Expanding your ear

Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

I've been learning music theory with the help of a friend who was educated in jazz guitar. We jam together with me on pedal steel and him on electric guitar. One thing that we do is that he'll pick out a chord progression and I'll have a few day to try to work out both a short solo composition for it as well as something to play behind him soloing.

This past week, the chord progression was F-Em-A-C-D, or IV-iii-VI-I-II in the key of C. I started out my solo composition by arpeggiating an Fsus2 and bending into a plain F chord and then hitting the #11th before striking the 3rd and 5th of the F chord again. In that context, it worked really well. However, later in the chord progression I did the same pattern over the C chord: Csus2 - C - #11th and it sound very "off" to me. I don't understand the reason why it worked so well over the F chord and not the C chord.

I played it for my jazz-educated friend, and he thought it was just fine... that it was just a matter of me "expanding my ear". I played it a few more times and it become more palatable to me, but still didn't sound good by any measure.

If this is what it means to "expand your ear", then I don't think I want to do it. I don't reject the idea of accepting novel phrasing and incorporating it into your musical vocabulary. For example, I think my mom has a very narrow ear. For her, any note in the melody that isn't a chord tone sounds like an embellishment. Despite the fact that I love music, I don't have a musical-type personality. I don't think the music itself should challenge the listener too much. If that were the case, they'd I'd expect musicians to pay me to listen instead of vice versa. I also don't want to become musically out of touch with the majority of listeners.

All this makes me suspicious of music theory, in a way. I appreciate when music theory tells me why I perceive music the way I do. I don't like it to tell me what I'm supposed to perceive and what I'm not supposed to perceive. I don't care if the #11th over the F major was technically the same as the #11th over the C major, they didn't sound the same to me and the former had musical meaning while the second didn't.

My point is that I'm just fine with the limitations of my musical ear even if the music theory doesn't justify it. Is this a musically ignorant attitude?

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Curt, the first step is really understanding the function of each chord of the diatonic scale. From looking at the progression you posted, I'm having a hard time understanding the logic of it. Are the A and D chords dom7 chords, major? From what I've read, it's hard to tell. Chord progressions sometimes are like a wonderful little puzzle or even a roadmap to get to the I chord.

I posted a few articles on my blog, called Understanding Harmony. I haven't read it in a while, but I think there is some useful stuff there. If you click the link, scroll down toward the bottom for the introduction and part 1.

Understanding Harmony

Music theory is very simple to understand. All you have to do is start with the major scale: harmonize it, learn about secondary dominants and chord functions, learn the minor scales in the same way, and you will have a lifetime of understanding that makes it much easier to navigate and learn about the unknown.
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Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Thanks Mike! I'm not sure why my friend picked out at the chord progression either. It doesn't make much sense to me. We did hear it in a guitar solo in a song recently, so that's probably where he got it from.

You mention music theory helping a person "navigate into the unknown", any maybe that's what I'm apprehensive about. It's not my goal to play bizarre jazz improvisations. I think what I'm trying to say is that if my ear doesn't want to hear a given note or pattern, I don't want to force it to adapt on the grounds that it's "musically correct". At this stage in my musical development, that's more math than music.

Ken Campbell · From: Ferndale, Montana

Curt,

In my limited experience I think a great analogy would be the training of your right hand. We all agree that the right hand is an essential element and whatever school you ascribe to, you have to force your right hand to do what you need it to do. Training. That training allows you to forget about it at some point and let it be a function of your expression, in my mind the ultimate goal. What Mike is saying, and what I totally agree with is the idea that through theory and new and different chord progressions and harmonies, you train your mind and ear to become the same function of your expression....just another way to look at it I suppose.....

Kc

Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

What I'm getting at is that I see "expanding my ear" to be putting the cart before the horse. It's great how music theory allows us to easily express ourselves musically. I just don't understand the idea behind letting music theory dictate what expressions I must believe are "correct".

In my case, it's not that my musical expression veers outside of music theory, it's that music theory tells me that something that is outside of my zone is "correct" when it doesn't sound right to me.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

If it doesn't sound right, then it probably isn't right. When it comes to using #11, as you mentioned above, there are specific places where you would use it, such as on a IV chord. Anywhere else would be venturing out of diatonicism.

Music theory can help you from playing the "wrong" stuff, simply by knowing what works. It can save you the trouble of finding out the hard way. We all have our own ground rules, though.
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Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

But is it narrow-minded of me to be content with what my "ground rules" are right now and not feel motivated to push my personal boundaries of musical taste?

Mike, I think you probably hit the nail on the head with why the #11 sounded good over the F major but not the C major, even though it doesn't explain why. Also, with a chord progression like that, the key signature (and thus whether a chord is dominant, sub-dominant, etc.) seems almost nominal to me based on what I know so far about music theory.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Play what you like. That's really what matters.

It is very important, though, to know the function and quality of a chord. For instance, in any key there is only one dom7 chord, the V7. Anytime you have a II7 or VI7, you have temporarily left that key and are moving toward another destination. The II7 becomes the V7 of another key, so if in the key of C you play D7, you have temporarily strayed into G major, since D7 is the V7 of G. However, that will not last, as you will probably be going to G7 next, which is the V7 of C.

It can get as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. A little knowledge will enable you to keep it simple, believe it or not.
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Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

This stuff is great. I have a technically-oriented mind, but some of this stuff is so far over my head that it's not even funny. The notation and terminology is the biggest hurdle for me.

If I were a natural-born music nerd, I think I'd probably move out into the desert like a hermit for a few years and rewrite music theory so that the notation is more intuitive. Sometimes I want to go back in time to when composers first came up with all these notations and stomp on their toes.

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

I agree with Mike; play what sounds good to you now. Listen to all kinds of music and, over time, what sounds good to you might shift. If it does, that would be the time to learn more about it. I think of "outside" pitches as "spice". You might not like a certain spice today, but try it again in a couple of years and see how you feel about it then. There's no hurry. Enjoy what you play.
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Curt Trisko · From: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Thanks Jim! Learning to like different "spices" is what I'm worried about Very Happy

. I see people get sucked into the black hole and sometimes they never come back out! Laughing

If you can't tell, I'm a little scared of jazz. It's like a dangerous woman. It's fun to flirt, but go any further and you might find yourself walking down the side of the highway at 3am in your underwear with a head full of fuzz.

Thank you for telling me that there's no hurry. I'm learning pedal steel as a hobby and am being leisurely about it. I think I'm getting so much more out of it by letting myself develop organically instead of pushing hard to reach an end point.

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Gary Meixner · From: New York, USA

Curt,

I say learn all you can. Studying theory is not going to make you a bad musician or spoil your ear. Quite the opposite in fact, you will develop a deeper understanding of what is happening as a song moves through the changes. Plus you will learn new ways to interact with the music (and this is important) on your own terms. You will still be you, your aesthetic will be much the same, you will loose some of the mystery and keep all the magic.

Basic music theory is not all that difficult to learn and I bet you will find that you know a lot already. And of the theory you already know I bet you consider it indispensable.

If you get stuck just get on the forum and ask a question.

Very best regards,

Gary Meixner

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

I find that the emotional content of what someone is doing is ultimately what gets to me, and I'm sure there are reasons why my ear lines up with one thing and not another. Different people might delve very deep somewhere to say something, but it's what they're saying and not how they say it that zoinks me - or not. I have never been able to love any entire genre of music (I do O.K. hating opera, though Laughing

).

When I was a kidlet growing up in guitarland, the great extant Stones/Beatles, black/white up/down dichotomy was between - Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin. And while I'm sure I'll never understand fully what Metheny plays, I don't really care because it's just "blah" to me. And I'm equally sure I'll never understand McLaughlin's tricks - to my ear, like in the 1999-2000 R. Shakti quartet he's using perhaps more devices to generate melody than anyone else, ever. He totally gobsmacked my brain with the first Mahavishnu, first & second Shakti's, the trio with DeLucia and DiMeola. Because of the fabulous wealth of music available, I just HAVE to give myself permission to not like some things, even though I "know" they're great music!

You can only spend so long listening to something you don't like because "it's good for you", Duane the bathtub I'm dwounding*.

*(knock-knock... Duane... etc.)

The first guitar solo, first song here:
http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/RememberShakti1999-06-26BerkleePerformanceCenterBostonMA.asx

Jamie Mitchell · From: Nashville, TN

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