Music Lab

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday July 24, 2010 – Music Lab

Four in the circle today; 3 of the usual suspects, and Jaxie turned up as well.

Began with a bit of free circulation in the key of G Major.

Moved on to the ear training game of circulating in G Major, moving no more than one diatonic step up or down. Beginning on G at the 10th fret of the 3rd string, the first guitarist played the G followed by either A or F#. The next guitarist would then play the previous guitarists second note, and then move to another note a diatonic second up or down from that. The next guitarist would play the second note of that pair and then another note a diatonic second up or down from that, and so on. With only 4 players in the circle, keeping track of where we were when the circulation came back around was not too daunting a challenge, and the team did well. Even though the “melody” that emerges from this is naturally a little limited and perhaps uninteresting due to the constraints of the exercise, there is a qualitative and musical shift that occurs when the players let go of thinking about notes and trust their ears and hands. A certain flow is possible, and it appeared from time to time.

From here we moved to the same exercise, but adding diatonic thirds to the allowable movement. This definitely added a more musical quality to the resulting melody, but also increased the hazard. Mistakes in this incarnation of the exercise tended to create more train wrecks, where in the 1-step only version mistakes were easier to weather.

The final stage of this exercise eliminated the step of repeating the preceding guitarist’s second note, but simply moving to a note within a diatonic third up or down. This took some time to gain momentum. A certain tentativeness in the assertion of the chosen note, and more than a few inadvertent fourths and fifths crept into the mix. Nevertheless, there was an unmistakeable musical intelligence in the resulting melody.

A short break, and then we moved on to more fun with voice leading. For this week, a rudimentary blues progression in G.

With 4 players, I assigned notes of a basic tonic G7 arpeggio, which were played in circulation with return, up and down:

G-B-D-F-D-B

…giving a basic 6/8 feel. This took some time to settle in, and in fairness the people sitting in the 2nd and 3rd chairs are in the “hot seats” since their notes bounce back at them more quickly than for those in the pole positions.

We then established the C7 (IV) chord by having everyone simply move up a fourth. D7 (V) was established by moving a fifth up from the tonic (a whole step up from the fourth). Using these voicings, we established the form of the simple 12-bar blues, visualizing it in terms of 3 4-bar phrases:

C7-G7-C7-C7
G7-G7-C7-C7
D7-C7-G7-D7

or, in functional terms:

I-IV-I-I
IV-IV-I-I
V-IV-I-V

Played this way, there was very little elegance to the voice movement, very much the way beginner guitarists tend to play the blues when they have just learned how to use barre chords, everything moving in parallel blocks. But it helped us to establish, in our ears and capacity to visualize a pattern, the harmonic movement of this iconic form.

When we began to look at the harmonic movement in terms of voice leading, we quickly abandoned the circulation in favor of pulsing together in eighth notes. We again established the “rule” that in moving from chord to chord, we moved 1) by not moving at all if the note was common to both chords, or 2) by half or whole step. Thirds were allowed if absolutely necessary. Giving ourselves this kind of freedom to chose our own note had the immediate effect making it more difficult to keep track of the 12-bar form, but eventually it settled in. It was understood that since everyone was following their own “melody”, it was inevitable that notes would sometimes be missing from a particular chord. The final step was to allow leaps of up to a major third within a particular chord. In this way, intelligent adjustments could be made to the resulting voicings in order to 1) fill out missing elements, and/or 2) move individual players out of narrow melody loops that they might be feeling stranded in.

With 7 or 8 players, there is a further refinement possible that I am longing to hear. Perhaps next Saturday.