
I'm going to talk about how essential (or not) music theory is.
This is a quick run over the special jargon used by musicians. Talk to a musician about tone, and they might ask you about half tones - that's when you realise that a few words have specific meanings in music.
A lot of western music from Beethoven to Black Sabbath relates to the piano keyboard, so it's worth a look. Also, a lot of the theory in this course relates to the keyboard.
There are plenty of good musicians who can't read music. So why bother learning to read?
A quick overview of the basics of rhythm. Quarter notes and half notes.
A quick exercise on reading rhythms, that will allow you to check if you have this down.
Now one quick point about the exercises in this course. If you find it easy, just do the exercise and move on, but if it's even a little tricky I think you should do the exercises again and again until they are easy.
Another short exercise on reading rhythms.
So far we've just been looking at rhythm. Now we're going to cover the notes on the staff.
By the time you have finished this session, you should know how to read music. If you couldn't read the stuff at all before starting the course, then I doubt you'll be a fluent reader - but you should be able to puzzle it out. So here's a puzzle for you - the attached PDF has two tunes that almost everyone knows. What are they?
A quick puzzel t sharpen your reading skills.
When you play two notes, the gap between them is an "Interval."
Here we delve into "perfect" intervals - forth and fifths (as well as octaves and unisons).
What happens if you make a perfect interval bigger or smaller? It gets Augmented or Diminished.
The character intervals are what make the difference between major or minor. They give music its flavour.
A worksheet on intervals that will start getting you familiar with identifying and naming them. Now, like I said before, if you look at this exercise and it's all obvious, you can just move on. But if you have to work it out then you should do the exercise again, until you are finding it easy. Print out a bunch of them, and do it every day until the answers are obvious.
Here we get to the major scale - the scale that lies under most western music.
The other important scale is the minor scale - and in someways this one is more important for Rock, Blues and Jazz.
A really cool trick is to slip between the major and minor scales that share the same notes.
Now we get to the real point. In rock, blues and jazz, major and minor smash together, and here we look at the wreckage.
At last we reach the secret weapon of this course: the Marigaux Scale, that scale that will instantly turn you into a master. Well, nearly...
These worksheets will get you up an running with finding the notes in the Marigaux scale. Actually these worksheets are really useful for learning to play over chords too.
The thing about the Marigaux Scale is that it's more than just a collection of notes.
Here we learn about blue notes (and how you don't really need them if you have the Marigaux scale)
We had to cover the blues scale because people might have been upset if we left it out. But actually I think the Marigaux scale does the same job better.
With all these minor and blues notes, what about the poor old major third? It's the note you have to watch out for!
How should you practice scales? I'll tell you.
A video clip with a backing track for you to play against.
The Cycle of Fifths is something I'm using every time I play. It's an essential tool for rock, blues and jazz players.
A worksheet to get you familiar with using the Cycle of Fifths.
OK, we can draw it, we can figure out keys with it. What else can this thing do?
Now we're getting into the nitty gritty. Every song is full of chords. What are they and how do they work?
To start with, lets look at the easy ones - the major and minor three-note chords.
Freak And Creepy Eddie Goes Back Down is the magic mnemonic that will give you the letter names in any chord.
These worksheets will get you on top of the three note chords.
Here's another way to work out chords using the Cycle of Fifths. There's many ways to swing a sax.
We meet the Augmented chord, up close and personal.
The guts of rock, blues and jazz is in four-note chords.
How to figure out what the notes in a four-note chord are.
Worksheets for four-note chords
Like the previous session, except this time the chords are on a musical staff.
The chromatic scale is just all the notes. So what is it good for?
Power chords are at the heart of loud guitar rock.
This session opens a door to cool jazz, and also gives you (yet) another way of thinking about the same stuff we've been working on.
We're starting to put things together - improvisation! Note the worksheet on the Marigaux scale as well.
Here's a backing track - it's actually the backing to Redemption, which is on my Voodoo Soul album (it's on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple music and all the usual places). You can follow the chord changes in the video while you play over the backing.
Here's an extra backing track - it's all on one chord, but it's a pretty flexible chord. Basically this is in G Minor, but the organ chord is a B♭ major chord (the relative major) so it's actually a bit of both. Since the bass part is solidly in G you should mainly use the G Marigaux scale, but you might also try the B♭ major or the B♭ Marigaux scale for variety.
Dr. Marigaux presents music theory from the other side of the tracks. There’s music theory for classical players, and then there’s music theory for rock jazz and blues.
I’m a sax player, and I’ve been playing blues, rock and jazz for more than forty years. I’ve got music degrees from universities, but the best stuff that I ever learned were the tricks I picked up from illiterate musicians who could really, really play. The stuff I learned at music school helped me package up what I learned from illiterate masters, and deliver it to you in a straightforward and clear way.
Why "blackmarket"? Because this course is full of dirty tricks - this is the under-the-counter, back door version. We’ll cover all the stuff you need to know, but there’s also some cool tricks in this course that will jump-start your knowledge.
This course is a complete “start from scratch” course. I’ve really worked hard on writing it so you don’t need to know anything at all at the start – there is no assumed knowledge. There’s a lot of material in this course: it might be that some of this is too simple for some of you, but it’s easy to skip over material that you already know. Also each video concludes with a “Takeaway Menu” which has the key points that have been covered – so if you think you already know the material in a video, jump to the end and check the Takeaways so you can be sure you didn't miss anything important.
At the end of this course you’ll be able to…
What’s in the course?
And then we’ll wrap it all up with a section on putting all this together and improvising against a backing track.
So who is Dr. Marigaux? Dr. Marigaux is the stage name of Phil Davison. Phil began playing professionally in the late 1970s and studied composition at Auckland, Waikato and Otago universities. Phil has been performing in Dunedin under the stage name of Dr Marigaux as both a soloist (playing guitar) and with his band, Highway 88, which is a hard rocking R&B band with a three-piece horn section. Phil has been involved with almost every genre of music in his time, including classical, punk, and free improvisation, but tends to feel most at home with blues and jazz.