VIDEO 3 | Common Melodic Shapes

Love that phat beat at the beginning!

An easier way to remember minor/major pentatonic… the minor pentatonic has the same notes as the relative major pentatonic (Eb major pentatonic in the case of C minor).

I’m finding that keyboard navigation (in terms of piano anyway) is really underlying just about everything in ear training and theory… and that interval understanding helps that tremendously. Apart from knowing how to get from chord to chord (how to lead from one into the other)–knowing how to go from note to note seems to be the ultimate goal.

Excellent John – that’s a very simply and effective method. Not every melody plays a half-step, but when it does – it’s the smallest interval there is, and it only exists 2 places in the minor scale.
And you can apply it to any scale – most music is major or minor – but even if it’s modal, the modes only have 2 half-step locations each too, which you learn when you learn the scale.
So C dorian has 2 half-steps – D – Eb, and A – Bb.
C lydian = F# – G, and B – C.
And you can explore the rest.
Really glad the half-step method stuck with you

My biggest takeaway: Minor Pentatonic scale.

Hi OK! That’s a great take away – I would say that about 75% of transcribing a melody by ear – is spotting the pentatonic shape. Now you know where it occurs in both major and minor scale – I hope you start to spot it when listening to music. I mean nearly every song I hear played, focusses around the pentatonic notes in the scale. And a good strategy is to just give 100% focus on listening out for that 5 note interval pattern.
Thanks for the comment and let me know how you get on :)

Julian, thanks for the great lessons. 2 quick questions:
Do you usually transcribe your minor melodies in the parallel minor or relative minor of your “key of choice?” I’ve been using C major and A minor for most transcriptions, because temporary tonicizations (V/vi, etc.) stick out in shapes on the keyboard more. But I definitely see the merits of using the parallel C minor, because it distinguishes itself from our C major scale more.
And what keyboard are you using? It really sounds great!

That comment about modal having half steps in different places just pulled together things for me. Since the modal scales are just starting on different steps of the Ionian scale but keeping the same notes of course they would have the same two half steps somewhere. So now the trick is to realize that the sound you are hearing is dorian or lydian or phyrgian or whatever.

Julian, thanks for all the great videos, all the loving effort you are putting into them. I’m not yet qualified to take take part in the course. since I have only been self learning for 12-18 months, and I’m without without any musical background.
I’m learning a lot from you and will continue to do so I’m sure of that. One thing I am taking away from your teachings and finally taking on board, is to stay on one key. My mind has been jumping around like a monkey seeing a feast of many musical roads to go down, freely available on the internet, YouTube mainly. I’ve had to exhaust that. But I have come to the conclusion that I absolutely need to stop scattering my energies. Tuning in more and more to the ear training of intervals can only deepen the whole musical experience. I’m really interested in that. This is my take away.