Hi One Minute Music Lesson fans,

Over the past few months I have been searching for a way to offer the OMML community live video webinars to teach the fundamentals of music theory and ear training for free.

Let’s hangout to talk about music!

Recently Google Plus has added the ability to broadcast live video via Google Hangouts and YouTube Live. This new ability will make it possible for me to be able to answer all your questions about music theory and ear training live.

This means there is no more waiting for a response in the comments or email. Also you will get a more detailed answer to your questions with live video and audio.

I’m eager to answer all your questions

I am so excited to be able to interact with all of you and I don’t want to waste any more time before I begin my live shows. This may mean we run into a few technical bumps along the way, but I think it will be well worth any of the possible growing pains in this new technology.

I am fairly new to hosting live webinars but am ready to give it a try with my first live broadcast on this Sunday, March 17th at 4pm Central Standard Time.

To get an invitation to join the webinar be sure you have signed up for my free newsletter to get the invitation that will be sent on Sunday.

Currently I am calling these live webinars OMML Live. For the first live show I will be teaching all about my simple tool called the Pitch Wheel. Also I will be teaching you how to memorize scales, chords and intervals with this unique free tool that I have created.

During the show I will also be answering your questions live and offering tips, tricks and advice for building your musical talents.

Join me on Sunday, March 17th @ 4pm Central Standard Time

I know you must be asking “How do I signup?”

To participate in the free webinar you can use Google Hangouts in your free Google Plus account or watch the show directly on YouTube and interact via the comments section.

I will send out the exact link to the webinar to subscribers of my free newsletter later this week with full details of how to participate in the webinar.

Don’t come empty handed

I am looking forward to talking with you all this weekend and I encourage you to come prepared with questions. Feel free to ask anything about music and especially music theory and ear training.

Can’t wait till Sunday?

If you can’t wait till Sunday to get in touch with me then let me know your questions or thoughts in the comments section below. You can also send me questions directly to my email at oneminutemusiclesson@gmail.com anytime.

I hope this new extension of the One Minute Music Lesson will bring you closer to achieving your musical goals and I am anxious to get started with the new live shows soon.

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Until Next Time … Practice Smart, Not Hard.

—

  Leon Harrell (about)

OneMinuteMusicLesson.com is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to beginning musicians who want to grow their talents as quickly as possible with effective lessons and time management tips for practicing.

Leon Harrell’s goal is to teach you musicianship by using highly targeted concept lessons that build progressively to teach you music theory, ear training and composition.

Hi One Minute Music Lesson fans,

Having a great sight reading program is a wonderful tool for the student musician. There are a lot of poorly designed programs available and finding the right one for you can be tough.

In my last post I talked about my top 4 picks for the best sight reading software programs available.

In this post I want to dive deeper into my number 1 pick with a review of SightReadingMastery.com.

What To Look For In A Sight Reading Software Program

I look for four things when I evaluate sight reading software. These four things are:

• The ability to print the examples
• The variety of examples
• The types of analytical data the program gives you and …
• The overall usability of the program.

How Does It Measure Up

Here are my ratings of these four categories for SightReadingMastery.com

OVERALL RATING: 82%

BREAKDOWN: Printing 7 | Variety 8 | Analytics 8 | Usability 10

SightReadingMastery.com is an online tool that uses traditionally composed musical examples from real composers, as opposed to computer generated musical examples.

I think this is a huge plus for the program because computer generated examples are almost never musical. They generally feel square and often lack the emotional character that traditionally composed music has.

The examples on SightReadingMastery.com are musical and well written for the purpose of sight reading.

Category 1 – Printing

My first and most important category is printing. If a program cannot print its examples I do not personally find it to be very useful for practicing sight reading.

SightReadingMastery.com does not natively support printing but you can print directly from the internet browser. The printout from the program looks the best in landscape orientation.

What this means for you is that you can print, but the page may look a little bit funky, but it is still completely readable and not a pain to print out.

Here is an example of an actual printout (the print quality is much better than my photo):

Category 2 – Variety

SightReadingMastery.com is designed specifically for piano players. This does not mean you must play piano to use it, but the examples are always for treble and bass clef together and often require that you play both clefs simultaneously to hear the melody.

With that said, it is an excellent tool for piano and keyboard players. The program is designed for three progressively difficult skill levels.

• Level 1 is for beginning sight reading: It has hands playing separately and requires both clefs to play the melody.
• Level 2 is a bit harder: Both hands play together and the left hand is usually easier.
• Level 3 is for intermediate sight readers: The examples are bit a longer and have more challenging key signatures.

The program has as much variety as you want to pay for. You can choose the level of variety that suits your needs the best. The current monthly plans are:

• 35 sight reading examples for $19 a month
• 100 sight reading examples for $29 a month
• 300 sight reading examples for $79 a month

For most people the 35 example plan would be sufficient to provide you will one example to sight-read per day.

Category 3 – Analytics

The analytics for this program are for tracking completion purposes only. The program will track what day and time you read an example and which example and skill level it was.

Because the program is not interactive it will not track how well you played it. I would not be too concerned about the lack of this feature. There are very few programs that can accurately “listen” as you play and tell if you are playing it correctly. Often the computer algorithms used to “listen” are poorly executed and give bad feedback to students.

Category 4 – Usability

I would rate this program as very usable. It has a simple interface that does exactly what you want it to do.

SightReadingMastery.com provides you with:

• An example to sight-read at the appropriate skill level.
• It allows you to listen to the example, often with a real audio recording of the example.
• It contains dynamics and expression markings in the music which many programs lack.
• Since it is designed for pianist it includes fingering written in many of the examples.

Give It A Try For Free

Visit SightReadingMastery.com and sign up for the 7 day free trail to get a feel for the program. This test drive is fully functional and gives you a good idea of how the program will work with your learning and practicing style.

That’s it for my review. Let me know in the comments below what think about the program and how you would incorporate it into your sight reading practice regimen. To get more tips on sight reading visit the sight reading forum page to ask your questions and get feedback from the One Minute Music Lesson community.

Thanks following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Until Next Time … Practice Smart, Not Hard.

—

  Leon Harrell (about)

OneMinuteMusicLesson.com is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to beginning musicians who want to grow their talents as quickly as possible with effective lessons and time management tips for practicing.

Leon Harrell’s goal is to teach you musicianship by using highly targeted concept lessons that build progressively to teach you music theory, ear training and composition.

Happy New Year! I just wanted to wish you a Happy New Year and I want to tell you about my new year’s resolution for 2013. Before I reveal my resolution and how it will help you, I want to give you a little background on how my resolution came to be.

It all started when …

I began answering questions and chatting with you and other fans of the One Minute Music Lesson over the past few months. I have been thinking of ways to increase our community, such as our forum, so that you can grow as a musician by using one of the key elements of musical growth  . . .  interacting with other musicians.

My 3 New Year’s Resolutions

My resolution is to get to know YOU better and help you know EACH OTHER better. As this website has grown I have met many of you and interacted via email, Facebook  Twitter and Youtube.

Through these various social networks I am meeting so many of you, and I see a common desire amongst you for more information to help you improve your musicianship skills.

The community of the One Minute Music Lesson is steadily growing and I want to introduce you to want I have been working on recently to further build this community.

This new project is being designed to give you more access to music education materials. This project will help connect you to each other and help further your development through interaction.

Over the past year I have been building content for my music theory and ear training academy and I have finally found the perfect platform to deliver this course content to you via the Udemy.com teaching platform.

This upcoming year I will be building and re-imagining my music theory and ear training academy, and I want to get as much feedback from you as possible over the next few months.

To do this I am re-posting all my One Minute Music Lessons in a free course on Udemy.com, entitled “How To Read Music for Busy People“. This course is being used as a test classroom for you to test out how you like the academy platform.

Check Out The Course Now

http://www.udemy.com/how-to-read-music/

Here’s How The Course Works

Since this course is being built live (see it here now) you can chime at any point to give me feedback on it’s design or ask questions.

Currently there are 26 lessons and each lesson has a video and will have an exercise or a worksheet. I am currently creating the exercises and worksheets and uploading them every other day or so.

So if you haven’t already, go to the course page and sign up for the free class at:

http://www.udemy.com/how-to-read-music/

After you’ve checked it out let me know what you think of the Udemy class setup. Let me know what you think about the look and feel of the classroom and how you like the interface of the course in the comments below or directly in the Udemy classroom.

That’s it for today,

And as always, thanks following the One Minute Music Lesson. I hope you have a great year in 2013 and I hope to see you inside the free Udemy classroom.

Until Next Time … Practice Smart, Not Hard.

—

  Leon Harrell (about)

OneMinuteMusicLesson.com is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to beginning musicians who want to grow their talents as quickly as possible with effective lessons and time management tips for practicing.

Leon Harrell’s goal is to teach you musicianship by using highly-targeted concept lessons that build progressively to teach you music theory, ear training and and composition.

Hi One Minute Music Lesson fans,

Using interactive sight reading software is a great way to practice sight reading daily. By using a program that generates a steady stream of new sight reading material you can easily and efficiently practice this skill. Also you can avoid having to collecting books for the purpose of sight reading sheet music.

Before I list the programs let’s start with a comparison of both traditional and interactive sight reading practice so you can see how using a software approach can help you grow as a musician.

Interactive Sight Reading vs Traditional Sight Reading

To sight read you will need music to read that is brand new to you. In the past you needed a library of materials to read from so you were looking at fresh materials each time you practiced. This required a lot of energy, time and money to collect the music not to mention the need to stay motivated to prevent boredom and challenge yourself to grow as a musician.

Interactive sheet music programs solve all these problems allowing you to have an unlimited supply of new musical examples. This can save you tons of hassle and set you up for success with your sight reading progress using the various skills you have learned about sight reading throughout my sight reading series.

And added feature of using interactive software is that you can track the growth of your sight reading skills accurately, efficiently and automatically with detailed statistics.

Common Features You Need In A Sight Reading Program

You must be able to print.

This is a vital feature for any sight reading program. If you can’t print the excerpts you will severely limit how useful the program will be. I recommend all my students begin sight reading by marking their music with a pencil and using other sheet music marking techniques.

If you can’t print from the program you could do a screen capture with programs like Camtasia or Snapz Pro. However this additional step will hinder your progress over time.

You need musical variety.

You want the program to be able to provide a huge number of examples. Often this will be done by using computer music algorithms that can generate musical examples. Some programs that use this feature are good and some are just plain awful.

Read reviews from users online before relying on the quality of the auto-generated music features of some programs. Alternately some programs use traditionally composed music which is much better in my opinion. If you go with a program that uses traditionally composed music be sure it offers enough variety in styles and difficultly levels to keep you engaged.

Analytics will  help you track your progress.

Tracking your progress is the key to achieving your goal of becoming better at sight reading. Look for programs that track how often you use them and grade your performance based on how accurate your reading skills are.

You want a program with good usability.

Ultimately a program that is easy to use will be the best option even if it is missing some of the other features. If the program is hard to use you will not use it.

The 4 Best Interactive Sight Reading Programs

Based on the criteria above here are my recommendations for interactive sight reading software programs. These are my top 4 picks in order starting with #4 and rating each in the categories of Printing, Variety, Analytics and Usability. Each category is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. I have also graded each with a percentage score by dividing the points by 40.

#4 - Ear Master 6

RATING: %57  BREAKDOWN: Printing 0 | Variety 5 | Analytics 10 | Usability 10

Ear Master Pro 6 is the latest version of the acclaimed computer based ear training program. I am putting this software in this list because it has some great features for learning to read rhythms. Also it incorporates rhythm reading and other musicianship skills into one killer program that is a user friendly tool that is useful for every level of musician.

Ear Master has some great features the other programs don’t have. It has a piano and guitar input interface. Also this program does a great job of tracking your progress with detailed reports.

The only reason the rating for this program is low is because it is not meant to be for sight reading although it can be a very powerful tool for learning to read rhythm. You can read my review of the previous version of Ear Master 5 here. I will be writing an in depth review of Ear Master 6 soon.

Try a 7 day free trial of Ear Master Pro 6

#3 - PracticeSightReading.com

RATING: %45  BREAKDOWN: Printing 2 | Variety 8 | Analytics 0 | Usability 8

PracticeSightReading.com is an online tools with auto-generated musical examples. There is a reasonable variety of skill levels and the music output is acceptable, but the more advanced musical examples are sometimes musically awkward.

I have reviewed this website before and found even in the free edition to be a useful tool. The biggest draw back is that you can only print from the web browser which causes the print out to look odd making it not very enjoyable to play from the printed page.

Try a 7 trial of PracticeSightReading.com Deluxe

#2 - SightReadingFactory.com

RATING: %73  BREAKDOWN: Printing 10 | Variety 9 | Analytics 0 | Usability 9

SightReadingFactory.com is also an online tool with auto-generated musical examples. It offers a lot of customization features which make it very usable. Also you can print directly from the website to a nicely formated page. This program natively supports most single staff instruments. Also it has a good listening feature to compare your work to the computer playback.

Try a free demo of SightReadingFactory.com

#1 – SightReadingMastery.com

RATING: %82  BREAKDOWN: Printing 7 | Variety 8 | Analytics 8 | Usability 10

SightReadingMastery.com is another online tool that is relatively new to me. This program has traditionally composed musical examples from real composers which is a huge plus to me.

Printing is only supported through the web browser but the print out looks nice in landscape mode. There is a good variety of melodies, with left and right hand parts. You pay for the amount of sight reading you want per month, but the cheapest plan has enough for one reading per day. It tracks what you have played, but not details about it.

This program is very usable, especially for pianist and piano teachers. I like its interface and it uses real recordings of the playback! That is nearly impossible to find in any other program.

I will be doing an in-depth review of it this program soon. This may effect my rating of this program but so far it is one of the best tools I’ve seen for sight reading.

Try a 7 day free trial of SightReadingMastery.com

Incorporating Sight Reading In To Your Practice Schedule

These programs are great for incorporating sight reading in to your practice routine. Especially the ones with good printing options. You can print your examples ahead of time so that you can mark your scores and you can use to programs to track your progress and listen to the excerpts.

However if you don’t know how to properly read notes and rhythms none of these will teach you how to read music. For that I recommend by latest e-book “How To Read Music In 30 Days Easily” to get you started using counting systems and understanding music theory so you can sight read better.

That’s it for today. Let me know what you think of these programs or if you have any other programs you like to use in the comments below.

Thanks following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Until Next Time … Practice Smart, Not Hard.

—

Leon Harrell (about)

OneMinuteMusicLesson.com is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to beginning musicians who want to grow their talents as quickly as possible with effective lessons and time management tips for practicing. Leon Harrell’s goal is to teaching you musicianship by using highly-targeted concept lessons that build progressively to teach you music theory, ear training and and composition.

Hi One Minute Music Lesson fans,

Continuing with my series of posts on improving your sight reading ability, today I wanted to tell you about 3 of the most common mistakes students make when learning how to sight read and how you can correct them.

These 3 mistakes are easy to fix and will improve your sight reading dramatically.

Also, stay tuned all the way to the end of the post because I’m issuing you a 3-day challenge.

Mistake #1 – You Do Not Prepare Before You Sight Read.

Preparing yourself and your music before you play a single note is the most common mistake in student musicians. Sight reading requires a lot of mental processes to occur simultaneously. When you couple this with the fact that many beginning, and even intermediate musicians, get very tense when they sight read creating a recipe for sight reading disaster.

To eliminate is problem of incorrect preparation you need to get into the proper state of mind and give yourself every advantage possible from the very start of your sight reading practice time.

To get in the “zone” to sight read you must understand that sight reading is not the same as playing music, which I would classify as performance. Nor is it the same as practicing a piece that you will eventually perform. Sight reading is simply the act of sharpening your music reading reflexes to be able to play the music at the first reading. This is an ongoing skill you will develop and you want to stay focused on strategically progressing bit-by-bit.

When you are ready to sit down and practice sight reading you should dedicate about 15 minutes to playing through your prepared score. By preparing your sheet music ahead of time you are eliminating the obstacles that are preventing you from getting better at sight reading. If you don’t already know how to prepare your music read my article on the 5 Steps To Sight Reading Music.

Mistake #2 – You Are Reading Note-by-Note.

In the beginning stages of sight reading you will most likely be reading note-by-note. This will prevent you from being able to read ahead, which is critical to improving your sight reading ability. Once you have memorized your note locations on the treble and bass clefs, or alto if you play the viola, you want to begin to read by interval.

Let’s look at a short example of how to read sheet music by interval:

As you read through the example you want to read from note-to-note by the interval, not the note name.

So for example this piece is in D Major. The first note is A. The next note is up 4 notes of the scale, then down 8, then up 3, and then up 2 and so forth.

I have marked the whole score with the generic interval distances. As you read through the piece this way by interval, you are reading the musical contour. Contour reading allows you to see the music in much larger chunks that reading note-by-note.

Reading by interval requires some knowledge of basic music theory. This sight reading technique requires two pieces of information: You need to understand what scale or key the music is in and understand generic intervals.

Additionally, once you understand these two concepts thoroughly you will see that most music will appear on the staff within the key, meaning there is no need to use any accidentals within the music. When this concept sinks in you will be able to read by interval very easily. Further more, once this sight reading technique is combined with the knowledge of chromatic scale degrees you can suddenly see the hidden structure in the sheet music that has been there the entire time. This is a concept I teach throughly in my book “How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days“.

Until Next Time … Practice Smart, Not Hard.

—

Leon Harrell (about)

OneMinuteMusicLesson.com is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to beginning musicians who want to grow their talents as quickly as possible with effective lessons and time management tips for practicing. Leon Harrell’s goal is to teach you musicianship by using highly targeted, “concept” lessons that build progressively to teach you music theory, ear training and composition so you can become the total musician you want to be.

When you are first learning the music notes for piano or any other musical instrument you will want to practice reading lots of easy music to get your note reading reflexes sharp.

In the early stages of learning how to read music or how to sight read music the act of identify notes is the first hurdle to cross. Once you know the notes of the treble and bass clef I highly recommend you get a great book for sight reading. There are a couple of criteria that I would recommend you look for in a sight reading book, including:

• Get a book with many easy examples.
• Get a book that progresses in difficulty from very easy to more complicated material.
• Get a book with both treble and bass clef, even if you just need to learn only one clef. A well-rounded musician can read all musical clefs (even the alto and tenor clefs).
• Get a book with a teaching component, especially rhythm since it is the one of the most difficult hurdles you will need to cross in learning to sight read properly.
• Get a book with an easy to read layout and high quality construction. You want the music to be a large enough size to read at a comfortable distance of about 2-3 feet. Also spiral bound books lay flat and are less prone to closing or falling of music stands or the piano’s music desk.

With all of these criteria in mind my #1 recommended book for sight reading purposes is Robert W. Ottman’s book “Music for Sight Singing”.

Now you may be asking yourself “what is sight singing?” and how could this possibly relate to my piano music reading skills or my guitar playing?

Sight singing is simply the act of reading sheet music without any instrumental help. This skill teaches you how to look at a piece of music and sing it based only on your knowledge of music theory and your aural memory of musical intervals. This skill is a beyond our needs at this point, but down the road I highly recommend you learn how to sight sing to improve your musicianship overall.

For our purposes this book is incredible because of the sheer volume of short, easy to read exercises. The “Music for Sight Singing” book is a standard college textbook for ear training courses and musicianship skills classes. It is based on the principles of teaching how to read music through thousands of short excerpts from real musical literature. Also it is available on Amazon for only $3.00 used, which is a steal for a book that retails for $86.00 at most book stores.

Let’s take a look at some sample excerpts for our 15 minutes a day exercise.

15-minutes a day Sight Reading Exercise

Here are the four steps for our sight reading exercise. Don’t skip any of them. When you are practicing any skill for music, remember that quality is much more important and quantity. Slow and highly focused practice will get you faster results in your musical development that any other method.

1. Use a practice journal. Download a copy of the One Minute Music Lesson practice journal here. Use it to track your 15-minutes a day sight reading exercise.

2. Get your materials ready. Find a page of excerptsin the “Music for Sight Singing” book to read. Our examples below are from pages 156-157 of the 7th edition of the book. If you don’t have this book here are 10 sites to find free sheet music for sight reading.

3. Stay focused. Focus on one aspect of music reading, either pitch or rhythm until you are comfortable with both.

• If you need to practice reading the notes, write in the pitches for each note before you play. The more you write in the names of the notes, the faster you will get at reading them. This is a vital step in the learning process that too many teachers discourage their students from doing. Here is a sample of what this would look like:

• If you need to practice reading rhythm, write in the Eastman counting system above the music before you play the excerpt. Then verbally speak the names of the notes in the rhythm. Then move on to playing the excerpt on your instrument. Here is a sample of what this would look like:

4. Use a timer. Use an online timer or the timer on your cell phone and set it to 15-minutes. By setting a timer you are consciously creating a goal for developing your skills. This is the key to your progress over time. By using the timer you will practice this skill until the timer goes off without think about how long this task will take. Also you will not be focused on how much time is remaining to your sight reading practice thus keeping you goal oriented during the session.

How is your Sight Reading Progressing?

Let me know in the comments below or in our sight reading forum how you’re sight reading progress is going and what books and materials you are using.

That’s it for today, until next time …

Practice smart, not hard.

- Leon Harrell

I am creating a series of sight reading exercises for you to help you with your sight reading skills and to provide harmonically interesting sight reading materials.

In this first exercise, which you can download here, you should complete the following list of instructions BEFORE you play it or listen to the recording. The link to the recording is available at the bottom of this post.

5 Steps to Sight Reading Sheet Music

1. Get your materials ready. Print the example out and get a pencil with an eraser and three different colors of highlighters, preferably a blue, a green and a pink.

When you sight read you need be prepared with these materials so you are actively reading the score while at the same time providing yourself with the necessary information to read the music at your own skill level.

When you sight read music you will inevitably make mistakes. Your goal is to catch each mistake the first time you make it and mark your music accordingly. When you misread a pitch, circle it with the pencil.

Marking your score as you read it the very first time will save you an enormous amount of time through out the process and prevent you from repeating mistakes.

2. Highlight all the accidentals. Accidentals are the sharp, natural and flat symbols printed on your score. The key signature for the piece may include some sharps or flats but we are focusing on the extra accidentals printed through out the music.

In this first exercise the music is in the key of C major, which has no sharps or flats in the key signature itself. However, it is rare that a piece of music would only have the pitches from the key signature throughout the entire piece.

To mark your accidentals use the blue highlighter and highlight any flat symbols, then use the green for any natural symbols and the pink for the sharp symbols. You can see in the previous sentence how highlighting attracts your eyes and creates attention quickly. This is why I use highlighters on the accidentals, they are usually the notes you will miss when you sight read. When I do this I may highlight the note itself or the accidental symbol, it all depends on the amount of space on the page there is to mark the music. Some music is printed smaller and it makes highlighting more difficult. In that case I will highlight the notes directly rather than the accidental symbols.

3. Mark the rhythms that seem difficult. Look over the piece and find any rhythms that you think will be difficult to play. If you find any, use the Eastman Counting System to label the counting above the music now. Watch lessons 17 and 18 on the free video lesson page to learn more about this marking system or get a copy of “How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days” which goes into great detail on how to use this counting system.

By marking the difficult rhythms we will save a lot of time and prevent mistakes in our rhythm reading. Again, this helps us to play the piece correctly and not repeat mistakes over and over again.

4. Scan over the whole piece before you play. Anytime you sight read always take the time to look over the whole piece before you play it. Identify a few features of the score such as key signature, time signature and expression markings that describe what type of sounds you should be making. An example of a common expression is dolce, which means sweetly. Expression markings are usually in italics.

Look for changes of key or modulations. This is usually indicated with a thin double bar between measures and a new key signature or the presence of more accidentals than in other parts of the music.

5. Read the music in your head first. Finally, before you play the piece look at the music and imagine performing it just in your head. Imagine the rhythms and sounds of the notes. You will probably not be albe to imagine the pitches correctly yet, but over time you can certainly build this skill up with ear training. For now just imagine the contour of the musical lines, or the basic high-ness or low-ness of the notes.

Read though the whole piece this way one time in a steady tempo using a metronome. Try to stay focused and move along in the music the same way you would as if you where playing it. This step is training you to read the score without involving any of the technical difficulties of playing your instrument. This is often called score reading, and it is a vital skill for any musician especially ensemble leaders like conductors.

Compare your work to the recording

After you have completed this exercise and gone through all the steps practice the piece until you feel as though you have played it correctly. Once you are finished go to the One Minute Music Lesson forums to listen to the recording to see how close you are to reading it correctly.

That’s it for today. Let me know what you think of the exercise. Was it too difficult? Was it too easy? Did you like the music? If you have questions or comments leave them in the comment section below or over in the forum.

Until next time,

Practice smart, not hard.

-Leon Harrell

Learning how to sight read music can be a very mystifying process for the beginning or amateur musician. But there are 10 facts about about learning how to sight read music notes and rhythms that you must know in order to develop your sight reading skills.

It took me over 20 years to learn an effecient system of sight reading because, in truth, most teachers do not know how to teach this aspect of music properly. Many teachers can teach you how to read music on a basic level and even how to play complicated pieces, but usually this is done through a tremendous amount of repetition and reliance on listening to recordings or playing standard pieces from the literature that your teacher learned many years ago.

If you are learning how to sight read music on your own I recommend that you adjust your sight reading habits to incorporate the 10 facts below. I guarantee you will experience a major shift in your sight reading ability and mindset.

1. You must maintain the motivation to improve your sight-reading skills.

In order to get better at sight reading you need to stay motivated to practice the skill. If you need a little motivation begin by reading my article on finding your inner motivation to grow as a musician.

2. You will need good quality sight reading practice materials.

To really sight read you need a lot of fresh music materials to read. There are many places you can get music for sight reading. One of my favorites is a tool called PracticeSightReading.com that generates an unlimited amount of free sight reading exercises online.

Also another quality tool in your sight reading arsenal should include great sheet music. Here is a list of my favorite top 10 free sheet music websites. Also you can find just about any piece at SheetMusicPlus in their catalog of over 800,000+ titles.

3. You must have a frequent practice schedule to improve your sight reading ability.

To get better at sight reading you will need to practice the skill frequently. A great way to do this is to keep a practice journal. To start a practice journal download a free copy of my practice journal template and use it daily.

4. You must make markings on your sheet music BEFORE you sight read.

Sight reading does not all have to be in-your-head. Use a pencil to make markings that will help you as you read through the sheet music. Also using highlighters or colored pencils is a great way to mark your music for visual clarity. When I sight read I mark all the accidentals (sharps, flats and naturals) before I ever play a single note. This marking technique is an invaluable lesson I have learned over the years. I teach this score marking method and many more in my book “How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days“.

5. You must practice sight reading slowly.

Practicing almost any skill on an instrument works better if you do it slowly. When you practice piano you begin playing with both hands slowly. When you begin playing guitar you learn to place the fingers on the fret board to form chords slowly. Sight reading slowly will lead to fast progress.

When practicing sight reading you want to read the music at a very slow tempo while also being very steady. This will require a metronome. Do not trust your mind’s inner time-keeping when sight reading. I suggest you should practice sight reading around four times slower than a piece should be performed at tempo.

6. You must learn and memorize the note locations on the staff.

If you have not learned the locations of the notes on the treble and bass clef by memory you must do this to get better at sight reading. I have developed two exercises that will help with this task. Download the treble clef exercise here and the bass clef exercise here.

7. You must learn how to count rhythm properly and accurately.

Rhythm is the main culprit in most student’s sight reading problems. I recommend all my students learn how to count rhythms properly by learning and using the Eastman counting system. I have two free videos on this counting system, one for simple meter and one for compound meter.

8. You need to understand at least some basic music theory concepts.

To sight read more easily you will need to understand scales and chords. These two fundamental music theory concepts exist in almost all music. You can learn beginning music theory online with my free video lesson series here or take a look at my top 10 free music theory websites.

9. Learning sight-singing will drastically improve your sight reading ability.

What is sight-singing? Sight-singing is a vital part of ear training. Sight singing is the ability to see printed music and sing it without any help from an instrument.

This crucial skill will take time to develop, but once you do, you will be able to sight read much more easily because you will be able to see the structure of the music, not just the notes on the page.

A two great tools for beginning to learn how to sight sing are the ear training tools at MusicTheory.net and the Ear Master program (Read my review of Ear Master here).

10. You must strive for efficiency in making progress.

My motto for the One Minute Music lesson is Practice smart, not hard.

This is my philosophy in teaching music. I feel the same way about sight reading. Practice smart by using these tips to save time and maximize the effectiveness of your practice. Don’t practice hard! Practice that does not include mentally engaging activities such as journaling, marking music and incorporating music theory knowledge is not as productive as a practice regimen that does.

Get started improving your sight reading today

Get motivated to practice sight reading today by talking with other people who are developing the same skills or experiencing similar struggles as you. Join the discussion in the Sight Reading Discussion Forum to find insipration and more tips to help you in your sight reading journey.

That’s it for today, Until next time …

Practice Smart, Not Hard.

- Leon Harrell

I am in the process of creating a forum feature for the website. Since this is a new feature I am limiting it to a suggestion box, but you can post anything you like in this forum.

To access the forum click here 

Or you can go to http://oneminutemusiclesson.com/forums or access it via the menu bar in MORE and then Forums.

This is a new feature and is very much in a beta testing stage so bear with me as I try to add this feature to improve the One Minute Music Lesson and build a solid community through the forums.

If you have questions or need help post them in the comments below.

Hope to talk more with you in the forums,

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

As a child I began taking piano lessons at the young age of five. I loved playing music even then and I was always fascinated to learn more at each lesson.

I was encouraged by my parents and piano teacher and I truly enjoyed playing the piano. I would practice most days of the week, but I would often get side tracked by just playing to hear the sound of the piano. I really loved just hearing the timbre and liked the challenge of trying to play melodies by ear. Even as a young child I could slowly pick out the notes of a song through trial and error.

As time went on I progressed and began playing more complicated pieces and I began to realize the difficulty of being good at playing the piano. Reading music was not easy and memorizing pieces was really hard even though my teacher always encouraged me to memorize pieces for our recitals.

At the age of fourteen I stopped going to lessons. I began to feel like I was failing at learning to play better. I also felt guilty that my parents, who were not rich by any means, were wasting money on lessons for me because I was not practicing my music.

But I was still playing my piano almost every day just noodling around and making my own kind of music. I had even began to write down some of the melodies I was creating in a rudimentary fashion.

Then years later I was the piano accompanist for my high school choir. It was an experience that ultimately lead me to wanting to be a composer and go to college for music. I tried to begin piano lessons again so I could prepare for college auditions.

This second go round with lessons was very eye-opening and also emotional. I realized then, at 18 years old, that I had lost so much of my ability to read music since I had not kept up the skill. I also realized that I could have been so much better if I had kept going to lessons during those pivotal years in my musical development.

This really made me sad because I understood that I had lost some of my potential as a pianist.

A year later I was in college as a music student because I had been accepted into music school even though my auditions where in my opinion awful. I had forgotten 2 pieces halfway through playing them that I was to play by memory during the audition and I just did not have the confidence to perform that had when I was younger.

But I did get accepted and I was assigned a new piano teacher. This piano teacher was fantastic at motivating me to play. He was by far the best pianist I had ever see play live and I was so eager to learn from him. He taught me so much about my technique of playing and I grew as a pianist faster than I thought was possible. In fours years of college I has become better than I though was possible. But something still persisted that made me really still feel inadequate in my playing ability.

I was still awful at reading music. I still did not like to practice. I still felt nervous when I played in front of people and I still could not memorize music in a way that I felt sure that I would remember it in concert.

A few years later I had a piano teacher during my master’s degree that I thought was a very nice person but was a horrible fit for me as a piano teacher. She was hyper-focused on my technique and the exact finger placement at all times. So much so that when I played for her in lessons we could not get through even 4 measures of music before she would stop me and correct something about my hands.

This teacher left me feeling a distaste for playing piano from sheet music ever again. Sure, I still loved classical piano and other genres that would require me to read and play from sheet music, but I had decided that it just was not possible for me to progress because there was just something I did not get and unfortunately I would never get it.

Then something happened that changed my life as a musician forever.

I was hired to teach music theory to undergraduates. I had never taught music theory before because this was my first teaching gig. I had understood theory in the context of a classroom setting as a student but I never had to understand it well enough to teach it to another person, let alone a class of 30.

But after a year of teaching I began to realize the potential for music theory with my piano playing. I began to see the structures from music theory in the music I was learning to play and using these skills to read music in a way I had never done before.

At the time I also worked as an organist and pianist for a church. I was now able to use the skills that I was teaching to my students to learn the music for the church services in under an hour. I was learning to read music in a way that I didn’t know was possible.

The key difference was understanding the fundamental of music theory in a way that applied to the music I was playing directly.

I began analyzing the music I had to play each week for church before I sat down to play. Then I was able to play the music at-sight nearly and with a little bit of extra practice I was playing the music perfectly.

At that point I decided that I would never take another piano lesson again because I had learned music theory well enough to solve the problems that I had experienced in piano lessons since childhood.

Did you ever stop taking lessons? Let me know your experience in the comments below.

I will tell you the rest of the story about my time as a piano student on another day. For now just know that if you have struggled with music lessons because you could not read music well or just could not grow as a musician there is an answer to your problem.

Unfortunately most teachers are unable to teach you how to use music theory in your playing because they don’t understand it all that well either. If you want to learn how you can take your playing to the next level, no matter where you are starting from, then you owe it to yourself to learn more about my new music theory and ear training academy opening on August 5th. Read more about it here.

That’s it for today. I hope to hear about your musical journey in the comments.

Until next time: Practice Smart, Not Hard.

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

As a composer I am constantly in need of manuscript paper, the paper used to write down music notation or sheet music.

This is a special type of paper that consists of only blank staves is extremely expensive to purchase pre-printed, especially in archival quality paper. This is why I no longer buy it all. Instead I make my own. And ever better I make it with a free tool.

I exclusively make my own manuscript paper using a variety of tools, but one of my favorite and easiest to use tools is BlankSheetMusic.net‘s manuscript generator.

This tool will allow you to create blank sheet music paper with many options available to you that normally are only found in expensive notation software like Sibelius or Finale.

To start creating your blank manuscript paper choose a clef type: Blank, Treble, Bass, Alto, Tenor, Percussion, 4-5-6 or 7 String TAB, or any other option listed such as Grand Staff.

Then choose the scale of the staves. Not the musical scale like C Major, but the visual scale or dimensions of the distance between each line of your staff.

You can change the page orientation to landscape or portrait. When making sheet music portrait is the standard for reading music, but landscape is great for composing and freely sketching ideas.

You can also add time signatures and key signatures if you wish, but I usually leave this off so my paper is a bit more flexible in how I can use it.

Give it a try at BlankSheetMusic.net. I recommend using no clef and a scale of 1.38, which will give you 8 staves per page for blank manscript paper that is easy to write notation on with a pencil.

Do you have any other tools you use for generating blank sheet music for free? Let me know in the comments below. I am always looking for new tools to share with you all, especially high quality free ones.

Until next time: Practice Smart, Not Hard.

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

Today I wanted to share with a review of one of my go-to books when I just want to play some tunes and have a fun jam session on my piano at home.

I love the Beatles, and I’m sure many of you do too. If you are a Beatles fan you must own a copy of The Concise Beatles Complete. This is one of the best collections of Beatles songs in a simple to read and play format.

Each song is written in a lead sheet style. This means you have a melody written in treble clef with the lyrics and the chord symbols printed above the melody. The rhythms are simple to read because they are very close to being as accurate as the recordings but not as accurate as the more famous The Beatles: Complete Scores collection, which is much more difficult to play from as a solo pianist.

This collection has 184 of the most popular Beatles songs which are arranged in the book in alphabetical order so you can find them easily. Here are the contents of the book:

• A Day In The Life
• A Hard Day’s Night
• Across The Universe
• All I’ve Got To Do
• All My Loving
• All Together Now
• All You Need Is Love
• And I Love Her
• And Your Bird Can Sing
• Another Girl
• Anytime At All
• Ask Me Why
• Baby You’re A Rich Man
• Baby’s In Black
• Back In The U.S.S.R.
• Because
• Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
• Birthday
• Blackbird
• Blue Jay Way
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• Carry That Weight
• Come Together
• Cry Baby Cry
• Day Tripper
• Dear Prudence
• Dig A Pony
• Dig It
• Do You Want To Know A Secret?
• Doctor Robert
• Don’t Let Me Down
• Don’t Pass Me By
• Drive My Car
• Eight Days A Week
• Eleanor Rigby
• Every Little Thing
• Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
• Fixing A Hole
• For No One
• For You Blue
• From A Window
• From Me To You
• Get Back
• Getting Better
• Girl
• Give Peace A Chance
• Glass Onion
• Golden Slumbers
• Good Day Sunshine
• Good Morning Good Morning
• Good Night
• Goodbye
• Got To Get You Into My Life
• Happiness Is A Warm Gun
• Hello Little Girl
• Hello, Goodbye
• Help!
• Helter Skelter
• Her Majesty
• Here Comes The Sun
• Here, There And Everywhere
• Hey Bulldog
• Hey Jude
• Hold Me Tight
• Honey Pie
• I Am The Walrus
• I Call Your Name
• I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
• I Feel Fine
• I Me Mine
• I Need You
• I Saw Her Standing There
• I Should Have Known Better
• I Wanna Be Your Man
• I Want To Hold Your Hand
• I Want To Tell You
• I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
• I Will
• I’ll Be Back
• I’ll Cry Instead
• I’ll Follow The Sun
• I’ll Get You
• I’m A Loser
• I’m Down
• I’m Happy Just To Dance With You
• I’m Looking Through You
• I’m Only Sleeping I’m So Tired
• I’ve Got A Feeling
• I’ve Just Seen A Face
• If I Fell
• If I Needed Someone
• In My Life
• It Won’t Be Long
• It’s All Too Much
• It’s Only Love
• Julia
• Lady Madonna
• Let It Be
• Little Child
• Long Long Long
• Love Me Do
• Love You To
• Lovely Rita
• Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
• Magical Mystery Tour
• Martha My Dear
• Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
• Mean Mr. Mustard
• Michelle
• Misery
• Mother Nature’s Son
• No Reply
• Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
• Not A Second Time
• Nowhere Man
• Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
• Octopus’s Garden
• Oh! Darling
• Old Brown Shoe
• One After 909
• Only A Northern Song P.S. I Love You
• Paperback Writer
• Penny Lane
• Piggies
• Please Please Me
• Polythene Pam
• Rain
• Revolution
• Rocky Raccoon
• Run For Your Life
• Savoy Truffle
• Sexy Sadie
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
• She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
• She Loves You
• She Said She Said
• She’s A Woman
• She’s Leaving Home
• Something
• Strawberry Fields Forever
• Sun King
• Taxman
• Tell Me What You See
• Tell Me Why
• Thank You Girl
• The Ballad Of John And Yoko
• The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
• The End
• The Fool On The Hill
• The Inner Light
• The Long And Winding Road
• The Night Before
• The Word
• There’s A Place
• Things We Said Today
• Think For Yourself
• This Boy (Ringo’s Theme)
• Ticket To Ride
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• Two Of Us
• Wait
• We Can Work It Out
• What Goes On
• What You’re Doing
• When I Get Home
• When I’m Sixty-Four
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Why Don’t We Do It In The Road
• Wild Honey Pie
• With A Little Help From My Friends
• Within You Without You
• Yellow Submarine
• Yer Blues
• Yes It Is
• Yesterday
• You Can’t Do That
• You Like Me Too Much
• You Never Give Me Your Money
• You Won’t See Me
• You’re Going To Lose That Girl
• You’ve Got To Hide
• Your Love Away
• Your Mother Should Know

This collection is great also for analyzing the harmony behind the Beatles songs if you know how to convert chord symbols into functional harmony, a skill which I will be teaching to my new upcoming academy students.

If you own a copy of  The Concise Beatles Complete or have a better Beatles collection you would like to share with the One Minute Music Lesson community leave me a note in the comments below.

Until next time: Practice Smart, Not Hard.

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

This is a question I get a lot from beginning students that want to learn to play by ear,

“What is the Difference Between Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch?”

Let’s begin with Perfect Pitch. Perfect pitch is a skill that you are most likely born with and if not, you will most likely never develop it.

Think of perfect pitch as begin able to remember the exact sound of any pitch in the same manner that you remember and recognize what a color looks like.

When you see the color red, provided you are not colorblind, you will recognize it instantly. The same is true of a person who has perfect pitch. When they hear the note C played on a piano or guitar they know that the note is C just by the sound because they have the ability to just remember this pitch by its sound.

According to Wikipedia perfect pitch may related to certain genes, possibly an autosomal dominant genetic trait. In my personal experience, I never known a musician that developed perfect pitch if they were not born with it.

Relative pitch however is a completely different story. Relative pitch is the ability to hear a melody and know what it is and how to play it by listening to the intervals between each note and reproducing them on an instrument. Although you may not begin on the same note as the melody in question, you will reproduce the melody exactly but in another key.

With a high level of relative pitch recognition ability combined with understanding music theory fundamentals you will be able to quickly hear a melody and reproduce it on your instrument even if you begin playing in the wrong key.

By hearing the difference between where you start playing and the note that you should be matching you can determine the amount of the transposition between the melody you are playing and the music you are trying to play along with.

Relative pitch is a skill any one can learn and with guidance and enough practice you can become very skilled at it in a relatively short amount of of time. It greatly helps to have a high quality, interactive practice tool such as Ear Master 5 to train yourself when beginning to learn relative pitch skills.

If you are interested in learning how to use the power of relative pitch ear training in your instrument playing and music writing I encourage you to follow along with the announcements on my newsletter about my upcoming members-only music academy where I will be teaching students exactly how to acquire relative pitch in a very easy and direct manner.

I hope this clears up any confusion between the difference between perfect pitch and relative pitch. If you have any questions leave them in the comments below or email me directly. I am always looking for great questions to answer that will benefit you and rest of the fans of the One Minute Music Lesson.

Until next time: Practice Smart – Not Hard,

Leon Harrell

There are three types of minor scales that are used often in music.

They are:

• Natural Minor (also known as the Aeolian Mode)
• Harmonic Minor
• Melodic Minor

These scales are created by using different patterns of half steps (H), whole steps (W) and augmented seconds (A2).

The Natural Minor scale is created by starting on a tonic pitch, your first pitch of the scale, and moving up by the following pattern: W H W W H W W

If you create a C natural minor scale the tonic pitch will be C and the scale will be formed by following the pattern starting on C.

So the result would be C D Eb F G Ab Bb C.

The Harmonic Minor scale is also created by starting on a tonic pitch and moving up by the following pattern:W H W W H A2 W

If you create a C harmonic minor scale the tonic pitch will be C and the scale will be formed by following the pattern starting on C.

So the result of that pattern would be C D Eb F G Ab B C

The third type of minor scale is the Melodic Minor scale. This minor scale contains different pitches going up than going down.

On the way up you will use the pattern: W H W W W W H. If you use the tonic pitch C again, a C melodic minor scale on the way up will be C D Eb F G A B C.

On the way down you use the pattern from the natural minor scale going down. That will result in the C melodic minor scale coming back down as C Bb Ab G F Eb D C.

My two personal favorites are EarMaster 6, a comprehensive ear training software and the ear training exercises at MusicTheory.net which has interactive flash-based ear training tools.

Here’s the list:

• EarMaster 6 (Read my review of EarMaster 5 here)
• Music Theory.net
• IWasDoingAlright.com
• Good-ear.com
• Miles.be
• Teoria.com
• Transcribe!
• BigEars
• Auralia
• EarPower.com

If you have any favorite ear training software or site you like that you don’t see in this list, let me know about them in the comments below.

Also, if you have struggled to learn ear training in the past you may be interested in learning about Leon Harrell’s music theory and aural skills beta academy.

Until next time: Practice Smart, Not Hard.

Leon Harrell

Hi fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

Ear training is the process of learning to play your instrument by ear, how to write down music by ear, a skill also known as musical dictation, and how to identify mistakes in music and fix them by ear. It’s one of the hardest skills in music to acquire. But it doesn’t have to be.

Ear training is difficult to learn because there are many possibilities when it comes down to how to find notes on your instrument by ear. In fact moving from one note to the next on any given song on a piano and you have 3916 possible choices from the first note you play to the next note. That’s a lot of possibilities between every single note, not to mention the possibility of more than one note at a time.

Ear training allows us to listen to music and decipher what is going on musically and recreate it either by playing it or writing it down. This is done by using your knowledge of musical sound including intervals, scales and chords in addition to what you know about the music theory behind these concepts.

Ear training is a skill that is developed over time and is frustrating for the beginner because it actually requires quite a bit of music theory knowledge to be able to do it well or alternatively a couple thousand hours of practicing to be able to do it without music theory.

To begin the process of ear training it is vital to understand how each interval sounds. Then you move on to how these intervals sound in context within scales and chords. To practice you need tools and a method that will work by teaching you how to listen properly and reproduce what you hear accurately.

This is the biggest problem with traditional ear training methods, especially ones taught at the university level. Many ear training classes and software teach by repetition and sheer volume of practice material. This approach does not work well or even come close to being efficient.

Over the past 5 years I have taught a course on ear training, also called aural skills in colleges, to graduate students who failed there entrance exams into the graduate music program at the University of Illinois. Often I have had students who were shocked at how simple the process of learning aural skills could be after taking my class. A common story among many students who take these types of courses in college goes like this:

As an incoming university music student you begin taking an ear training course with an instructor that teaches you solfege (a method used to teach ear training) and forces you to practice sight singing melodies and musical dictation by using recordings or horribly designed software in the hopes that you will absorb the material.

What actually happens is that about 10% of the class learns the material fairly well while the other 90% of the students never get past the most basic concepts because they have no idea how to practice these skills with their current level of abilities, therefore they just never develop any further.

Sure, they almost all pass the class, but they do not learn the material in a deep and meaningful way and promptly forget it after the course is over because they have not learned how to use it in a practical manner.

This is exactly why I am creating my new music theory and ear training academy. I have developed a system that works and is easy to learn and put into practice. And best of all it is practical. It teaches you how to use many elements from the traditional method of solfege but in an entirely different way that makes you use your inner ear without the crutch of the staff (more on this in another post).

Over the course of the next month I will be teaching introductory concepts of ear training and music theory, the flip-side of the ear training coin. Some of this material will be on my free video lesson series Understanding Music Theory on my free video lesson page. More of this material will be sent exclusively to subscribers of my free newsletter.

If you are interested in learning how to use the power of ear training in your instrument playing and music writing I encourage you to follow along with the announcements on my newsletter about my upcoming members-only music academy.

Until next time: Practice Smart – Not Hard,

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

I wanted to talk to you today about the difference between understanding music theory and the your playing abilities due to your level of technique.

Many beginning musicians make the assumption that it will take them years to become great on there instruments. This is in part due to the common learning traps that people fall into.

Many people begin by picking up an instrument because they have a passion for the sound of that instrument. You probably heard a beautiful piano piece or a rocking guitar solo and decided “Hey I want to play that!”

Then you got an instrument and either began taking lessons from a teacher or bought a beginners book on how to play.

Then the struggle began. You were immediately faced with the problem of not having enough technique to play your instrument well. Hand coordination was probably your biggest challenge. Pianist have trouble learning to play with both hands together. Guitarists have trouble contorting their hands around the neck of the guitar.

Then after some time, maybe years later, you finally got comfortable with your instrument and began to play pieces, but reading music was still a struggle and memorizing pieces was even harder.

You probably started many new pieces and gave up on them because they were too difficult to read and to hard to execute because you kept making mistakes just reading the notes.

This is exactly where people begin to give up and quit taking lessons or just put down their instrument for good. Some people keep going but never progress much more after this stage of development.

The problem was that you never understood how the music worked. You were simply reading the notes on the page and trying to play them, but you never had a clue how each note related to each other.

This happened because you did not understand music theory, or the mathematical underpinning of music.

You probably never learned it because your teacher really didn’t understand it all that well either. Sure they may have been able to play very well, but that was due to the years or decades more of time they have had to learn to cope with these exact problems. They have learned to navigate the patterns of music by trail and error and through literally thousands of hours of repetition to learn and see the hidden patterns in music.

By understanding music theory you prevent all these problems. You understand why the notes of a song are arranged the particular way that they are. You can read music much faster because you know what patterns to look for in the music. You recognize that there are not millions of combinations of notes,  just by simply knowing the basic rules of how notes form harmonies.

Music theory levels the playing field for musicians. This is how you become a great musician. It allows you to be literate on a level that gives you access to the hidden information that has been right in front of your face the whole time.

But why then do so many musicians not learn music theory? It’s confusing! But only because there are so many terrible books, videos and guides that try to teach people how it all works without giving them the foundation they need to really get it.

Often you find guides on music theory that use wish-washy language to describe concepts that are very simple when seen through the lens of basic mathematics. Chords, scales and harmonies are not clouded in a sea of mystery. They are very simple to learn and memorize when you understand that there are extremely simple patterns used to create every single type of chord or scale imaginable.

This is exactly why I am opening my music theory and ear training academy. I want to provide you with the tools to take the technical playing ability you already have and multiply it with a solid foundation of music theory so you can finally stop wasting hours of unproductive practice time and excel in your musical abilities.

Stay posted for my announcement on Sunday, July 8th, which will only go out to my newsletter members, with the complete and detailed course outline of the new academy. I will share with you then the exact path we will take together to teach you this valuable knowledge to take your musical abilities to the next level.

Until next time, Practice Smart, Not Hard,

Leon Harrell

EarMaster 5 is hands-down one of the best ear training tools I have ever used as a musician and as a professor.

Let me begin by telling you where most other programs fail. Many popular ear training applications are terrible simply because of there poor user interface design.

When I was an undergraduate learning ear training for the first time in college we used Practica Musica and later I used MacGAMUT when I began teaching because the school required students to buy it.

Both of these programs pale in comparison to the quality of EarMaster 5, if not just for the sheer fact that you can navigate the program easily and the use the input interface very intuitively.

Beyond just the ease of use I really like EarMaster 5 for the way that it is laid out from a learning perspective. You begin by choosing an ear training topic and a level of difficulty. Here is what the first screen looks like when you start the program:

You get a choice of training modes (standard and jazz) and a list of exercises beginning with intervals, the most essential building blocks of ear training.

After you choose your exercise you are allowed to choose a difficulty level or just complete each level in order.

The second and really useful reason this software is great is the pitch input method through an onscreen piano keyboard, guitar fret board or clickable buttons.

Here are two screens shots showing the piano and fretboard interfaces:

The Piano Interface

The Fretboard Interface

Also you can download a fully functional 7 day trial that allows you to test out all the features of the software. After that you can choose to purchase one of three different levels of the program.

• The first is the Essential version. This version is great if you are a total beginner at ear training and will take very far.
• The second level, the Pro version, opens up the more advanced ear training levels. This is great if you are practicing for ear training courses in college or music conservatory.
• The third level is the School Version which I think is great for music professors but I don’t see a real advantage for a student. Most of the extra features in this package are for tracking students grades and progress on assignments. However if you teach music I highly recommend this version.

Give it a try today on a Windows or Mac. It installs very quickly and also works with any MIDI keyboard or you can use mouse and keyboard input on your computer. It also has microphone input that you can use with your voice or guitar, but I have not used these features very much so I can’t really say how well they work.

If you are serious about learning to play by ear or want to work on any of your ear training abilities I can’t recommend this software highly enough. I urge you to try the free demo and see for yourself how good this program is.

Do you already own EarMaster 5? If so let me know what you think about it in the comments below.

Until next time, Keep up the good practice!

Leon Harrell

Scales are the foundation of most music. A scale is a pattern of intervals that repeat every octave that is built on a tonic pitch.

A tonic pitch is the first pitch of a scale. The tonic pitch is also the letter name of the scale.

Major scales are built from a combination of half steps and whole steps.

A half step is the smallest distance between two pitches, this also referred to sometimes as a minor second.

A whole step is the distance of two halfsteps. A whole step will sometimes be referred to as a major second.

To create any major scale you must begin on a tonic pitch and create the following interval pattern:

W W H W W W H

This pattern is two whole steps (W) followed by a half step (H) then three wholsteps and one last half step.

In the video above the example is the C major scale. Begin with the tonic pitch C then go up the scale in the interval pattern of W W H W W W H. That will produce the notes C D E F G A B C.

Here is that C major scale in standard notation:

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

Last week I sent a survey to my newsletter subscribers to get some input on what they wanted in the upcoming music theory and ear training academy I am building. You can read more about this academy here.

Here are the results of the questionnaire:

1. When asked “What order of importance to you are the following skills?” people answered with this order of importance:

• Learn music theory (chords, scales, harmony etc.)
• How to play music by ear
• How to read and play chord charts
• How to compose music and write songs
• How to improvise on my instrument

2. When asked “Do you know how to read music already?” people replied:

• Yes, but I need to improve my reading skills. (39%)
• Sort of, just barely. (34%)
• No, but I want to learn (14.6%)
• Yes, very well. (12.4%)
• No, I am not interested in learning to read music (0%)

• A video library of lessons for each concept
• A bank of worksheets and exercises to download
• A printable document library of lessons for each concept
• A forum for members to interact and ask each other questions and answers
• Interactive quizzes to ensure you are learning the material
• A page of all the previous questions and answer calls with Leon Harrell
• Priority access to help from Leon Harrell

Does this sound right to you? Let me know in the comments below if the results from this survey sound about right of if this is not what you want from the academy?

I will be sending a second survey to further shape the academy’s materials. I will send this survey to my newsletter members. If you want to receive an invitation to this survey signup for my free newsletter here.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts,

Leon Harrell

My two personal favorites are OneMinuteMusicLesson.com, a site for teaching music theory from the very beginning through one minute video lessons and MusicTheory.net which has interactive flash-based music theory tools.

Most of these sites contain information about music theory and worksheets or interactive tools for learning concepts of music theory.

1. One Minute Music Lesson.com
2. Music Theory.net
3. Teoria.com
4. eMusicTheory.com
5. Jazz Guitar Online
6. Dolmetsch Music Theory
7. Music Theory on 8notes.com
8. BerkleeShares
9. Music Theory for Songwriters
10. The Tonal Centre

If you have any favorite free music theory sites you like that you don’t see in this list, let me know about them in the comments below.

Also, if you have struggled to learn music theory in the past you may be interested in learning about Leon Harrell’s music theory and aural skills beta academy.

Until next time, Keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

Hi fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

It took me 20 years to learn the importance of music theory. Today I want to teach you what music theory is and why it is important, and save you 20 years of trial and effort in the process.

Let’s begin with a definition. Music theory is the mathematical language of music. You may not realize this but any piece of music you have ever heard can be thought of and discussed in terms of its mathematical proportions and relationships between every single note in the piece.

Music theory encompasses a huge amount of information and explanations of the how’s and why’s of the rules and conventions of music. People have studied music theory since the beginning of recorded history. Millions of people have already though long and hard about why does this note sound good with this one but not with the other. The process of how to create a chord progression has been established for over 300 years. If you learn music theory you will know this information and thus not have to search for the answers to these questions through thousands of hours of trial and error.

By understanding music theory you can critically analyze music that has already been written by composers and songwriters which will allow you to absorb the tricks and techniques of any song by simple looking at the mathematical data written in the sheet music. This hidden data will be in plain sight once you understand how to recognize chords, scales and voice-leading.

By knowing how music theory works you are literally becoming fluent in a language that is shared by musicians since the times of the ancient greeks. This language allows us to stop repeating the same mistakes over and over in our instrument playing and practicing as well as composition, improvisation and soloing. Knowing this language can save you weeks of practice time on new pieces allowing you to practice smart, not hard.

Here’s a fact you may not know: There are only 12 pitches in music, but there are 24,576 possible combinations of notes to form any single harmony. By understanding music theory you reduce this number substantially because you learn how to create any of these combinations from memory and how to limit them to just the few that work in conjunction with each other in a pleasing way to your ear.

Over the course of the next month I will be teaching introductory concepts of music theory and ear training, the flip-side of the music theory coin. Some of this material will be on my free video lesson series Understanding Music Theory on my free video lesson page. More of this material will be sent exclusively to subscribers of my free newsletter.

If you are interested in learning how to use the power of music theory in your instrument playing and music writing I encourage you to follow along with the announcements on my newsletter about my upcoming members-only music academy.

Until next time: Practice Smart – Not Hard,

Leon Harrell

Hi fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

I am extremely excited to tell you that I have something HUGE in the works.

Since I began the One Minute Music Lesson over one year ago I have been dreaming of opening an online music academy that is designed to be self-paced and focused on teaching the fundamentals of music theory and ear training in a simple and understandable way.

Well that dream is about to come true. Beginning on Aug 5th I will be opening the doors to the beta version of my members only music academy. This beta version of the academy will be available to a very limited number of students so I can design the most effective training material for the release of the full academy later this year.

This beta academy group will consist of 30 students who will be guided personally by me in a 12 week course designed to teach the fundamentals of music theory and ear training.

The course will include:

• How to play music by ear with proven aural skills techniques.
• Learning the fundamentals of music theory including chords, scales, modes and functional harmony.
• How to read and play chord charts with ease.
• How to put these skills into action by composing music and writing songs.
• Techniques of improvisation that will make you sound like a pro.
• And much, much more …

You do not need to know how to read music to understand and benefit from this academy. In fact we will learn and discuss many music reading techniques throughout the 12 weeks.

Also, each self-paced module will include:

• 10-minute video lessons.
• Worksheets and exercises designed for each lesson.
• Interactive quizzes to test your understanding of the materials.
• A step-by-step checklist to ensure you are getting every detail in order.
• A proven method of building upon each lesson to ensure mastery of the information.

Finally, and this is the best part, as a member of the beta academy group you will receive 12 weekly live video and audio group lessons.

In each of the 12 live sessions we will discuss:

• Review the materials from the self-paced lessons for the current week.
• An open question and answer session to ensure every student understands and masters the concepts of the lessons.
• An opportunity to request any information you feel should be included in the modules.
• Direct access to Leon via Skype during pre-planned “office hours” as well as an opportunity to schedule short meetings to clear up any questions during the week.

In order for me to make the academy as good and as powerful of a teaching tool as I possibly can, I will need your help. Please take a few minutes and answer a few simple questions in this survey:

Click here to take the short 6 question survey

After I collect your questions and comments I will release a preliminary course outline and syllabus on July 8th.

I can’t wait to hear your feedback on this. If you have been struggling to comprehend and navigate the jungle of information on music theory and ear training let me know your most burning and difficult questions in the survey or the comments below.

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Leon Harrell

Burningwood asked,

Hi Leon, I wanted to know something about transposition. I understand intervals already but how do I know whether to transpose up or transpose down when writing music for transposing instruments like the english horn?

This is a great questions and one that stumps many composers even after they have learned how to figure it out.

The part you and many other people are getting confused on is written pitch (the pitch notated on the page) versus the sounding pitch (also known as concert pitch).

Every instrument that is a transposing instrument, has a sounding pitch that is different from its written pitch.

On the english horn the sounding pitch is a fifth below the written pitch, therefore the written pitch is a fifth above the sounding pitch.

The easy way to remember how to write for any of the transposing instruments is to think the sounding name of the instrument equals written C. Use the phrase: “I hear (insert name of transposition), when I see C”

For example: The english horn is an F transposing instrument. F sounding equals C written. Therefore: “I hear F, when I see C”. So an english horn has a written C it sounds a fifth below as an F.

To go the other way or “I want to hear X, so I need to add (written pitch interval) to get the correct written note” you need to decide the pitch you want first.

Let’s say you want to hear an E-flat as the sounding pitch. So “I want to hear Eb, so I need to add a perfect fifth up to get the correct written note”.

The best tool you can get at this point is a good orchestration book, such as Samuel Adler’s The Study of Orchestration or the equally good Alfred Blatter’s Instrumentation and Orchestration which are great references for this exact type of question.

I hope this answers your question Burningwood. If you need any more help email me at OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com

Do you have a burning music question you want Leon to answer? Send in your questions for Ask Leon to OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com and your question could be answered on the next blog post or in the One Minute Music Lesson video.

Thanks for the question, and keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

In our last lesson we learned about octaves and octave numbers. Since a pitch has the same letter name in any octave it considered to be a part of a pitch class. A pitch class is a term used to describe any pitch, for example C, regardless of what octave or register that pitch is in. In the video above the example shows 8 octaves of C’s, but all these pitches are part of the pitch class C.

Since all these are the same pitch class they have the quality of octave equivalence. Octave equivalence means that these pitches will share many of the same overtones, as well as be resonant with each other, and that voice leading resolutions will still work with octave displacement.

Listen to the extreme example of octave equivalence in the performance of Happy Birthday in the video. This example displaces the pitches of the melody in several octaves, yet you can still follow the melody due to the phenomenon of octave equivalence.

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

Continuing my series of exercises and worksheets on sight-reading based on my book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days, this week we have a bass clef exercise worksheet to help build your skills in the lower register.

In this exercise you will practice the notes of the bass clef. The exercise is designed to get you to read the notes as well as introduce the intervals of 2nds and 3rds. If you do not know the notes of the bass clef watch Lesson 3 – Bass Clef and then come back.

The example in this exercise is in the mode of A aeolian, a musical mode also known as a natural minor scale.

Here are the instructions:

In this exercise you will work through five different levels of sight-reading ability. Start by clicking here to download this exercise as a PDF. You may wish to print four copies of the music sheet for the exercise. As you play the exercise remember to take the repeat at the end. The exercise ends on the whole note in the last measure.

Things to keep in my as you read and play through the exercise:

• Play at a steady tempo. Regardless of how fast you are able to play the exercise, steadiness of tempo is the most important aspect of sight-reading.
• Use a metronome as you play. If you do not have one use an online metronome listed on the resources page at: http://oneminutemusiclesson.com/resources/
• Tap your foot in Levels 1 and 2. However, do not tap your foot in Levels 3 through 5. Also be aware if your body is pulsing with the beat. Are you nodding your head? Try to remain still in your body movements beyond Level 2.
• Begin with Level 1. Work your way trough each level one at a time.
• If you have any questions or experience difficulty email then directly to Leon Harrell at oneminutemusiclesson@gmail.com

Level 1: Write in all the letter names of the notes with a pencil. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 60.

Level 2: Write in only the letter names of the first note in each measure. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 60.

Level 3: Write in only the letter names of the first note in each line, or system of the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 70.

Level 4: Don’t write in any letter names. Read ahead by one note as you play the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 70.

Level 5: Don’t write in any letter names. Read ahead by one measure as you play the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 80.

If you enjoyed this type of blog post, please let me know in the comments below. I will continue to create more exercises like this one if it seems like many of you enjoy them.

Finally, if you want to improve your music reading ability with a structured method check out my book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Leon Harrell

My two personal favorites are 8notes.com, a site for beginner pieces and the IMSLP collection which has 1000′s of scores of classical pieces including full orchestra scores, which are great for composers to study.

Most of these sites contain piano sheet music but you will find music for many other instruments as well including guitar, violin and other strings. Also a few sites have music for woodwinds, brass and voice.

1. 8 Notes.com
2. IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project)
3. Easy Sheet Music.com
4. Free Sheet Music Guide.com
5. Musica Viva Free Guitar Sheet Music
6. Free Sheet Music.net
7. Duke University Digital Collections
8. The Choral Public Domain Library
9. The Mutopia Project
10. G Major Music Theory Free Sheet Music

If you have any favorite free sheet music sites you like that you don’t see in this list, let me know about them in the comments below.

Also, if you have struggled to learn how to read sheet music in the past, you own it to yourself to check out my latest e-book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days to get the advantage you need to finally understand how to read music fluently.

Until next time, Keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

If you want to make progress quickly when practicing your instrument or learning to play new pieces, a practice log and journal is crucial.

Studies have shown that any activity that you track will result in a higher favorable return on your time invested. This is because you are creating a system of self accountability which propels you forward in your growth.

The same is true of practicing music. This can be very easily accomplished with a practice log. A practice log is a sheet of paper that contains a place to track your practice sessions including the time, date and a tally of how many times or how much time you have spent practicing this month, or week.

I find this technique great for when I am focusing on playing a very difficult piece or when I set out to compose a large work of music. Click here to download a copy of my practice log template.

To use the practice log, print a copy of it out and fill in the name of the month at the top. When you get ready to practice fill in the initial of the day of the week beside the calendar date.Write down the current time and your one main goal for that day’s practice session. Finally after you finish the practice session write down any comments about that days practice.

Keep your practice log where you will see it everyday, even if you don’t practice. You can put it on your refrigerator, on your music case or the wall above the piano. You might keep it hung on the wall near the bathroom, because you will see it multiple times everyday. The key it to put it somewhere you can not avoid seeing it.

This particular practice log also contains a small space to track your comments about each practice session. You may benefit more from keeping a separate practice journal. In your practice journal you should write about how your practice session went and what you would like to work on specifically the next time you practice. Aim for listing three specific goals in your journal for the next practice session.

I hope you find this to be helpful and gives you some motivation for practicing. Let me know in the comments what you think about practice logs and journals and if you have had any success with this method.

Until next time, keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

This book is structured into 16 chapters including topics such as tonal and atonal music composition, motivic development, transformation techniques, harmony and counterpoint.

Although not a rigorous textbook on any of the subjects it covers, Russo does a wonderful job explaining each technique as well as offers numerous compositional exercises that will get your creative juices flowing.

The book’s exercises are very practical. Beginning on page 1 Russo outlines some general rules for the exercises. These “rules” seem at first to be very strict however they offer the composer some limitations, which is a very powerful creative tool when used properly.

“The Imperial Flute” is one of the exercises that I have used with many of my students. It begins by describing that you have been “captured by the Lorac, a warlike tribe ruled by Edrevol, who will spare your life only if you please them with the music you write for the Imperial Flute”. This flute can only play four notes. Thus your assignment is to create a piece that uses only the four notes E4, G4, A4, and C5.

This exercise is a type of constraints or limits exercise designed to get you to problem solve when creating a new piece of music. It works like a charm to get a student out of a case of writers block.

Check out one of the glowing reviews from Amazon to get a better idea of the quality of this book:

This is one of the best “How to” books I have ever read on any subject.

It works on several levels. Even though it takes a “beginners” approach to introducing many topics, it doesn’t shy away from “real” music. For example, even the first simple exercise contains something different – 5/4 time. A beginner will simultaneously learn the basics of chord progressions and melody writing, stripped down to the bare essentials, while delving into modern techniques like 12-tone rows and picture music.

The key to the book is the concept of restricting the musical palette by some simple rules, to prevent the budding composer being overwhelmed by the possibilities. Right from the first page, you are working on real composition examples.

Even though the book is not particularly aimed at computer music or sequencing, electronic music enthusiasts should find it useful. A lot of the minimalist techniques are ideal for sequencing. Plus, if your musical background is pretty basic, and you are looking to broaden it with a mix of traditional and contemporary techniques, this book should take you a long way.

By its very nature, a book like this can only touch on some areas. So you will probably want to supplement it with some other material if, for example, you want a bit more detail on counterpoint. Still, it manages to cover a huge amount of ground, with the most detail where it counts most – developing and harmonising melodies, and a very good section on writing music to lyrics (ie: songwriting).

One last point – a lot of theory and composition books miss the mark with contemporary musicians because they approach the subject from the purely “classical” angle of cadence and resolution. This book is soundly classical in its approach to harmonisation and melodic development, but uses the comfortable pop/jazz approach to chord progressions, so it shouldn’t lose any reader.

Highly recommended!

I can’t recommend this book highly enough and I urge you to get a copy today if you are at all interested in writing your own music.

Do you already own this book? If so let me know what you think about it in the comments below.

Until next time, Keep up the good practice!

Leon Harrell

Wedgie from Yahoo Answers asks:

I was recording my GCSE composition today, and I asked my teacher what he thought of it. He said it was in the B to A grade region (in his opinion). I asked what I could do to up it to an A. He suggested a key change.

I pointed out that it changes from Eb Phrygian to Eb Locrian, which is a different scale. He said that it wasn’t a key change, and my mind exploded.

How is this not a key change?

Let’s start with defining what a key is. The word key refers to the major or minor key system. Your question also involves modes. Modes are rotations of the major scale (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian).

The real issue you are dealing with is that keys as well as modes both rely on the concept of a tonal center, or a main tonic pitch.

In the example you have stated, starting in Eb Phrygian and changing to Eb Locrian, the tonic pitch in both cases is Eb. This means that the tonic pitch has not changed. A change in tonic is required to change key, otherwise you have only changed the mode, thus creating a modal mixture instead of a modulation.

Also, you are mixing the words key and modes a bit. Indeed you have changed modes. But in order to change keys you will need to change from one major or minor key to another major or minor key.

However, you can absolutely change from a major key to a mode, or vice versa, or do just as you have and change from one mode to another. There are no rules to say what is not allowed in music composition, only conventional practices that composers in the past have used.

To answer your question about how to raise your grade on the assignment: Do just as the teacher has asked. Change the tonic pitch in the second part to incorporate a change of key or mode.

On a more philosophical level, you are the judge and jury of your own music. If to you the change you have composed from Eb Phyrgian to Eb Locrian sounds pleasing, then you have accomplished what you set out to create musically.

If you do decide to change the piece to fit the requirements of the assignment you might try Db natural minor, also known as Db Aeolian. This keep the all the same pitches from Eb Locrian.

Eb Locrian: Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bbb, Cb, Db, Eb

Db Aeolian: Db, Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bbb, Cb, Db

This will not be a fool-proof change. You will have to be the judge as to if you like the musical results.

I hope this answers your question Wedgie. If you need any more help email me at OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com

Do you have a burning music question you want Leon to answer? Send in your questions for Ask Leon to OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com and your question could be answered on the next blog post or in the One Minute Music Lesson video.

Thanks for the question, and keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE EXERCISE

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

Sight-reading and learning to read music can be a challenge to master. To help you get to your goal of learning to read and play music better, I am creating a series of exercises and worksheets based on my book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days to help build your skills.

In this exercise you will practice the notes of the treble clef. The exercise is designed to get you to read the notes as well as introduce the intervals of 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths. If you do not know the notes of the treble clef watch Lesson 2 – Treble Clef and then come back.

The example in this exercise is in the mode of E phrygian, a musical mode similar, but a little different than the sound of a minor scale.

Here are the instructions:

In this exercise you will work through five different levels of sight-reading ability. Start by clicking here to download this exercise as a PDF. You may wish to print four copies of the music sheet for the exercise. As you play the exercise remember to take the repeat at the end. The exercise ends on the whole note in the last measure.

Things to keep in my as you read and play through the exercise:

• Play at a steady tempo. Regardless of how fast you are able to play the exercise, steadiness of tempo is the most important aspect of sight-reading.
• Use a metronome as you play. If you do not have one use an online metronome listed on the resources page at: http://oneminutemusiclesson.com/resources/
• Tap your foot in Levels 1 and 2. However, do not tap your foot in Levels 3 through 5. Also be aware if your body is pulsing with the beat. Are you nodding your head? Try to remain still in your body movements beyond Level 2.
• Begin with Level 1. Work your way trough each level one at a time.
• If you have any questions or experience difficulty email then directly to Leon Harrell at oneminutemusiclesson@gmail.com

Level 1: Write in all the letter names of the notes with a pencil. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 60.

Level 2: Write in only the letter names of the first note in each measure. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 60.

Level 3: Write in only the letter names of the first note in each line, or system of the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 70.

Level 4: Don’t write in any letter names. Read ahead by one note as you play the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 70.

Level 5: Don’t write in any letter names. Read ahead by one measure as you play the music. Play the exercise on your instrument at a tempo of quarter note equals 80.

If you enjoyed this type of blog post, please let me know in the comments below. I will continue to create more exercises like this one if it seems like many of you enjoy them.

Finally, if you want to improve your music reading ability with a structured method check out my book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Leon Harrell

Do you have anything that can help me with the diminished scale for guitar and also for diminish chords?

Let’s start with defining what the diminished scale is. Jazz and blues musicians often refer to this scale as the diminished scale, but it’s real name is the octatonic scale. An octatonic scale has 8 pitches in the scale, (the prefix octa means 8).

To get 8 pitches in a scale you need to divided the octave in a certain way. You must have a repeating pattern of halfsteps and whole steps to accomplish this.

There are 2 types of octatonic scales. The first begins with a half step, and the second begins with a whole step.

In total there are only three possible octatonic scales that can be created with the 12 pitches, but you can begin on any note of these scales to create 8 different modes of each of the scales.

Here are the three possible octatonic or diminished scales beginning with a half step:

• C – C#/Db – D#/Eb – E – F#/Gb – G – A – A#/Bb
• C#/Db – D – E – F – G – G#/Ab – A#/Bb – B
• D - D#/Eb – F - F#/Gb – G#/Ab – A – B – C

Here are the same three possible octatonic scales beginning with a half step:

• C#/Db – D#/Eb – E – F#/Gb – G – A – A#/Bb – C
• D – E – F – G – G#/Ab – A#/Bb – B – C#/Db
• D#/Eb – F - F#/Gb – G#/Ab – A – B – C  - D

Here are the same three scales in standard notation:

Diminished chords are also seen within these scales. If you look at every other note of any of these scales you will create a diminished chord, because another way of constructing these scales is by interlocking two diminished seventh chords that are separated by a half step or a wholestep.

Just as there are only three octatonic scales, there are only 3 diminished seventh chords. However these chords can be spelled in many ways and you can use any note in them as the root of the chord.

Here are the three possible diminished seventh chords:

• C – D#/Eb – F#/Gb – A
• C#/Db – E – G – A#/Bb
• D – F – G#/Ab – B

I hope this answers your question Anthony. If you need any more help email me at OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com

And for anyone else reading feel free to send in your questions for Ask Leon to OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com and your question could be answered on the next blog post or One Minute Music Lesson video.

Thanks for the question, and keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

An octave is an interval. The interval of an octave is the distance from one pitch to the same pitch 12 half steps away.

When you are reading octaves on sheet music they always fall with one note of the octave on a space and the other note of the octave on a line in the staff.

Throughout the range of the grand staff each octave has its own number assigned to it. An easy way to remember which number belongs to which octave is to memorize “Middle C = C4″.

Octave numbers are assigned with each number spanning from C up to the next B. The next number appears at the next C.

Also, to calculate the frequency of an octave from any given beginning frecuency you will need to either:

• Multiply the original frequency by 2 for the octave above.
• Divide the original frequency by 2 for octave below.

To help you remember the information from this lesson click here to download a free poster with the octave numbers for the grand staff in the range of the piano keyboard.

In this lesson we will learn about the overtone series.

Musical tones with pitch are actually comprised of several higher and quieter sounds called overtones.

Overtones are the upper frequencies that resonate when a tone is played. If a piano plays the pitch C3 then the overtones C4, G4, C5, and E5 can be faintly heard.

In this example C3 is the fundamental, or the main frequency heard in this pitch. The fundamental frequency is the lowest frequency of a pitches overtone series.

The overtone series is also known as the harmonic series.

The frequencies of a pitch’s overtone series can be calculated by multiplying the fundamental frequency by the numbers 1 through 16.

Each instrument resonates different overtones, which contributes to the instruments timbre; the unique quality of the instrument’s sound.

Let’s look at an the overtones of the pitch C3, which has a frequency of 130.81 Hz, in the chart below.

• Fundamental = 130.81 * 1 = 130.81
• Overtone 1 = 130.81 * 2 = 261.62
• Overtone 2 = 130.81 * 3 = 392.43
• Overtone 3 = 130.81 * 4 = 523.24
• Overtone 4 = 130.81 * 5 = 654.05
• Overtone 5 = 130.81 * 6 = 784.86
• Overtone 6 = 130.81 * 7 = 915.67
• Overtone 7 = 130.81 * 8 = 1046.48
• Overtone 8 = 130.81 * 9 = 1177.29
• Overtone 9 = 130.81 * 10 = 1308.1
• Overtone 10 = 130.81 * 11 = 1438.91
• Overtone 11 = 130.81 * 12 = 1569.72
• Overtone 12 = 130.81 * 13 = 1700.53
• Overtone 13 = 130.81 * 14 = 1831.34
• Overtone 14 = 130.81 * 15 = 1962.15
• Overtone 15 = 130.81 * 16 = 2092.96

To learn more about overtones I have a created a free overtone series poster you can download here.

Until next time,

Keep up the good practice,

Leon Harrell

Hi Fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

My new e-book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days has been released and I wanted to share a preview of it with you.

In this 43 page preview you will begin the process of learning to read music beginning with the first 10 days of this 30 day course.

You can download the free preview as a PDF here or read it below in the scrolling document window.

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Leon Harrell

Hi One Minute Music Lesson Fans,

It’s done!!! Well almost, anyway.

I am in the final editing stage for my book How to Read Music Easily in 30 Days which will be released on Monday, May 28th.

I am so excited to have completed this project over the past 60 days and want to thank everyone that contributed to the surveys I have sent out over these 2 months.

Here’s a sneak peek at the Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• How to Use this Book
• Part 1 – Introduction to Pitch and Rhythm
• Day 1 – Rhythm
• Day 2 – Pitch and the 1-line Staff
• Day 3 – The 2-Line Staff
• Day 4 – The 3-Line Staff
• Day 5 – The 4-Line Staff
• Day 6 – The 5-Line Staff
• Day 7 – 1 Ledger Line Above
• Day 8 – 1 Ledger Line Below
• Day 9 – Simple Meter in the Eastman Counting System
• Day 10 – The Grand Staff
• Part 2 – Advanced Pitch and Rhythm Reading
• Day 11 – Compound Meter in the Eastman Counting System
• Day 12 – Rhythmic and Notational Proportion
• Day 13 – A Closer Look at Compound Meters
• Day 14 – Sub-division of the Beat Unit
• Day 15 – Common Rhythmic Sub-division Patterns
• Day 16 – Differences between Simple and Compound Meters
• Day 17 – Articulations
• Day 18 – Syncopation
• Part 3 – Seeing the Hidden Musical Structure
• Day 19 – The Art of Chunking
• Day 20 – Understanding Chords
• Day 21 – Keys and Key Signatures
• Day 22 – Accompaniment Reading in Homophonic Textures
• Day 23 – Scales
• Day 24 – Accompaniment Reading in Polyphonic Textures
• Day 25 – Tempo & Dynamics
• Day 26 – Musical Form & Structure
• Day 27 – Musical Symbols
• Day 28 – More Musical Symbols
• Day 29 – Understanding Triplets
• Day 30 – Understanding Duplets

Stay tuned for Monday for the launch of the book and a chance to enter to win a free copy. Also new episodes of the podcast in iTunes and Youtube videos will begin next week.

Enjoy your weekend,

Leon Harrell

Today I thought I would post a favorite piece of mine that doesn’t get enough play because it is so difficult to perform, but so beautiful to listen to.

This piece is the third movement from Maurice Ravel’s piano suite “Miroirs“. This collection of five piece is one of my favorite piano works. I hope you enjoy.

Until next time … Practice Less, Play Better

Leon Harrell 

(Click to learn more about Leon)

(Get Leon’s FREE Book)

Sightreading Genie by PracticeSpot.com is a great tool for beginning sight readers. This tool allows you to choose from 4 difficulty levels and proves you will a large amount of short musical examples to play. It is designed for piano but many instruments can use it because it uses treble and bass clef.

This is one of the resources I will discussing in my new book 30 Days to Reading Music with Ease which is due out Monday, May 28th, 2012. This book will include many more tips, tricks and resources to teach you to read music fluently and eliminate the confusion of musical notation.

Until next time … Practice Less, Play Better

 Leon Harrell 

(Click to learn more about Leon)

(Get Leon’s FREE Book)

Do you test your sight reading agility?

Today I wanted to post a tool that is useful for practicing your sight reading agility. This Piano Keys trainer from eMusicTheory.com allows you to adjust the difficulty level from beginners to advanced. This tool is great for a quick warm up before practicing or in between practice on your computer.

Try it on the “Select All” setting and test how good you really are at finding the correct notes quickly. Post your screenshots in the comments below or any other tools you use for practicing sight-reading.

This is one of the resources I will discussing in my new book 30 Days to Reading Music with Ease which is due out Monday, May 28th, 2012. This book will include many more tips, tricks and resources to teach you to read music fluently and eliminate the confusion of musical notation.

Until next time … Practice Less, Play Better

 Leon Harrell 

(Click to learn more about Leon)

(Get Leon’s FREE Book)

Hi fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

Ear training can be difficult and frustrating because you need a couple essential elements to be successful.

1. You will need material to practice that is at your skill level.

2. You will need a variety of material, so you don’t just memorize it.

3. Ear training needs to be fun and engaging so you stick with it long enough to learn it.

Speaker Chords, an interactive chord ear trainer has all three of these elements and best of all it’s free.

Give it a try and tell me what you think of it in the comments below.

See you next time,

Leon Harrell

Once again, one of my favorite sites for music theory tools has done it again. This time Ricci Adams site MusicTheory.net has created a guitar fretboard trainer that is different than any other I’ve seen.

This Fret Trainer allow you to begin with as many frets as you are comfortable with. You can start with just 1 or adjust up to 12 frets.

Also the tool lets you choose both the flat and sharp names for the pitches in instances where a pitch contains an accidental.

The tool will also keep score as you progress and allow you to print a progress report, which is useful for teachers that want to assign this as a practice method or homework assignment.

If you struggling to learn your guitar frets this adjustable tool may be just the thing you are looking for.

See you next time,

Leon Harrell

Learning the notes of scales and chords can be a laborious process and often times students need a good resource for checking the accuracy of them.

Although you can learn how to construct chords and scales from memory there is an absolutely amazing tool for finding scales and chords on just about any fretted instrument, including guitars, basses, and mandolins.

When learning to read music you will need materials for practicing. One of the hardest things about learning to sight read is having enough materials so that every example is fresh and truely being read at sight.

This new tool at PracticeSightReading.com is the answer to this problem. With this tool you can select a meter, a length of example and a difficulty level. The site will then generate a new example for you to read as well as provide an example of what it will sound like so you can check your accuracy.

I think this is a great tool and I will be using it for material in my new upcoming book due out on May 28th. It’s still in production so if you have any thought about materials please let me know what you think with this quick survey.

Until next time, keep up the smart practice,

Leon Harrell

In my career as a professor I have been thinking about motivation a lot lately. This is one of the toughest nuts to crack when it comes to getting students to get into the right mindset to grow musically.

This difficulty comes from 5 critical concepts and items you must have in order to make progress.

1. Strive for Progress not Perfection. When we want so badly to become better at our craft it is very easy in today’s fast paced world to want it right now. And the fact of life is that any worth having is worth working for.

But how do you deal with this?

For me personally I have become a huge fan of the personal motivational sign. A motivation sign is a very simple tool to help you gain any goal you want simply by making a little sign, or several, and placing them around your home and places you will see them such as your car, instrument case, kitchen sink, bathroom, bedside table, etc.

On your sign you should put a word or phrase that reminds you, in a specific way, what your goal is. In the case of improving as a musician I suggest a sign with the phrase “Fast progress is made with slow practice.”

2. Create a practice schedule. Schedule your practice daily if for only 5-10 minutes a day. Nothing will work better than practicing with focus and intention every day. This can easily be achieved if you plan your practice in advance and use a practice log or journal.

If you are a beginner at reading music focus on spending 5-10 minutes each day reading notes. You don’t need your instrument for this. Just find any piece of sheet music, try 8notes.com if you need some free music to read, and then begin simply saying the names of each note as you read through the music. Playing the notes will come later. This is an example of a focused exercise that is easy to accomplish on a daily basis.

3. Make it fun. The real key to success with music is to make it enjoyable. Choose songs you like when you practice. You should also choose songs that challenge you slightly, but not way too much, to avoid frustration. Frustration is the enemy of progress.

4. Use a pencil. Every time you sit down to practice have a pencil handy to make markings in your music. The number of errors and hours of practice time you will save are immeasurable. It took me 20 years to get in this habit but it is one of the keys that took my playing and music reading abilities to the next level.

5. Learn music theory. There is a reason great musicians recommend this over and over again. Music is a language that is built from rules and patterns. This language is music theory. As difficult as it may seem to a beginner, music theory is a very concrete and real way to learn the inner workings of music that will take the mystery of 99% of how music works. If you are new to this idea begin my free lessons. If you have been struggling with this just remember tip #1, Strive for Progress not Perfection. Since it is a very deep subject it will take time to learn and master, but it is so worth it in the long run.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I want to invite to you take a minute and tell me about you motivations in the comments below.

Also I will be releasing my new e-book in 62 days on May 28th. I am looking for all the input you can give me to help create the best possible book for you guys. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to fill out this survey to put your 2 cents into the book’s creation.

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson and I’ll see you next time,

Leon Harrell

Hi fans of the One Minute Music Lesson,

I am very excited to tell you that my new ebook will be released on May 28th.

However I can’t tell you the title or what it is about yet because I don’t know. I am giving you guys the opportunity to hand craft the exact music book you have been searching for but cannot find.

In order for me to make the book I will need your help. Please take a few minutes and answer a few simple questions in this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SQCMNT7

After I collect your questions and comments I will release a preliminary table of contents on April 3rd.

So help me help you. If you have been struggling with some musical concept or need that key missing piece of information let me know so I can custom create a book tailored to your needs.

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson,

Leon Harrell

As you may know I have begun offering private music lessons from the One Minute Music Lesson. Now I am ready to get some feedback from those of you who are on the fence about giving private lessons a try.

I have decided to give away 25 free private lessons to the first 25 people who fill out this interest form: (Sorry, this give away is now over)

What’s the catch? Well there really is no catch, but your computer will need to be able to do a video chat via Skype, a free video chat software which is available at Skype.com

The only thing I will want in return, is for you to fill out a short survey after your lesson to let me know what you thought about it.

So if you have been thinking about taking lessons but just weren’t sure here’s your opportunity to give it a try totally risk free.

Click the link below to fill out the interest form and I will notify the first 25 responders within the next 2 days.

Link: (Sorry, this give away is now over)

Thanks for following the One Minute Music Lesson and I hope to talk to you soon,

-Leon Harrell

The guitar fretboard can be a bit confusing for beginners, or even for people who have played other instruments, such as the piano, where there’s only one place to play each note, but the layout is actually very simple.

Here are the two basic pieces of information you’ll need to navigate the fretboard:

• In standard tuning, the strings (from lowest sounding to highest sounding) are tuned to the pitches E, A, D, G, B, E. These strings are sometimes called by number, starting from the highest pitch string and ending with the lowest pitch string (e.g. the “fourth” string would be the string that plays the open D) or by note name (e.g. the “D” string).
• Each fret represents one minor second, or half step. An open string does not count as a fret. It is simply referred to as an open string.

Using these basic pieces of information, we now also know:

• With the exception of the G and B strings, the interval between each open string is a perfect fourth. The G and B strings are separated by a major third. This is done as a compromise to make chording and scales both relatively easy on the instrument. If the guitar were tuned in all perfect fourths, many of the barre chords used in standard tuning would not be possible.
• Because the same pitch can be played on multiple strings, we can tune the guitar to itself fairly easily:
  • Tune the fifth fret of the low E string (or sixth string) to the open A string (or fifth string)
  • Tune the fifth fret of the A string (or fifth string) to the open D string (or fourth string)
  • Tune the fifth fret of the D string (or fourth string) to the open G string (or third string)
  • Tune the fourth fret of the G string (or third string) to the open B string (or second string)
  • Tune the fifth fret of the B string (or second string) to the open E string (or first string)
• At the twelfth fret, the entire fretboard pattern repeats itself. The open notes at the twelfth fret are one octave higher than their respective open strings. This makes sense because the chromatic scale has twelve tones, and each fret represents one step in the chromatic scale.

Here is a diagram of the fretboard to further explain:

About the author

Dan Vuksanovich received his Master of Music degree in classical guitar performance from the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University in 1999. He currently teaches and blogs about how to get better at guitar via his website www.whyisuckatguitar.com.

A specific interval is the distance between any two notes measured in halfsteps.

A specific interval will be different from the generic interval because the generic interval is the number of lines and spaces, which will not line up with the number of halfsteps.

Specific intervals tell us something abou the quality of the intervals such as if the interval is major, minor, augmented, diminished or perfect.

To measure a specific interval begin with the bottom note and count 1 for the first half step between the bottom note and the next half step up. Proceed by counting up 1 for each half step until you reach the top pitch.

Here is a list of the number of half steps and the specific interval name:

• 1 – minor 2nd
• 2 – major 2nd
• 3 – minor 3rd
• 4 – major – 3rd
• 5 – perfect 4th
• 6 – tritone
• 7 – perfect 5th
• 8 – minor 6th
• 9 – major 6th
• 10 – minor 7th
• 11 – major 7th
• 12 – octave

To help you remember and more easily see this this information visually, you can download the free Specific Intervals poster.

If you liked this lesson don’t forget to sign-up for the free One Minute Music Lesson newsletter. With your subscription you will also receive a free copy of the eBook “How to Read Music” by Leon Harrell.