 Everyone, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to identify, how to write down and how to hear all of our intervals using three melodic interval techniques or the three ways in which you hear melodic intervals. First off, you hear it with respect to the root of the song. So, the root is D-flat, everything you hear will be with respect to D-flat. For example, the 5th, the 3rd, the 2nd, the 4th, the 7th, the 6th and so on. Then you hear intervals with respect to each other, all of those are seconds with respect to each other or the 3rds, 3rds, 4ths, octaves, 7ths and what not. And you'll also hear intervals with respect to chords. So, if you take this chord, that'll form the 9th with respect to an E-flat minor or if you sing the same one, it'll form a different interval. So, to learn the three ways of detecting melodic intervals, we've chosen an incredible song by the Grammy Award-winning artist Lowe and the album is Bewitched, you should check it out, we're going to take the song from the start. So she's won the Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album, it's one of the best albums of 2023 and at the time of shooting this lesson, Feb 14th, Valentine's Day, this song is very fitting as a love song to celebrate the occasion. So, before we get started, it'll be great if you could consider heading over to our Patreon page for just $5 a month and getting yourself a copy of the notes and notation of this video, this lesson as well as pretty much everything we do on our YouTube and don't forget to hit that subscribe and ring the bell or watch the video and if you liked it, then hit the subscribe and ring the bell. Let's get cracking. So, using the song from the start, we're going to decipher all the types of melodic intervals using a strategy which I call as pitch freezing. Pitch freezing basically means like the old era of cassette tapes or any kind of tape mesh storage, even the CD era, you stop it and the most recent thing that you heard would be what you need to detect or identify or write down or call out or play or whatever it might be. So I call it pitch freezing. I'm going to freeze the pitches as I play the melody and we're going to look at each of those frozen pitches and a few interesting compositional observations about the song as to why the chord happened that way or more importantly, why the melodic note was chosen that way. So before we dive into the melodic components, let's look at the basics of the theory. You have the scale D flat major, it's D flat major again, it's five flats, all these black notes in addition to F and C, that's D flat major and the chord progression used for the song is E flat minor, A flat major and D flat major for the most part. So whenever the chords change, I'm going to walk you through those and I'll show you how the vocal melody also changes. So E flat minor is played in this amazing voicing which she does on the guitar. So that's E flat minor 9. So this is how I voiced it on the piano, root, 5th, then you have your minor 3rd, then you have your minor 7th and then the 9th should be E flat minor 9th. Second chord would be an A flat 13th. So you started with E flat minor 9th and then it goes into A. Just a slide, you could just slide that D flat down to C and you get yourself an A flat 13th. With a dominant 7th, not a major 13th, it's not, that's not the 7th we are referring to. So flat 7, major 3rd and that's the 13th. That's what gives you the 13th vibe, 13th is essentially a 6th but played alongside a 7th. It could be a flat 7 or a major 7th. So that'll be don't you know this how and then I get quiet when there's no one else around. Okay so that, that's D flat major but it's voiced in this really, really clean voicing, major 7th voicing. So all the chords if you're playing it on the piano would be pretty clean with just three notes and then just move that down to C and then so that's pretty much all the chords in the song most of the chords. Okay so for this lesson not so much on the harmonic construction that was just a gist let's now dive into the melody. So I'm going to walk you through the tune line by line and as and when you know I find something or as and when you have to find something with me we're going to kind of pause and explore and explain what exactly is happening. First of all let's give ourselves the root. So for melodic ear training to happen if you want to figure out the notes with respect to the root is one way to do so. For example if you take a note like La that's a 5th, La that's a 3rd, La that's a 7th, Na that's a 6th, Re which is a 2nd and then the root. Okay so that's a walkthrough of the root, keep the root near you at all times so whenever in doubt try to keep that D flat resonating and sing it very important to detect for detection of intervals you have to sing it it's the best way to detect it. Okay so the way she starts is you see there's a strong prominence of that note F which forms some incredible intervals with respect to the chords but with respect to the root don't you know what's the root no there's a lot of these Fs so you need to know that the F is the 3rd with respect to the root but now the chords are coming into play so you could also visualize it with respect to the E flat minor chord don't you know so that F maybe the 3rd in the D flat major scale but it is the note which is making this E flat minor into an E flat minor 9th chord and she's singing even that that entire bar is literally notes of the chord yes they are part of the scale but when you're hearing it the root has changed so if you are an Indian classical trained musician also you might find that a bit awkward because usually the root will always be driving forward in this song it starts with the 2 minor 7th with that vocal line going and all the instrumentation also targeting that 9th and then the chords sneak into the next chord to a flat 13th don't you and the same F will continue to be the 3rd of the D flat major scale but with respect to E flat it was its 9th with respect to A flat it is its 13th because you know 1 2 3 4 5 6 13 is nothing but a 6 but then with alongside the dominant 7th don't you know so that F has two roles so to speak and it'll have a third role as I as I finish in the next sentence and that F lingers on even the next sentence which goes I get quiet when there's no one else and back to that prominent so almost every bar every chord change is starting with that F so that F becomes a kind of a pillar pillar point of the song so that's over the E flat minor 9th that's the A flat 13th it's a great use of just one note which has so many emotions because of the chord that is supporting that one note okay and what about the passing or the connecting notes the passing notes in music generally would be or she could have easily done don't you know she could have gone in stepwise motion but there are two ways musicians can go or reach the final eventual target tone you can do that either in stepwise diatonic stepwise motion or or what she's doing is there's a huge jump there there's a jump of a perfect fifth and before that there's a chromatic note which is actually a wrong note it's not even part of the D flat major scale but it just magically works so it the note gets hit before the chord onset so don't you know don't you so there's no other instrumentation happening so the value of the function of that note is to just slide just slide to the diatonic world don't you instead of doing don't you know this how that'll be rather boring don't you think or don't you know this how that's too diatonic which is also kind of boring so to make it rather interesting and not invade the chord she's singing it at the off beat she's not singing it at the land it's not don't you know no that'll be it's actually a wrong note so don't you know and even that's not part of the E flat minor triad it's big making itself as a ninth so how do we study that it's a chromatic pass or a slide to B flat don't you know and then a perfect fifth jump up and then when the word notice finishes don't you notice which also works in the other lines as well burning pain girl to do tada so this becomes a very familiar movement but it it's made more artistic or more creative with that chromatic note don't you know and now some interesting stuff happens with respect to that D flat major seven she uses a pattern like melodic construction okay and she plays it in a very interesting rhythm as well obviously so how do we study that I get quiet when there's no one so there we have built or your look you could visualize this as a melodic phrase which is four notes going down for diatonic notes I should say that means it's in the key of D flat major and to make that more interesting I get quiet when there's no one so it's interesting and familiar you know it catches you it hits you but it's not monotonous so that's the hallmark of a great melody which this one clearly is so the whole story and then the whole story repeats oh that a flat and then resolving to D flat me and you and awkward silence me and you and so all these are diatonic seconds with respect to each other see E flat is a second from F D flat's a second from E flat and D flat is a second from C albeit a minor second but with respect to the root if you go back to the root if you want to get it with respect to that D flat that would be three two one seven sometimes that can get very confusing because the root seems to have consistently changed so that's the main workflow of this lesson it's to show you when you're listening to an interval or a fragment or a piece of a melody what is your perspective is it the root of the scale is it the previous neighboring notes or is it the chord tone so in this one small discussion we've covered pretty much everything isn't it so we've done that chromatic passing a jump leaping to the F but that F contextually is part of the E flat minor ninth it's in that family or it's in that bed of notes so the sound of that F changes so a funny question I sometimes ask students is how do the white notes of the piano sound in comparison with the black notes I get this weird answer that people say the white notes sound a bit happier and all that and some people even use the word brighter which is weird because of the color so they are influenced by the color of the note or the actual sound of the note so all white notes and black notes are just notes they are just musical notes one of the 12 we have it's when they come together with each other that's when you can actually quantify or talk about a sound otherwise F is an F you could have other notes also coming maybe from a car horn or an auto horn so F the value of that note is based on the entire ecosystem see E flat minor ninth is a very warm sound this gives the more tense sound and back to home okay and then the second half of the verse it's sort of a a b c song writing structure so the a a line we finished me and you and awkward silence now don't you dare don't you dare beautiful there she goes B flat B flat there there's almost a somewhere over the rainbow interval where she sings way up high but that has a different context in the song way up high in somewhere over the rainbow it's 1 6 5 in from the start by low way she goes she creates B flat which is the 5 with respect to E flat and the 6 with respect to the D flat so that's almost a relative minor interval but if you consider B flat B flat A flat those are the somewhere over the rainbow notes but yet it doesn't sound like somewhere over the rainbow because the whole context has changed so we need to consistently visualize our intervals alongside the root of the song alongside each other when we along know them alongside each other we then have patterns and say oh that's familiar I heard that somewhere you know and rhythmically also she'll continue something like that don't you dare look let's analyze that that's the B line or the third line so don't you that's over any flat minor snide a flat 13 look at me okay look at me those are diet on it look at me look at me landing on the third of the F minor seventh chord that way so what's very interesting about that B flat chord is it's first of all I think a B flat augmented seventh in the song there may be even be they could also be a flat nine in there or something but they keep changing the color of that B flat chord B flat major and this particular note D is not part of the D flat major scale it's a minor second so why does that work well it's a it's some kind of a colorful dominant chord which is going to finally resolve so the melody line cannot be diatonic when the chord is is non-diatonic so there's a very interesting chord when she lands on that look at me that way now D what is that it sounds very stable but yet this note is a wrong note it's and she is now landing on that note so what happens is the B flat is giving D purpose don't you look at me that way if you put D with all the other D flat major chords it may sound pretty disturbing so we angle the chord either it's a chicken and egg situation either the note came first and she adjusted a chord or she used a chord it's a dominant chord for sure so it will resolve to the next part or the next sentence you play a B flat dominant or B flat major works even a B flat augmented will work you can color up that however you wish so that's the chord there and there's a note D and it is a minor second with respect to the root which I don't think I will ever know but I will know that it's a major third with respect to the B flat chord so another important strategy when you're listening to a note listening to a melody or a note at a time after freezing the pitch would be reference not only that note but reference it with respect to the lowest possible note which your eardrum is processing so if I do this what's the lowest note to that's a B flat so with respect to the B flat so we've done the a double a a b now let's do the C the last line of the verse I don't need reminders of how you don't feel the same or rather traditional ending because it ends with a dominant chord the five chord of the D flat major the very common chord to end a section in most songs whether it's jazz pop or whatever so don't you know I don't need reminders of how that's exactly as the a but she changes are changes it around to get the dominant now that's landing on the C which is the seventh with respect to D flat but the third with respect to a flat which is the dominant of the root so that will be your root is still D flat so there's all these things happening with respect to each other blah blah blah but with respect to the root is the is eventually where we are going to come to or all musicians will come to for the song to have a purpose you start from home do your business go out have fun play work but you come back home and sleep on the same bed hopefully which is good after a long day's work so now let's move into the B section you could call the earlier part is the a or the verse line or the main head some people call it in the B section it's very easy I'm not going to take too much time it's just a very recurring second interval as you're going to hear it'll make it very obvious I'll play it and then walk you through you see the melody is the same but the chords are making it sound very different and it continues just to make it a bit more obvious so that's a kind of a three line structure just with a kind of animated third line but they're all very similar to each other and very similar continuation okay so if we analyze that again the chords are pretty much the jazz standard chords two five one look at the melody that when I talk to you with respect to each other these are a major these are major seconds with each other with respect E flat to F but with respect to the chords the equation will change slightly that when I talk to you there's also a nice jump to you to you another perfect fifth jump so she definitely enjoys these perfect fifths these octave jumps that's what like I said earlier makes a great melody so there's this combination always of leap and steps you know leaps being fourths fifths octaves thirds and six which make it beautiful in combination with the stepwise motion and the stepwise motion would be diatonic or chromatic as well to have its own fun in the world of step motion so you can have many leaps you can anything from a third fourth fifth sixth seventh and octave is considered a leap or you can go beyond that and a step is always a second interval and it could be a major second or a minor second or it could be a chromatic second or a diatonic second depending on how you look at it okay coming back to the B section and it repeats but the chords change so it creates a very nice D flat major seventh sound with a nine there that E flat is a ninth with respect to D flat and then the word through it becomes a nice major sixth chord just because of the melody lines she continues that it's just pretty much that kind of influenced by somewhere over the rainbow right okay so moving on so we've covered so this is pretty much the B section but the B section has a little bit of variation let me walk you through that as well first of all what we learned through my heart is a different melody now she could have easily done but that would feel complete there's more to it that creates that more mysterious sound because she's ending on the ninth instead of the predictable root and then the whole motif continues but now the context of the chords change there's an F minor seventh that's a 2-5 immersed in that's a non-diatonic 2-5 but I'll explain how it neatly comes back diatonically she adds that G flat which makes it a very augmented sound that's the same as earlier but let's study that 2-3 in the D flat scale or with respect to F it would be minor seventh root that'll be a flat seven that's a sharp five or augmented fifth ending on the third and then okay we have one more incredible part to analyze and it just hit me also out of the blue because in modern pop music you don't hear a jazz-scat vocal solo so it was that's what drew me to this song and that's what you heard in the beginning also so let's just quickly walk through that and conclude the lesson with just one more thing maybe so let me walk you through the vocal scat solo it starts with that musical interlude what happened there that's F flat D flat C so it's step-wise motion going down so it ends on a very jazzy note but it moves down in a very predictable diatonic step-wise motion downward she likes that A she could have easily done again at the offbeat that A which is nowhere part of the scale it just works when she sings it that's a descending one and then you ascend ending on an E flat it's 5th chord tone very interesting jumps and leaps what's that that's a 5th with respect to each other in terms of chord context that's 5 octave or a perfect 4th with respect to each other then landing on the 3rd of the D flat let me play that for you intro D flat major again step-wise going back to E flat minor which is the 2 chord D flat G flat diatonicly up pretty traditional up but always focusing on the chord tones 5 of the E flat makes it a bit rememberable but not boring because it's climbing up and then climbing down and the chords are changing and now the magic comes that climb that's a huge jump it's almost impossible for me to sing this I definitely need some vocal lessons after this one let's break that down that's a jump from E flat to C which is the 7th flat and the 5th of the F minor 7 and then you have this beautiful diatonic jump so you think and then it goes away from the diatonic because of that B flat dominant chord and now she basically sings the B flat dominant 7th it's very difficult to do at least for me that's a B flat dominant 7th in an inversion it's not it's instead that's the lick there and it continues so so you can analyze those melodic notes as just being chord tones of the B flat dominant 7th what's happening there there's a B so makes it a flat 9 in there now I don't know how to sing that but what I think she's doing is she's creating a triplet there with that with that wrong note which is not part of the D flat scale somehow figures out a way to land so that's absolutely beautiful you should definitely listen to the original song and that scat vocal solo is incredible so let me just do that run one more time let's get that ending another huge jump it's a minor 6th jump you would call it so she's leaping down or leaping up and then stepping in that opposite direction so leap, step and come back to the next chord tone which is the 5th of the D flat major scale namely A flat major we call that the dominant so the whole solo I'll just slow it down and you can follow and before we conclude the ending is beautiful just the last 2 bars of the song let's just deal with that and then this lesson is done very unique set of notes there and she puts that B in the chord so what does that make this chord? it makes it A flat 9 and then resolves back to the root okay let's do that a which is part of the usual B section and there's also an augmented chord played by the rest of the band by the way she doesn't do but the other musicians are doing that and then the very ending but at that very last I know I've loved you the chord actually changes while she continues to sing that famous note F which has been lingering on for the whole song but the chord is different there's a flat 9 in there that's a 11 13th wow flat 9, 11 and 13 call that a 13 flat 9 also get away with this by playing maybe an an A augmented in the right hand and an A flat in the left hand the third part of this ending is the way does the A flat and the A are clashing with each other but it just sounds beautiful see how close they are so that was the outro and we've covered the verse, the A section, the B section the incredible vocal scat solo now the outro the intention of doing this was yes have a deep dive into from the start by Lowe a Grammy award winning artist you should listen to the entire album be witched but the main intention was to take a song which has great chords it has a lot of melodic movement not monotonous stuff like that there are songs like that if you actually play pop songs on the piano you'll realize that you might as well just replace all the singers in today's industry by rappers it would kind of work better I think because the singers are not really singing they are just singing one or two notes so it's a bit weird this is a very refreshing song which is why I wanted to share it considering it was released just about a year ago or less so the main intention I hope was to look at musical notes degrees, intervals from different perspectives what were the three perspectives again one with respect to the true root of the song D flat which we rarely did in this song I confess but then we've also looked at intervals with respect to each other stuff like that and then octave jumps things like that and then some chromatic note non-diatonic then we also looked at following the actual chord and how a simple note like can be so many things could also be that I would have liked that but it's not there in the song anyway happy learning have fun so if possible do consider heading over to our patreon you'll find my handwritten notes for this song I've transcribed the the melody, the chords, the voicing of the chords and so on we also have the staff notation for you which we built using mu score and the open source community it's an awesome place to be you can find the notation of pretty much any song some of it is not entirely right so we did a few tweaks so do check out the notation, the MIDI and my handwritten notes and before you sign off and hopefully watch another video on our channel it'll be great if you can hit that subscribe button and turn on the bell for regular notifications cheers and catch you in the next one