The Song That Taught Us All Music Theory And Nobody Noticed

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[CharlesCornellStudios]

MUSIC THEORY IS NOT THAT HARD! You already know a ton, I guarantee it.

[REAPERMania]

As someone who has written and produced music professionally for over 30 years, you just convinced me that Happy Birthday CAN start on the one. LOL. Probably not your intention but I was entertained. :)

[mikkysteaders]

That Moth was just trying to wish you a happy birthday....

[anthonywestbrook]

This year, at my birthday party, I busted out my autoharp and made everyone sing Happy Birthday to me in D minor. They struggled so hard, and it was so fun for me.

[AABB-ngiv]

It may be the most famous and happy song but it will always be the most awkward song to have sung to you

[biltrex]

I spent decades knowing these things, these things I always felt about music, these patterns, these feelings... the tension and resolution. I just never knew that that's really what music theory is. Putting vocabulary to these feelings. Charles Cornell, Adam Neely and Rick Beato have opened my brain to this world, and I appreciate music even more now. Couldn't be more grateful!

[WillFlyTheLightingGuy]

I like to think of the #11 (#4) as just a flavor of Lydian to sweeten the person’s name a bit.

[billtruttschel]

David Bennett taught me/us those first couple notes are called an 'anacrusis.'

[splitp]

Your happiness while playing and experimenting with this is infectious. Thanks for making me smile. Awesome video.

[rome]

I loved this. I think most people feel that in order to know music theory, you have to know the terminology. But you can learn something without knowing the language for it.

For example, people always say "The Beatles didn't know music theory." But is that really true when they cut their teeth playing hundreds of cover songs in Hamburg for eight hours a night? They learned music theory concepts through those songs. So they may not have known what a Picardy Third is, but they knew how to use it. Similarly, they may have called diminished chords "naughty chords, " but they popped up all over the Beatles' music. There's more than one way to "learn" something.

[Averagewaterenjoyer]

There’s also the grade school classic of adding ‘cha cha cha’ after each phrase, which makes each grouping of 2 measures a set of one 3/4 measure and one 4/4 measure, meaning that kids in elementary school are doing mixed meter.

[michaelfay]

When staying with my grandmother (1910-1987), she would wake us up by singing "Good morning to You! 🎶" Which I believe is the original version of this song. Thank you for the lesson!

[tiyenin]

Here's a funny fact: a lot of kids/young adults learn a "Latin" version of happy birthday. It's in 4/4, mm 1 tresillo instead of 3 quarter notes, and mm2 3 claps after "you". Here's the first two measures as lyrics and as rhythm diagramming, with dashes in the latter indicating additional 8th note length:
Happy | birthday to | you [clap clap clap] happy...
4+ | 1-- +-- 4- | 1- [2+3-] 4+...
THE PROBLEM IS, without music backing, these gen Z / gen A folks smooth out the tresillo back to 3 quarter notes, altering the length of only the odd numbered measures.
The result? Alternating 3/4 & 4/4 time 😅

[avyanschannel]

I can't believe this gem was hidden in plain sight all these years, and those chords and rising bass from 8:25 scratched a spot in my ears that I didn't know needed scratching.

I'm so going to steal all of this!

I may need to look more closely at what our common songs and nursery rhymes have been teaching us all along, us being none the wiser. This just made my day brighter and got me excited about music all over again, thank you!

[BernardClintwood]

Curiosity: Here in Brazil, we use to sing Happy Birthday in 4/4. "Birth-" is a minim and "you" a dotted minim. It is also usual to sing it twice, with a ritornello, accelerating at the second time. And there's no fermata.

[SirFrederickBanbury]

I remember one time singing this in Lydian (and another time in Lydian dominant), and it sounded so much better. Nowadays, I just try to make the group performance work, and it never does.

[Novastar.SaberCombat]

NGL... I really wish that this video was "Chronotrigger, part 2".

[samuka]

Happy birthday taught everyone the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians and nobody noticed

[LavaXYZ]

happy birthday- the most incorrectly performed song of all time

[KalebPeters]

This is such a great concept! It might sound silly but I'd watch a whole series of you breaking down nursery rhymes like this 😂

Would be great to show to my piano students 😅