Tag Archives: alteration

Alterations (part one), here is a simple way to really understand them

IMMAGINE-PENTAGRAMMA4Musical alterations

Alterations, chromatisms, accidentals, sharps… how often have your heard these terms without really understanding them?
Yet the concept of musical alteration is extremely important to start understanding music and to be able to play the piano or any other instrument.

As with every other musical theory concept, alterations are born from essentially practical needs.
This is the path I will use to try to explain these concepts in depth, by explaining where and how these thoeries are born.

Since this lesson is pretty long and demanding, it has been split into two parts.
In today’s lesson we will try to understand the two main reasons why introducing musical alterations is an absolute necessity.

This way you will finally be able to completely understand the function of those graphical symbols that are calleds sharps and flats, and generally speaking of all the other “musical accidentals”.


Learning material of this lesson

3 videos 12 mins
1. The accidentals (sharp and flat) 3m 17s
2. Diatonic half-tones and chromatic half-tones 2m 51s
3. The A major scale case 5m 44s
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