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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
  

RESOURCES AND REFERENCES

APPENDIX 1:
Roedy Black’s Chord Progression Chart

 

APPENDIX 2:
Useful Websites and Resources

 
APPENDIX 3:
Winners of the Moose-Nobel Prize in Music, 1901 - 2006
        
   
NOTES
 

   
REFERENCES
 

   
GLOSSARY
 

  
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