Thank you so much for taking the time to write this wonderful comment! I really appreciate you watching my piano medley. To be honest, I have always known some of Adam's more famous songs, but it was not until last year that I started to listen to music across his entire catalog of songs, and this has had such a massive impact on my life over the past two years. I have always loved slower and more emotional songs, which is why the songs in this medley are a lot of my favorite Owl City songs, but since recording this medley, there are many others that I wish I learned earlier and had included. He has so much amazing music, which makes it hard to decide on favorite songs. I would have to say that my top 3 favorites are “Silhouette,” “Lonely Lullaby,” and “Be Brave.” I just checked iTunes, and I have listened to “Silhouette” almost 300 times in the past year! I definitely recommend that you continue learning his music on the piano! “Lonely Lullaby” is such a rewarding song to play, and the piano line at the end of the choruses is absolutely beautiful and a joy to play. If I am remembering correctly, I came across Adam's cover of “In Christ Alone (I Stand),” and after hearing the beauty contained in that version, I decided that I wanted to explore his catalog of songs. I wanted to start by finding songs that were slower and more emotional, and “Lonely Lullaby” was the first suggestion that I found. After I heard that song, that is when I started to listen to a lot more of his music from his entire discography. For a while, I had a difficult time deciding on if my favorite song was “Lonely Lullaby” or “Silhouette.” I completely agree with you-Adam has brought and continues to bring so much beauty and hope into the world through his music, lyrics, and inspirational words of wisdom, and it is so nice to see that his fan base primarily consists of caring and kind people that are full of optimism and positivity. I am hopeful that I will have an opportunity to meet Adam one day to thank him and tell him how much his music means to me and how much it has changed my life. Maybe he will come across my Owl City cover videos! Thank you again for writing such a nice comment. I really appreciate it!

Thank you, and me too! Amazing musicianship from that band!

Thanks for watching! If someone goes enough time without using something that they've learned, it fades from the memory. That is why I always liked finding review videos like this when I was a student, and that's a big part of the reason why I decided to make this video. Unfortunately, that memory thing applies for muscle memory too. There are several incredibly difficult piano pieces that I learned as an undergraduate student that I have since forgotten how to play. Too bad I can't relearn them just by watching a review video!

😂 Luckily, this is a real room with real guitars! Let's just say I had a phase where I got addicted to buying guitars to build a collection. Since making this video, I have sold some of them. I decided that I would rather have a more limited number of guitars that get a lot of use rather than have too many. Having too many guitars meant that I spent less time playing my favorite ones at times and had certain ones that were just sitting on their hangers. I wanted the ones that did not get as much use to go to people that would put them to great use.

Thank you very much! This finale is quite possibly my favorite moment from any piece of classical music. The amount of sheer beauty and incredible power that is contained within it is beyond astounding. This finale truly takes listeners to another dimension. How Mahler was able to compose something of this magnitude is almost beyond comprehension. I hope to play this on a full organ one day, and I definitely hope to see a live performance of it at some point in my life!

Thank you very much for these encouraging words! I actually find that I often have a habit of saying more than I need to and writing too much, but I tried to keep things as simple and concise as possible throughout this video so that it can be used to review or even to learn some things for the first time, so I'm very glad to hear that you find the video to be helpful!

What I should've said is that in tonal music that uses a minor key, the diatonic harmonies themselves tend to derive from the harmonic minor scale, with the exception of the III chord that derives from the natural minor scale. This is true for both classical and popular music. Even if a modern songwriter does not have any knowledge of music theory, they tend to use the V and viio chords because of their strong pull to the tonic harmony. In terms of the minor scales themselves, natural minor is the commonly-used default minor scale, and composers and songwriters adjust this scale when necessary depending on the harmonic context and what they want to convey melodically.

Thank you for watching!

I haven't seen keys called variant keys in any theory books that I've read before. I've always seen keys that share the same starting note referred to as parallel keys. Is there a source or sources you have that use the term "variant" instead? I'd be interested in reading it. There are several concepts in music theory that are labeled using different terms depending on the book and author(s), so the labels I use in this video won't match every single textbook's wording.

Thanks so much!

Thank you so much for watching! This is one of my favorite songs to play on the guitar, and the combination of beautiful acoustic and electric playing makes it such a reward to play. As you mention, there are so many lessons that can be learned by learning the guitar part. The first few minutes are essentially an acoustic improvisation, the electric section requires careful use of a volume pedal and a lot of fast ascending and descending lines, and the acoustic coda has variations on a chord progression through hybrid picking and different chord voicings. The coda is one of my favorite excerpts of guitar music ever composed!

Obrigado pelas amáveis ​​​​palavras!

Thanks!

Thank you very much! I appreciate that! "Be Brave" is easily one of my favorite Owl City songs. The piano part and harmonies on that song are so gorgeous, and the song always makes me emotional. I made all of these arrangements of Adam's songs by ear. I focused on adding the vocal melodies to the harmonies, and I practiced it enough times that it became muscle memory. I do not have sheet music for it. There is a very accurate one I found on KZbin titled "Be Brave (Owl City) - Piano Tutorial." If I can get it converted from GarageBand, I can probably send you the MIDI file for my short arrangement of that song, at which point you could add it to an app or program that shows the notes on the piano. Some of my social media profiles are linked in my KZbin profile, so if you would like the MIDI file for that excerpt of this video, feel free to message me on one of those platforms!

Me too! The finale of this symphony is one of my favorite excerpts of music ever composed! Mahler was such a genius! I really hope that I have an opportunity to hear this piece live at least once. For now, I'll have to find an organ that I can play my arrangement on!

Thanks!

I am glad that so many students are finding this video helpful for their music theory studies! That's why I wanted to make it. Thanks for watching!

The guitar is a Jackson JS Series Dinky Arch Top JS34 DKA Electric Guitar (Silver Burst), which has a 25.5" scale length, 12”-16” Compound Radius, and 24 frets. Hope this helps!

@@LennonAshtonNY thanks mr

Thank you, I really appreciate that! This is my favorite Yes song, so I really wanted to learn it as accurately as possible.

@@LennonAshtonNY one of my favourites too, alongside America, Awaken and Close! All with Steve’s best guitar work in my opinion!!

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much! Alex is my favorite guitar player, so choosing one solo as a favorite is so difficult to do. I love how unconventional this solo is with the extreme use of the vibrato arm and the elasticity. I have seen a few videos where Alex says that this is his favorite solo that he wrote.

Thank you! This was at a summer music festival/fair, so plenty of people were walking around, but there were a lot that stayed to watch my performance, which I really appreciated. The best part about this show was I was opening for Randy Jackson from Zebra, who is one of my favorite musicians and a dear friend of mine!

Thanks!

Thank you very much for the kind words! I appreciate it. In my opinion, once you get the notation down, the analysis becomes the fun part where you get to really delve into the music that you are most interested in!

Thank you for the nice compliment! I appreciate that. And it's never too late to make new musical progress!

Thank you for the very kind words! I am glad that you find my video beneficial. Yes, music theory is wonderful for interacting with other musicians. Many great songwriters and composers did and do not know music theory, and they would compose by ear. Over the past few centuries, certain scales, melodic patterns, harmonic progressions, rhythms, forms, chromatic chords, etc., have been used across tonal music of various styles. Because of this, our ears and minds can be indirectly trained to anticipate, expect, and gravitate toward certain musical practices, and this is why you'll find many similarities between music of different periods whether or not theory was involved in the creation of the music-composers' ears guide them! Theory itself allows us to make sense of these common practices, analyze various elements, try to understand the purpose behind every note and rest that happens in a composition and the thought process behind its creation, and try to understand why composers and listeners seem to enjoy certain things that happen in music. Good luck with your musical journey!

Thanks for watching! Tried to cram as much content as I could into a summary video, not knowing how long the final result would be. I'm glad that it reviews a lot of topics for those who need a refresher. And there is so much more to theory than I covered in here!

Thank you very much! My favorite Yes song as well-truly a masterpiece!

Thank you!

While I do agree that ear training is very important when it comes to learning music theory and developing aural skills, as I say at the start, this video was not specifically designed to teach these topics for the first time, but rather to provide viewers with a compact overview of the topics that they would encounter by taking actual theory courses, reading theory textbooks, etc., which can be helpful for those that are preparing for major written exams that are more focused on the theoretical knowledge and non-aural questions. I also did not know how long the final video would be, and I did not want it to end up being excessively long for a review video that is primarily focused on summarizing. Thankfully, the feedback that I have received from tons of people since posting the video has been very positive, with many students telling me that it has helped them to study and prepare for their classes and exams, which was one of the main motivations for making the video in the first place. For people watching this video who would like to get more out of it, I would recommend that they try to play through some of the examples on a keyboard, which would allow them to "hear" the theory while also giving them a chance to practice things like sight-reading, converting Roman numerals to chords, voicing chords, harmonizing a melody, adding upper voices on top of a bass line, playing tonal and post-tonal scales, and other skills related to keyboard harmony. Although this is a review video, some might watch it because it gives them a general introduction to music theory. For those who want to learn these topics at a more in-depth level, I recommend that they check out some of the amazing lecture series that are on KZbin that cover these topics through full lessons and courses, combining analytical skills, aural skills, and more.

Thank you!

Thank you very much! I always enjoy watching Rick's insightful videos! This is a challenging solo to play, and because the studio version involves some harmonizing and doubling, playing it as a single player will not capture every detail from the original, so one has to decide on a way to approach it. Double tracking a solo can be very challenging, but when done well, it can create a very cool sound. My favorite example of this from this solo is probably the second-to-last phrase, where the solo has that fast alternating pattern that ends with a bend. The chaos and tension in that phrase is awesome! Tom has a distinguishable style of playing and a sonic fingerprint that is recognizable to many listeners of rock music! A Rockman would be very cool! Finding a good Boston tone was one that I always wanted to achieve. I was so happy when I discovered the awesome app called Tonebridge, which simulates so many famous guitar tones. This tone was very close, making it more fun for me to play this solo!

Thank you very much!

Thank you!

Thank you! That's a cool fun fact that I hadn't thought of before. I just watched some live videos, and yeah, Tom plays the organ part on "Long Time" instead of the leads. And I know that when I've watched videos of "Don't Look Back," he's playing rhythm guitar as well. It's very interesting since the lead parts in those songs sound like something he also would have written and played. Boston has got a signature sound!

Tom played all those leads, in his basement, while Barry and the rest of the newly hired road band were on the west coast. Make no mistake, Tom spent a large portion of his life sitting in that basement perfecting every subtle nuance of all those songs, all alone with that old Scully deck. Countless hours, creating, editing and over dubbing. Splicing in stuff the oldschool way, with a razor blade. No way he would have put some road band guitarist licks on that first creation. That album was, and still is, his Opus.

@@bobbyboykin7137 *What'd he call em ... "Snipets"? hahaha LOL And with 1 wrong computer click 6 full months of night and 18 hr. days work vanished forever and nothing he could ever do could get it back...Ever.*

@@LennonAshtonNY *Scholz wrote em and played em all alright no doubt about that whatsoever. He had those songs under construction for years before he'd met **_ANY_** of the band. From what I understand Scholz let Goodreau adapt some of the leads to his style and record those on 3 possibly 4 (Let Me Take You Home Tonight) and thats it. Simple as that. Thats also why he never could come up with his next batch of songs fast enough to suit the record companys and was sued.*

Thank you!

Wow, what a wonderful compliment! I really appreciate your kind words! Best of luck on your musical journey! :)

Thank you so much! The beauty in this piece of music is astounding!

@@LennonAshtonNY Indeed, it is! You did a terrific job bringing it to life!

I used an older iPhone when recording this video, and then compression occurred when compiling all of the clips into one 3.5-hour video. Music can be heavenly, so I guess you could say this video compliments that attribute. 😂

@@LennonAshtonNY Your username saids NY! Any chance you teach in a CUNY ?

I do not, but maybe one day. I did go to a CUNY for a graduate degree!

Because this video is a gift from heaven

Nice way to put it! :)

same, good luck!

You're welcome, and good luck to you both! I think that it's a pretty fun exam to take.

Thank you so much! This is such a fun guitar solo to play, and it is definitely worth taking the time to learn it! I love how this solo has beautiful melodic lines that require virtuosity. As a musician, having music that keeps you challenged makes playing such music more thrilling!

Thanks so much! I used a Boston setting on an app called Tonebridge, which has awesome simulations of famous guitar tones. I highly recommend this app to guitarists!

As I wrote in another comment, I learned this solo by ear, so I do not have any tabs for it. The solo is in the key of E♭ major (mostly the major pentatonic scale), with some G♭s thrown in for some added color (mode mixture). If you get comfortable with that scale around the middle of the guitar neck, that will make this solo easier to learn. And to really get the most out of playing this solo, try to find a way to get the notes to sustain. I used a guitar with a Sustainiac pickup, but performing near an amplifier can also help. I hope this helps! Someone else commented that there is a Rocksmith video here on KZbin that might help too. It's worth checking out. This is a very fun solo to play!

Thank you so much! My goal was to create a comprehensive overview of some of the key topics in music theory, and I am so glad that many people are finding it helpful. I might make an updated version of it in the future. I highly recommend looking up Dr. B Music Theory on KZbin. Dr. Brellochs recorded his music theory lectures, and his style of teaching is phenomenal! His lectures cover the majority of the things that I covered in my video, and he breaks them down at a microscopic level, whereas my video is more of a macroscopic overview.

Thank you so much! I appreciate it!

Thank you! I've never been to California, so maybe one day! And I think Steve would win for longer hair. :)