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These musical games are a fun and effective tools for learning useful concepts and skills.

Inverted Major Seven Chord Is Actually Minor

August 28th, 2014

Some chords are just like that. You change the bass, and the whole chord is completely different. An easy example is when the bass changes to the root of the relative minor (the 6th scale degree) underneath the tonic triad. Chances are that you’ve heard this tonic prolongation technique before. Maybe even used it!

(Take note that I’ve added the 7th scales degree in the example. This simply make the chords M7 and m9. Also, in the image I’ve added a C on the top of the chord when going to the m9. This is to replace the C that has been left vacant in the bass.)

The inverted major seven chord is actually a minor add 6 chord.

inverted-major-seven-chord All you change is the bass, but all of a sudden you have a minor seven chord. While this is neat and useful, the relationships that occur when the bass plays the third scale degree reveal much more exciting possibilities. The same four notes reorchestrated can literally form a completely new chord. So new, in fact, that an inverted major seven chord should actually be analyzed as a minor chord with an added sixth.

Changing the bass to the third of the chord means that we have not added or subtracted any notes from the tonic major seven. Simply reorganized. This is more exciting because our previous example added a note to get that minor sound. That’s just a boring regular ol’ chord change! This is different.

Here is a major seven chord:

Here is an “inverted major seven chord” (first inversion) that is actually a minor add 6 chord:

Now listen to the chords interact with one another. Hear how they are the exact same chord, but the bass position entirely changes your perception of it. Also listen for the delicious ambiguity at the end; which is it!?

This shift in cognition occurs because when the bass moves to the third of the chord, a fifth is formed between the seventh and the bass. This fifth relationship is a simpler proportion than the third relationship formed with the root. This, in turn, outlines the fifth of the inverted major seven chord and our brains reinturpret the fifth as the third in a new chord. This redefines the chord as a minor chord to our ears. Now the minor triad on the top of the inverted major seven chord is perceived as the most important feature of the sonority. What was formerly the root is now simply a spicy treat added on to the new chord.

Drum Rudiment Game – Progression to Paradiddles

August 24th, 2014

Paradiddles are difficult for beginners. When I was little, I asked a guy to show me a few things on the drum set. He showed me paradiddles. I didn’t practice them because they were hard and didn’t sound cool. Those are very good reasons for a kid not to practice something! There are more efficient ways of leaning the monotonous skill. So I made a drum rudiment game that includes paradiddles.

A Drum Rudiment Game Makes it More Fun

Rudiment Rock-It starts the player off with the single stroke roll. Back and forth; right to left. But there’s a rocket, and you want it to get to the top of the screen. Now there’s motivation to keep your taps even! Once the player has begun to develop this basic percussive skill, the drum rudiment game then directs the player towards the double stroke roll. Same story there. The player is motivated to keep their taps even.

Something important to notice when learning these drum rudiments is that the single stroke roll and the double stroke roll form a paradiddle when put next to each other. The single stroke roll and the double stroke roll are the most basic patterns possible when you only have two hands to work with. Think about it. Two strokes and two hands. Either you do the same hand twice or you do one stroke with each hand. Important skills to learn on both sides of your body if you want to be a drummer! Paradiddles take the combination of these skills and cause a musician to think about the patterns on a higher level. This reinforces effective sticking reflexes and makes more difficult patterns easier to achieve.

But achieving this ability doesn’t happen intuitively. It used to be a rigorous and monotonous process of R L and L R and L L and R R and L R L L and R L R R. But now you can just play a drum rudiment game. You’re welcome.

Metronome – When to Not Use One

August 14th, 2014

metronome-when-not-to-use-one Don’t get excited. It’s a rare thing. Turning off the metronome is for professionals only. That is unless a professional told you to turn it off. If you’re a beginner musician, leave your metronome on. If you’ve been playing a while and can keep fairly steady time, this is where a metronome just might be holding you back from progressing.

The traditional argument (and it’s a good one) is that if you can’t keep you part together with something predictable and solid, how are you possibly going to keep your part together with another person? That’s what Mommy told me in the 6th grade, and she was absolutely right. If you can’t keep it together with a metronome, you can’t keep it together with anything. But once a musician gets to a certain level of time keeping proficiency, there is a time to set it aside. There’s another aspect to metronome practice that can actually hold a musician back; aligning your body with itself.

The metronome is an external thing that each musician internalizes in order to all be on the same page. Each beat should be exactly as far away from the previous one so that everyone agrees on when to play the next note. But there are tiny details that have nothing to do with the metronome that get overlooked. Details that occur between each note outside of the pulse and they must occur in a certain sequence in order to be correct. For example, On a woodwind instrument, the throat position must change a split second before the fingers. Otherwise the next note will have a weak and anemic attack. A metronome might get in the way of learning this technique.

Turn Off the Metronome: An Example From Percussion

Rudiment Rock-It

Drum rudiments should almost always be practiced with a metronome. But there comes a time when a percussionists weaker hand becomes conditioned to be satisfied with not being as powerful. Their single stroke roll becomes permanently swung. Their double stroke roll is sloppy with a consistent decrescendo between the four taps. A metronome hides that defect from a student. Yes, leading left helps, but it doesn’t fix all of the problems. At some point, the parts of a person’s internal striking mechanism must be aligned to itself. A metronome will get in the way. Turn it off. Play the singly stroke roll slowly. Speed it up. Slow it down. Let yourself go into a sort of trance by focusing on the sound you’re making. Play at speeds you are comfortable with until you can’t figure out which hand is making which sound. Do the same with the other rudiments. You have already internalized the symmetrical proportion of time. You have mastered it. Trust your intuitive judgment, turn off the metronome, and efficiently make your weak hand stronger. Then turn it back on to see how much faster you’ve become in the past five minutes. It works, I promise.

Thanks to Rudiment Rock-It, beginners can now use this technique too. Teachers need not be worried about students developing bad habits. The game allows the player to speed up, but keeps track of the time passed between each tap. If the player becomes unbalanced in their timing, the rocket crashes and they lose. But before they crash, the game gives them a chance to slow down and regroup to try to win. So the gameplay encourages perfect and efficient practice without a metronome. There has never been a more fun or efficient way to learn the basic rudiments of percussion.

This game is so efficient because it applies this theory of a metronome getting in the way of a musician’s body aligning with itself. Instead of an outside force beating a student into submission, the game tells the player what their striking mechanism is actually doing. A persons hands align themselves to each other without needing to think about the outside influence of a metronome, and one problem can be dealt with at a time.

Practicing with a metronome still solves the majority of timing problems. However, any problem that has to do with a person’s body sequencing events with itself might be better dealt with using alternate methods.

There will be more games like this. Stay “tuned.”

Lifelong Learners – You’re Not Too Old to Learn Music

August 8th, 2014

Too often older folks tell me that they have no musical talent what-so-ever. This is usually in the context of discussing my own musical abilities. I appreciate the compliments (don’t we all). Compliment me further and ask to be taught! This is actually very important for the same reason that it is important to learn music in a person’s early years. The key to being a lifelong learner is knowing how to learn. Music teaches us this skill.

A lifelong learner probes and prods every detail in an object. They look at a broken appliance, figure out how it works, and fix it themselves. They look at a programming language and study it rather than declaring it to be magical. A lifelong learner listens to music, and starts asking questions about how it’s done. It’s not enough to appreciate beauty. They want to know why its beautiful. They want to make it themselves, and this is a wonderful thing.

Music is for the Lifelong Learner

Music is a marvelous way to teach us how to be curious. It teaches us how to listen. It’s not possible to reproduce a sound you haven’t listened to. Lifelong learners are sponges. They soak up all of the information around them and in all of its forms. The arts in general are a raw form of teaching the skill of observation and emulation. It forces the learner to make seemingly arbitrary connections. “How will adding blue to this spot of the canvas create beauty.” But it does, and learning happens. This sort of intuitive knowledge is what grants the ability to manipulate the world around us. Lifelong learners reconstruct illogical data in a way that is beautiful and useful.

Are you a lifelong learner who doesn’t know music? Probe into the raw materials of creative thought. You’re not too old to learn music. You can start here.

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