Heney's A Short Course in Music Theory

 

June 7, 2022

A couple of updates, primarily correcting for the "Dominant" Seventh, etc.

Here are the corrected chapters plus a compressed file containing all four chapters:

Here is the compressed file containing all the course modules:

The full course in a single document:

And a personal story to share:

A few days ago I was looking at some notes for McCartney's "And I Love Her" and saw a chord notation that that I'd never seen before in a song analysis: "I#3". But I'd seen this notation the day before in Chapter 6 of William's Music Theory course. This song is in the key of Dm but the last chord in the song was noted "I#3" – in short, the "third" is being raised one semitone thereby changing the expected "I" chord (Dm - 1 b3 5) into a D Major chord (1 3 5). This technique is called a "Picardy Third" and has been used since the Baroque period to end a song on a "happy" chord.
If it hadn't been for William's course, I'd probably still be scratching my head and wondering what was meant by “I#3.”
Thanks, William!
PS. I understand that there is some debate as to whether or not this was a true Picardy Third. However, as much as I enjoy studying song analyses, some commentators can go a bit overboard on minutiae. The question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin" was originally a critique of commentators – with belated thanks to Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570 – c. 475 BC).

 

Supplemental Material

For those who may need it, here is some home-made blank staff paper, fret diagrams, and combination staff and tablature sheets for both C-Tuned and G-Tuned ukes.

And in the event that anyone can improve on these materials (and I'm confidant that there are many with that talent), here are the word processing originals (MS Word and OpenOffice formats):

 

June 5, 2022

As many of you know, William Heney has created "A Short Course in Music Theory", and he has given permission to have this course posted here. If you have already downloaded this package, please note that four of the original files have received some slight editing (spell checking); these are very minor corrections, nothing impacting meaning. Here are the updated modules:

And here is a compressed file containing all four modules:

For those who have not yet done so, you can download the full package here:

And here is the full course in a single document:

Even if you've already taken a Music Theory course, this is a great opportunity to refresh your knowledge and increase your understanding about how music works. And for those of us who haven't yet taken such a course, this is a golden opportunity to gain access to the hidden secrets that will enhance your understanding and playing of music.