Music Student 101 Jeremy Burns, Matthew Scott Phillips

The pace it goes covers the absolute bare bones basics in the early episodes, all the way into thicket, where later covering some really in depth down the “chipmunk” hole kind of topics as our hosts make refenerence to, many being college and university level subjects discussed. Intervals, melody, harmonies, inversions, counterpoint and chord structures, non chord and passing tones. Major and minor keys, triads and modes within scales, and how to actually be using them. Being able to do ear training practice on the road is a nice refresh every so often from the same old same on the radio. They also have topics covering histories of different instruments and the evolution of those and music itself. Its a great podcast if you are looking to broaden your understanding of music and take it much deeper. It will help and the fact that your have them literally teaching you the components of a college level education in an episode based format makes its easy to study what you want.

I lost my way for a couple decades but I am back to regular practice and playing. I had some gaps in my music theory and not only has this podcast filled them, but I am connecting my theory and practice better than ever. I have listened to several episodes multiple times as I work my way through the RCM theory syllabus. Thank you Matt and Jeremy. I only wish you were podcasting when I was a young piano student (pre-Internet, alas!) Your southern accents only add to the charm of music student 101.

A few years ago I started playing piano self-taught. I’m now a dad of 2 with that works more than 40 hrs/week so being able to learn music theory on my drive to work has been very convenient. Last year I took a basic online theory course but still found myself looking at some chords from some pieces and thinking “what the hell kind of chord is that?” but thanks to the episode on non-chord tones and Matt’s advice to not just slap try to slap a label on each chord in isolation, but to look at its function in the chord progression, has made things a lot more clear for me. Tonight I was planning on learning how to play a fancy version of Happy Birthday since I never really practiced that song in all this time. I downloaded some sheet music, was about to start learning it… but then I thought, “wait a minute, I should come up with my own fancy version of this song”. So that’s what I’ve been doing tonight. So far I figured out a way to squeeze in a German augmented 6th before the 2nd time you play the dominant chord, added a suspension to the “happy birthday dear…[name]” part, and instead of ending with the standard G-D-G progression I swapped it with an A-D-G progression (thanks to your episode on secondary dominants). I’m also thinking instead of ending with the tonic on the last chord I might swap it with a fully diminished chord so that I can then play it a 2nd time in Bb, but first I’ll listen to your episodes on modulation before I get too far into that