⚡ One glance 🎧 The style goal 🔄 Circle, applied 🎼 Your progression 🥁 The rhythm 🌑 The mode ladder 🌒 Minor keys 👂 Hearing the bass ✅ Homework

Lesson 4 · August 11, 2026 · The Recording Club

Your progression was 6-5-4-1 all along.

The chords you found by feel in Taipei got decoded into numbers — and one melody note turned out to be the 1, the 9, the 3 and the 13 as the chords moved under it. Then: the R&B rhythm, the mode ladder, and minor keys straight off the circle.

🎓 Poseidon Ho 🎯 Goal: hear a song & play it 📅 Aug 11 — 3½ weeks after Lesson 3 ⏱️ ~90 min

⚡ The lesson, in one glance

Six things happened

🎧

The style goal, named

Your sheets are all one genre. You want R&B, funk, blues — "piano is a percussion instrument. You can be the rhythm."

🎼

Your progression, decoded

The A-G-F-C you composed by feel is 6-5-4-1 in C — and the melody note A is a different chord tone over every chord.

🥁

The R&B rhythm

Subdivide every beat into four — 1-e-&-a — and learn the pattern in two halves. It's the foundation of the styles you want.

🔄

Circle, applied

Dominant pulls down into home; subdominant moves sideways. Chains of fifths explain why C-G-A works.

🌑

Modes & minor unlocked

Darken any key by adding flats in circle order. Minor = the next three flats around the circle. One rule, every key.

👂

Hearing the bass

"Children" — the harmony lives under the water-drop sound. Training your ear to hear the bass is the next frontier.

🎧 The style goal

Out of the pop-ballad box

📄The problem you brought: your Chinese pop sheets (Jay Chou, JJ Lin) are all one genre. You want R&B, funk, jazz, blues in your hands.

🥁The reframe: piano is a percussion instrument — you don't need a drummer to have rhythm. You can be the rhythm.

🌍Theory is genre-agnostic. The same numbers, chords and circle run every style — what changes is the rhythm and the voicings.

📱Save the clip. Greg's ask: keep that groove clip on your phone — we'll decode that exact rhythm in a future lesson.

"Getting these rhythms foundationally — then you can build upon it with the specifics of all the other things."Greg — every genre sits on the same foundation

🔄 The circle, applied

Dominant pulls. Subdominant floats.

➡️One step clockwise = the dominant (5). It pulls down into home — the strongest gravity in music. 5→1 is the authentic cadence.

⬅️One step counter-clockwise = the subdominant (4). A soft, lateral move. 4→1 is the plagal cadence — the gentle "amen" ending.

⏸️Stop on the 5 and don't resolve — that's a half cadence: the sound of a musical comma.

⛓️Chains of fifths: why does C-G-A sound right? A is the dominant of D, which is the dominant of G, which is the dominant of C. Your ear hears distance in fifths.

💥The breaking point: the chord on the 7 (B in C) has no perfect fifth — F♯ isn't in the key. That's why the far side of the circle feels unstable, and why the 7 chord gets skipped. The workaround from the lesson: play the 5 chord over that note in the bass (G/B) and let it walk down to the 1.

🚶Left-hand bass is a choice: the 1, 3 or 5 of the chord — and a walking bass can be a counter-melody, rising while the melody falls.

🎼 The centerpiece

One melody note, four jobs

The A you kept on top is the 1 of the 6-chord, the 9 of the 5, the 3 of the 4, and the 13 of the 1.

🎹 The progression you composed by feel in Taipei — A, G, F, C on white keys — is 6-5-4-1 in C.
🔢 Naming the melody against each chord is how extensions work: count up the scale past the octave — 8 is the 1, 9 is the 2, 11 is the 4, 13 is the 6.
🚶 Your walk-back to the 6: that passing B is the 3 of the 5 — or think of it as the 2 of the 6 — an adjacent note leading you in. Do it before 5→1 and you've made 2-5-1.
🧠 "Amateur vs. professional mindset": the pros choose the top note. Keeping the 6 on top instead of the 5 is a decision, not an accident.

💡 The reverse method for extensions

You don't choose to play a 9. You hear the sound, play it, then look: "what is this note against this root?" Then take it to another key — that's what trains your ear to hear the theory.

Hold the A — move the chords

Tap each chord. The melody note stays; its number changes.

the root itself

upper extension

the chord's color

the lush one

🥁 New skill

The rhythm: 1-e-&-a, in two halves

Subdivide every beat into four sixteenths and count them out loud: 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, 3-e-&-a, 4-e-&-a. This grid is the foundation of the R&B groove — press play and count along.

The sixteenth-note grid

Gold cells are the main beats. The "a" pickups are what trip you up — that's normal.

✂️Learn it in two halves. First half: 1-e-&, a-2-e-&. Then the second half — and the join across the barline into the next measure is the part to drill.

🤚Left hand steady, right hand pattern. Quarter notes in the left hand sound folky — change the left-hand rhythm and the same chords become other genres.

🐢Slow it way down on your own time. Speed is free once the pattern is clean.

🎶Then combine: this rhythm inside your 6-5-4-1 progression. That pairing is the homework.

"What I just showed you is the foundations of an R&B rhythm. Get that perfectly, and then we expand upon that."Greg

🌑 New theory

Darken a key by walking the circle

Every mode is the major scale with flats added in circle-of-fifths order: B♭, then E♭, then A♭, then D♭, then G♭. One more and you'd flat the root — you'd be in a different key. Tap a mode.

C major (Ionian) — no flats yet

The bright starting point. Every darkening starts here.

🎷Mixolydian = the dominant scale. Flat the 7 and you lose the natural 7 — you don't keep both.

📉The order is the circle: ♭7 → Mixolydian · ♭3 → Dorian · ♭6 → minor · ♭2 → Phrygian · ♭5 → Locrian.

🛑Why it stops: flatting the C itself removes the root — that's the wall on the far side of the circle.

🌒 The rule you derived

Minor = the next three flats around the circle

Look at your root, go counter-clockwise: the next three notes not yet in the key get flatted — the 3, the 6 and the 7.

🎯 C minor: add B♭, E♭, A♭ — exactly the next three flats after C major's empty signature.
🔄 Sharp keys flat by naturalizing: A major has F♯-C♯-G♯; A minor lowers C♯, F♯ and G♯ back to natural. B minor lowers D♯, G♯, A♯.
🧮 Your old way still works — counting half-steps (4-3-4 = maj7, 4-3-3 = dom7, 3-4-3 = m7, 3-3-4 = half-dim, 3-3-3 = dim) is correct. The goal now is to stop counting and see it on the circle.
🌐 The number system is agnostic. 6-5-4-1 means the same thing in any key and any mode — find the 6 of A♭ the same way you find the 6 of C.

⚠️ Where past knowledge fought back

You expected "make it minor" to mean flatting the notes of the triad. It's not — you flat by the circle (3, 6, 7). The ♭3 and ♭7 just happen to land in the seventh chord.

C natural minor — B♭ · E♭ · A♭ added

Same root, three flats darker. Tap a key to compare.

👂 The frontier

The harmony hides under the water drop

🎛️ You brought "Children" — the classic dance track. As we played it: F minor, four flats.
🎵 What you could hear: the melody (the "water drop" line). What you couldn't yet: the bass underneath it — and the bass is the harmony.
📻 The bass line we pulled out: ♭6 → 4 → 1 in F minor — D♭ down to B♭ down to F.
🔊 Part of it is physics: phone speakers bury the bass. Listen on real speakers — the boom under the drop is there.
🧏 Harmony has fewer choices than melody. You'll pick it up faster than you think — it's the same ear, aimed lower.

The bass line under "Children"

♭6 → 4 → 1 in F minor. This is what lives below the water drop.

🔊 The left-hand chords you play are the same thing you hear at the bottom of every produced track.

"You listen to it on bigger speakers and you'll hear it. Go through what we went through today — and next time we can go through this song, or any other song, and I'll show you exactly how it relates."Greg — the next lesson's opening move

✅ Homework · two things + one listen

Lock the progression, lock the rhythm, then marry them

Greg's words: do these two things and "that will expand so we can get closer to playing different styles and hearing this music and recreating it on the spot, by ear."

✓

🎼 The 6-5-4-1 progression — in 4–5 keys

Goal: hear "A♭" and land 6-5-4-1 with the melody voicing, no math

Learn it in C, F, B♭, E♭ — and A♭ if you can. That takes you far from the center.
Keep the melody analysis alive: over each chord, know what number the top note is (1 · 9 · 3 · 13).
The fingerings are on your lesson video — watch Greg's hands when in doubt.

✓

🥁 The R&B rhythm — then inside the progression

Goal: the full pattern hands-together, then on the 6-5-4-1 chords

Count it slow: 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a… Learn the two halves separately, then join them across the barline.
Left hand steady while the right plays the pattern.
Then combine: this rhythm, that progression. That's the deliverable for next lesson.

✓

👂 The listening drill — root first

Goal: start hearing the bass under real songs

Pick any song. Stop it. Ask: what's the bass note? Find it on the piano.
Then build the chord above it, then name the melody notes by number — slowly, same process as the lesson.
When you hear a sound you love: play it, then look at what it is, then move it to another key.

🎯 Between lessons

The Ear Trainer now runs all three tracks in all twelve keys — the new "All twelve keys" levels match this homework exactly.
Carry-over from Lesson 3 still stands: scales, triads 1→6→1 and "Let It Be" in all 12 keys.
Notes live on the shared notes page — add questions anytime.