This is a music theory article!
I can hear the groans already. Triads, augmented fifths, leading tones, wha?? My first theory class felt like math, and I hated math. My first three theory classes, really. But then came the eureka moment....when the light bulb clicked on over my head and I GOT it. And at that moment I realized that had certain things been explained from the get-go, the whole business would have made more sense. That's what I want to talk about today: a simple principle that easily explains what music theory is, how it works, and why it's important.
Randy Halberstadt, a jazz pianist and educator from Seattle, wrote a fantastic book called "Metaphors for the Musician", which I highly recommend to anyone who already has a basic grasp of theory and wants to dig deeper. But he used a phrase as the title of one chapter that sums up the whole concept beautifully: "Harmonic Astronomy".
"Harmonic" in that we are talking about how notes played together create harmony. "Astronomy" in that notes and chords exert influence and force upon each other much like celestial bodies do. And understanding this simple concept provides a framework which is filled in by all the specific details. In short, learning theory gives you a convenient way to organize which moon revolves around what planet, and how all revolve around the sun.
Let's get into some detail. You've probably heard the word "key" used as a musical term: as in, this song is in the key of C. Now, the technical explanation of this is that the key of C uses only the white notes on the piano: in other words, out of all the notes on the keyboard we are using a subset (haha, math class, remember?) that includes only the white keys.
But what we really mean when we say we're in the key of C is that the note (or chord) C is the sun around which all the other notes revolve. In other words, when we're in the key of C the way you hear every note is filtered through the prism of its relationship to C. Change keys and gravity shifts....the same note can be heard in a completely different way.
To illustrate this, play this sequence of chords on piano or guitar: C - G - F - C - F - G...
I followed the G with those three dots for a reason....does that series of chords sound finished? Or does it sound like you've been left hanging, waiting for something to happen?
Well, you have. That G chord wants to resolve: to bring us back home to C. Now play the same sequence but end with the C chord and notice how it brings a sense of finality that was missing before.
Now play this sequence: C - G - D - G - C...
This time, the C doesn't sound quite so final. Follow up with this: C - G - D - G - C - D - G
Now G sound like home, and we have moved into the key of G.
This is the whole concept in a nutshell. Chords want to lead to other chords. Notes of a melody have an inherent need to resolve, to move one way or another. Music theory is a way to organize this set of interwoven relationships into a tool box you can use in your writing and playing. Obviously there's much more to learn here, and subsequent articles will explore this further. But listening to music with this in mind can change your whole way of hearing....and have a huge impact on your musical choices and vocabulary.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
On music theory: do you REALLY need to "know the rules before you can break 'em"?
It's a statement I've heard repeated often enough to have become a cliche. Let's face it, when it comes to music, "breaking the rules" is not a conscious decision. Musical innovators develop their own language by following what they hear, and while any writer or composer is influenced by the music that moves them they don't have to have a formal grasp of the vocabulary to absorb elements of the style and sound.
On top of that, the subjective filter that we comprehend music through is different for everyone...one man's celestial harmony is another man's noise. And with the whole of human musical history a few mouse clicks away, you can go from Gregorian chant to Sonic Youth in the blink of an eye. Any combination of sounds anyone's ever made are probably on a YouTube video. There are far more sonic and tonal possibilities open to the contemporary musician than Bach or Mozart would have dreamed of. So is it still relevant, given all this, to study four hundred year old "rules" to learn how to make music in the 21st century?
Well, yes, it is. The tonal system as we use it in most popular music today still follows the same principles of tension and release that form the basis of classical harmony. A major chord is still a major chord, and ending a song on a 5 chord is sure to leave most of the room hanging. A 12-bar blues or a three-chord country song still moves forward not just on the narrative thrust of the lyric but by setting up dissonance: the diversion from 1 to 4, and the expectation and gratifying sense of release when 5 brings us back home to 1. Fundamentally, harmony is like gravity: combinations of notes and chords exert force on each other and bring about movement as a result. So music theory is simply a way to categorize and explain how and why this works. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo postulated it, and Newton's apple would have fallen whether he was there to observe it or not.
So the "rules" are not really rules at all, but explanations why some notes sound good together and some don't. The major triad is present in the overtones of a vibrating string: it's a sound that existed before someone gave it a name. And understanding of THIS aspect - music theory as an explanation of natural sonic phenomena - is a great tool and stimulus for creativity.
This is a large and complex topic, but understanding this simple fact makes the study of music theory both more relevant and more interesting. So to go back to our cliche: you really CAN'T break the rules, they just exist....and they're more flexible than you might think.
On top of that, the subjective filter that we comprehend music through is different for everyone...one man's celestial harmony is another man's noise. And with the whole of human musical history a few mouse clicks away, you can go from Gregorian chant to Sonic Youth in the blink of an eye. Any combination of sounds anyone's ever made are probably on a YouTube video. There are far more sonic and tonal possibilities open to the contemporary musician than Bach or Mozart would have dreamed of. So is it still relevant, given all this, to study four hundred year old "rules" to learn how to make music in the 21st century?
Well, yes, it is. The tonal system as we use it in most popular music today still follows the same principles of tension and release that form the basis of classical harmony. A major chord is still a major chord, and ending a song on a 5 chord is sure to leave most of the room hanging. A 12-bar blues or a three-chord country song still moves forward not just on the narrative thrust of the lyric but by setting up dissonance: the diversion from 1 to 4, and the expectation and gratifying sense of release when 5 brings us back home to 1. Fundamentally, harmony is like gravity: combinations of notes and chords exert force on each other and bring about movement as a result. So music theory is simply a way to categorize and explain how and why this works. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo postulated it, and Newton's apple would have fallen whether he was there to observe it or not.
So the "rules" are not really rules at all, but explanations why some notes sound good together and some don't. The major triad is present in the overtones of a vibrating string: it's a sound that existed before someone gave it a name. And understanding of THIS aspect - music theory as an explanation of natural sonic phenomena - is a great tool and stimulus for creativity.
This is a large and complex topic, but understanding this simple fact makes the study of music theory both more relevant and more interesting. So to go back to our cliche: you really CAN'T break the rules, they just exist....and they're more flexible than you might think.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Capos Are Not Cheating!
as originally published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter. To subscribe, email songconnection@aol.com.
There's no reason to be apologetic about using a capo, even if it is sometimes called a "cheater"!
When you use a capo you are applying at least a basic knowledge of music theory, and if you really know what you're doing it opens up a whole range of new sonic possibilities without your needing to learn lots of new chords.
First of all, let's address the "cheating" thing. It's true that an accomplished piano player can play in all (or at least most) keys without much difficulty, never mind the "transpose" button on most modern electronic keyboards. But the truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a difference in difficulty playing in different keys on the piano as there is on the guitar. In terms of what the change requires of your hands, it's less of a challenge than many beginners might think once you master basic technique....the greater challenge is mental, because every key has its own configuration of notes.
On the guitar, especially if we're talking about playing rhythm on an acoustic, there's a tremendous difference in difficulty between playing in, say, D and D flat. Adding bar chords into the mix levels the playing field a whole lot, but bar chords just don't ring the way open chords do....the instrument doesn't resonate nearly as much. Also, in many flat keys we lose the sympathetic vibration and overtones created by the open strings. (That's a topic for an entirely different article, though, suffice it to say that when you play certain chords other strings will sound whether you struck them or not....this is called sympathetic vibration and adds to the richness and depth of the sound).
So now that we've established that using a capo is part of maximizing the sonic potential of an acoustic guitar and is NOT in fact "cheating", let's talk about how we use it.
The most important idea to understand is how much you have moved or "transposed" a chord when you clip on that capo. It's helpful at this point to visualize a piano keyboard: white keys in a row, with black keys between them. The white keys follow the letters of the alphabet, while the black keys fill in the sharps and flats. If you're at all familiar with a keyboard, you already know that not every pair of white keys has a black key (and therefore a sharp or flat) in between, and here's where the main concept lies.
We're now talking about measuring the distance between two notes: between, say, two white keys when there's a black key between them, or when there isn't. The distance from A to B is what we would call a whole-step, because there's a black key between them. Same with C to D or F to G. But there's no black key between E and F or B and C, and so the distance in those two cases is called a half-step.
Still with me? It's simpler on the guitar....a half-step is one fret, a whole-step is two. And remembering these two small pieces of information are the key, because now you know that if you put a capo on the second fret you have moved (transposed) every chord up a whole-step. So C becomes D, F becomes G, and G becomes A.
Remembering where those naturally-occurring half-steps are also tells you that with that capo on the second fret, E becomes F SHARP because ordinarily E to F is only a half-step.
It's true that it takes time to soak up all this information to the point where you can use it without having to think too much....so let's throw in some shortcuts. Instead of thinking letters, let's now go to numbers: an eight letter sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C would be numbered one through eight (seven really, because eight is just the recurrence of one....the pattern is really a circle just like on an old-fashioned clock). The chord built on each of those notes has the same number: so C is the "one chord", F is the "four chord", etcetera. Musicians often shorten this and just say "one", "four", and so forth. This is the "Nashville number system" in a nutshell.
So here are the shortcuts. First, common chords in two common keys and their numbers, but note three points first.
1. The minor chords on the 2, 3, and 6. Major chords may be substituted as well but these are what we would call "diatonic" chords, meaning they use only the notes of the scale.
2. The one exception is the use of the "flat 7" instead of the seventh note of the scale. This is actually a far more common chord in popular music than the diatonic 7, and makes an interesting substitution for a 5 or to approach a 5.
3. The flat 7 in both these cases uses a bar chord, the B flat and the F. This is a hurdle that everyone needs to get over at some point, but once again that's a topic for another article.
Here are our examples:
Key of C: 1=C, 2= D minor, 3= E minor, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A minor, flat 7=B flat.
Key of G: 1=G, 2=A minor, 3=B minor, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E minor, flat 7=F.
Now visualize the keyboard again. Keeping in mind the naturally-occurring pattern of whole and half-steps, you can move of "transpose" to any other key by using these patterns in higher capo positions. For example:
C with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes D, the 3rd fret becomes E flat, or 4th fret becomes F.
G with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes A, 3rd fret becomes B flat, and 7th fret becomes D.
As I said earlier, it will take some time to become thoroughly familiar with all of this. But I hope the basic concept is clear and its application useful. A future article will explore more creative and unusual uses for the capo.
There's no reason to be apologetic about using a capo, even if it is sometimes called a "cheater"!
When you use a capo you are applying at least a basic knowledge of music theory, and if you really know what you're doing it opens up a whole range of new sonic possibilities without your needing to learn lots of new chords.
First of all, let's address the "cheating" thing. It's true that an accomplished piano player can play in all (or at least most) keys without much difficulty, never mind the "transpose" button on most modern electronic keyboards. But the truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a difference in difficulty playing in different keys on the piano as there is on the guitar. In terms of what the change requires of your hands, it's less of a challenge than many beginners might think once you master basic technique....the greater challenge is mental, because every key has its own configuration of notes.
On the guitar, especially if we're talking about playing rhythm on an acoustic, there's a tremendous difference in difficulty between playing in, say, D and D flat. Adding bar chords into the mix levels the playing field a whole lot, but bar chords just don't ring the way open chords do....the instrument doesn't resonate nearly as much. Also, in many flat keys we lose the sympathetic vibration and overtones created by the open strings. (That's a topic for an entirely different article, though, suffice it to say that when you play certain chords other strings will sound whether you struck them or not....this is called sympathetic vibration and adds to the richness and depth of the sound).
So now that we've established that using a capo is part of maximizing the sonic potential of an acoustic guitar and is NOT in fact "cheating", let's talk about how we use it.
The most important idea to understand is how much you have moved or "transposed" a chord when you clip on that capo. It's helpful at this point to visualize a piano keyboard: white keys in a row, with black keys between them. The white keys follow the letters of the alphabet, while the black keys fill in the sharps and flats. If you're at all familiar with a keyboard, you already know that not every pair of white keys has a black key (and therefore a sharp or flat) in between, and here's where the main concept lies.
We're now talking about measuring the distance between two notes: between, say, two white keys when there's a black key between them, or when there isn't. The distance from A to B is what we would call a whole-step, because there's a black key between them. Same with C to D or F to G. But there's no black key between E and F or B and C, and so the distance in those two cases is called a half-step.
Still with me? It's simpler on the guitar....a half-step is one fret, a whole-step is two. And remembering these two small pieces of information are the key, because now you know that if you put a capo on the second fret you have moved (transposed) every chord up a whole-step. So C becomes D, F becomes G, and G becomes A.
Remembering where those naturally-occurring half-steps are also tells you that with that capo on the second fret, E becomes F SHARP because ordinarily E to F is only a half-step.
It's true that it takes time to soak up all this information to the point where you can use it without having to think too much....so let's throw in some shortcuts. Instead of thinking letters, let's now go to numbers: an eight letter sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C would be numbered one through eight (seven really, because eight is just the recurrence of one....the pattern is really a circle just like on an old-fashioned clock). The chord built on each of those notes has the same number: so C is the "one chord", F is the "four chord", etcetera. Musicians often shorten this and just say "one", "four", and so forth. This is the "Nashville number system" in a nutshell.
So here are the shortcuts. First, common chords in two common keys and their numbers, but note three points first.
1. The minor chords on the 2, 3, and 6. Major chords may be substituted as well but these are what we would call "diatonic" chords, meaning they use only the notes of the scale.
2. The one exception is the use of the "flat 7" instead of the seventh note of the scale. This is actually a far more common chord in popular music than the diatonic 7, and makes an interesting substitution for a 5 or to approach a 5.
3. The flat 7 in both these cases uses a bar chord, the B flat and the F. This is a hurdle that everyone needs to get over at some point, but once again that's a topic for another article.
Here are our examples:
Key of C: 1=C, 2= D minor, 3= E minor, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A minor, flat 7=B flat.
Key of G: 1=G, 2=A minor, 3=B minor, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E minor, flat 7=F.
Now visualize the keyboard again. Keeping in mind the naturally-occurring pattern of whole and half-steps, you can move of "transpose" to any other key by using these patterns in higher capo positions. For example:
C with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes D, the 3rd fret becomes E flat, or 4th fret becomes F.
G with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes A, 3rd fret becomes B flat, and 7th fret becomes D.
As I said earlier, it will take some time to become thoroughly familiar with all of this. But I hope the basic concept is clear and its application useful. A future article will explore more creative and unusual uses for the capo.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Some cool folks I'd like to share!
First of all, I'm just thrilled that my blog and articles seem to be circulating...I'm hearing from people from all over and it's very gratifying! So here are some links to some fine folks who have featured my work and I want to acknowledge them as well.
GuitarPlayerZen: great guitar resource with new articles posted regularly.
Guitar9 Records: a home on the web for shredders everywhere:
And here's my new friend Anne and her site My Guitar Buddies.
I'm told there's other stuff getting out there, but I'll make the announcements when the articles are posted. In the meantime, thanks for reading and for spreading the word!
GuitarPlayerZen: great guitar resource with new articles posted regularly.
Guitar9 Records: a home on the web for shredders everywhere:
And here's my new friend Anne and her site My Guitar Buddies.
I'm told there's other stuff getting out there, but I'll make the announcements when the articles are posted. In the meantime, thanks for reading and for spreading the word!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Songwriting And Rhythmic Identity
(As published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter of 7/19/08. Subscribe by sending an email to songconnection@aol.com)
I’ve focused a lot in my articles about rhythm and how important it is in songwriting. Previous posts have established that having a wide rhythmic vocabulary can diversify the sound of a writer's catalog and allow you to pitch to a variety of artists and markets.
I’ve focused a lot in my articles about rhythm and how important it is in songwriting. Previous posts have established that having a wide rhythmic vocabulary can diversify the sound of a writer's catalog and allow you to pitch to a variety of artists and markets.
As a musician that plays multiple styles, my contributions in a cowriting session often lean more towards the musical than the lyrical....I’m not the type of writer that keeps a journal or a book of ideas. (Perhaps I ought to start, but that’s another matter). And we know that every cowriting situation is different....sometimes you start on an idea from scratch, sometimes one writer has a verse or a chorus, or even more. Perhaps one writer even has a song completely written but feels it’s missing something. This opens up a question....according to copyright law, a song is music and lyrics. So if your contribution in the session is a rhythmic idea that gives the song a new identity, does that constitute a cowrite even though copyright law doesn’t recognize it?
I do believe that every song needs a rhythmic identity of its own. There are songs that you’ll recognize instantly from a drum intro or a guitar lick before a note of melody is heard. If those musical contributions come from a session musician, that player doesn’t get a writing credit as a rule....but would Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” be the same song without that distinctive guitar intro? Besides being hooky, the intro establishes the rhythmic framework of the song as the bass figure that follows is strongly related and supports the entire rest of the tune.
I do believe this constitutes a gray area, and it may be more a matter of courtesy than law. I’m not suggesting that session musicians are entitled to writing credits, because their contributions are considered more arrangement than composition, and copyright law as I understand it doesn’t cover arrangements. But in a cowriting session the dynamic is different. And Nashville courtesy as I understand it is that all parties present in a writing session are generally given equal credit for the song. So my answer to the question above is, yes.....rhythmic identity may not be recognized by copyright law but can be as important to a song as melody and lyric. And in my opinion this strengthens my initial assertion that it is in every songwriter’s best interest to have as wide a vocabulary as possible.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Serving The Muse: a lesson learned
I had a defining musical experience the summer after my junior year in college, a series of events that had a huge impact on my approach and philosophy. The lessons I learned over those two short weeks have stayed with me throughout my career because I do believe they illustrate a fundamental fact about music....and everything I've observed or learned since has only driven the point home.
The first week, I attended a well-established summer music program for six days of intensive class study with one of the foremost and most influential jazz guitarists in the world. Who it was is peripheral to the story....the relevant part is that the prospect of soaking up some of this man's knowledge drew guitarists from all over the world, all equally devoted to mastering the bebop style of jazz. Now, bebop is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult and complex languages in any genre of music, and I have tremendous respect for any musician on any instrument that can master it. But my interest in this workshop was more to broaden my musical horizons....I knew that this master teacher had worked with other musicians I admired that were not strictly jazzers but creative souls looking for a new approach.
Sadly, the master I had come to see suffered a debilitating illness and was unable to lead the class. The teacher who came in his stead was a wonderful substitute in that he himself had a complete and in-depth knowledge of the style himself and was at the same time probably a better communicator than the sometimes thorny genius we had all come to see. But I'm still relating peripheral details, as you'll see.....while I did get a lot out of the class, the great lesson I learned came later.
I was entering my fourth year of music school, studying classical guitar and practicing three to six hours a day. I was reading the journals of John Cage and Stravinsky and listening to Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett. In short, my head was full of high concepts and while I knew I had a lot to learn I felt I was thinking and playing on a highly sophisticated musical plane. But I also had the tendency towards hubris and the sense of invincibility of a young man in his early twenties, and I was about to be put squarely in my place.....by a bunch of middle-aged ex-hippies playing folk music.
I grew up on folk music and always had a love and appreciation for it...I still do. No amount of education will ever change the fact that the Clancy Brothers made me bawl like a baby singing "KillKelly" or that Jean Ritchie's "Black Waters" continues to give me goosebumps. So after my week in the rarified atmosphere of quartal chord voicings, the lydian flat 7 substitution, and post-tonal harmonic extensions, I went to "folk music week" at a summer retreat on Cape Cod. And here's where I learned my lesson: the folkies were better musicians.
Sounds like an audacious statement. Obviously the music they were playing was much simpler. But even though they played songs with three and four chords, they played with an authority that despite my training and supposed greater skill I was unable to match. And even more strikingly, fifteen or twenty people could sit in a circle making music together without stepping on each other. And I'm not talking about fifteen people strumming the same C chord and singing Kum-Ba-Ya.....I'm talking about a group of musicians listening to each other, each choosing their moment to contribute to the whole and then melting seamlessly back into the ensemble. Some able to play five or six instruments with equal authority and ease. Singing spontaneously in three and four and ten-part harmony. Knowing exactly how to listen to each other and blend into a harmonious whole.
Now, don't get me wrong. The masters of bebop and high-concept exploratory jazz who were teaching the first class I attended are musicians of the highest order. They DO possess listening skills and an understanding of harmony that is attained by few musicians in any style. But by and large the aspiring younger players who attended the class did not, myself included....and it was instructive to observe that while most of these guys (and it WAS mostly guys, another little detail that made folkie camp much more pleasant) could play every standard in the Real Book backwards and forwards, they still needed the book to know what to play. And two of them playing together often couldn't keep from stepping all over each other instead of blending to make music together. The ensemble class was a particularly grevious example, with near-cacophony threatening to take over until the instructor (who I hold in very high esteem and absolutely DOES "get it") pulled back the reins.
I don't mean to make a blanket indictment of jazz and jazz musicians. Great jazz players continue to be an inspiration to me, and in my opinion John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" still stands as one of the most incredible recorded examples of master musicians tuning in to one another and together pushing their explorations into the stratosphere. But the lesson is this: it doesn't matter how many chords or scales you know if you can't listen to someone else play and complement it in some way. Vocabulary without proper context and the means to put it there is useless. I've hired sidemen who possess tremendous skill only to have them completely ruin a gig by overplaying and being more in love with their own ability than with the needs of the song.
Technique and vocabulary are wonderful in that they give you options. But artistry is in how you use what you know. These ideas aren't mutually exclusive but most musicians seem to come down on one side or the other. Here's what I think: technique and vocabulary are meant to function IN THE SERVICE of artistry. In other words, know how to authoritatively use what you've got. Then seek out new information and learn to use that properly. In this way your skills serve your muse instead of dictating your style....and as your abilities grow, your music grows along with them.
The first week, I attended a well-established summer music program for six days of intensive class study with one of the foremost and most influential jazz guitarists in the world. Who it was is peripheral to the story....the relevant part is that the prospect of soaking up some of this man's knowledge drew guitarists from all over the world, all equally devoted to mastering the bebop style of jazz. Now, bebop is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult and complex languages in any genre of music, and I have tremendous respect for any musician on any instrument that can master it. But my interest in this workshop was more to broaden my musical horizons....I knew that this master teacher had worked with other musicians I admired that were not strictly jazzers but creative souls looking for a new approach.
Sadly, the master I had come to see suffered a debilitating illness and was unable to lead the class. The teacher who came in his stead was a wonderful substitute in that he himself had a complete and in-depth knowledge of the style himself and was at the same time probably a better communicator than the sometimes thorny genius we had all come to see. But I'm still relating peripheral details, as you'll see.....while I did get a lot out of the class, the great lesson I learned came later.
I was entering my fourth year of music school, studying classical guitar and practicing three to six hours a day. I was reading the journals of John Cage and Stravinsky and listening to Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett. In short, my head was full of high concepts and while I knew I had a lot to learn I felt I was thinking and playing on a highly sophisticated musical plane. But I also had the tendency towards hubris and the sense of invincibility of a young man in his early twenties, and I was about to be put squarely in my place.....by a bunch of middle-aged ex-hippies playing folk music.
I grew up on folk music and always had a love and appreciation for it...I still do. No amount of education will ever change the fact that the Clancy Brothers made me bawl like a baby singing "KillKelly" or that Jean Ritchie's "Black Waters" continues to give me goosebumps. So after my week in the rarified atmosphere of quartal chord voicings, the lydian flat 7 substitution, and post-tonal harmonic extensions, I went to "folk music week" at a summer retreat on Cape Cod. And here's where I learned my lesson: the folkies were better musicians.
Sounds like an audacious statement. Obviously the music they were playing was much simpler. But even though they played songs with three and four chords, they played with an authority that despite my training and supposed greater skill I was unable to match. And even more strikingly, fifteen or twenty people could sit in a circle making music together without stepping on each other. And I'm not talking about fifteen people strumming the same C chord and singing Kum-Ba-Ya.....I'm talking about a group of musicians listening to each other, each choosing their moment to contribute to the whole and then melting seamlessly back into the ensemble. Some able to play five or six instruments with equal authority and ease. Singing spontaneously in three and four and ten-part harmony. Knowing exactly how to listen to each other and blend into a harmonious whole.
Now, don't get me wrong. The masters of bebop and high-concept exploratory jazz who were teaching the first class I attended are musicians of the highest order. They DO possess listening skills and an understanding of harmony that is attained by few musicians in any style. But by and large the aspiring younger players who attended the class did not, myself included....and it was instructive to observe that while most of these guys (and it WAS mostly guys, another little detail that made folkie camp much more pleasant) could play every standard in the Real Book backwards and forwards, they still needed the book to know what to play. And two of them playing together often couldn't keep from stepping all over each other instead of blending to make music together. The ensemble class was a particularly grevious example, with near-cacophony threatening to take over until the instructor (who I hold in very high esteem and absolutely DOES "get it") pulled back the reins.
I don't mean to make a blanket indictment of jazz and jazz musicians. Great jazz players continue to be an inspiration to me, and in my opinion John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" still stands as one of the most incredible recorded examples of master musicians tuning in to one another and together pushing their explorations into the stratosphere. But the lesson is this: it doesn't matter how many chords or scales you know if you can't listen to someone else play and complement it in some way. Vocabulary without proper context and the means to put it there is useless. I've hired sidemen who possess tremendous skill only to have them completely ruin a gig by overplaying and being more in love with their own ability than with the needs of the song.
Technique and vocabulary are wonderful in that they give you options. But artistry is in how you use what you know. These ideas aren't mutually exclusive but most musicians seem to come down on one side or the other. Here's what I think: technique and vocabulary are meant to function IN THE SERVICE of artistry. In other words, know how to authoritatively use what you've got. Then seek out new information and learn to use that properly. In this way your skills serve your muse instead of dictating your style....and as your abilities grow, your music grows along with them.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Hear Beyond Your Instrument
I often hear songwriters say that their goal on the guitar or piano is to play "just well enough to write songs". I think what they mean is that they don't want to learn to play things that aren't going to impact their songwriting, but I think it misses a point. (First of all, I think everything can impact your writing, but that's a topic for another article). What we really want to be focused on is not the vocabulary in your fingers but the vocabulary in your head. So today I'd like introduce a way you can broaden that vocabulary without even touching an instrument, and it's as simple as opening your ears.
A core element of any formal music education is something called "ear training". This is the process by which we learn to identify and categorize sounds....melodies (notes in sequence), intervals (distances between notes) and chords (notes that sound simultaneously). While an instrument can be a helpful reference in this process it can also get in the way, by keeping your mind on your fingers and visual relationships rather than on your ears and aural (heard) relationships. So we're going to use our ears and voice as the primary instruments, and use the guitar or keyboard as a reference. Keep in mind that this is not about being a vocalist, so it doesn't matter if you're a strong singer or not. The idea is to use the voice to establish a direct connection to what I'll call your inner ear....."inner" not in the anatomical sense but the musical one.
For the purposes of this exercise you will need to work from an existing song, preferably one you didn't write. It could be on your computer, an I-Pod, or a CD, but most importantly you should be able to move easily from one part of the song to another.
Listen through the entire song and sketch out the form or "map" of the tune. As a writer you should already be familiar with the basic structural elements of song form: verse, lift/pre-chorus/ channel, chorus, and perhaps a bridge, intro, interlude, or outro.
Your map should list all of these sections in the order they appear.
Now listen through the song again. Since we've established where the primary sections are, this time we're listening for a greater level of detail. See if you can figure out how long each section lasts, and more importantly how many times you hear the chords change within each section. This is where the voice comes in: see if you can sing along, but instead of singing the melody try to sing along with the bass or primary rhythm instrument. Note that it doesn't matter whether your voice is low or high, the point is not to match the exact pitch but to give you the clearest outline of when the chords change. More often than not, the note played by the bass or rhythm guitar will be the note that names the chord (called the "root').
If you find that you're having difficulty finding the notes with your voice, try listening to just a small section at a time. You may end up listening to only a couple of beats before you stop the music, but that's OK. With repeated attempts you should be able to zero in on the basic "chord changes" for each section, and once you can sing along you can move to your instrument and try to find the notes you're singing. Don't worry about whether you can find the complete chord that goes with each change.....all we're trying to do in this case is to identify one note for each chord. If you can, fill in these notes on your map or "chord chart", and then see if you can find a pattern to the order the chords appear in.
What we're ultimately trying to accomplish is make your ear aware of chords and how they fit together. The more adept you become at this, the more possible options you'll have open to you in your writing, as you start to hear chord changes in your inner ear that your fingers haven't yet learned. Using the voice to guide the way we can sketch out the basic direction of the chord changes, and then use a chord dictionary (or ask a more skilled player) to suggest some possible options that might fit what you're hearing. This way of thinking should open your ears and broaden your horizons musically, so that when you sit with your instrument you can follow what you hear in your head. This is what it means to hear beyond your instrument: to be limited only by your imagination instead of by your fingers.
A core element of any formal music education is something called "ear training". This is the process by which we learn to identify and categorize sounds....melodies (notes in sequence), intervals (distances between notes) and chords (notes that sound simultaneously). While an instrument can be a helpful reference in this process it can also get in the way, by keeping your mind on your fingers and visual relationships rather than on your ears and aural (heard) relationships. So we're going to use our ears and voice as the primary instruments, and use the guitar or keyboard as a reference. Keep in mind that this is not about being a vocalist, so it doesn't matter if you're a strong singer or not. The idea is to use the voice to establish a direct connection to what I'll call your inner ear....."inner" not in the anatomical sense but the musical one.
For the purposes of this exercise you will need to work from an existing song, preferably one you didn't write. It could be on your computer, an I-Pod, or a CD, but most importantly you should be able to move easily from one part of the song to another.
Listen through the entire song and sketch out the form or "map" of the tune. As a writer you should already be familiar with the basic structural elements of song form: verse, lift/pre-chorus/ channel, chorus, and perhaps a bridge, intro, interlude, or outro.
Your map should list all of these sections in the order they appear.
Now listen through the song again. Since we've established where the primary sections are, this time we're listening for a greater level of detail. See if you can figure out how long each section lasts, and more importantly how many times you hear the chords change within each section. This is where the voice comes in: see if you can sing along, but instead of singing the melody try to sing along with the bass or primary rhythm instrument. Note that it doesn't matter whether your voice is low or high, the point is not to match the exact pitch but to give you the clearest outline of when the chords change. More often than not, the note played by the bass or rhythm guitar will be the note that names the chord (called the "root').
If you find that you're having difficulty finding the notes with your voice, try listening to just a small section at a time. You may end up listening to only a couple of beats before you stop the music, but that's OK. With repeated attempts you should be able to zero in on the basic "chord changes" for each section, and once you can sing along you can move to your instrument and try to find the notes you're singing. Don't worry about whether you can find the complete chord that goes with each change.....all we're trying to do in this case is to identify one note for each chord. If you can, fill in these notes on your map or "chord chart", and then see if you can find a pattern to the order the chords appear in.
What we're ultimately trying to accomplish is make your ear aware of chords and how they fit together. The more adept you become at this, the more possible options you'll have open to you in your writing, as you start to hear chord changes in your inner ear that your fingers haven't yet learned. Using the voice to guide the way we can sketch out the basic direction of the chord changes, and then use a chord dictionary (or ask a more skilled player) to suggest some possible options that might fit what you're hearing. This way of thinking should open your ears and broaden your horizons musically, so that when you sit with your instrument you can follow what you hear in your head. This is what it means to hear beyond your instrument: to be limited only by your imagination instead of by your fingers.
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