features harmony that
changes, but drones are fairly common in some styles, such as blues and traditional folk, and are used
occasionally in other styles as an eect.
Creating a harmony requires choosing notes that complement the melody, a skill that needs plenty of
practice. When notes that sound at the same time do not complement each other, they can be described
as dissonant or discordant. When they do complement each other, they can be described as consonant
or harmonious. What is heard as consonant diers from one music tradition to another. This course
introduces the basic harmonies of common practice, but as a composer and arranger of music, you should
feel free to explore anything that sounds interesting and good to you. Stepping outside of the basics is a

21
22 CHAPTER 4. THEORY FOR DAW 2: DRONE ACCOMPANIMENTS
good way to develop your own signature sound. If you are more interested in harmonious sounds that are
not typical of common practice, you may prefer the Exploring Music Theories
4 course.
Even if you don't think you will use drone notes much, exploring drones is a good way to start practicing
choosing harmony notes, because the lack of change helps you train your ear to hear how the harmony
interacts with the melody. As always with learning by doing (Chapter 1) exercises, if you nd an activity
particularly challenging, rather than becoming frustrated, try to nd a more enjoyable way to engage with
the challenge. You may want to try activities more than once with various melodies that you particularly like,
until you nd one that "works" for you, or you may want to turn the activity into a full-scale composition
project, giving you a chance to really get used to working with the concept, before going on to the next
challenge.
Activity 1: Improvise and Compose a Melody over a Drone
1. Start a new project in your DAW, and create a track for the drone.
2. Choose a virtual instrument sound that can make long, sustained notes. (For example, you cannot use
steel drums to create a drone sound, because the sound of a steel drum dies away too quickly.) As for
your melody tracks, choose a sound with a simple tone quality that makes it easy to hear the pitch
clearly; eects, reverb, or a buzzy or "metal" tone quality make it harder to judge whether notes sound
good together. Once you have gured out which harmonies you like, you can use whatever instrument
sounds and eects you like!
3. Create a single long note that is in the lower half of your instrument's range of pitches, but not near
the very bottom of the range. Extend the note so that it lasts for several seconds.
4. Add a melody track. You may want to choose a dierent instrument sound, to make it easy to
distinguish from the drone.
5. While listening to the drone, improvise a short melody in this track. If you are not used to improvising,
start the melody on the note that is exactly one or two octaves higher than the drone note and play
something with a rhythm you like, using only a few dierent notes. Make the melody long enough by
repeating notes and returning to notes that you used earlier. Returning to the starting note is an easy
way to create a strong ending.
6. If you are completely dissatised with the improvisation, feel free to delete it and try again. Notice
which notes seem dissonant to you, and try to avoid those notes in your later improvisations.
7. Once you get a melody that you feel is worth working with, use the editor to delete or move individual
notes that you do not like. You do not have to get rid of all dissonant notes! Short moments of
dissonance add avor and interest, so a good way to decrease dissonance is to simply make the notes
that are harmonious longer and the dissonant notes shorter.
8. Use the editor to further clean up and strengthen the rhythm. Remember, you can include gaps in
the melody (rests) as well as moving, lengthening and shortening notes.
9. Save this project to use in the activities below.
Example 4.1
A drone is a long or constantly-repeated note (or notes). When played with a melody, it functions
as a very simple harmony. You may want to add the drone in the same track as the melody at rst,
making it easy to see exactly how far the drone note is from the melody notes. If you later decide
that you would like to hear the drone in a dierent instrument than the melody, simply add an
instrument track, add notes that are the same as the drone notes in your melody track, and then
delete the drone notes from the melody track.

23
Melody over a Single Long Drone Note
Figure 4.1: The drone note chosen is one octave below the nal note in the melody, which also happens
to be the longest note and a note that is played often, but other drones would also have worked with
this melody.

<DAW2-Ex1.wav>
Figure 4.2
Activity 2: Add a Drone to your Lesson 1 Melody
1. Open the melody that you created in Activity 1 of Lesson 1 (Chapter 3) and save it as a dierent
project, so that you won't lose the version of the melody that you like.
2. In this new project, add a track for a drone note, using any appropriate instrument sound. (If you
would nd it much easier to add drone notes to the same track, you can do that for now, but be aware
that when you do this, you cannot choose dierent volumes, instruments, or eects for the melody and
harmony. Switch to using dierent tracks as soon as it is comfortable to do so.)
3. Choose a note from your melody that is your rst guess for a good drone note. This could be the
rst note of the melody, the last note, or a note that is held for a long time or repeated often. (See
Example 4.1)
4. Add a drone note that lasts as long as the entire melody, one or two octaves lower than your chosen
note.
5. Listen to the result. Then try moving the drone to various other positions, one or two octaves below
any note in the melody, to see whether you can nd one that you like better. If none of these sound
good to you, you can also try moving the drone to notes that are not part of the melody, but these are
less likely to be good drones.
6. Try to choose a best t drone for your melody. If all possible drone notes seem to clash badly with
the melody, try moving the drone to a dierent octave and playing it more quietly than the melody,

using a mellower instrument sound. A drone that seems to t most of the melody but not all of it is
ne.
7. Save this project with the best t drone, to use in the activities below.
In common practice, the accompaniment is any part of the music that is not the melody. Accompaniment
includes harmony notes, such as drones, as well as parts that do not have denite pitch, such as bass drum
beats and cymbal crashes. Any of these parts can be used to help dene the basic beat of the music.
The melody also strengthens the basic beat, by beginning many of the melody notes on a beat. Your
DAW helps you do this by snapping the beginnings of notes to the vertical lines; the thicker vertical lines
in the piano-roll view are the beginnings of beats. However, melodies often are much more rhythmically
complex than a basic beat; often, some of the notes begin in between beats (for example, on the thinner
vertical lines). It is typically the job of the accompaniment to create a strong, steady, repetitive beat. Drum
tracks are often used to do this; a short loop (usually two, three, four, six, or eight beats long) of drum
rhythm is repeated continuously through long sections of the music. For the purposes of this course, this
repeated unit of rhythm can be considered to be one bar (also called a measure) of music.
note: The repeated rhythm in the accompaniment does not have to be exactly one bar or measure
long, so this is not an ocial denition, but this is so commonly the case that it is a useful working
assumption for most common practice pieces. The actual denition is based on traditional methods
of writing music, which we are not using in this course.
Notes in the harmony may have the same rhythm as the melody, or have their own independent, complex
rhythms, but they are often used to strengthen the beat. One way that they can do this is to have a
rhythm that repeats in every bar, similar to drum parts but with a pitch (See Figure 4.3 (Melody over a
Single Rhythmic Drone Note)) To begin working with this idea, try turning your drone note into a rhythmic
accompaniment in the next activity.
Example 4.2
Melody over a Single Rhythmic Drone Note
Figure 4.3: Since a rhythmic drone just repeats the same pitch, putting some spaces (rests) in between
the individual notes helps make the rhythm more audible.

25

<DAW2-Ex2.wav>
Figure 4.4
Activity 3: Add a Beat to your Drone
1. Open your project from Activity 2 to continue editing the track that contains the drone.
2. Break up the continuous drone note into a row of shorter notes that add a steady, repetitive beat to
the sound. You can make the shorter notes all the same length, or create a more interesting rhythm,
as long as it is repetitive. (See Figure 4.3 (Melody over a Single Rhythmic Drone Note)]
3. Use the beginnings of the melody notes and the vertical lines on the editor to help align the beginnings
of the drone notes into a pattern that strengthens and complements the melody. Feel free to adjust
the placement of the melody notes if you like.
4. If the rhythm is not very noticeable, shorten the notes so that there is more space in between them.
5. If you like, once you have a rhythmic beat in the drone that complements the melody, you can add to
it by including drum tracks that strengthen or complement the beat in the drone.
If you would like to continue exploring drones before going on, try any of the following with any
project you like.
• Change the instrument sound for both the drone and the melody, trying a variety of combinations.
• Try using drones closer to and further from the melody (i.e. in medium-low and very-low ranges).
• Try using a drone doubled at the octave, i.e. two drone notes one octave apart.
• Try a high drone with a low melody.
• Do some research to determine whether any of your favorite genres or styles feature drones. If they
do, try to discover specic pieces that you like that feature a drone. Listen to them carefully to hear
how drones are used in this genre/style. Can you imitate the instrument sound that is used? Does it
create a steady, repeated rhythm or not? Does it consist of a single pitch, or octaves, or two dierent
notes?
• If there is anything about the sounds of drones that inspires you to do some composing or arranging
on your own, take time to pursue your own creative projects before going on. Working on your own
"real music" will help you get accustomed to adding harmony notes to melodies, and any diculties
or questions you encounter along the way may help prepare you for the concepts in upcoming lessons.


Chapter 5
Theory for DAW 3: Harmonic Tempo 1
2
note: This lesson is part of Music Theory for Digital Audio Work Station , a learning by doing
As you worked on the activities in Lesson 2 (Chapter 4), you may have noticed that your best t drone
worked better for some parts of your melody than others. In common practice, you can change the notes in
the harmony at any time. For example, you can change the harmony with every single melody note, as you
did with the parallel harmonies in Activity 4 of Lesson 1 (Chapter 3). Or you can change the harmony
while holding the same melody note.
However, a steady beat is one of the most typical features of most common practice styles, and harmony
is typically structured in a way that strengthens and emphasizes the beat. One way to do this
is by organizing the accompaniment (p. 24) into repeated rhythmic patterns, as you did in Lesson 2.
Another powerful way that harmony can strengthen the rhythm of a piece is by changing the harmony at
the beginnings of bars (p. 24). Changing the harmony on a beat emphasizes that beat, so changing harmony
at the beginnings of bars makes it easier for listeners to hear/feel the bars. (See Figure 5.1).

27
28 CHAPTER 5. THEORY FOR DAW 3: HARMONIC TEMPO
Figure 5.1: Repeated rhythm patterns create a sense that the music is organized into measures or
bars that have the same underlying (or implied) rhythm. Changing the harmony at the beginning of
the rhythmic pattern strengthens the feeling of the bars/measures as easy-to-hear, fundamental units
of the music. Changing the harmony at other places in the rhythm pattern weakens the feeling of
bars/measures, but used sparingly this can keep the music from becoming too repetitive and predictable.
note: As a composer, you may sometimes want a beat that is not so strong or predictable; that
is ne, and very eective in creating some musical styles or moods. This course focuses on most
typical, assuming that this will give you the knowledge needed to explore less typical. Also, keep
in mind that the stronger the established/expected beat, the more surprising/interesting/eective
it is to throw in some type of change!
The harmony does not have to change at the beginning of every bar, in order to set up a regular, predictable,
beat-enhancing pattern. For example, it can change every two bars, or every four bars, or it can change
twice in every bar (at the beginning and half-way through, for example). The general pace of change in
the harmony of a piece is called its harmonic tempo or harmonic rhythm. (See Figure 5.2 (Harmonic
Tempo).) The harmonic tempo is not a straight-jacket that means that you must change rhythm every two
measures, any more than establishing a beat means you must use the same rhythm loop every time. It is just
another way of creating the underlying predictability that makes a piece of music intuitively understandable
for listeners. Throwing in some variety is good, and is often necessary to make sure that the harmony is also
complementing the melody.

29
Harmonic Tempo
Figure 5.2: Examples A and B both have the same bar length, but the harmonic tempo in Example
B is twice as long, changing "harmony" (in this case, a rhythmic drone) every 2 bars rather than every
bar.

<DAW3-ExA.wav>
Figure 5.3: Listen to Example A


<DAW3-ExB.wav>
Figure 5.4: Listen to Example B
Activity 1: Accompaniment with harmonic tempo
1. Start a new project for this activity.

2. Choosing any low note, any appropriate instrument sound, and any repeating rhythm that you like,
create a rhythmic drone as you did in Lesson 2. Make the drone at least eight bars long. In other
words, repeat (loop) the rhythmic idea at least eight times.
3. Choose a dierent note where you will move parts of the drone. Notes that are four, ve, or seven
lines higher or lower work particularly well for most common practice (Section 2.1: Music Styles and
Genres in Common Practice) melodies, but you can choose any note that is dierent (i.e. NOT the
octave).
4. Move alternating bars of the drone to the new note. In other words, if you repeated the rhythm eight
times, leave the drone in place in bars 1, 3, 5, and 7 where they are, and move it to the new note in bars
2, 4, 6, and 8 (and so on, if your line is longer). (See Example A in Figure 5.2 (Harmonic Tempo).)
5. Listen to the track to hear how the changing note emphasizes the beginning of each bar.
6. Next, rearrange the drone so that it changes every two bars: 1, 2, 5, and 6 are on one note and 3, 4, 7,
and 8 are on the other (continuing this pattern, if your line is longer). (See Example B in Figure 5.2
(Harmonic Tempo).)
7. Listen again to hear the eect on the beat. The changing-note emphasis now happens only at the
beginning of bars 3, 5, and 7, rather than at the beginning of every bar, which gives the beat a slightly
dierent feel.
8. Choose whichever version you like best, and save it for the next activity. If you like, you can also add
a drum track that strengthens or complements the harmonic rhythm in your harmonic-rhythm track.
Activity 2: Add an improvised/composed melody to your single-note accompaniment
1. Open your project from Activity 1 and add a track for the melody.
2. While listening to the accompaniment track(s), improvise a short melody. If you are not used to
improvising, try creating a melody that features the two notes that are exactly one or two octaves
above the two accompaniment notes, adding just a few other notes (at nearby pitches) to add interest.
Keep in mind that you can create a strong, interesting melody by reusing the same few notes in dierent
rhythms and combinations.
3. If the result sounds too dissonant (p. 21) to you, notice which melody notes seem to clash with each
drone note. You may nd that the same notes clash with both drone notes, or that dierent notes
clash with each one. Delete the melody track and try again, avoiding the notes that clash and trying
new notes if you like. (If you are unhappy with the result mainly due to rhythmic problems, go on to
the next step.)
4. Once you get an improvisation that you feel you can work with, feel free to move any melody notes
that you feel are not working well with the accompaniment. You can move any melody note up or
down, to a dierent pitch, or left or right, to adjust the rhythm of the melody.
5. Once you have a melody that you like, continue to edit the rhythm until it feels strong and complements
the beat in the accompaniment.
If you don't have a particular inspiration for a melody, creating a strong accompaniment that you like can
often inspire you to hear melodies that t it. This is the approach to composition taken in Activity 2. But

31
if you are arranging a tune composed by someone else, or if you already have an idea for a melody, you will
of course need to add harmony that works with the given melody. This is the approach taken in Activity
3. Just as there can be many melodies that t a given harmony, there can also be several harmonies that
work with a given melody. For example, you may nd that you can t the melody to either a fast harmonic
rhythm or a slow harmonic rhythm, creating two very dierent stylistic feelings. You may also nd that it
sometimes works best to break with the harmonic rhythm, by changing the harmony note somewhere other
than the expected place. (See Figure 5.5.) That is ne; in fact, it is a great way to make the harmony more
interesting. There will be some choices that are stronger than others, because they make the harmony
sound as if it is in a particular style, and thus will appeal to people who like that style, but ultimately there
are no right answers.
Figure 5.5: Once you establish the harmonic tempo, it is ne to break the pattern in any way that
supports the melody. You may also want to break it up just to make the accompaniment more interesting
or to establish longer, more complex patterns.

<DAW3-Ex3.wav>
Figure 5.6: Listen to the Example in Figure 5.5
Activity 3: Change the Accompaniment Note to Fit the Melody
1. Use your project from Activity 2 of Lesson 2 to do this activity. (If you feel that the drone and melody
of your Activity 2 project in this lesson still do not "t" each other perfectly, you can use that project
instead.)
2. Listen carefully to the melody, along with its best t drone note broken up as a rhythmic drone.
Find points in the melody when the drone note does not t particularly well, and note which bars are
involved.
3. Find those same bars in the harmony track.
4. Experiment with moving the harmony note in each of these bars to a dierent pitch. Start by trying
the other note that is already a part of your accompaniment. If that one also does not work well,
you may want to try other notes. As before, other good guesses are notes that are exactly one or two
octaves below some of the melody notes, but try to choose the note that is an octave or two below
a dierent melody note. If you choose drone notes that mirror the melody notes, you will end up

with a medieval-sounding parallel harmony (as in Lesson 1). In this project, you want a part that
complements, rather than follows, the melody.
5. Once you have found a best t for each bar of the drone, listen carefully and do some nal editing of
the accompaniment. If the accompaniment seems too random or complicated, you may want to simplify
it by turning it into a repeating pattern (as in Activity 1) of only two or three dierent pitches, even
if this allows short dissonances with the melody. If it still seems to clash too much with the melody in
one or two spots, experiment with making adjustments such as changing the drone note in the middle
of a bar, as in Figure 5.5
If you would like to continue exploring harmonic rhythm before going on, try any of the
following:
• In Activity 1 you created two harmonic rhythms: a faster (change every bar) and a slower (change
every other bar). Try some even slower harmonic rhythms, for example three bars of each drone note,
or four bars.
• Experiment with changing the harmonic tempo for dierent rhythm loops. For example, try rhythm
loops that are long and complex, short and simple, or that have a very fast or very slow basic beat.
• Try some more complex harmonic-rhythm patterns, for example two bars of one note followed by only
one of the other note, or three of one and one of the other.
• Experiment with breaking the harmonic rhythm pattern. Set up any harmonic rhythm that you like
(for example, changing notes every two bars), repeat it enough times to establish the pattern, and then
do something to break the pattern, such as skipping an expected changes.
• Experiment with changing drone notes in the middle of a bars. You can do this occasionally, as a break
in the set harmonic rhythm, or you can try setting up a harmonic rhythm that uses both drone notes
in every bar.
• Choose a third drone note. For example, if you chose a second note that was seven lines higher than
the rst one, you might want to choose a third note that is in between them. Start with one or two
bars for each note, and listen to nd a third note that you think works well with the other two. Once
you have chosen a third note that you like, you can experiment with any harmonic-rhythm pattern of
the three notes.
• If you come up with a pattern you particularly like, try adding a melody to it, or save it for a later
project.
• Listen to some of your favorite music, to see whether you can hear the harmonic rhythm. Does the
underlying harmony seem to change quickly or slowly? Can you hear anything similar to the patterns
you have been experimenting with?
• For more practice nding accompaniment notes to t melodies, use any melodies that you have available
in other projects, or create new projects, adding melodies from whatever source you prefer. If you feel
you need ear training to help you choose usable accompaniment notes, you may want to try using a
project with a track that already has a harmony-based accompaniment added (for example, a favorite
downloaded clip). Try to choose pieces that are not too complex and that have a slow harmonic rhythm.
Listening to the harmony track, try to add your own accompaniment notes that seem to match the
ones you hear.
• If there is anything about the concept of harmonic tempo that inspires you to do some composing or
arranging on your own, take time to pursue your own creative projects before going on. Working on
your own "real music" will help you get accustomed to the using this concept, and any diculties or
questions you encounter along the way may help prepare you for the concepts in upcoming lessons.

Chapter 6
Theory for DAW 4: Open Harmonies

and Power Chords 1
note:
2
This lesson is part of Music Theory for Digital Audio Workstation , a learning by doing
You will nd in this lesson:
• What is an interval? (p. 33)

• What makes an interval "open" or "perfect" (p. 33)
• What is a power chord? (p. 35)
• What is an inverted chord or interval? (p. 35)
• How to create a "chart" of the "changes" in a piece of music (p. 37)
6.1 Open Harmonies

In common practice, the distance between two pitches in other words, how much higher or lower one note is
than the other is called the interval. Lesson 1 (Chapter 3) demonstrated that the octave is a particularly
interesting interval. When two notes are an octave apart, their frequencies line up so neatly (one is exactly
twice the frequency of the other) that human ears tend to hear them, in terms of harmony, as the same
note. This relationship is so strong that it is recognized in just about every music tradition all over the
world.
There is one other harmony relationship that is also so strongly based on the frequencies of the notes
that most music traditions recognize and use it. The frequencies don't line up quite so simply (the ratio
is 2-to-3 rather than 1-to-2), so it is not quite as basic as the octave, but is still recognized across many
traditions and styles as being strongly harmonious. Along with the octave, the intervals that are created by
this simple frequency relationship are sometimes called open or perfect. Because the open interval is only
slightly more complex than a single note or octave harmony, it is still relatively easy to create melodies that
will sound good with it.

33
CHAPTER 6. THEORY FOR DAW 4: OPEN HARMONIES AND POWER
34
CHORDS
Open Harmonies
Figure 6.1: An octave is an open harmony, uncommitted to a particular scale or mode and therefore
open to lots of melodic possibilities. Inside every octave, there are two notes that are seven lines from one
note in the octave and ve lines from the other. Adding either of these notes inside makes the harmony
a bit more complex but still open-sounding.

<DAW4-Ex1.wav>
Figure 6.2: Can you hear that both examples shown in Figure 6.1 (Open Harmonies) have similarly a
similarly "open" quality but are still dierent harmonies?
Activity 1: Open Intervals
1. Start a new project by choosing and creating a workable drone note, as in previous lessons.
2. Add another drone note exactly one octave (12 lines) above or below it, as you did in Lesson 1. Listen
to make sure the result has the simple, open sound of an octave.
3. Add a third drone note in between the octave notes, exactly seven lines above the lower note (ve lines
below the upper note). (See Figure 6.1 (Open Harmonies))

35
4. Listen to the result, noting that the sound has become only slightly more complex than the sound
of octaves. This is the open or perfect quality; musicians sometimes describe open intervals as
sounding hollow or medieval.
5. Move the middle note so that it is exactly ve lines above the lower note (seven lines below the upper
note).
6. Listen again to hear that the result is still an open harmony sound.
7. Move the middle note one more time, so that it is six lines from both the upper and lower notes.
Listen to the result to hear what it sounds like when the frequencies of notes are not aligned. Most
music traditions consider this interval dissonant (p. 21) and avoid using it as harmony. If you like
dissonance, you may want to keep it in mind as an eect, but this course focuses on basic common
practice harmonies, so this interval won't be explored in these activities.
8. Move the middle note back to seven lines above the lower note (ve lines below the upper note), if you
want to save it for the next activity.
6.2 Power Chords

Due to the history and notation of common practice music, you will probably nd the traditional names for
intervals dicult to relate to or remember. They were named to make sense when writing music in common
notation or thinking about it in terms of major and minor scales. (More about all that later.) If you are
going to discuss intervals with non-digital musicians, you may want to know that the seven-line interval is
called an open fth and the ve-line interval is an open fourth. But many digital composers don't need to
worry much about this, so in this course, I will avoid unnecessary complications and refer to the seven-line
interval by a less confusing term that is used in many popular genres: the power chord.
Activity 2: Melody over a power chord drone
1. For this activity, you can use your project from Activity 1, or you can use a rhythmic drone accompa-
niment that you saved from Lesson 2 (Chapter 4), with the melody track deleted or turned o, if there
is one. (Remember to always work on copies of projects that you really like, so that if you don't like
the new version as much, you still have the old version saved.)
2. If you are starting with the Activity 1 project, delete the highest note, so that all you have is a power
chord drone. Turn this into a rhythmic drone using the same steps you used in similar activities in
Lessons 2 and 3. You can choose to break both of the continuous notes into shorter notes with the
same rhythms, or leave one note continuous while breaking up the other, or even give the two notes
dierent rhythms, but to give it that common-practice feeling, do make sure that the result is an
accompaniment that repeats every bar (or every two bars, or four bars, if you prefer). You can also
add drum tracks if you like.
3. If you are starting with a project saved from Lesson 2, add a second drone note seven lines higher or
lower than the original drone, to create a power chord. The second note can be one long, continuous
note, or it can have the same rhythm as the original drone, or a dierent repeating rhythm that
complements it. (Again, make sure that the result is a repeating rhythmic pattern).
4. If your project includes a melody track that has been turned o, you can turn that track back on and
listen to see whether the power chord suits the melody. If you like the result, you can save it, but in
any case, now delete the melody and save this as a new melody-less project so you can practice adding
melody over a power chord.
5. Add a melody track, using the same steps as in previous lessons: While listening to your power chord
accompaniment, improvise a melody to go with it. If you are not used to improvising, keep the melody
simple! Try featuring the notes one octave above each of the power chord notes, plus only a few other
nearby notes. Delete tracks that you dislike, noticing which notes seem to clash with the power chord
and avoiding these notes in subsequent tries. When you create a track that you feel you can work with,
edit the melody as needed to get something that you like.

36
CHORDS
The other concept I will borrow from common practice, to keep things simple, is the idea of inverted
intervals or inversions. Remember that the upper and lower notes of the octave are, in theory the same.
So the ve-line interval is just an upside-down, or inverted, version of the seven-line interval. In other words,
the middle note with the top note gives you essentially the same harmony as the middle note with the lower
note, but inverted because the note that was on the top is now on the bottom. (See Figure 6.3 (Power
inverted power chord.
chords)). Rather than call the ve-line interval a perfect fourth, I will call it an
(Note that inverted power chord is not standard terminology; I am using it to avoid terminology that
you are likely to nd unnecessary and confusing.)
Power chords
Figure 6.3: Remember that octaves don't matter in common practice harmony. So these power chords
are all the same chord, because they all consist of the same two notes (although some are in dierent
octaves).

<DAW4-Ex2.wav>
Figure 6.4: Can you hear that both of the inversions create the same harmony as the root position,
but with a slightly dierent eect? Notice that the octave chosen also slightly changes the eect of the
chord, while not changing the basic harmony. Choices involving which chord position and which octaves
to use are called voicing, a more advanced composition technique that is not covered in this course.

37
Activity 3: Adding power chord harmonies to a melody
1. Open any project from Lesson 3 (Chapter 5) in which you saved a melody with an accompaniment
that included a changing, one-note harmony.
2. Try turning the rst note in the harmony into a power chord, by adding another harmony note of the
same length, seven lines above it, creating a power chord.
3. Listen carefully to the result and decide whether you feel the added harmony note also goes well with
the melody or seems to clash with it.
4. If you like the result, you can go on to the next step. If not, delete the note you added and try adding
a dierent note instead. You can try: the note ve lines above the original harmony note (to create
an inverted power chord); the note seven lines below it (that same power chord, in root position); and
the note ve lines below it (the inversion of the rst power chord you tried). Listen to each possibility,
and keep the one that you think works best.
5. If none of the options sounds good to you, you can try moving both harmony notes up or down by the
same amount, seeking a power chord that complements that section of melody.
6. Repeat steps 2-4 with each of the harmony notes, until your entire harmony part consists of power
chords rather than single-note harmonies. If there are one or two spots where you cannot nd a power
chord that sounds right, you can change the harmony in those spots to a simple octave, but most of
your harmony should consist of power chords.
7. Save this project for Activity 4.
6.3 Naming Chords, Part I

In Activity 3, you created a harmony in a typical common practice style, with chords that change regularly
as part of the accompaniment to a melody. When musicians work together to perform a piece as a band,
they sometimes refer to this aspect of the accompaniment as the chord changes or simply the changes of
the piece. If a standard harmonic tempo or harmonic rhythm pattern is used, they may also be called the
rhythm changes. If you create your digital music without input from other musicians, you may not need
to know the names of your chords, but if you work with other musicians, you may want to be able to create
a chart of the changes. (See Figure 6.5 (A Chart of the Changes))
Knowing the names of the chords, and when they are used, can help other musicians create parts for
themselves that complement the part that you have created. In the same way, if you use loops created by
other musicians, knowing the names of any chords that are used in the loop will help you choose notes to
add that will complement what is in the prerecorded loop, or to choose loops that complement what you are
already working with.

38
CHORDS
A Chart of the Changes
Figure 6.5: A chart of the chord changes names the chords that are played, in the order that they
are played. In order to make it clear when to change chords, it also may include a melody, and/or an
indication of how many bars (p. 24) there are per chord, and/or song or rap lyrics. In some styles, a
symbol for a power chord includes a "5" after the name of the root note. In other styles, a chord symbol
that only names the root note is assumed to be a power chord.
Rules for Naming Power Chords
• A power chord is named using the note that is lower when the notes are seven lines apart (or higher
when the power chord is inverted). This note is considered the root note of the chord, and when it is
the lowest note, the chord is in root position (see Figure 6.6 (Naming Chord Roots)).
• If the note is a white piano key note, the letter name of that note is enough to name the chord.
• If the note is a black piano key note, you have a choice. You can name it as the sharp of the note
below it, or as the at of the note above it (see Figure 6.7 (Root Notes that are Sharp or Flat)). The
rules for whether to prefer sharp or at names are not straightforward and not worth learning at this
point. As a basic strategy, simply be consistent (i.e. use only sharp chord names or only at chord
names) within each piece.
• If it is already understood that the chord is a power chord (for example, some rock genres use mainly
power chords), no further naming is needed. If it is not obvious, a power chord can be specied by
adding a 5 (meaning the open fth), for example, writing C5 or F#5.

39
Naming Chord Roots
Figure 6.6: Your piano roll interface may not show the names of all of the notes; note names are implied
by their position in the black-key-white-key pattern. If you will not need to name your chords often,
there is no need to memorize the names, but you may nd it useful to know how to name chords when
discussing your music with other musicians.

40
CHORDS
Root Notes that are Sharp or Flat
Figure 6.7: The chord that is higher than F and lower than G can be named either F sharp or G at.
Its root lines up with a black key, rather than a white key, on the piano-keyboard diagram. Although F
sharp is more common than G at, both are acceptable names. By tradition most pieces are consistent,
either using only sharp chord names, or only at chord names.
Activity 4: Name and Chart your Power Chords
1. Open your project from Activity 3.

2. Using the rules above (Rules for Naming Power Chords, p. 38), determine which note is the root of
the rst power chord.
3. Using the keyboard diagram at the left of your piano roll editor, and referring to Figure 6.6 (Naming
Chord Roots) as needed, determine the name of the root note, and the name of this chord.
4. Go through your entire harmony track, repeating steps 1 and 2 every time the chord changes.
5. Create a simple chart that would indicate to another musician what the changes are in your piece
(see Figure 6.5 (A Chart of the Changes)).
If you would like to continue exploring power chords before going on, try any of the following:
• Develop a repetitive two-chord rhythm changes pattern that you like. Start with a rhythmic power
chord drone, like the one you created for Activity 2 above. Then move alternating bars of the drone
to dierent notes, as you did to create harmony changes in Lesson 3. When you have a power-chord-
changes beat that you like, try adding a melody.

41
• Start with a single-note drone (a long note or one broken up into a rhythm, whichever you like), and
add a second note that varies between seven-line-away and ve-lines-away from the unchanging drone.
Try adding a melody over this set of changes.
• Double any of the chord notes in any of your power chord projects, by adding the note an octave lower.
Notice the change in the sound of the chord, as well as the change in whether the chord is considered
to be in root or inverted position.
• Add a melody to any of the suggested projects, using the same methods as in the course activities, and
noticing which melody notes seem to work with all of the power chords in your changes, which ones
only work with some of the power chords, and which seem to clash with all of the chords.
• Do some research to determine whether any of your favorite genres or styles feature power chords. If
they do, try to discover specic pieces that you like that feature power chords. Listen to them carefully
to hear how power chords are used in this genre/style. Do power chords accompany the entire piece,
or only certain sections? Are they the main harmony accompaniment, or used for eect? Can you
imitate the instrument sound that is used? Can you tell how many dierent power chords are used?
• Although voicing (p. 36) is not discussed in this course, you should always feel free to explore the
eects of changing the octaves of any of the notes in your chords or melodies that you are creating for
any of the lessons.
• As always, if there is anything about power chords that inspires you to do some composing or arranging
on your own, take time to pursue your own creative projects before going on. Working on your own
"real music" will help you get accustomed to the sounds and uses of power chords, and any diculties
or questions you encounter along the way may help prepare you for the concepts in upcoming lessons.

42
CHORDS

Chapter 7
Theory for DAW 5: Major Chords and

Scales 1
note:
2
In previous lessons, when you were creating melodies that sounded good with a given harmony, and vice-versa,
you probably found that some combinations of notes sounded harmonious to you, while others clashed or
sounded dissonant (p. 21). You may have noticed that, while octaves are always harmonious, notes that
are close to, but not exactly, an octave apart are dissonant. Specically, notes that are only one or two
lines away from a note, or from any of its octaves, are considered dissonant (see Figure 7.1 (Examples of
Dissonant Combinations)). This is because, unlike the octave, their frequencies cannot be lined up neatly;
for example, one note might have 10 vibrations for every 21 vibrations of the other. The result of both notes
together is therefore a complex sound that your ear interprets as noisy. Many musicians today love noisy,
clashing sounds - and you can of course use those whenever your style calls for it but the basis of common
practice harmony is obviously the more harmonious combinations.

43
44 CHAPTER 7. THEORY FOR DAW 5: MAJOR CHORDS AND SCALES
Examples of Dissonant Combinations
Figure 7.1: C sharp is only one line above C, and D is only two lines above C, so C sharp and D in
any octave will be dissonant with C in any octave.

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Figure 7.2: Listen to the dissonances in Figure 7.1 (Examples of Dissonant Combinations)
note: You will probably not need to know these terms, but just in case: When a note is only one
half step, a half tone, a semitone,
line above another, the interval between them can be called a
or a minor second. When a note is two lines above another, the interval between them can be
called a whole step, a tone, or a major second. There are so many dierent terms because there
are dierent music theory traditions that prefer one set of terms or another.
The power chord in root position is open enough to allow one more note to be added in between the two
power-chord notes, creating a chord with only harmonious relationships among all three notes. For example,

45
a note that is four lines above the lower note will also be three lines below the upper note (see Figure 7.3
(Turning a Power Chord into a Major Chord)). This arrangement is a major chord in root position.
Turning a Power Chord into a Major Chord
Figure 7.3

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Figure 7.4: Listen to the dierence between a power chord and a major chord
Activity 1: Create some major chords
1. You can start a new project for this activity, or use any previous project that featured power chords
in root position. (As in other activities in which hearing the harmony is critical, do not use projects
in which you added distortion to the sound.)
2. If the project that you are working on includes a melody, delete it or turn it o for this activity. (Be
sure to save a version with the melody, so that you don't lose it.)
3. For each power chord, determine which note needs to be added to turn it into a major chord. This
will be the note four lines above the root note (and three lines below the upper note). (See Figure 7.3
(Turning a Power Chord into a Major Chord))
4. Add the correct note to each power chord, to turn it into a major chord in root position. Use the same
rhythms and note lengths that are in the power chord notes, so that each major chord has a unied
rhythm.

5. Listen to the sound of the major chords, comparing it with the sound of the power chords that you
have been working with.
6. If the project includes a melody, turn the melody back on and listen to see whether or not it ts the
major chords as well as it t the power chords. You may nd that the melody does not work at all
with the major chords, that it sounds even better with the major chords, that it works equally well, or
that the major chords only work with some parts of the melody. If you like the sound of this melody
with the major chords, edit both the melody and the chords to get a best version for now and save
the result for later projects.
Because a major chord has more notes than a power chord, there is more potential for melody notes to
clash with it. It is no longer so open to a wide variety of melodies. Common practice has developed the
idea of a scale as a list of notes that will work in a specic musical situation. When the harmony features
major chords, a major scale lists the notes that are considered to be most harmonious in the melody (see
Figure 7.5 (Major Scales)). A major scale includes, of course, the three notes in a specic major chord, but
it also includes four other notes that, by long tradition, are considered to sound good in the melody, given
some basic rules:
Rules for harmonious major-scale melodies
• Most long notes in the melody should be notes in the chord that is being played.
• Most notes on a strong beat (for example the beginning of a bar) should be notes in the chord that is
being played.
• Most of the other notes should be in the scale that is being used in the piece of music.
• A note that is not in the chord is most acceptable when it is preceded by a nearby note in the chord,
and also followed by a nearby note in the chord. (In other words, the melody does not make a big
jump to or away from the dissonance.)
A major scale always includes the three notes of the chord that has the same name as the scale. (For example,
a C major scale would always include the notes of a C major chord.) The four other notes that are included
in the scale are two lines, ve lines, nine lines, and eleven lines above the root of this chord. Of course,
these notes do clash to some extent with the notes in the chord; that's why they need to be used carefully
and sparingly, as suggested in the rules. When used following the rules, they create a melody that sounds
harmonious, in part simply because people who listen to common-practice music become so accustomed to
major-scale melodies that that is what they expect to hear!

47
Major Scales
Figure 7.5: Since some notes of the scale are not harmonious with others, scales are played one note
at a time. Major scales always includes the three notes of the chord that has the same name as the
scale, along with the notes that are 2, 5, 9, and 11 lines above the root of that chord. Usually scales are
completed by playing the note that is an octave above the starting note. Notice that this makes the
scale eight notes long, which is why the same-note-name distance is called an "octave."

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Figure 7.6: Listen to the C, D, and E major scales in Figure 7.5 (Major Scales). Can you hear the
ways in which they sound the same, as well as the ways in which they sound dierent?
Example 7.1
Listen to a major scale, without a chord accompaniment, then with a chord accompaniment. Can
you hear that the rst, third, and fth notes of the scale (and the eighth note that is an octave
above the rst note) all are the same as the notes in the chord (same name, dierent octave)?
Can you hear that the other notes are a little bit dissonant but end up sounding ne, because you
are accustomed to the major sound and because they are used to connect notes that are in the
chord?


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Figure 7.7: A major scale, without and then with a major chord "accompaniment."
note: The more you follow the "rules," the more harmonious your melody; but it is ne to break
the rules on purpose to create a desired eect. For example, many music genres and styles feature
standard ways of breaking the rules! For example, melodies in some jazz genres feature short
wrong notes on strong beats, which are immediately followed by a longer right note that ts the
chord. Breaking the rules in a standard way then becomes a powerful way to signify that a piece is
in a certain style.
Activity 2: Add a melody to a major chord
1. For this activity, you can use any version you like of your Activity 1 project, without a melody track.
Or you can start with any project that contains only a single-power-chord accompaniment, with or
without rhythm, and add the note needed to turn it into a major chord, as you did in Activity 1.
2. Add a melody track. Construct a major scale in this track, starting on the note one octave or two
octaves above the root of your major chord.
3. Check carefully to ensure that you have constructed the major scale that goes with this chord. The
rst, third, and fth notes of the scale should be the same notes as the notes in the chord (in a
dierent octave). Listen carefully to the scale, to hear that it sounds basically harmonious with your
chord. Compare the sound with the audio examples of major scales above (Figure 7.6), to make sure
the pattern of notes sounds like a major scale.
4. Leave the scale at the beginning of your melody track for reference. Now construct a melody that
includes only the notes of the scale. Do not use any notes that are not in the scale. You do not have
to use all of the notes in the scale, but you can use as many as you like. You can simply build the
melody note-by-note using the rules above (Rules for harmonious major-scale melodies, p. 46), or you
can decide which notes you will use and improvise a melody by ear as you have in previous activities.
5. As in previous activities, when you create a melody you dislike, try to decide why it doesn't work
(perhaps it broke the rules too often), then delete it and try again. When you create a melody you
want to work with, edit it as needed to create a melody that you like that goes with the major chord
accompaniment.
In its inverted form, the power chord does not have room for a third note in the middle. The note that is 3
lines above the lower note would only be two lines below the upper note (and vice versa), so any note in the
middle would clash with one of the outer notes. However, that does not mean that major chords cannot be
inverted. If the major third of the chord (the note that is in the middle in root position) is the lowest note,
the chord is in rst inversion. If the fth (the note that is on top in root position) is the lowest note, the
chord is in second inversion.

49
Inverting a Major Chord
Figure 7.8: As with power chords, inverting a major chord simply means that the root note is no longer
the lowest-sounding note. If the lowest note is the note four lines above the root, the chord is in rst
inversion. If the lowest note is the note seven lines above the root, the chord is in second inversion.

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Figure 7.9: Listen to the same chord in three dierent positions. Can you hear the ways in which they
sound the same, as well as the ways in which they sound dierent?
note: Again, as a digital composer, you may never need to know these terms, but if you need to
talk with other musicians about chords and inversions, you may nd it useful to know that the note
four lines above the root of the chord is the third of the chord, and the note seven lines above the
root of the chord is the fth of the chord. The terms arise from their position in the scale: the
third of the chord is the third note in the scale, and the fth of the chord is the fth note of the
scale.
Note that inverting a chord does not change the harmony. It just gives the composer/arranger of the
music the freedom to choose which octave each note is in. This can aect other important aspects of the
music, such as the ease with which an instrument can play the note. In terms of the harmony, inversions of
a chord are always interchangeable, because they have the same notes and so will be harmonious with the
same melodies in the same key.
Activity 3: Create Inverted Major Chords

1. Try this activity with both of the projects from Activity 1 and Activity 2.
2. Double the length of the project by adding a repetition of the entire piece. Leave the original part of
the project as it is, for comparison.
3. On the repetition, move the root of every chord to a higher octave, so that the chord is in rst inversion.
(See Figure 7.8 (Inverting a Major Chord).) Listen carefully to the result, to hear the slight dierence
between the sound of the chord in root position and rst inversion.
4. If the resulting chord does not work well because it is too close to the melody, move the entire chord
down one octave, or move the entire melody up one octave. Listen again to hear the dierence between
the two repetitions of the piece, and keep whichever version you like best.
5. Add another repetition, this time repeating the section with inverted chords. Repeat steps 2-4, but
this time move to a higher octave the note that was on the bottom in rst inversion. This will make
the lowest note the note that was originally the highest note in the chord, so that all chords in the
third repetition will be in the second inversion. (See Figure 7.8 (Inverting a Major Chord).) Again, it
the chord has gotten too close to the melody, you can move them apart by either moving the entire
chord down an octave, or the entire melody up one octave.
You may have noticed that in Figure 7.5 (Major Scales) the C major scale includes no sharp (Rules for
Naming Power Chords, p. 38) or at (Rules for Naming Power Chords, p. 38) (i.e. "black key") notes, while
the major scales that start on D and E both include sharp notes. Why sharp instead of at? In order to
make music in the keys easy to read, the names of notes are always chosen so that there is one (and only one)
note with each letter name. In other words, each key has only one (sharp, at, or natural) A, one (sharp,
at, or natural) B, one (sharp, at, or natural) C, and so on. When this rule is followed, the major scale
pattern leads naturally to the following rules:
• C major has no sharp or at notes.

• F major has one at note.
• All other major scales that begin on a "white key" note (A, B, D, E, G) include sharp (not at) notes.
• Most major scales that begin on "black key" notes are easier to write as at keys than as sharp keys
(A at, B at, D at, E at, G at).
Again, you will probably only need to understand the sharp/at issue if you plan to write chord charts or
discuss your music with other musicians. Even then, you do not have to follow these rules, but you will
generally nd it much easier to communicate with other musicians if you do.
Exercise 7.1: Activity 4: Name the notes in a scale (Solution on p. 52.)

2. Name the notes in the scale you used, using the rules above.
3. Check your work against the list in the solution.
4. If you would like more practice, transpose the scale to a dierent key and repeat the activity.
If you would like to continue exploring major chords and scales before going on, try any of
the following:
• Do some research to determine whether any of your favorite genres or styles feature major chords. Try
to discover specic pieces that you like that feature major chords. (Looking at a chord chart of the
song can help.) Listen to them carefully. Can you hear the major-chord sound? Can you decide how
closely the melody follows the rules? If a melody seems to break the rules, does it do so in a way
that suggests a particular genre or style, or is it an attention-getting feature of that piece?
• Deciding which octave to place each note of a chord is called voicing the chord. So far, you have
explored two aspects of voicing: chord inversion and doubling a note by adding it in more than one
octave. You can continue to explore voicing by creating major chords with one or more of the notes
doubled. If you nd a chord voicing that appeals to you, use it as the basis for a project of your own.
Or try creating a piece that features dierent voicings of the same major chord.

51
• If you would like to get comfortable with naming the notes in each scale, and/or if the patterns created
by the chord rules and scale rules interest you, spend some time trying to name the notes in every
scale. Try naming the "black key" scales as sharp keys and see what happens. (Hint: there are such
things as "double sharp" and "double at" notes.) See whether you can spot further patterns that help
you predict how many sharps or ats are in a key. (Hint: That "seven lines higher or lower" interval
is so central to common practice that musicians describe keys as being in a "circle of fths.")
• As always, if there is anything about major chords that inspires you to do some composing or arranging
on your own, take time to pursue your own creative projects before going on. Working on your own "real
music" will help you get accustomed to the sounds of major chords, and any diculties or questions
you encounter along the way may help prepare you for the concepts in upcoming lessons.

Solutions to Exercises in Chapter 7

Solution to Exercise 7.1 (p. 50)
• A at major: A at, B at, C, D at, E at, F, G, A at

• A major: A, B, C sharp, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A
• B at major: B at, C, D, E at, F, G, A, B at
• B major: B, C sharp, D sharp, E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B
• C major: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
• D at major: D at, E at, F, G at, A at, B at, C, D at
• D major: D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, D
• E at major: E at, F, G, A at, B at, C, D, E at
• E major: E, F sharp, G sharp, A, B, C sharp, D sharp, E
• F major: F, G, A, B at, C, D, E, F
• F sharp major: F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B, C sharp, D sharp, E sharp, F sharp
• G major: G, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp, G

Chapter 8
Theory for DAW 6: Major Chord

Progressions 1
8.1 Chord Functions in a Key

note:
2
In Lesson 5 (Chapter 7) you experimented with major-scale melodies over a single major chord. You may
have wondered why the major scale includes those particular four notes that are not in the chord, and not
some other set of notes-that-are-not-in-the-chord. The pattern of the major scale allows each major scale to
be used with three dierent major chords. (Each major scale also works with three dierent minor chords;
more about that later.) This lets you keep using the same set of notes for the whole melody, which makes
things easier for those who are listening or who are singing or playing the melody. At the same time it allows
chord changes, which makes the accompaniment to that usable melody more interesting and complex. (See
Figure 8.1 (Example of the Three Major Chords in a Key)]. Notice that, while all three chords use only
notes that are in the scale, they use dierent notes of the scale, so when the melody features notes that
are not in one chord, you can change to a dierent chord that is in the key (i.e. that uses only
notes in the scale) but is a better t for the notes in that section of the melody!

53
54 CHAPTER 8. THEORY FOR DAW 6: MAJOR CHORD PROGRESSIONS
Example of the Three Major Chords in a Key
Figure 8.1: Notice the relationship of the three major chords that are in the same key: The root of
the tonic chord is on the note that names the key and the scale. The second chord is seven lines higher
than the tonic chord, and the third chord is seven lines lower than the tonic chord. C major is used
here because it uses all the white-key notes and no black-key notes, making it easier to see that the
three major chords are all made up of notes that are in the key. Every major key follows this same
three-chords-that-are-seven-lines-apart pattern. However, the pattern results in dierent notes being
used, depending on where it starts. For example, if you move all of the chords (the entire pattern) up
one line, you would be using mostly black-key notes rather than white-key notes.
note: Unfortunately, "key" terminology is slightly confusing when discussing piano key-
boards and piano-roll view. The terms white key and black key refer where notes are played
on piano keyboards (i.e. using a white key or a black key). So they also refer to where the notes
are on the horizontal lines in the piano roll view of a DAW. For example, in my diagrams, the
horizontal lines of white-key notes are white; those of black-key notes are grey. (Your DAW may
choose a dierent color scheme, but probably still uses the black-key-white-key pattern.) These
terms are separate from terms relating to the key and key signature of a piece of music, which
can be related to any instrument and which refer to whether each note in the key (A, B, C, etc.)
is the sharp, at, or natural (Rules for Naming Power Chords, p. 38) version of the note.
The three major chords in a major key are:
• The chord rooted on the rst note of the scale. This can be called the tonic chord, or the one chord

55
(symbolized with a Roman numeral I). It is the central, most important chord of the key, and is very
common in most pieces in the key.
• dominant chord, or the ve
The chord rooted on the fth note of the scale. This can be called the
chord (symbolized with a Roman numeral V). It is the second most important chord in the key, and
is very common in most pieces in the key.
• The chord rooted on the fourth note of the scale. This can be called the subdominant chord, or the
four chord (symbolized with a Roman numeral IV). As the only other major chord available, it is
common in many pieces in the key.
Harmony that is based on changing chords within a key is called functional harmony. When discussing
functional harmony, each chord can be assigned a particular function (such as tonic or dominant) within
the key. Each chord's function depends on which notes it contains. For example, the tonic chord of a major
key is the major chord (p. 44) that has its root on the note that names the key. For example, the tonic
chord of the key of F sharp major is a major chord with its root on F sharp. The chord does not have to
be in root position (Rules for Naming Power Chords, p. 38) to be the tonic chord, however; it just has to
contain those same three notes, in any octave.
Many common practice (Section 2.1: Music Styles and Genres in Common Practice) pieces feature
complex harmonies with a wide variety of chord functions. (These might be chords that are not major
chords, for example, or chords that are "borrowed" from related keys.) However, large numbers of songs in
folk and popular traditions use these three major chords for all or most of their harmony. This emphasis on
seven notes and three chords simplies the music to the point that listeners can easily sing along, novices
can learn to play in one or two keys relatively quickly, and experienced musicians can learn to "play by ear"
in many keys.
In some traditions in which playing by ear is common, the musicians may not bother much with note and
chord names such as C and F sharp. Instead, they learn to hear the relationships among the notes and
chords of each familiar key; they can hear, for example, when it is best to play the tonic chord, and when
the dominant chord would sound better. If you work with musicians in play-by-ear traditions, you may want
to be able to name chords based on where they are in the key, for example by discussing the "ve" chord,
and writing "V" on a chart, rather than using note names. On the other hand, musicians in many genres
like to use chord charts (p. 37) to keep track of the changing harmony. If you work with these musicians,
you may want to be able to name chords using letter names. Even if you work mostly by yourself and prefer
to compose by ear, if you like genres that use functional harmony (which includes most pop, rock, and jazz
genres, as well as most Western folk and classical traditions), you may nd that it is useful for you to think
of your pieces in terms of functional harmony, because it will help you identify the chord changes (p. 37)
that are most likely to "work" in a particular key or with a particular melody.
Singable melodies over harmony that changes is a main feature of common practice music, and
music based on major scales and chords is particular popular in many genres and styles, so learning how
to use the three major chords in a key can be particularly useful. One important concept that will help is
the idea of a tonic or tonal center. In most common-practice styles and genres, the changes in chords
do not feel like a random ramble; they feel as as if they are heading purposefully to a particular harmony
destination. When chord changes have this sense of destination, they can be called a chord progression,
and the implied destination is an ending on the tonic (I) chord, which is the chord with the same name
as the key and the scale.
note: Many popular genres feature repeat-and-fade endings rather than strong endings on the
tonic chord. This does not necessarily mean that they do not have a tonic chord. Some still feature
I, IV, and V chords, but without a strong feeling of progression. Others create a strong feeling of
progression and destination, so that the I chord creates satisfying temporary endings, for example at
the end of each chorus. The repeat-and-fade is a way of avoiding a nal ending that is inappropriate
for the style because it is too strong, too satisfying, or too abrupt.
Activity 1: Create a major chord progression

1. Start a new project. If you like, you can begin by adding or creating any repetitive rhythm track that
you like.
2. As in activities in previous lessons, create a track for the harmony part that has a relatively simple,
clean instrument sound.
3. Choose any note to be the tonic note of your piece and create a major chord, rooted on this note.
4. Decide on a basic harmonic tempo (Chapter 5) for the piece. (A tempo of one, two, or four bars per
chord is recommended for your rst piece.)
5. As in activities in previous lessons, give your chords a repetitive rhythm that suits your harmonic
tempo and complements your rhythm track, if there is one.
6. Using the same rhythm, follow the I chord with a rhythm unit of either a IV or a V chord. The easiest
way to do this is to copy-and-paste your entire tonic chord rhythm, making sure that you have moved
the entire copy to the correct place in the rhythm, and the correct number of lines higher or lower. See
Figure 8.2 (Example of a Chord Progression)
7. Add another rhythm unit of I, IV, or V chord. Listen to the result; you can change either the second
or third unit to a dierent chord if you like. Make sure you are only using I, IV, and V chords, but
remember that you can use them in any octave and any inversion!
8. Repeat step 7 as many times as you like, until you have a progression that sounds good to you and
that creates a convincing ending on a I chord. If you create a short chord progression that you really
like, you can easily lengthen your piece by repeating the entire progression.
9. Save this project for the activities below.
Example of a Chord Progression
Figure 8.2: The chords in a progression can be used any number of times, in any order, either estab-
lishing a harmonic tempo or departing from it. In general, it is most important to have a progression
that ts the melody (in other words, the notes in the melody tend to be in the chord that is playing at
the same time). Some progressions give a stronger, more satisfying sense of the key than others, however,
so you may sometimes have to balance, or decide between, supporting the melody and building a strong
chord progression.

57

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Figure 8.3: Listen to the example chord progression.
8.2 Transposing Chords to Dierent Keys

All major keys follow the same pattern of scale and chords. Each key is based on a dierent tonic note,
however, so each ends up using a dierent set of notes to ll the pattern. This means that the chord functions,
and the relationships among the chords and the notes of the scale, are the same in every key, but dierent
notes and chord names ll each function in each key. For example, the relationship between the tonic and
dominant chords sounds the same in the key of F sharp major as it does in C major. The dierence is that
in the key of C, C is the tonic chord and G is the dominant chord; in the key of F sharp, F sharp is the tonic
you can change the key of a piece simply
chord and C sharp is the dominant chord. This means that
by moving all of the pitched notes up or down by the same number of lines. Changing the key
of a piece is called transposing it.
A piece that has been transposed to a dierent key still sounds almost exactly the same. The main
dierence is that it will sound higher or lower. You may want to transpose a piece because you would prefer
a higher or lower sound. Playing a piece higher or lower can also aect the timbre
3 of the instruments used.
For example, a ute sound becomes more "piercing" as it plays higher sounds, and more "breathy" as it
plays lower. This is less of an issue with virtual instruments, but still an issue. With "real" instruments,
there is also the issue that a melody might simply be too high or too low to play or sing well. For example,
you may want to move a piece to a higher key so that it is easier for a trumpet player to play the melody, or
move it to a lower key so that it is easier for a baritone voice to sing it. Finally, you may sometimes want to
move one of your pieces to an easy-to-play key. For example, many guitar, banjo, ddle, and ukulele players
do not like to play in the key of F sharp; moving a piece up one line, to the key of G, would make a song
much more playable for them.

Transposing Melody and Chords
Figure 8.4: When transposing a piece, you must move every pitched note, in every track, up or down by
the same number of lines. Some DAWs have a transpose function that will do this for you automatically.
Depending on the DAW, the transposed piece may look dierent (i.e. the notes appear on the lines of
the new key), or it may appear the same (the notes are still on the same lines) but sound dierent.
Non-pitched rhythm parts are not aected by transposition.

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Figure 8.5: Listen to the example in the key of C

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Figure 8.6: Listen to the example in the key of D
Activity 2: Transpose your major chord progression
1. Open your Activity 1 project and listen to it carefully.

2. Select all of the notes in all of the chords and move them all up or down a few (less than 5) lines. (Be
careful to ensure that all of the notes in the piece are moved the same distance up or down.)
3. Listen carefully to the progression again, noticing what has changed and what has not changed about
the way it sounds.

59
4. Select all of the notes in all of the chords again, and move them all up or down many (more than nine)
lines.
5. Again, listen carefully to the progression, noticing what has changed and what has not changed about
the way it sounds.
6. Continue experimenting with the key of the piece as much as you like. Choose a key that you like the
sound of, and save it in that key for the next activity.
7. Check to see what options your DAW has for automatic transposition. Do they move the notes
themselves, or do they just change the sound? Which method do you prefer? (For example, you may
prefer to "see" the notes that are actually sounding, or you may prefer to always work in the key of C
major and move only the sounds when you transpose.
8.3 Melodies and Chords in a Key

The IV and V chords of a major key each share a note with the I chord, but do not share any notes with each
other. Every note in the key is included in at least one of the chords. (See Figure 8.7 (Together, I, IV, and
V include all notes in the key).) This means that when a melody is in that key, most of the bars of melody
will t one of the chords better than the other chords, using the rules introduced in Lesson 5 (Chapter 7).
However, there may be other chords (for example, minor chords, discussed later) that would also work with
that bar of melody, just as well, or even better.

Together, I, IV, and V include all notes in the key
Figure 8.7: This gure shows three octaves of each major chord alongside three octaves of the scale, to
illustrate that every note in the key belongs to at least one of the chords. Some of the notes are included
in two dierent major chords in the key.

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Figure 8.8: Listen to a major scale with each scale note accompanied by a I, IV, or V chord that
includes that note.
Activity 3: Add a melody to your major chord progression

2. Create a chart of the progression, using either chord names or I, IV, V functions, whichever you prefer.
If it will help you with the rest of the steps, you can also indicate on your chart the three notes that are
in each chord. (As discussed in the sharp/at rules (Rules for Naming Power Chords, p. 38) in Lesson
4, remember to consistently use only sharps or only ats to name a key and its notes or chords.)
3. Add a melody track. In this track, construct a melody that ts your chord progression.

61
4. If you have found it relatively easy to improvise suitable melodies by ear in previous lessons, try
improvising a melody by ear while listening to your chord progression, and editing it until you like the
result, as you did in those activities.
5. If you have found it relatively dicult to improvise a melody that goes with a particular chord,
then try constructing a melody note-by-note (based on the rules for harmonious melodies in Lesson 5
(Chapter 7)). As with improvised melodies, feel free to delete attempts that you dislike, and to edit
workable attempts as much as needed, until you have something that you like.
Remember, adding a melody to a chord progression, or vice versa, is not an exact science; it is an art that
takes practice. There can be more than one right answer, depending on your harmonic tempo, whether
you want to use power, major, minor, or more complex chords, where you are in the chord progression, and
so on. The more you practice putting melodies and harmonies together in a certain style, the better you will
become at composing and arranging pieces in that style. When you want to add a major-chord progression
to a melody, a crucial basic step is to ensure that the melody is suitable for a major key. When searching
for major-key melodies, listen for a mood that can be described as basically cheerful or happy, regardless
of whether it is a calm or excited happy. Avoid melodies that sound sad, angry, melancholy, or mysterious;
these are likely to work better with minor chords.
Activity 4: Add major chords to a melody
1. Search for a very simple melody that you like and that sounds to you like it has a cheerful, major-key
sound. This can be a melody that you have already created for another project, either for this course
or on your own. It can also be a melody that you have heard, if you can manage to create a version of
the melody using your piano-roll editor. If you use a favorite song, you can just use a favorite section
of the melody, for example, just the chorus, rather than the entire song. Try to use a section of melody
that is long enough to need at least one chord change.
2. Make a list of the notes that are used in the melody, and arrange them from lowest to highest within
a single octave, as if they are a scale (see Figure 8.9 (Can the Melody Fit a Major Scale?)). You can
make the list on paper, in the same track as the melody, or in a dierent track or project.
3. Check to see whether you can make the notes t into a major-scale pattern. Some notes of the scale
may be missing; see whether you can ll in notes to create a major-scale pattern. If you believe more
than one major scale is possible, choose the one that will feature the notes of the melody in the I chord.
If you cannot make the melody t into a major scale, try a dierent, simpler melody.
4. Add a harmony track, and create a set of major-chord changes that complements the melody (again
based on the rules in lesson 5).
5. Listen carefully to your melody-plus-harmony. If the chords sounds generally "wrong" or "unexpected"
in spite of following the rules, you may have chosen the wrong major key, or you may prefer the melody
with a minor-key accompaniment. You can decide to try a dierent melody, try a dierent major key
that ts this melody, or simply go ahead and work with this "unexpected" harmony sound.
6. Once you have found a chord progression that you like with the melody, edit the timing of the chord
changes as needed to create a strong harmonic tempo.
7. Feel free to continue making small changes to both the melody and the harmony until you have a piece
that sounds good to you. Add a rhythm to the chords, and/or a separate drum track, if you like.

Can the Melody Fit a Major Scale?
Figure 8.9: This fragment of melody is from a tune in a major key (It came upon a midnight clear),
but a glance at the list of notes that are used will show you that they will not t the major-key pattern
in any key. A dierent phrase in this song, or a dierent song altogether, would be more likely to t with
the three major chords in a single key.

<DAW6-Ex5.wav>
Figure 8.10: Listen to the melodic phrase in Figure 8.9 (Can the Melody Fit a Major Scale?)
So far, you have been creating accompaniments using block chords, in which all the notes in the chord
begin and end at the same time. You do not have to present your harmony this way. People who have
listened to a lot of common-practice music are so accustomed to hearing functional harmony that they tend
to interpret any repeated rhythmic pattern of pitched notes as a chord, even when the notes don't happen at
the same time. Playing the chord notes at dierent times is one of the main ways to make accompaniment
interesting. It is also a main way to make the harmony sound in a particular style. Some styles use a lot of
block chords, for example. Others tend to use arpeggiated, one-note-at-a-time, chords, while others break
up chords into a low-note-followed-by-block-chord, "oom-pah" sound. (See Figure 8.11 (Breaking Up Block
Chords)].)

63
Breaking Up Block Chords
Figure 8.11: The same melody can be accompanied by block chords, by a bass-note-block-chord ("oom-
pah" or "boom-chick") pattern, or by arpeggiated chords. Listen to the sound les to hear how this type
of change can aect the style of a pieces.

<DAW6-Ex6block.wav>
Figure 8.12: Listen to the example with block chords. The chord voicing was chosen to put the blocks
within the same pitch range.

<DAW6-Ex6oompah.wav>
Figure 8.13: Listen to the example with a bass-note-block-chord pattern. The bass notes were chosen
to strengthen the chord progression. (There are rules for this that are not covered in this course; for
now, choose your preferred bass notes by ear.)


<DAW6-Ex6arpeggio.wav>
Figure 8.14: Listen to the example with arpeggiated chords. The notes chosen for the arpeggios avoid
clashing with the melody notes.
Activity 5: Break up your block chords
1. Open any project that you have saved that includes major chords in block style with a repeated rhythm.
Add two extra repetitions of the entire project, so that you hear the entire chord progression three
times.
2. Leave the rst chord progression as is.
3. Choose any method of breaking up the chord (for example, an arpeggio of rising or falling chord notes,
or an "oom-pah" bass-note-chord rhythm) that will allow you to hear every note in the chord at least
once. Use this method as a pattern to break up every chord in the second version of the progression.
4. Listen carefully to the entire piece to hear the eect of that particular pattern on the sound and style
of the accompaniment.
5. Choose a dierent pattern that will allow you to hear every note in the chord at least once. This
pattern can be very dierent, or only slightly dierent, from the rst pattern. Use the new pattern to
change the third version of the chord progression.
6. Listen carefully to the three versions, to hear the dierences in style evoked by the dierent ways of
sounding the chords. Save any version of the project that appeals to you.
If you would like to continue exploring three-chord harmony before going on, try any of the
following:
• Because they are part of the same traditions, power chords also tend to be used in the same
three-chord pattern as major chords; in other words, many pieces are centered on a tonic power
chord, and use two other power chords that have roots seven lines higher and seven lines lower than
the tonic power chord. Notice that these V and IV power chords each share one note with the tonic
power chord! Try creating some pieces featuring a harmony based on three power chords.
• Listen to some favorite pieces in any common practice style or genre. Can you hear the chord changes?
Listen for endings of major sections of the piece, for example, the end of a verse, or the end of a chorus.
Can you tell that any are ending on the tonic chord? Does the genre seem to feature strong ending
chords, repeat-and-fade endings, or perhaps ambiguous ending chords?
• Continue experimenting with dierent patterns for breaking block chords down into dierent accom-
paniment styles. You can try longer, more complex patterns, for example by moving some of the notes
in the pattern to dierent octaves (i.e. dierent voicing), doubling notes at octaves, or other two-note
blocks.
• If you found it relatively easy to add a chord progression to a simple melody, try a longer or more
dicult melody, still following the steps in Activity 4. If you can nd major chords for most, but not
all of the melody, try using single note or power chord harmonies as place-holders and save this project
for further work after you have learned some more chord functions.
• If you like repeat-and-fade endings, try developing a chord progression that you like with an ending
that features the same two-bar or four-bar set of changes, repeated as the volume fades to nothing.
• Try transposing your Activity 4 or Activity 5 projects to dierent keys, searching for a sound that you
like a little better.

65
• Open your Activity 3 project, add a repeat of the chord progression, and try creating a melody that
is very dierent from the rst melody you created but still works with the same progression. Listen
carefully to both melodies to see how they are the same and how they are dierent. Do they complement
each other enough to be dierent parts of the same piece, or do they sound to you like dierent pieces?
• As always, if there is anything about the major chord progressions that inspires you to do some
composing or arranging on your own, take time to pursue your own creative projects before going on.
Working on your own "real music" will help you get accustomed to working with chord progressions,
and any diculties or questions you encounter along the way may help prepare you for the next lesson.

66 INDEX
Index of Keywords and Terms

Keywords are listed by the section with that keyword (page numbers are in parentheses). Keywords
do not necessarily appear in the text of the page. They are merely associated with that section. Ex.
apples, 1.1 (1) Terms are referenced by the page they appear on. Ex. apples, 1
A accompaniment, 24 half tone, 7(43), 44

arpeggiated, 62 hands-on learning, 1(1)
hands-on lesson, 1(1)
B bar, 24, 24
harmonic interval, 6(33)
bars, 28
harmonic rhythm, 5(27), 28
black key, 54
harmonic tempo, 5(27), 28
block chords, 62
harmonious, 21
C changes, 37
harmony, 3(11), 12, 4(21), 5(27), 6(33)
chart, 37
I I, 55
chord changes, 37, 8(53)
inquiry, 1(1)
chord function, 8(53)
inquiry based learning, 1(1)
chord inversion, 6(33)
interval, 6(33), 33
chord progression, 8(53), 55
inversions, 36
common practice, 8
inverted, 36
common practice music, 2(7)
inverted chord, 6(33)
consonant, 21
inverted power chord, 36
D DAW, 2(7), 3(11), 4(21), 5(27), 6(33),

IV, 55
7(43), 8(53)
K key, 54
digital audio work station, 2(7), 3(11)
key signature, 54
digital audio workstation, 4(21), 5(27),
6(33), 7(43), 8(53) L learning by doing, 1(1)
discordant, 21
Dissonance, 16
M major chord, 8(53)
major chord in root position, 45
dissonant, 21
major chords, 7(43)
dominant, 55
major scale, 46, 8(53)
doubled, 18
major scales, 7(43)
doubling it at the octave, 19
major second, 7(43), 44
drone, 21
major third, 7(43)
drone accompaniment, 4(21)
measure, 24, 24
drone notes, 4(21)
measures, 28
F fth, 49 melodic line, 3(11), 11
rst inversion, 48 melody, 3(11), 11
ve chord, 55 minor second, 7(43), 44
at, 38 music accompaniment, 4(21)
four chord, 55 music lesson, 1(1)
function, 55 music theory, 1(1), 2(7), 3(11), 4(21),
functional harmony, 8(53), 55 5(27), 6(33), 7(43), 8(53)
H half step, 44 O octave, 3(11)

half steps, 7(43) one chord, 54

INDEX 67
one octave, 14 S scale, 46

open, 33 second inversion, 48
open chord, 6(33) semitone, 7(43), 44
open fth, 35 sharp, 38
open fourth, 35 subdominant, 55
open interval, 6(33)
T third, 49
P parallel, 18 tonal center, 55
perfect, 33 tone, 7(43), 44
perfect fth, 6(33) tonic, 54, 55
perfect fourth, 6(33) transposing, 57
perfect interval, 6(33)
pitch, 3(11), 12
V V, 55
voicing, 36, 50
power chord, 6(33), 35
project based learning, 1(1)
W Western, 8
R rests, 22, 24
western music, 2(7)
white key, 54
rhythm changes, 37
whole step, 44
root, 38
whole steps, 7(43)
root position, 38

68 ATTRIBUTIONS
Attributions
Collection: Music Theory for Digital Audio Workstation
Edited by: Catherine Schmidt-Jones
URL: http://cnx.org/content/col12061/1.2/
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Module: "Learning by Doing: An Introduction"

By: Catherine Schmidt-Jones
URL: http://cnx.org/content/m62540/1.2/
Pages: 1-6
Copyright: Catherine Schmidt-Jones
Module: "Music Theory for DAW: Course Introduction"

Pages: 7-9
Module: "Theory for DAW 1: Pitch and Octaves"

Pages: 11-20
Module: "Theory for DAW 2: Drone Accompaniments"

Pages: 21-25
Module: "Theory for DAW 3: Harmonic Tempo"

Pages: 27-32
Module: "Theory for DAW 4: Open Harmonies and Power Chords"

Pages: 33-41

ATTRIBUTIONS 69
Module: "Theory for DAW 5: Major Chords and Scales"

Pages: 43-52
Module: "Theory for DAW 6: Major Chord Progressions"

Pages: 53-65

Music Theory for Digital Audio Workstation
This is an experimental course that illustrates the basic concepts of Western music theory using the piano roll
view of a digital audio workstation (DAW). It is intended for musicians who are comfortable with creating
music using a DAW but are not comfortable with reading notated music. Common notation is avoided, so
that familiarity with it is not necessary to learn the theory concepts that can give you more control over your
creative eorts. Because harmony concepts can be the most dicult aspect of common practice to learn, it
focuses on basic harmony concepts, including octaves, major and minor and power chords, and basic chord
progressions. This is a short, experimental learning-by-doing course. One of the goals is to make visual
notation less necessary for understanding music theory, so the author would particularly appreciate feedback
about whether the information in the course is fully accessible to the visually impaired.
About OpenStax-CNX
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Music Theory for Digital Audio

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Learning by Doing: An Introduction 1

1.1 Learning-by-Doing: Practical Tips for getting the most out of

1 This content is available online at <http://cnx.org/content/m62540/1.2/>.

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• Recognize it when you hear it in real music?

Here is a quick summary of the above tips:

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1.2 The Philosophy behind Learning-by-Doing

1. All theoretical concepts are somehow useful for real-world activities.

1.2.1 1. Using theory to do things in the real world

• name examples of mibbles

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1.2.2 2. Starting with specic understanding

1.2.3 3. Doing things that you really want to or need to do

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1.2.4 4. Getting feedback on real-world projects

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8 "Providing Constructive Criticism in Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m43427/latest/>

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Music Theory for DAW: Course

• What kind of music theory is featured in this course? (p. 7)

2.1 Music Styles and Genres in Common Practice

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• Classical music of an Asian, middle Eastern, or African country

2.2 What do you need to take this course?

• You do not need to be able to read music.

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• You do not need any prior knowledge of music theory.

What you DO need:

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Theory for DAW 1: Pitch and Octaves 1

You will nd in this lesson:

• What is pitch? (p. 12)

Activity 1: Create a Melody Track

1. Begin a new project in your DAW.

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3 "Providing Constructive Criticism in Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m43427/latest/>

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Activity 2: Explore Pitch

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Screen Shot of a Melody in a Piano Roll Editor

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Three Octaves on a Piano Keyboard

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Three Octaves in Piano Roll View

Activity 3: Add notes one octave higher or lower

4 "Timbre: The Color of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11059/latest/>

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Figure 3.6: Melody in higher octave.

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Figure 3.7: Melody in lower octave.

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Activity 4: Parallel Harmonies

1. Open your project from activity 3.

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1.2.2 2. Starting with specic understanding

You will nd in this lesson:

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Three Octaves in Piano Roll View

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You will nd in this lesson:

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