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How Music REALLY Works!
The Essential Handbook for Songwriters, Performers, and
Music Students, 2nd Ed.


  

  
Table of Contents

 Linked to 470 FREE Pages!
     
  
    

  
 
 

    

PART I
THE BIG PICTURE


INTRODUCTION:                                                  (FREE CHAPTER)
Yes, You Can Create Compelling, Emotionally Powerful Music and Lyrics ... If You Know What You’re Doing
  

CHAPTER 1:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
What Music REALLY Is, Who Makes It, Where, When, Why

  

CHAPTER 2:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
What the Popular Music Industry REALLY Is, and Where It Came From

 

PART II
ESSENTIAL BUILDING BLOCKS OF MUSIC

CHAPTER 3:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
How Tones and Overtones REALLY Work

 

CHAPTER 4:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
How Scales and Intervals REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 5:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
How Keys and Modes REALLY Work

 

PART III
HOW TO CREATE EMOTIONALLY POWERFUL MUSIC
AND
LYRICS

CHAPTER 6:                                                            (FREE CHAPTER)
How Chords and Chord Progressions REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 7:                                                                        (DETAILS)
How Beat, Pulse, Meter, Tempo, and Rhythm REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 8:                                                                        (DETAILS)
How Phrase and Form REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 9:                                                                        (DETAILS)
How Melody and Melody-harmony Integration REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 10:                                                                     (DETAILS)
How Lyrics REALLY Work

  

CHAPTER 11:                                                                     (DETAILS)
How Repertoire, Signature, and Performance REALLY Work

 

PART IV
MAKING A LIVING IN MUSIC

CHAPTER 12:                                                                     (DETAILS)
How the Music Business and Music Entrepreneurship REALLY Work

  

 

  
INDEX


Detailed Table of Contents and Links to Chapters

~ • ~ • ~ • ~

PART I
THE BIG PICTURE


INTRODUCTION:
Yes, You Can Create Compelling, Emotionally Powerful Music and Lyrics ... If You Know What You’re Doing

  • Music Notation? Not Here!

  • An Essential Skill Songwriters and Performers Lack

  • Technique First, Then Emotional Abandon

  • What You Need to Know to Understand Everything in
    this Book

  • The Territory Ahead
      

CHAPTER 1:
What Music REALLY Is, Who Makes It, Where, When, Why

  • Piquing the Polarized

1.1 What Is Music?

  • Biological, Not Mystical
      

1.2 Who Makes Music?

  • Hootin’ and Howlin’: How Animal Sounds Differ from Other Sounds in Nature

  • Hootin’ and Howlin’: Instinctive vs Learned

  • Human Soundmaking: Discrete Pitches (No More Hootin’ and Howlin’)

  • Human Soundmaking: Entrainment (That’s En-train-ment, Not Entertainment)
      

1.3 Where Does Music Come From?

  • Not out of Thin Air: Music Comes from Evolved Brain “Modules”

  • You Were Born with a Personality

  • Modules Ain’t Computers

  • Evidence for Brain Modularity

  • Where in the Brain? Music Modules in Infants

  • Where in the Brain? Modularity and Universal Musical Grammar

  • Where in the Brain? Lateralization in Animals and Humans

  • Where in the Brain? Lateralization and Music

  • Where in the Brain? Amusia

  • Where in the Brain? Modularity and Universal Linguistic Grammar

  • Where in the Brain? FOXP2 and MYH16

  • Where in the Brain? Aphasia

  • The Combinatorial Nature of Music and Language

  • How Plastic Is Your Brain?

  • Mentalese: Thinking Without Language

  • Animal Intelligence and Culture

  • Nowhere in the Brain: The “Blank Slate” Myth

  • Cultural Relativism

  • A Desert Island Thought Experiment

  • The Nonsense of Biological Determinism and Social Determinism

  • Human Universals

  • “The Genes Hold Culture on a Leash”

  • Inhuman Music of the Biologically Uninformed: Postmodernism

  • Musical Universals

  • How Much Is Music Innate, How Much Is it Culturally Acquired?

  • Where Is Music? Woven In the Fabric of Life Globally
      

1.4 When Did Music Get Started?

  • The “When” Question: Science vs Religion

  • Religious and Political Assaults on Music

  • Ultimate Origin of the Adaptation for Music: Common Descent

  • Timeline of Musical Evolution

  • Did Music and Language Co-evolve? Similarities Between Music and Language

  • Did Music and Language Co-evolve? Evidence from Studies of Animals

  • Did Music and Language Co-evolve? Evidence from Studies of Children

  • Why Your “Modern” Brain Hasn’t Changed in 50,000 to 100,000 Years
      

 1.5 Why Is There Such a Thing as Music?

  • Darwinian Evolution and Adaptations (Including Music)

  • Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene”: Gene’s-eye View of Evolution

  • Hootin’ and Howlin’ Revisited: Sound as a Signalling Device in Animals

  • Music as an Adaptation for Mother-infant Communication: We’re All “Preemies” at Birth

  • Music as an Adaptation for Mother-infant Communication: “Motherese”

  • Music as an Adaptation for Social Bonding: Survival Through Cooperation

  • Music as an Adaptation for Social Bonding: Evidence from Studies of Children and Animals

  • Music as an Adaptation for Social Bonding: Grooming, Troop Size, and Dunbar’s Number

  • Music as an Adaptation for Social Bonding: Coalition Signalling

  • Music as an Adaptation Shaped by Sexual Selection: Sex Differences and the Innate Taboo

  • Music as an Adaptation Shaped by Sexual Selection: Sex Differences vs Race Differences

  • Music as an Adaptation Shaped by Sexual Selection: Evidence from Studies of Animals

  • Music as an Adaptation Shaped by Sexual Selection: Differences in Male-Female Cognitive Specializations

  • Music as an Adaptation Shaped by Sexual Selection: Proportions of Male and Female Musicians

  • Why Is There Such a Thing as Music? Probably “All of the Above”
      

CHAPTER 2:
What the Popular Music Industry REALLY Is, and Where It Came From

  • A Tiny Bit of Helpful Musical History

2.1 Origin of Popular Music as an Industry

  • Where the Popular Music Industry Came From

  • Paying Songwriters: A Mercifully Brief History of Legislated Copyright, Mechanical Right, Performing Right
      

2.2 African American Dominance

  • How America Became the Capital of Western Popular Music

  • Why African American Music Tends to Dominate Popular Music Generally
      

2.3 Your Musical Roots: How the Major Genres Emerged

  • My Music Is Better than Your Music”

  • Phases of Genre Popularity: Underground, Breakout, Crest, Mainstream
      

2.4 Why There’s No Such Thing as “Progress” In the Arts, Including Music

  • Progress Means Technical Usefulness

  • Why Doesn’t Music Progress?

  • How Songs Are Useful: Models In Controlled Contexts

  • The Age and Beauty of Classic Songs

  • Hit Songs vs Great Songs
      

2.5 Musical Genres as Cultural Infrastructures

  • Neil Young Got it Right: The Nature of Cultural Infrastructures

  • Here to Stay: The Language You Speak

  • Here to Stay: The Musical Genre You Work In

  • Knowing Something about "Foreign" Genres Will Help Your Musical Development
      

2.6 A Brief Look At the Major Genres of Western Popular Music

  • What “Genre” Means (Here, At Least)

  • Genres Emerging Over Time

  • Folk/Roots Music, ca. 200,000 Years Ago to the Present

  • “Classical”/Art/Formal/Serious Music, ca. 2,500 Years Ago to the Present

  • Minstrelsy (American), ca. 1830 - 1905

  • Music Hall/Vaudeville/Operetta/Cabaret, ca. 1850 - 1955

  • Jazz, ca. 1890 - Present

  • Blues, ca. 1890 - Present

  • Ragtime, ca. 1895 - 1920

  • Musical/Film (Broadway/West End), ca. 1920 - Present

  • Country/Bluegrass (Popularized), 1925 - Present

  • Gospel (“Gospel Blues”), ca. 1930 - Present

  • Swing, 1935 - 1946

  • R & B/Soul, ca. 1945 - Present

  • Rock/Pop, 1954 - Present

  • Reggae, 1968 - Present

  • Dance/Electronica, 1975 - Present

  • Hip-hop, 1979 - Present

  • World Music, 1982 - Present

 

PART II
ESSENTIAL BUILDING BLOCKS OF MUSIC

CHAPTER 3:
How Tones and Overtones REALLY Work

3.1 Tones and Their Properties

  • “Anything You Can Do”

  • Pitch: “I Can Sing Anything Higher Than You”

  • Loudness: “I Can Say Anything Softer Than You”

  • Duration: “I Can Hold Any Note Longer Than You”

  • Tone Color: “I Can Sing Anything Sweeter Than You”
      

3.2 Overtones: The Harmonic Series

  • The Tone Path To Your Brain

  • A House Is Not a Home, and a Tone Is Not a Tone

  • So, What Exactly Are Harmonics/Overtones?

  • Not Just One Overtone—A Bunch of ‘Em

  • The Harmonic Series (Overtone Series)

  • Your Brain’s Automatic Tone-processing Skill

  • Bring Out Those Overtones!

  • Overtones Identify Musical Instruments and Voices
      

3.3 How Musical Instruments Work (Including the Voice)

  • What’s A Musical Instrument, Anyway?

  • Setting Resonators in Motion, Directly and Indirectly

  • Categories of Musical Instruments

  • Idiophones: Percussion Instruments without a Membrane

  • Membranophones: Percussion Instruments with a Membrane

  • Aerophones: Wind Instruments, Including the Voice

  • Chordophones: Stringed Instruments

  • Electrophones: Instruments That Produce Sound Electronically
      

3.4 Tone Properties and Their Emotional Effects

  • Emotional Valence and Intensity

  • Emotional Effects of Pitch

  • Emotional Effects of Loudness

  • Emotional Effects of Tone Color

 

CHAPTER 4:
How Scales and Intervals REALLY Work

4.1 Scales: Brain-averse, Brain-friendly

  • What’s a Scale?

  • Chalk Marks on a Cello Fingerboard

  • Brain-averse: Why Random Scales Suck

  • In Search of an Organizing Principle that Will Yield a Brain-friendly Scale

  • Using Simple Frequency Ratios to Build a Brain-friendly Scale

  • That Familiar “Do-Re-Mi” Scale

  • More Brain-averse: Equal-interval Scales

  • Brain-friendly: A Naturally-selected Specialization for Simple Frequency Ratios

  • Filling In the Last Gaps: The Chromatic Scale

  • E Unum Pluribus ... Many Scales Out of One
      

4.2 Intervals

  • The Basic Intervals

  • Interval Names Explained

  • Perfect Fifths and Scale Construction: Monty Pythagor’s Method

  • The Pythagorean Comma

  • Why Pythagorean Scales Emerged Independently on Several Continents

  • Consonance and Dissonance

  • Dissonance: Freaky Frequency Ratios

  • Intervals Within Scales

  • Complementary Intervals

  • Why Intervals Are the Real Musical Units of Melodies and Chords
      

4.3 Interval Dynamics

  • Musical Drama

  • Scale Degrees

  • Curvature of the Major Scale

  • Interval Dynamics: Curved Arrows Through Your Brain

  • Interval Dynamics: Musical Road Trips

  • Interval Dynamics: Curved Arrows and Context

  • Interval Dynamics: Manipulating Tonal Tension

  • The Tyrannical Octave
      

4.4 Emotional Effects of Intervals

 

CHAPTER 5:
How Keys and Modes REALLY Work

5.1 Scales from Around the World

  • What Scales Have In Common: Tones In Simple Frequency Ratios

  • Major Pentatonic Scale

  • Minor Pentatonic Scale

  • Why “Similar” Scales Sound So Different: The Staircase Analogy

  • Blues Scale

  • An Arabic Scale

  • Indian or Whole Tone Scale: An Equal-interval Scale That Works

  • A Chinese Pentatonic Scale

  • Hungarian Gypsy (Roma) Scale
      

5.2 The Modes: Scales of the Diatonic Order

  • The Diatonic Order: A Distinctive Pattern of Tones and Semitones

  • Flavours of the Diatonic Order

  • Church a la Mode

  • Some Popular Songs with Church Mode Melodies

  • More Scales Than a Catfish (2,047 to be Exact)

  • Why the Church Modes Didn’t Make the Big Time
      

5.3 Keys, Major and Minor

  • The Two Surviving Modes

  • Keys and Scales

  • Music’s “Theory of Relativity” (Not to be Confused with Cultural Relativism)

  • All 12 Major Scales In One Convenient Table

  • All 12 Descending Melodic Minor Scales In One Convenient Table

  • All 12 Ascending Melodic Minor Scales In One Convenient Table

  • All 12 Harmonic Minor Scales In One Convenient Table

  • How Digger’s 10-Note “Grand Minor Scale” Simplifies Matters

  • Relative Numbers of Popular Songs In Major Keys, Minor Keys, and Modes

  • 10 Emotional Effects of Modes
      

5.4 Tuning, Temperament, and Transposing

  • “How Come I Can’t Tune this #@*&!% Thing?”

  • Don’t Lose Your Equal Temperament

  • “It’s Too Low (or High) for My Voice”: Transposition

  • How Transposing Instruments Work
      

5.5 Modulation and Tonality

  • The Keys, They Are A-changin’ (Good Thing, Too)

  • A Brief, Star Spangled Modulation

  • Signalling a Shift In Tonal Centre

  • “The Centre Cannot Hold” (Or Can It?)

  • Keys in Cozy Relationships

  • Octaves and Fifths: Simple Frequency Ratios, Close Relatives

  • Why Heinichen’s Circle of Fifths, While Somewhat Useful, Is Often Misunderstood and Misused

  • Tonality and Tonal Music

  • Distinguishing Tonal Music from Modal Music and Atonal Music

  • Emotional Effects of Tonality

 

PART III
HOW TO CREATE EMOTIONALLY POWERFUL MUSIC
AND
LYRICS

CHAPTER 6:
How Chords and Chord Progressions REALLY Work

6.1 Where Chords Come From

  • What’s a Chord?

  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience without Jimi: Why Melody-free Harmony Does Not Stand on its Own

  • Harmony’s Own Organizing Principle

  • Properties of a Major Triad (This Looks Familiar)

  • Exploring the Innards of the Major Triad

  • Stacking Intervals, Then Turning Them Upside down and Disturbing Them
      

6.2 Triads and Sevenths: The Foundation of All Western Tonal Harmony

  • Restless Intervals Make Restless Chords

  • The Paradox of Unsettled-sounding Consonant Inversions

  • That Moody Minor Sound Again

  • Diminished and Augmented: Disturbed Chords (But in a Nice Way)

  • The Most Boring Tune in the World

  • Harmony’s Gotta Move (Coherently, of Course)

  • That Other Chord Type: The Seventh

  • And What about All Those Jazz Chords Such as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths?

  • Slash Chords

  • Power Chords (Not to be Confused with Power Cords)

  • Drone On
      

6.3 Introduction to Chord Progressions

  • What Are Chord Progressions Good For?

  • Dynamic Qualities of Chords

  • Understanding Harmony: Terms of Endearment
      

6.4 The Nashville Number System

  • “Harmonic Degree”: Just a Fancy Name for “Chord”

  • The Seven Harmonic Degrees

  • An Example: The Seven Harmonic Degrees in the Key of C Major/A Minor

  • The Nashville Number System of Chord Notation: Why It’s Important and How It Works
      

6.5 The Four Types of Chord Progressions

  • "Harmonic Interval": Just a Fancy Name for "Chord Change" or “Chord Progression”

  • How Chords Actually Change

  • The Tricky Business of Naming Harmonic Intervals (Chord Progressions)

  • Fifth Progressions, Up and Down

  • Third Progressions, Up and Down

  • Second Progressions, Up and Down

  • Chromatic Progressions, Exiting and Returning

  • Summary and Examples of the Four Types of Chord Progressions
      

6.6 Scales of Chords? Yes!

  • The Key to Boldly Going Way Beyond the “Three-chord Wonder”

  • Unrest and Direction: The Magic of V – I

  • Harmonic “Scale Neighbours”

  • The Harmonic Scale: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

  • Families Within the Circle

  • Which Direction Home?

  • The Melodic Scale: Two Directions Home

  • How Does it Feel to Move Clockwise Round the Harmonic Scale?

  • How Does it Feel to Move Counterclockwise? (Hint: The Cat Wants Back In)

  • The Harmonic Scale: One Direction Home

  • Fixing Another “Minor” Problem

  • Harmonic Motion and “Musical Punctuation” (Cadence)
      

6.7 Inside the Circular Harmonic Scale

  • The Problem of Harmonic Ambiguity

  • Dissonance to the Rescue!

  • The Dominator: Why the V7 Chord Controls Harmony

  • Last Tweaks of the Harmonic Scale

  • The Harmonic Scale: Final (“Default”) Version

  • Two Different Animals: Comparing the Circle of Fifths with the Harmonic Scale

  • Circle of Fifths: The Mistake of Treating Keys as “Chords”

  • Comparing Melodic Scales with Harmonic Scales
      

6.8 Chase Charts: Chord Progression “Maps”

  • You Can Use “Maps” of Harmonic Scales to Create Beautiful, Powerful Chord Progressions

  • What’s a Chase Chart?

  • What Does a Chase Chart Look Like?

  • How to Sketch a Chase Chart

  • Sources of Harmonic Scale Chords with Nashville Numbers for Every Key
      

6.9 Chase Charts of the Four Types of Chord Progressions

  • 6.9.1 How to Do a Chase Chart of Your Own Song (or Any Other Song)

  • Chase Charts of Fifth Progressions, Up and Down

  • Chase Charts of Fifths Up, To and From the Tonic Chord

  • Chase Charts of Fifths Up, Away from the Tonic Chord

  • Chase Chart of Secondary Dominants

  • Chase Charts of Third Progressions, Up and Down

  • Chase Charts of Second Progressions, Up and Down

  • Chase Charts of Chromatic Progressions, Exiting and Returning

  • Chase Charts of the General Patterns of Chord Progressions
      

6.10 Examples: Chase Charts of Great Songs without Modulation or Chromatic Chords

  • Chase Charts of the General Patterns of Chord Progressions

  • Group 1: List of Great Songs without Modulation or Chromatic Chords

  • “Heartbreak Hotel”: I – IV – V Eight-bar Blues

  • “Tracks of My Tears”: Suspense of Half-closes

  • “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”: The Strongest Chord Progression in All of Music

  • Twelve Bar Blues: Deceptive Cadence and “Turnaround”

  • “When a Man Loves a Woman”: Another Kind of Deceptive Cadence

  • “Walking After Midnight”: Progression Reversal

  • “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue”: Consecutive Secondary Dominants

  • “Hey Joe”: A Fifths-up Progression That Works

  • “Return to Sender” (And Loads of Other Songs That Use the Same Progression): A Mellifluous Thirds-based Progression

  • “Midnight Train to Georgia”: Totally Avoiding Fifths Up

  • “Danny Boy”: A Little Mode Mixing without Modulating

  • “Moondance” A Classic of the Minor Mode

  • “All Along the Watchtower”: A Masterpiece with Second Progressions Only

  • “I’ve Got You under My Skin” A 20-chord Masterpiece

  • “Yesterday”: One of the Most Covered Songs of All Time

  • “The Star Spangled Banner”: A British Teen’s Greatest Hit
      

6.11 Examples: Chase Charts of Great Songs without Modulation, with Chromatic Chords

  • Group 2: List of Great Songs without Modulation, with Chromatic Chords

  • “Hey Jude”: Naaa-na-na Na-na-na-na For Several Minutes

  • “Carefree Highway”: Slippin’ Away on a Chromatic Chord

  • “Wild Horses”: Unusual Use of Minors

  • “September Song”: How to Use More than One Chromatic Chord

  • “Crazy”: When the Tempo’s this Slow, You Notice Every Chord

  • “Trouble in Mind”: More Secondary Dominants

  • “Sundown”: Slippin’ Away On the “Carefree Highway” in Reverse

  • “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”: Four-chord Ingenuity

  • “Bridge Over Troubled Water”: Harmonic Heaven and Hell
      

6.12 Modulation Ways and Means

  • Modulation: The Soul of the Western Tonal System

  • Near vs Remote Modulation

  • Relative Key Modulation

  • Parallel Key Modulation

  • Shift Modulation (Don’t Do This!)

  • Sequential Modulation

  • Pivot Chord Modulation
      

6.13 Examples: Chase Charts of Great Songs with Modulation, without Chromatic Chords

  • Group 3: List of Great Songs with Modulation, without Chromatic Chords

  • “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’”: Two Kinds of Modulation

  • “Three Bells (The Jimmy Brown Song)": Pivoting to a Closely Related Key

  • “Kodachrome”: Using the Same Chord (Root) to Pivot Both Ways

  • “Dear Landlord”: A Tour through Four Keys in 60 Seconds

  • “One Fine Day”: Pivot-Shift-Pivot

  • “Free Man in Paris": Taking Advantage of Triad Stability

  • “Kaw-liga”: Parallel Key Modulation

  • “Lovesick Blues”: Relative Key Modulation

  • “Gimme Shelter": Simultaneous Parallel Keys, Forceful Second Progressions—and Only Three Chords
      

6.14 Examples: Chase Charts of Great Songs with Modulation and Chromatic Chords

  • Group 4: List of Great Songs with Modulation and Chromatic Chords

  • “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”: Modulation and the Power of Simple Triads

  • “It Was a Very Good Year”: Sequential and Parallel Key Modulations

  • “The Girl from Ipanema": Transient Sequential Modulation

  • “Georgia on My Mind”: More Relative Key Modulation
      

6.15 When Chord Progressions Go Bad ...

  • How to Use Chase Charts to Visually Spot Weak Chord Progressions

  • Examples of Chord Progressions that Don’t Quite Make It
      

6.16 What About Chord Progressions Based On the Church Modes?

  • Modal Harmonic Scales

  • Dorian Mode Harmonic Scales

  • Phrygian Mode Harmonic Scales

  • Lydian Mode Harmonic Scale

  • Mixolydian Mode Harmonic Scale

  • Locrian Mode Harmonic Scale
      

 6.17 Chords and Chord Progressions: Maximizing Emotional Impact

  • Optimizing Unity and Variety in Chord Progressions

  • Emotional Effects of Chords
     

6.18 Ten Chord Progression Guidelines

  • Guideline 1: Start with the Circular Harmonic Scale as Your Basic Chord Progression Framework

  • Guideline 2: Learn How to Use Chase Charts to See How a Song’s Chord Progression Actually Works

  • Guideline 3: Use the Chord Progression Chart (Appendix 3) to Save Time and Avoid Frustration

  • Guideline 4: Take Advantage of Tonic Chord Stability

  • Guideline 5: Take Advantage of Dominant Chord Instability

  • Guideline 6: Make Structured Use of Chords of the Same Type

  • Guideline 7: Take Advantage of Major Triad Consonance to Progress to Chords Built on the Same Root

  • Guideline 8: Try Not to Commit the Sin of Monotony—Use Modulation, Variant Chords, Chromatic Chords

  • Guideline 9: Keep in Mind the Emotions People Associate with Chords

  • Guideline 10: Use a Roedy Black Chord Chart to Save Time, and to Avoid Interrupting Your Creative Flow

 

CHAPTER 7:
How Beat, Pulse, Meter, Tempo, and Rhythm REALLY Work

 

CHAPTER 8:
How Phrase and Form REALLY Work

 

CHAPTER 9:
How Melody and Melody-harmony Integration REALLY Work

 

CHAPTER 10:
How Lyrics REALLY Work

 

CHAPTER 11:
How Repertoire, Signature, and Performance REALLY Work
 

  

PART IV
MAKING A LIVING IN MUSIC

CHAPTER 12:
How the Music Business and Music Entrepreneurship REALLY Work

 

  
INDEX

 

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