Besides maybe war, poverty, and disease, there’s nothing worse than forgetting the idea for a really great song. Seriously … it’s happened to me more than I’d like to admit. Sometimes, I would be out on a hike, or in the car—or anywhere, really—when I’d think of a cool lyric or melody. But by the time

This, my friends, is where things really get good. And that’s because all 12 keys in music are exactly the same. So once you’ve learned the interval patterns for one key (like we did in the key of C), you already know how they work in all the others. You see, any note can be the

So all the colors follow the exact same patterns as the scale degrees in music … which is cool. You can see how the different notes are spaced out at whole-step and half-step intervals. And nothing is really complex at all. But you might still be wondering, “Wait a minute … why do we use both letters and numbers

Now that we’ve seen the six basic interval patterns in music, we can look at how musicians label them. We just have to start back at that old, familiar pattern … the major scale. Of course, we already know this scale includes notes 1, 2, 3, 4 … 5, 6, 7, 8. For example, the C

If you want to make great music, then you need to know more than just the eight notes of a major scale. I mean, the major scale sounds nice and all. But music is full of scales and chords that include those other notes … the ones you skip in the major scale pattern. At

So we’ve been playing the notes in each major scale. And they all follow this same pattern of whole-steps and half-steps. But as you’ve been going through each scale (1, 2, 3, 4 … 5, 6, 7, 8), you might have started thinking, “Hey … what about those other notes? The ones we don’t include

Music is so easy to play when you can actually see what you’re doing. So that’s why I’ve always been amazed by people like Stevie Wonder. I mean, how does he do it … seriously? I am totally impressed by blind musicians. Talk about real skill…. But I’m just as amazed by musicians in general. Because

So far, we’ve been looking at notes, and intervals, and scales … which are the real nuts and bolts of music. And we’ve played through patterns like the major scale. But sometimes, it’s nice to just sit back for a minute and listen to an actual song. Because that’s really where we’re headed. You see, once

Well, what do you know? We’re back to the chromatic scale. And that means we’re back to square one (or circle one … pardon the pun). You see, nothing has changed about the 12 notes in this pattern. It’s just that we now have a huge advantage. Because we can see each note (and every

Nothing in music is random. And that’s why it’s so easy to learn. Patterns like the chromatic scale, the major scale, and the circle of fifths are all very simple. And because each pattern leads to the next, they’re also totally predictable. In fact, no one is throwing us any curveballs here … the science of sound