Music Theory Comprehensive: Part 8 - Harmonic Expansion

For years I've been teaching Music Theory in the college classroom. These classes I'm making use the same syllabus I've used in my college classes for years, at a fraction of the cost. I believe anyone can learn Music Theory - and cost shouldn't be a barrier.

Recently I was named as a semi-finalist for the Grammy Foundation's Music Educator of the Year award because of my in-person university classes. Now I'm taking those classes to an online format in order to reach more students and give them the joy of Music Theory.

My approach to music theory is to minimize memorization. Most of these concepts you can learn by just understanding why chords behave in certain ways. Once you understand those concepts, you can find any scale, key, or chord that exists. Even invent your own.

This class is a Comprehensive class - it will have many parts, going through my entire annual curriculum.

This class is Part 8: Harmonic Expansion, and it continues what would be the second semester of a college music theory class (according to the typical American academic system for learning music theory).

Throughout this class, I'll be providing you with many worksheets for you to practice the concepts on. If you get stuck, you can review the videos or post a question, and I'll back to it as fast as possible. Also in this class, I have several complete analysis projects that we will complete together - just like in my college classes.

In this class, we will cover:

• Tools of Music Theory
• The Cadential 6/4
• Chord Function
• Writing Cadential 6/4 Chords
• Neighboring 6/4 Chords
• Pedal 6/4 Chords
• Writing Neighboring 6/4 Chords
• The Arpeggiating 6/4 Chord
• Parallelism in Music
• New Analysis Notations
• The V7 as a Tonic Expansion
• Other V7 Expansions
• The Double-Neighbor V7 Expansion
• Submediant Expansions
• ...and much, much more!

And of course, once you sign up for Part 8 - Harmonic Expansion you automatically get huge discounts to all the upcoming parts of this class.

You will not have another opportunity to learn Music Theory in a more comprehensive way than this. 

Dr. Jason Allen is an Ableton Certified Trainer and a Ph.D. in Music Composition and master of Electronic Sounds. His music has been heard internationally in film, radio, video games, and industrial sound, as well as the concert hall and theater. His 2015 album, Aniscorcia, reaching the CMJ Top200 Charts and radio broadcasts nationwide. In 2014 he was named a semi-finalist for the Grammy Music Educator Award.

He currently is a professor at Augsburg University and the CEO of Slam Academy in Minneapolis.

Praise for classes by Dr. Jason Allen:

"Without a doubt the best explanation and east of use that one can get. It leaves you enough room to go explore. The classes go by quickly, so you can be on your way to being proficient. What are you waiting for!"

"Amazing - Seriously Loved It! I took all his courses and have to say I'm so happy! Learned loads! Jason is an awesome teacher!"

"I have never had any formal training in music at all. Trying to learn all the notes and how everything translated was a serious challenge. After going through this class, Dr. J has totally brought down the barriers. The content was very useful and was easy to grasp for me."

"I like these courses because you can get up and running quickly without having to spend hours of time wading through TMI (too much information!). Jason hits the high points but shows you what you need to know. Thanks!"

"I've watched many other videos on scales and chords before, however, this one has been the best. I now understand minor scales and chords and even how to analyze songs. It really gave me the confidence to start producing music because I feel like I have some structure and guidelines to follow. AWESOME!"

"Clear and Informative - Jason has a clear uncluttered style (with the important dashes of humor) of presentation that is focused on the important key aspects of this course. Recommended for those starting out!"

"Dr. Allen does it again with his music theory series. This course really opened up everything I learned from the 1st section, and now I understand more about the composition side of things for music. I highly highly recommend this course to anyone!!! Really opened my eyes to many things I wasn't aware of."

"The Best Teacher Ever, who makes you understand the ins & outs of Music Theory by all means without giving what you don't want to know."

Throughout this class, I'll be giving you 4 different handouts for practice. Keep up with them, and re-watch the videos for anything that gives you trouble. Here are the handouts!

In addition, try this project:

Here is a simple melody that you might be familiar with. Try to create an accompaniment to this melody using some techniques from the class. Be sure to use:

• a cadential 6/4 chord
• a neighboring 6/4 chord
• an arpeggiating 6/4 chord
• a V7 as a tonic expansion
• a double-neighbor V7 expansion

Try to use each one of those once, in addition to the species counterpoint that you already know. (You choose which species to use!)