Dr. Kit Music

I realized recently that most of my writing is aimed at people who are interested in reading music, or might have some reference to enter into music theory that way. However, many people are interested in talking about music intelligently that may not have time or resources to devote to learning to read, play an…

Chords are a way that we group notes that work together so that we can talk about their joint impact on music. Often we think of chords as a simultaneity, notes that occur at the same time. But chords can also be arpeggiated, or broken up, and still understood to act as a unit: The…

Tuplets are when a beat is subdivided differently than the meter might indicate. The most common example is triplets, specifically eighth note triplets, where a beat normal subdivided by twos has three even subdivisions. This is shown with a bracket or the notes beamed together and a 3. Quarter note triplets, also called drag triplets,…

Earlier I posted about simple meter: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/10/24/simple-meter/ and today I want to write about another common type of meter, compound meter. Remember that Time signatures are a purely visual phenomenon – how we write music out on a page. Meter is aural – how you hear it. Generally, these two things match, but sometimes there are reasons they…

Now that I’ve written a basic introduction into major and minor keys (https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/11/20/major-keys/ and https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/11/20/minor-keys/ ) let’s talk a bit about how keys are related to one another.   Most music that can be described as functionally tonal, where it is useful to talk about keys and functional harmonic chordal relationships, doesn’t stay in one…

I reference “key” and “minor scale” in the post on solfège https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/06/13/solfege/ , but now we’re going to go into it a little bit more. A key is a framework for organizing notes in a tonal hierarchy. Read about tonality here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/09/26/tonality/   Keys are centered around a tonic pitch and tonic chord. This chord/note…

I reference “key” and “major scale” in the post on solfège https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/06/13/solfege/ , but now we’re going to go into it a little bit more. A key is a framework for organizing notes in a tonal hierarchy. Read about tonality here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/09/26/tonality/   Keys are centered around a tonic pitch and tonic chord. This chord/note…

Meter is how we describe how individual beats act in groups. This is often conflated with time signatures (briefly covered here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/07/02/basic-rhythm-reading/ ) but it is slightly different. Time signatures are a purely visual phenomenon – how we write music out on a page. Meter is aural – how you hear it. Generally, these two…

So far I’ve only made one, but I can make more as I make posts about various types of meter. This one is primarily in 4/4 (common), but there is also a line of 3/4 and one of 6/8 for a challenge. Start by clapping or counting just the rhythm, without worrying about the notes.…