Piano and Music Videos

This is a term you may or may not be familiar with. The plagal cadence is a IV chord resolving to a I chord at the end of a piece. Why is this significant? Typically the end of a piece has a V – I or V7 – I cadence.

So why is the plagal cadence important and how can you use it in your music? It is a certain tool you can use to add a fresh color to the end of a piece. I highly recommend you listen to the accompanying video to this article to understand the function of a plagal cadence. Ultimately, the sound is what sets it apart.

A classic example of a plagal cadence is the “Amen” in a church service. Once you hear it, you will always remember it!

Somebody asked me this question the other day and I was very confused – I wondered what they could be talking about. But once he explained the questions I began to understand that it actually made a lot of sense.

C is the starting note for most pieces you start with on the piano and a C major scale is played by playing all the white keys consecutively on the piano. You’d think that because this is the basic foundation of music that the note would be called A and you would then name the other notes accordingly.

Upon thinking about this I began to understand why things evolved this way and why C is the way it is. To understand this concept you’ll have to go way back into time before minor and major tonality was entrenched into Western music.

Originally, music was built on modes. Modes can be started on any of the white keys (and can be transposed to other keys with sharps or flats). For example, the notes from D to D diatonically is the Dorian mode and the Aeolian Mode is from A to A.

The ionian mode, which is the major scale, was not very popular at the time. If you listen to Renaissance music, you will rarely hear something written in the major. At the same time, the minor modes were very popular and the aeolian mode was one of the most popular. This might explain why A is the starting note!

If anybody has different information about this or another explanation I would be glad to hear it. These are my personal thoughts and conjecture based on my knowledge of music and it’s history. I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on why C is not called A.

Perhaps you have heard of a picardy third, and possibly not. It can possibly provide a compelling element to your music. The picardy third is a single note that can dramatically change the nature of the end of a composition and be a welcomed addition when placed in the right context.

So you’re probably wondering, how do you produce a picardy third and what does it sound like? When a piece is in the minor key, a picardy third is created by raising the third of the last chord of the piece so it ends in the major. You and your audience would expect the piece to end on a minor chord, but the picardy takes an interesting turn and ends it in the major!

When used effectively this can add spice to your music. In a long and dark piece it can add a “ray of sunshine” to an otherwise dark piece of music.

Parallel intervals have been around for centuries. They have a rich and detailed history. But what exactly are parallel intervals? Parallel intervals are any intervals (2 notes played together) that go consecutively in the same direction. For example, if you have the interval of a 5th – such as C to G; if you go to D and A that would be parallel intervals – in this case, parallel 5ths.

If you go back to the first written music (plainsong, also known as Gregorian chant) you simply had the singing of liturgical text – just one note at a time. When music eventually evolved to add a second note with the birth of organum there were many parallel intervals (specifically parallel 4ths).

As music developed polyphonically and counterpoint emerged (often with many simultaneous musical lines) the writings of Bach chorales and the basic rules of four part harmony actually forbade the use of parallel fifths and parallel octaves. But why?

The very first writing in music was vocal writing. Typically in four part chorale writing you have a soprano, alto, tenor, and bass and the idea was to have distinct separate vocal lines you could hear. As these lines intersected, harmonies were created. The reason that parallel octaves were avoided in this type of music is because if you have two different voices singing the same notes an octave apart it sounds like the same line.

This same principle applies to parallel fifths since they are sonically related. The same is not true for parallel thirds and other intervals. If you listen to parallel thirds and fourths you can still hear each individual part even though they blend well together.

Welcome to the first in my multi part series on music theory. Today we will be covering intervals, specifically half-steps and whole-step. Many people consider music theory to be a complex subject – and while it can be – it is built upon simple principles. Much like mathematics, if you understand the foundational principles, you can build your knowledge from there. In explaining the simple fundamentals of music theory, it will make it much easier in the future to grasp the more complex subjects.

Intervals are simply the distance between notes (or more accurately, the distance between tones). The piano is a wonderful tool for demonstrating theory because it’s a very visual instrument; all the keys and notes are simply laid out right in front of you!

Let’s start with half steps, what are they? Simply put:

A half step is two keys together with no keys between.

If you look at a keyboard, any two keys that are together – with no keys between – is a half step. Now it’s important to remember that when it comes to intervals, you must consider the black keys. So, half-steps can contain both black and white keys. Look at the keys close to the fallboard so you are aware of the black keys.

A whole step is essentially 2 half-steps, or more simply:

A whole-step is two keys together with one key between.

So you could have a whole step that is two white keys with a black key between them, a pair of black keys with a white key separating them, or even a black and white key with a key between them. As long as there is one key between the notes, you will always have a whole step.

But why is this important? Virtually all Western music is based upon these essential building blocks. More than that, all major scales are simply a series of half-steps and whole-steps – which we will cover in a future video.