In this introductory video for the second installment of his comprehensive online music‑theory series, J. Anthony Allen explains the course’s philosophy and scope. Unlike short‑form tutorials, this class is designed to take students from basic note‑reading to an in‑depth understanding of major keys, scale construction, chord building, and harmonic analysis without heavy memorization. The curriculum centers on pattern‑based learning—using whole‑step/half‑step formulas to derive any scale or key, and systematic chord‑construction rules. Throughout the course, students will complete eight practice worksheets (with answer keys) and can post questions for rapid instructor feedback. The flagship application is a complete Roman‑numeral harmonic analysis of Bach’s Minuet in G, demonstrating how every note functions within the key. The video also showcases Allen’s teaching style, including live demonstrations of scale patterns, interval qualities (minor thirds, augmented intervals), and triad formation.
Chapters
Hey, everyone. Welcome to my second in my series of big, comprehensive music theory classes. Now, why do I call it comprehensive? The reason is I found that making these short online classes are good for some topics and less good for other topics. And music theory is one that is not extremely simple. It gets complicated and it builds and it builds and it builds. So I wanted to devise an online course that took us from beginning to end. So the first one I made, which you may have seen, focuses primarily on reading notes and basically how to understand a music score like the one we're looking at here. This one is going to dive into the real nitty gritty of music theory. We're going to focus on major keys throughout this whole course. We're going to look at chords, how chords are built, what notes go in chords, how to figure out what notes go in chords, how to figure out any scale by the pattern of a scale, not just by memorizing, but by learning what makes up a scale, what goes into keys, and the same deal with that one. What is the pattern of a key, how to figure out any key, not just memorizing. There's not going to be very much stuff that you're going to need to memorize in this course. A couple things, but mostly we're looking at learning how to. How to understand music on a deeper level, including this piece that we're looking at here. We are going to, by the end of this class, do a complete analysis of this piece. This is Minuet and G by Bach. It's not the most exciting piece ever written, but it has a lot of really interesting things in it. We're going to know what every single note is doing on this page. We're going to do a complete harmonic analysis using Roman numerals slightly thing you would do in one of my college classes. I'm going to walk you through every step of it. Also throughout this class, I'm going to give you a whole bunch, I think, eight practice worksheets that you can do if you want. On these worksheets, there'll be some things that you can do to reinforce the concepts that we've just learned in each section. And then I'll also be giving you an answer key so you can check. You can also post questions, questions to the class, and I will answer those very quickly if another student doesn't answer them before me, which is also a nice touch. So I hope that you are excited to learn music theory as I am to teach it. So please jump in and let's get started. Right away. Now, before we jump into the class, one of the things I always do is I wait to film this introductory video until I finished filming all of the rest of the class. So the class is done. I'm filming this now, and I want to show you some of the cool stuff that we cover in this class. So here are a few excerpts from the class that just kind of show you the teaching style that I have and how we're going to cover different things and a couple of the topics that we're going to cover. So please check this out, and then I will see you inside the class for the first lesson. Scale looks something like this whole, whole half. Whole, whole, whole half. Now, you're gonna hear me say that a billion times, so let's put a G right there because that's the fifth note of my scale, which is gonna make this feel like this note is gonna lead to there, because it's one of those tendencies. And the fifth note of the scale makes a C major triad because we use the scale of C. Let me say that one more time. We start off with a C major. Minor seventh chords have a similar kind of prettiness to them, but kind of encapsulated in a. Minor thirds are smaller than major thirds, Right? Augmented is a term we use to mean slightly stretched apart, slightly bigger than it ought to be, right?
