A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded—you take your pick.
Showing posts with label Music Theory for Poets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music Theory for Poets. Show all posts
It’s Thursday, so hope you’re ready for some great guitar music!
I’ve been featuring the extraordinary Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell in February, & here on the month’s last day we get to listen to his performance of his own composition, “Prelúdio in A minor,” from a concert late in his career. Baden Powell, who was born in 1937, passed away in 2000.
The “Prelúdio in A minor” is built entirely on groups of sextuplets (also known as sestoles & other variations), which is a series of six notes played over a single beat. The most familiar such grouping to the general listener’s ear is the triplet, which is three notes played against a single beat, & is in fact the basis of the shuffle rhythm heard in blues & related types of music—the shuffle consists of the first & last notes of the triplet figure, with the middle note omitted, thus giving them a “swung” sound.
This type of note grouping is called “irrational rhythm,” because it divides the notes in ways that seem to work against the general feel of the music—the underlying pulse, so to speak. For a piece in 4/4 time (four quarter notes per measure, & a beat to each quarter note), the pulse would indicate that notes would be divided into groups of that will evenly divide four or are evenly divided by four, which six is not. Thus the flow of six sixteenth notes per beat in the melody plays against the steady four of the bass strings. It really is a masterful work & challenging to play—even once you would get all those 16 notes down, you still have to play those repeating figures in a musical manner, while keeping up the strong bass movement. For those who are interested, there two standard notation/tab versions on this page dedicated to Baden Powell’s music—it’s a delight to explore, for certain!
That’s a lot of technical music stuff, but don’t be dismayed! There won’t be a quiz; & hearing Baden Powell’s beautiful playing will be worth it.
Enjoy.
Image of Baden Powell links to its source on Wiki Commons, which claims fair use for making the image available. There are instances of this same image in much higher resolution available elsewhere on the web.
[This is a re-post from The Spring Ghazals blog. Next time there will be a brand new music theory for poets post, probably next weekend. No photo of the week today—simply put, our harsh winter weather has made it difficult to get around for picture taking.]
Ready for some more music theory? Remember, this is for poets (non-poets welcome too, of course), so we’re making this as painless as possible!
When I left you last, we were just starting to think about the difference between major & minor chords. In fact, we discovered a chord called a major 7 that’s a combination of a major chord & a minor chord—music can be pretty witchy that way.
OK—most folks know do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do. It’s a major scale—what makes it major? Actually, there are a few considerations, but for today we’ll just consider the most basic: that’s the interval between do & mi. If you can sing “do-mi” you are singing what musical types call a “major third.” If you have a piano or keyboard around the house, play a C followed by an E a couple of notes above it—again, a major third. A plain old major chord contains just three notes: do-mi-sol. That’s it! Here’s that major third:
Perhaps you have a guitar around. Actually, since you’ll just be using one string, it doesn’t even matter too much whether it’s in tune. Pluck the low E string—confusingly enough, the “low E” is the string that’s closest to your nose when holding the guitar in any conventional manner. The high E is the string closest to your toes. So pluck that low E, then fret the E string on the fourth fret. In case you’re curious, that’s a G#. E. G#. Major third! Here’s what it sounds like:
Now there are a few differences between a major & minor scale, but for today, let’s just worry about chords. & I can tell you there’s only one note that’s different between a major chord & a minor chord! It’s hard to explain using do-re-mi; because the difference would be that rather than singing “mi,” you’d be singing “mi-flat.” So if you have a piano, strike the C, then strike the Eb a note & a half above it (it’s the black note to the left of E natural). That’s a minor third:
With your guitar, pluck the E string, then fret the third fret. You’re playing an E, then a G. Just a plain old G natural, not G# as you were before. That’s a minor third.
So the notes of a minor chord are “do-mi flat-sol.” “Do & Sol” remain the same. This can be expressed as a pattern of “whole steps” & “half steps,” but this is music theory for poets, so we won’t worry about that right now. Suffice it to say that sol is the fifth tone of the scale—you can see that easily enough: do-re-mi-fa-sol. If you’re still at your piano, you will find the “sol” for C is G. If you play C-E-G simultaneously, you’re playing a C major chord. If you play C-E flat-G simultaneously, you’re playing a C minor chord.
Now back to the guitar. We know that if E is “do,” then G sharp is “mi.” If E is “do” & a G natural is played, it becomes minor. The “sol” of E is B natural—that would on the 7th fret of the low E string (guitar players—the 7th fret is always the “sol” or fifth of the open string!—also true of banjos, ukes, bass guitars, mandolins, etc) So E-G sharp-B is E major; E-G-B is E minor.
If you recall last time, I mentioned that a major 7 chord adds the tone “ti” from the major scale. That makes sense because if you count to seven, you’ll see that “ti” is the seventh tone of do-re-mi. Now it so happens that if you play a C major scale, you’ll hear that B natural is the “ti” note. Now think about it: a C major 7 contains the notes C-E-G-B. Think about the C major chord: C-E-G. The E minor chord? E-G-B. See how that works?
In the poem “How High the Moon,” I wrote:
“a trailer truck on Highway 95, the glass slide whooshing guitar strings, a riff existing somewhere between the major & minor modes”
&
“the glass slide existing somewhere between the major & minor modes”
There are a number of guitar riffs, particularly associated with the blues—& therefore by extension to rock & jazz & even country that incorporate the ease with which the guitar can move back & forth between major & minor chords, especially in certain keys. One of the simplest is this, in the key of E:
Of course using a slide—which regular readers of Robert Frost’s Banjo know from my Monday Morning Blues series—enables the player to move between tones (& actually even in micro-tones of the established scale) without actually pressing down the strings. So moving back between the major & minor thirds—again in the key of D, on a guitar tuned to an open major D chord (hey, you know what that means now), sounds like this:
