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Microsoft Excel Music Theory-Scale Degrees Redesigned
21 students

Microsoft Excel Music Theory-Scale Degrees Redesigned

Systems Thinking for Business Professionals - Redesigning and Antiquated System Part 2
Created byRobert (Bob) Steele
Last updated 12/2025
English

What you'll learn

  • Analyze the structural weaknesses of the traditional music theory system using data-driven reasoning.
  • Construct a complete modal framework in Excel using tables, formulas, and circular logic models.
  • Apply Excel functions (XLOOKUP, IF logic, absolute references) to build a dynamic modal relationship engine.
  • Differentiate between note half steps, modal half steps, scale degrees, and absolute modal positions.
  • Reorganize the diatonic system into a streamlined, logical structure suitable for modern teaching and software design.
  • Model forward and backward modal motion within circular 7-point and 12-point systems.
  • Evaluate how an absolute modal numbering system improves clarity for musicians, educators, and DAW developers.
  • Demonstrate how Excel can function as a powerful tool for redesigning complex legacy systems.
  • Integrate circular relationships, formulas, and system logic into a cohesive, navigable mode map.
  • Produce a fully functional Excel workbook that represents a modernized, scalable music-theory engine.

Course content

2 sections • 5 lectures • 3h 37m total length

  • 1152 Excel - Mode Formula Comparison & Mode Relationship Table41:55
  • 1155 Excel – Model Ranges42:08
  • 1157 Excel – Model Ranges Part 237:59

Requirements

  • Basic familiarity with Microsoft Excel (entering data, simple formulas, navigating worksheets).
  • No prior music theory knowledge required—everything is explained from the ground up.
  • Musicians with traditional theory backgrounds are welcome, but not required.
  • A willingness to think analytically and explore system redesign from a modern perspective.
  • Microsoft Excel (any modern version: Windows, Mac, or Office 365).
  • Optional: Ability to download and open the provided practice workbook.

Description

Excel + Music Theory: Rebuilding the System Musicians Deserve

This course uses one big, beautiful mess to teach you Excel and systems thinking:
traditional music theory.

For hundreds of years, musicians have been forced to learn an inconsistent, patched-together system: scale degrees that change their identity depending on context, chord names that hide what they actually do, and “modes” explained like mystical trivia instead of clean, logical structure. It does not behave like something you’d design today for a DAW, a modern curriculum, or a data-driven world.

So in this course, we treat music theory like what it really is:
an antiquated legacy system screaming for refactor.

Using Microsoft Excel as our design lab, we rebuild the core of tonal music from the ground up:

  • We turn the fretboard and keyboard into a map with fixed “continents” (absolute mode locations) instead of constantly renaming every city every time the “key” changes.

  • We convert the old scale-degree system into a stable absolute mode numbering system that actually behaves like a modern data model.

  • We design tables and formulas that a future DAW—or a sane theory textbook—could use to teach and compute harmony in a way that’s transparent, navigable, and scalable.

If you’re a business professional, you’ll use this as a rich, real-world redesign project: learning Excel, logic, and system architecture by cleaning up one of the most stubbornly messy frameworks on earth.

If you’re a musician or music student, you’ll finally see a version of theory that behaves the way your brain and your instrument actually work—one that would dramatically improve learning if music schools and software ever adopted it. You won’t just memorize rules; you’ll help build a clearer system that exposes why the old one feels so confusing, and how a better structure makes everything—keys, modes, chords, progressions—snap into place.

By the end of the course, you won’t just be “better at Excel” or “better at theory.”
You’ll have participated in designing a next-generation music theory engine—
one that could power smarter DAWs, clearer curricula, and faster learning for the next wave of musicians.

Who this course is for:

  • Business professionals who want to improve their Excel skills through an engaging, real-world redesign project.
  • Analysts, managers, and system thinkers who enjoy modeling complex structures and cleaning up legacy frameworks.
  • Musicians and music students who want a clearer, more logical understanding of modes, scales, and theory structure.
  • Educators and curriculum designers interested in modernizing how music theory is taught.
  • DAW users, producers, and developers who want a logical framework for building or understanding digital music tools.
  • Anyone who wants to learn Excel by reconstructing a full system—rather than using generic business examples.
  • Learners who appreciate a structured, visual, and analytical approach to understanding how systems should work.

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