Setup.

Lessons are separated into PDF files, 35 PDF files in total. Each PDF file contains at least one of the following parts, in the following order:

-          homework assignment for the student

-          reference page for the student

-          note to the teacher

 

 

Motivations.

I wrote these theory lessons while I was teaching a high-school trombonist privately. Shortly into our first few lessons I decided I wanted to give him more; I wanted to give him the tools I thought were necessary to be a leader. To me, a good command and understanding of the ins and outs of music theory is one of the first places to start. Having had a background in piano myself, I had been exposed to many elements of music theory, yet there were many things that were not explained to me until I was in college. I wanted to take my college experience, as well as things I had learned myself since college, and put it together in a package that would be useful to teachers and easy to digest for students. After all, for us to be successful as teachers, we really and truly need to equip our students to be quality leaders. I believe that creating in a person the knowledge to lead in one field is creating in him/her the potential to lead in all fields. These are my motivations for writing these courses.

After writing the first few initial lessons specifically for that student, I decided it would be a good project to finish and put out there for the world to use. So here it is!

 

 

Jazz V.S. Classical

One of the difficulties of putting together these lessons is finding the right balance between the jazz approach to theory and the classical approach to theory. Personally, I feel that classical theory is better for understanding how music works, but jazz theory is better for understanding how to make music yourself. For example: four part analysis; understanding how to correctly write a four part chorale does help me to understand music better, but it probably doesn’t help me to play trombone any better. However, studying jazz ii-V-I’s and extensions does help me to improvise better, as I’m exposed to the inner workings of a common chord progression and made aware of what notes are present in each chord. My goal is to give my students a good, rounded understanding about the underlying basics, and some specifics about each “side of the house.” One of my solutions to the problem of finding a good balance was to use both methods wherever possible. On many of the homework assignments there will be space laid out specifically for the student to include answers that are representative of both jazz and classical formats. I hope that the material presented here, both from the jazz side and from the classical, will be practical and useful, and help your students have a better ground sense of how all music works.

 One uniquely jazz element that I touch on in these lessons is the walking bass. Besides just being fun, walking bass provides a way into easy improvisation for any instrumentalist. I also believe walking bass to be a real practical application that can be made at a fairly early stage of one’s theory studies.

 After covering some basics that are essential to both jazz theory and classical theory, the lessons are loosely grouped into larger units that alternate focus between jazz and classical.

 

 

Format.

These lessons are set up in such a way that you should be able to introduce a concept and get your student to apply it using just 15 minutes of a private lesson. The goal of these lessons is to give the students a comprehensive overview, but in small bite-size portions that are easy for them to digest and master. The homework assignments that are the cornerstone of these lessons should be easy for any highschooler to accomplish in a week’s time. As a general rule, I set this material up to follow the mantra of one single-page assignment per week. This is reasonable and good for consistency.

 

Ideally, by studying theory weekly in this manner for a little more than a year’s time, a student should be able to get a good grasp of the same amount of theory that is covered in the first year of college, minus the in-depth analysis; they will certainly be well equipped to handle the challenges of college music theory, and hopefully enlightened in a way that can help them get more out of their high school music experience.

 

 

Progression of lessons.

I wrote these lessons to be cumulative, each one building on the one before it. In my own private lessons I would first take a moment to look at the previous week’s homework; this would give me an opportunity to look for any problems of understanding and to answer any follow-up questions my student might have. It also provided a good method to segue to new material, as I tried to plan these lessons in a way that each one would naturally lead into the next. I would highly recommend that you take a similar approach, looking over and correcting each homework on the spot before launching into the next lesson.

 

  

Necessary piano skills.

The piano is an inseparable tool to be used with these lessons, and these lessons provide a good way to give your students a quality introduction to the piano. Although these lessons are still useful without a piano, I believe that a person’s understanding will be an incredible amount deeper if a piano is incorporated as I provided. In that same light, a considerable amount of competency on the piano will be required from you to be maximally effective in these lessons.

 

 

Where to start.

One of the difficulties about writing lessons like these is that for students with no formal training, you really don’t know what they already know; finding a starting point becomes difficult. My strategy was to start with concepts that they should already be familiar with and build upon them. For this reason, the pacing in the beginning lessons is rather slow. I wrote these lessons for a student in high-school band, with the following general assumptions: thorough knowledge of key signatures from C through four flats; wavering knowledge/familiarity at five flats and one sharp; fluent in the use of either treble or bass clef, but barely familiar with the other.

 

 

Content.

This course covers the following:

-          reading treble and bass clef

-          diatonic scale degrees

-          constructing intervals

-          building triads

-          inverting triads

-          building major and minor scales

-          building 7^th chords

-          circle of fourths/fifths

-          Roman numeral analysis

-          relative major and minor keys

-          ii-V-I’s in major and minor

-          12-bar blues

-          walking bass

-          transposing a blues change

-          figured bass / classical analysis

-          inversion of 7^th chords

-          four-part analysis

-          jazz extensions

-          four-part composition

-          secondary dominants