The Abraham Studio · The Living Portal • one of six rooms
Musician body, harmony, modes, voicings, song dissection, ear-led learning. Play it, hear it, then name it.
from this room
17 films
M01
When I play the flat six that you're showing me instead, that sounds much better, but I'm confused. Maybe it is safe to say that both chords are a safe option, but again they only share one common note, so I just don't know why that happened. In the future, when I'm faced with a scenario that is exactly like this, I can know to go for the flat six instead of the flat three.
That's me in April, working out a rule with my own ears before I had the theory for it. One note changed and the whole story of the chord changed. This film does that on camera. A plain progression, then one borrowed note, then you hear what it did before I tell you what it's called. Most of what people hear as my sound is a normal chord with one expensive note in it.
M02
i thought modes was a whole new world but its like a few notes and you use maybe 1 mode per song i think.
That was me after weeks inside the modes question, and it was a relief, not a letdown. I don't want the whole bottle of any mode. The full saturated flavor is too strong for me. What I want is the small amount that makes a normal progression smell different. I like Phrygian when it feels modern, tasteful, soulful, clever, or harmonically expensive. Not when it sounds like a music-theory demo. Think Phrygian with the fish smell cooked out. This film plays a song both ways, saturated and restrained, and I say which one I'd keep and why.
M03
I was listening to Versace on the Floor by Kane Brown and I'm like This is why people sing in higher keys because when you sing it in a low key like that it almost gives no feeling
That's what a dissection is for me. Not a chart analysis. A feeling caught in the act, then chased down to the note level until I know why it happened. This film takes one song and works backward the same way. The emotional world first, then the harmonic color, then the one note or chord that's doing the work. I play the moment myself, keys or guitar, in my own key. And one thing I've learned about the songs I love most: the melody usually stays close to home while the floor moves underneath it. That's where to look first.
MW04
i had such a blast aeolian is my favorite mode i learned what i like what i don't like
That's from a past-midnight practice log, March 2026, two and a half hours into one mode. My older way of saying the same thing still holds. There's beauty in sadness. Mellowness is still ice cream, it's just a different flavor, but it's still ice cream. This film sits inside Aeolian long enough for you to hear what I mean, and I mark the exact moves that make it beautiful instead of miserable.
M04
make a 7 modes in 7 days class but use references to different songs andn make it gorgeous ... cush chords is what we focus on , not just basic traditional which is why certain modes are not that popular
I wrote that to myself in May, in a note about my music account, typos and all. The part I keep is the second half. Not the plain shape of the mode, the chord that makes you want to sit in it. Day one is one mode, played on whatever is in my hands, and I don't say its name until you've already heard what it does.
M05
show mmy claude porocess to study songs before an event
That's the whole note. Nine words, typed in April, filed under work. There's no written process behind it, which is the honest part. It's a thing I do before I have to perform something, and this lesson is me doing it once, out loud, instead of describing it.
M06
The same 4 bars two ways — plain emotional harmony, then the maj7/9/13-stacked bossa version — so the ear hears what the note describes before any label lands: extended chords everywhere, the polite rhythm, the beach-wine aesthetic. "Some people hear that as refined. Others hear it as background music." I don't deliver a verdict. Your ear keeps the last word.
M07
I always say jazz is a fineline for me, I love jazzy but not jazz, it feels contrary to what many might thing predictable to me those chords, even if it is from a certain niche, it’s kinda got this overplayed feeling in neo soul and jazz for me, it’d be embarrassed to play the chord, but I’d be embarrassed to wear some outfits either that stand out too much (good to note) that aren’t in a classy way that is.. anyway, yeah they’re kinda cringey for me, a bit abrasive
Typed in December, kept as typed. It's a taste boundary, not a verdict on anybody's music. The clothes line is the part I'd forgotten I said and it's the truest bit. Some chords are loud in a way I wouldn't wear.
M08
I want to be doing a lot of these songs throughout the weeks and months because I'm always learning skill but never songs. When people ask me to play something, I never have something to play because I mostly had trained to be either a teacher or a rhythm player, but really not a special act.
I wrote that in June, to nobody in particular, and it's the most exposed sentence in this room. There's no after attached to it here. I built myself a shelf of songs to actually finish, and that shelf is the answer in progress, not the proof that it worked.
M09
make something monday what i'm working on i'm trying to figure out what mode the song creep is and i'm looking at how playing the key of a and guitar with these open voicings i feel like it's the one that's it i feel like these chords serve as a ramp to like not tell what the key is so that you can use modes
... I'm trying to figure out what the mode is if it's Dorian if it's Aeolian because I'm super new to this and I'm gonna find out how the tones in the chords are either supportive or if it's like unrelated with what I'm thinking ... That's what I'm working on.
I named the format myself and it means what it says. Make something on a Monday and show it mid-way. This one is me on guitar with a song I love, guessing, out loud, in March.
M10
it seems i was making the same thing that gets to the same end result so yeah its been nice just to see how I wasn’t far off
Six days later, unprompted, the same thing in different words: it was a project in the making that didnt go to waste. i still have the muscle memory even though it feels wasted, its not. i dont think it is.
Both of those are me typing at night after a guitar lesson. The detour I thought I'd wasted years on turns out to be the same road, arrived at from the other end. That's the whole card. No moral attached.
M11
My whole issue was, I thought this sound was Mixolydian because it was playing in my head, but then when I played the melodies, it wasn't working. But then I went ahead and played the flat seven chord and then I was like, oh, so I wasn't wrong. Hopefully I'm not.
Later the same day I corrected myself on a second clip. Wasn't losing my religion. It was actually all I want
i know when someone tries to explain it with me they would want me to just listen to them and accept it
That's one April afternoon, getting it wrong and then getting it right and keeping both. I learn in relationships between things, not in accepting a rule and moving on. It makes me slow and it makes me sure.
M12
So I've done this for a while, but this is my last take. Whatever happens happens.
I know it's gonna shake And I've let it shake
I had much better takes but this is real at least. I must look crazy. I'm literally have the phone in front of my face and I'm trying to use my left eye to see through the phone into the lyric.
April, alone, one take, phone against my face. I kept the shaky one. That's not a lesson about courage, it's just which file I didn't delete.
M13
okay chat but seriously, opening my abraham tadesse station, you don't feel chill, its like a density you enter where you do feel , i dont wanna say drain because i dont want you to clock that red flag thing, but its like a abttery of a phone decreases when you use it, same way, when playing these songs, its not like free to listen, even if im not processing, i do feel some tax.
Typed at five in the morning in December, hedge and typo included. I said it once and I've never said it again, so take it as a thing I noticed about my own listening, not a thing I know.
X03
How I actually got into the room, told plainly and in order — a kid who went to church, then serving on the projector moving the lyrics, before I could play anything. Then guitar, and guitar is what took me to the worship team. Then the part that is mine and not a testimony formula: my own account of what happened to the relationship over time, moving from obedience into zeal and then into what I call the grace relationship. The 2018 journals stand in for the zeal years, in my own hand at roughly 19 — asking permission to join the team, and later, having led, naming something I learned about restraint. The film is explicitly not "how I found my calling." I was in the room before I was on the stage, and I'm still working out what the relationship is.
M14
those are actually the two things I was supposed to be comparing but I realized that a lot of what I thought I knew about Dorian I don't have in my head anymore so so I'm just like playing the C major scale starting from D so so I'm just trying to see like when I reach over here what's that different taste I'm supposed to get but it's getting hard to hear it. Hearing C major or am I hearing D Dorian? That's where I'm at. Probably won't send this because it's not going anywhere but yeah I think I'm just rushing this I need to watch an actual like material and do this.
March, mid-practice, guitar in hand, and I nearly didn't send it. That's the only reason it's in here. Everything else in this room is me arriving somewhere.
M15
I'm working on making a compilation (from songs in my favorites playlist) of what makes my favorites moments, to learn my favorite intervals and guide my writing that way!
July. Something I was inventing while I was writing it down, and I had not finished inventing it.
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