Understanding The Formula of Music - Makes it so Easy! [VHS]

ISBN 10: 1584960000 ISBN 13: 9781584960003

Music is as simple as first grade math, but a lot more fun! Most of us start by taking a few lessons on an instrument or by trying to figure out how to play on our own. Watching this DVD will make you musically enlightened! You will gain an ear for harmony & melody, plus knowledge of the mechanics, as well as the language of musical terms. Everything is laid out in the most logical order, with the easiest examples to practice on. The best thing about it is, it’s so much fun, you’ll forget you’re studying. Dan Huckabee, your instructor, has a degree in Music from The University of North Texas, is the 1976 National Dobro Champion, has recorded 5 solos lps, toured with The Allman Brothers in 1974, has authored 250 music instructional products, & has a lifetime of professional experience. So get comfortable & let Dan guide you through everything you need to know to truly understand what music is all about. It will give you the understanding that the pros have! It’s really just college music theory condensed down into 2-hours of just watching TV. Find out why those great musicians are so talented & join ‘em yourself! So if you haven’t had much formal training & you feel like you need to fill in some of those gaps in your understanding, this may be just what you need. Split screen close ups & video illustrations make it a breeze! (Two Hours & 9 minutes)

Review:

"Answered questions I’ve been trying to get answered for two years. $40 well spent. Will take me months to absorb." -- Bill Weigle, La Feria, TX

"I have learned more in four hours...(watched it twice), than I have in 40 years."---M. Stewart Freehold, NJ -- M. Stewart Freehold, NJ

If you're looking for a quick and dirty method to make the most progress on your instrument, one of the best things you could do is watch the video Understanding the Formula of Music, by Dan Huckabee of Musician's Workshop.

Most musicians just want to play songs. They don't want to learn a bunch of theory that has no immediate practical application. That's where Dan comes in. He's put together this two-hour video that explains how music works in layman's terms. You don't need the Pocket Music Dictionary to figure out what he's talking about. He explains and demonstrates everything. All you have to do is pay attention.

If you've been playing music for a while, or working in a band, you may know some of this stuff included in Understanding the Formula of Music, but chances are you don't know all you really need to know, or how the various parts relate to each other.

While the video is designed for the musical novice, there are several points during the program that could prove useful even to the musician who already understands the formula of music. It could prove useful to teachers who are seeking some ideas of how to tie everything together for their students.

Keep in mind that once you buy the video you are allowed to watch it more than once. This is not like a cram course, where you have to break your back trying to absorb all this material and then face a tough exam the next day. It's one of those videos you might want to watch all the way through and then come back to it a week later, after playing out, or practicing, or woodshedding.

The idea is for the musician to know enough about how music works, to be out of the dark. To be good at your instrument, you don't need four years of college theory: "Too much theory can take all the flavor and personality out of your style, " Dan says. He offers the facts, the basics with none of the time-consuming filler.

Dan recommends that the budding musician or even the veteran get an inexpensive keyboard, because the keyboard is the best instrument to illustrate pattersn of music. The keyboard is a form of musical diagram itself. That's because: regardless of what instrument you play, you need to know about other instruments for harmony. Dan also demonstrates how music theory works on guitar, another chord instrument. He covers the major scale and explains how it relates to the Nashville Numbering System, which is also used in blues and pop music recording studios.

Dan explains how to build a major scale. Then he shows how, once you listen to it a few times, you will have it embedded in your mind's ear. The major scale is the basis for all the other scales and modes, most notably the blues scale and pentatonic scale, used in blues and jazz, as well as pop configurations.

Dan then gets into various chords and how the chords are built from the scale. Obviously, not all of this will be of equal importance to every player, but it makes it easier to learn to recognize the chords that apply to your playing. He focuses on the three chords that most blues players know as the I, IV, and V chords (tonic, subdominant and dominant) which are the major part of the Nashville Numbering System.

During the course of the video, you can learn quite a few songs. But most of the songs are used to illustrate a point about a chord change or idea. If you can identify a concept with a familiar song, you are likely to remember that concept. For the novices, this video emphasizes ear training: learning to listen so you know what you are hearing. Knowing what it is, you can play it right back on your own instrument after you hear it with a little practice. -- American Harmonica News Magazine August 1998, by Phil Lloyd

From the Contributor:

Review: Banjo Newsletter (Jan 2001 by Bob Piekiel). Dan Huckabee's video "The Formula of Music," is unlike virtually all other instructional videos on the market. Today, one can purchase dozens of excellent banjo instructional videos which show basic rolls, important licks, song vocabularies, trademark techniques, etc., but there is little discussion of how the sounds of various notes can be combined to form music. To anyone who has ever asked, "How can you hear a song for the first time & then play it right away?" or "How do you know how to get all the right chords in a song in a completely different key from where you learned it?", I would recommend this video. Whether you're a beginner or advanced, there is a wealth of info on this tape that is simply not found elsewhere. I have let a number of my students & one fellow band member see it, & each one has commented on how they learned something from the various lessons. Dan Huckabee has other such videos that follow from this one, should you desire more. Review: Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine (Oct 2000 issue). What surprised me most about "Understanding the Formula of Music" was that I was able to watch the entire 2 hours of this video in one sitting, & then again the next day, without once loosing interest. This in spite of the fact that I already knew most of the theory. I guess what held me, besides the mystical interlocking mathematics of music, was seeing if Mr. Huckabee could lay out such a complex subject without being confusing (which he did), & seeing how much theory he could cover in two hours (the answer:...volumes). In fact, I could have filled this review just listing what he covers. If anything important is left out of the explanation of scales, chord building, melody, harmony, voicings, & chord progressions, along with ideas on developing an ear & perfect pitch, I can’t think of it. This video will get you grounded.