Hey YouTube! Welcome back we knew you couldn't stay away! mDecks Music here and what we have
for you today is the beginning of a comprehensive series on how to write music using Mapping Tonal
Harmony Pro. What we want to be able to do is get you guys to identify the elements in songs
that keep showing up over and over again, the things that make them successful and accessible
and fun to play and easy to listen to. What are these elements? Why do they work? Why do
they keep showing up? We want you guys to have an awareness of your surroundings with regard
to harmony, being able to navigate the map, and why that's important and why using an app like
mapping tonal harmony can make that a bit more accessible and easier. So what we're not gonna
do is basically like spoon feed you the formula and say do this do this do this do this. What we
hope to do and what you can expect to take away from this series is a better understanding of
music and the freedom and empowerment that comes with that! These are the elements, these are where
they show up. You can use them or not! And it's basically up to you to know how you want to
write your song or arrange your arrangement. So this context through understanding is what we
hope to give you guys through this series. And we're going to do that through several genres.
We're going to decode pop music. We're gonna decode classical music. We're going to decode
jazz. We're going to decode blues, and we'll take songs from each of these genres, break them down,
show you why they work, and then you'll be able to identify them and use them on your own. So to kick
off our series how to write music using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro, we're going to start by decoding
Bob Marley! We're gonna look at some pop music, "No Woman No Cry." All right so here's our song...
(sings) "No Woman No Cry....."
"No Woman No Cry......"
hmmmhmm
All right so here's our progression. It's pretty straightforward, it's just C, G/B,
(or you can just play G), Am, and F. Those are the only four chords we're gonna need to get through this
analysis, it's the only four chords Bob Marley used to write one of his most recognizable and
catchy tunes of all time. All right, so you have C, G/B, Am, F and then C, F, C, G. All right. So
all the primary chords and one secondary. Let's go ahead and plug this into our Map so you can see
how we're gonna do this through a Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro. Okay so just in case you're new to
Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro, in the interface we're using here, we're just going to gloss over
it real quick as far as basic elements, ideas, and how to navigate it. Right so what you're looking
at here are just the three regions we use when mapping, tonal harmony. We have the tonic region
down here, the sub-dominant region over there, and the dominant region over there, and all the
chords that go along with each region. So our map is currently calibrated to the key of C, that's
why the tonic chord is C and that's why all the chords you see on the map currently are relative
to C. So in other words, you're not gonna see a B major or anything like that because in the key
it's C without going to more complicated version of the map you're not going to see a B chord. So if
I want to change the key we're in, if I want to change the Maps calibration to a different key
that might have a B chord -- like let's say E -- now I see the dominant region as my five chord, the
B chord. Or I can just go to the key of B and now everything is calibrated to the key of B. So the
chords are always going to change at least their names with regard to what key you're in, alright.
So, let's talk a little bit more about what is in front of you on the map. What you basically have
here are little tiny circles of fifths. And the chords geographically located around the circle
of fifths are related to where they would be in the circle of fifths. And the chords on the
outside of each circle represent the chords of C major (we're in C). The chords on the inside of each circle
represent the chords of C minor (C's parallel minor). So you have F and Dm7 over
here in the sub-dominant area, and on the inside circle all the chords specific to Cm in the
sub-dominant area. And the same thing over here in the dominant region. The reason they're both
there at the same time is, if you remember from our previous series, we talked about sometimes
you can borrow from minor keys if you're in a major. Usually doesn't go the other way around, but it's
good to know that those those chords are there if you need to use them to rearm
something or write something. Our songs in C major, so, I don't know, if we were gonna reharm it,
we could some of those chords on the inside circle. We're not gonna do that today.
If you're interested in that, check out our previous series on reharmonization
using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro. Also, if you want a more like in-depth explanation
of the map, and just reharmonization in general, we're going to put a link to a previous video
we made right there. You should check that out! We're just touching on some of the main ideas
right now. So aside from that, we talked about the key what the chords on the inside of the circle
are, what the chords on the outside of the circle are, and one really really important feature that
I'm we're kind of really going to promote a lot through this series is to not see the chords by
their name but rather by their function. How do they function? How do they move to and form one
another within the key you're playing in? This will never change, I can change the key now to F
you still see 1, 4, 5. I can change it to D. Alright so this idea of seeing the movement
of chord to chord, relative to the map, relative to these regions and their neighborhoods will really
really help you in understanding the similarities between songs, comparing and contrasting them. So
if I see a 2, 5, 1 as a II, V, I it really doesn't matter what key it's in, I can figure out what
the chords are. The chord names are a consequence of these functions. Ok they're not really that
important per se. Obviously you need to know them if you have to play them on your instrument, but
try to see the harmonization and the analysis of the harmonization that we're going to do to this
series as a series of functions, or Roman numerals (II, V, I) (IV, V, I), authentic cadence, plagal
cadence, whatever. So that's a basic synopsis of how we're going to view the map and how it works.