Take Two Steps Back

[JimLucas]

Alan started this Topic in the General Discussion subForum, but it seems to me that it's very much about learning, so I'm putting my reply here, in the hope that further discussion will also continue in this Teaching and Learning subForum.

 

I hope this however helps some of you who like me do things the wrong way round.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Alan, you are assisting "the enemy".

Yours may be a different way from what is promoted by a particular establishment, but it is not "wrong". Many excellent musicians have followed that same route.

 

My own story is, I guess, somewhere in between and off to the side. In grade school I learned about major and minor chords and scales, and somewhere along the way I picked up that 7th chords were used to produce an "unfinished" feeling which could then be "resolved" to form a feeling of "completion". But that was about the extent of it. No formal training in music theory (be aware that it's "just a theory" ) -- chord progressions, counterpoint, etc.

 

When I was in high school (secondary school), I got curious about chords, so I taught myself what the different chord names meant by examining my sister's sheet music for popular songs, and noting what notes in the piano score correlated with which chord names. Among other things, this led me to the conclusion that the match-up wasn't perfect. There certainly wasn't a new chord symbol every time there was a new note in the score. The chord symbols were a suggestion or framework, not just an alternate notation for what was written in the score. (To me, that was a revelation.) Sometimes the written chords implied notes that didn't appear in the score, while in many places there were notes that didn't fit into the designated chords. (I later concluded that these were what was meant by the term "passing tones".) Another thing I noticed was that a chord name was identified with the notes of the scale that it contained, but not by the order or octave in which they were included. (That, I learned somewhere, is called "inversion".)

 

But that's about as far as I went. It didn't occur to me to look for "standard" sequences of chords, what I now know are called "chord progressions". And I wasn't able to make any real use of it, since I didn't play an instrument where I could produce chords (trumpet & French horn at that time; I still don't play the piano), nor was I writing my own music. 10-15 years later I got my first concertina, but I didn't think of it as a chordal instrument. Often, I used it to play one note at a time, like a brass or woodwind. If I did try to play more than one note at a time, it was to add a harmony line, similar to singing harmony, something else I was familiar with.

 

Now, another 40 years on, I've become interested in richer arrangements, but I'm again mainly looking at what others do, not what they say. And I do a lot of experimenting. What I've discovered is that chords and chord progressions are only one of several different ways of viewing groups of notes and how they change over time.

 

So my "two steps back" are to step back and look at what I find -- from various distances -- and learn to recognize patterns that I can copy or modify for use elsewhere, without transforming them into rigid rules that might prevent my discovering yet more patterns.

 

I think that if there's a general rule/lesson here, it's to take a new look and try a new approach. For Alan, it was taking a more formal, analytical approach than what had been his habit. For by-the-dots players, it might be learning to play by ear. For someone who is well-trained in chord progressions, it might be experimenting with modifying a progression -- either substituting a new chord in a sequence or changing a single note in a chord -- and seeing where that leads. One way to do that on the concertina is by simply moving a finger, without thinking about what note or chord will result. Often the result is awful, but sometimes it can be unexpectedly desirable.

[Rhomylly]

I took a college theory class last fall for non-music majors. It's definitely improved my note recognition, my sense of rhythm, and my ability to figure out chords.