Sunday, December 13, 2020 by Mary O'Connor | theory

Music theory has never sounded so catchy with this witty remake of the holiday classic The Christmas Song (with apologies to Mel Torme) Try not to laugh at the ending.

Though it is a bit humorous, this version titled ‘Intervals Roasting’, with lyrics by David Rakowski, attempts to encapsulate the fundamentals of music theory in just over two minutes.

It does a good job of explaining the intervals and harmonic structure of the song and also gives you an idea of how to use music theory to analyze or compose music.

The O'Connor Music Studio has a copy if anyone wants to learn this :)

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Sunday, September 15, 2019 by Mary O'Connor | theory

This is the high notes' answer to "All About That Bass (Clef)". This video teaches the lines and space notes of the treble clef.

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Friday, August 16, 2019 by Mary O'Connor | theory

When my students are first working with the Grand Staff, they are often confused about the placement of the various clefs. 

In piano music, we generally use only the G-clef (Treble clef - not "trouble clef" as some think!) and the F-clef (Bass clef)  I try to show students how the curvy part of the G-clef wraps around the G above middle C and the F-clef looks sort of like an F marking the F below middle C.  I draw out G and F on the staff to show how these could have looked. 

Originally, instead of a special clef symbol, the reference line of the staff was simply labeled with the name of the note it was intended to bear: F and C and, more rarely, G. These were the most often-used 'clefs' in Gregorian chant notation.  Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Over time the shapes of these letters became stylized, leading to their current versions. 

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