When I was in Singapore, I had the great opportunity to teach at NUS. Although I was a research assistant, professor Ye Wang asked me to hold a lecture for his course CS4347: Sound and Music Computing. The idea was to present an introduction to music theory from a musician’s point of view. In other words, how musicians use the elements of music theory in songs.

Understanding how music theory “works” is essential in order to develop new algorithms that can better analyze songs. For example, if we all agree that the minor scale is used in sad songs and the major scale is used in happy ones, then if we are able to detect it programatically, we will be able to group or search songs by emotions. I touch on this and other interesting aspects in this lecture.

I think that everybody should teach something that they’re passionate about because they might inspire passion in others. For that matter, I thought that the concept of explaining music theory using feelings would really raise interest and it worked. I received amazing feedback from the students. Here is the full video:

Thanks to the great feedback received, professor Wang asked me to do another short lecture on introduction to MIDI. Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a protocol that allows musical equipment and computers to talk to each other. This lecture is more on the technical side, but it should be interesting for musicians as well:

Did you like them? Were they engaging? Did they raise your interest? I would really appreciate to hear your comments on YouTube.