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James, movable do to me is linked to function within a certain kind of music (you'll know which I mean). That's what it was designed for and where it works. It is NOT about intervals per se. For example, So Do is a P4, but so is Do Fa. But if I sing the latter a number of times, after a while it sounds like another So Do because I start hearing V-I and not I-IV. I hear function as well as interval as a singer who started with that system.

Ti Re Fa sounds good until you want to add the next note. And if I am singing a fully diminished chord where the bottom note is not the seventh of the music, my head would go up in smoke. I think that singing in intervals of generic thirds (nameless) or visualizing them aurally as semitones, is a lot safer.

But this begs the question: are fully diminished chords usually played as an exercise divorced from music in the study of any instrument? I have a feeling that they aren't. If it isn't done, then why worry about how to do it?

In the way LoPresti worded his question, I don't think it was a question. It sounds rhetorical, with a foregone conclusion, because of how it ended.

I find that explaining major chords, for instance, as the 1st 3rd 5th of a scale is useless unless all major scales are learned first. I would explain that information AFTER students have already learned chord chord. I used to teach scales first, or always use scales to teach chords. I switched because the other way is faster for me, but I still teach major scales. The timing is just a bit different, the order in which I present things.

Good grief, I am not talking about college students majoring in music! I’m talking about BEGINNERS. I teach this by year two, and I get to it in only a few months with really quick minds, and very young ones. The 6 chord idea is a way to get the chords PLAYED, quickly. I think I have not explained that I cover these things very early. It’s not a classical vs non-classical thing. A kid who fully feels an Edim7 chord, without spelling, will get that same chord in Fuer Elise in seconds because he (or she) already has it in his hands. For him it’s a matter of suddenly realizing that this “chord” is right in his music, and at that point I can just say it’s Edim7, or I can go into the C#dim7/E concept if it is appropriate.

Full agreement. A good teacher will have many different approaches and will find the one most appropriate to the student – which takes into consideration age, talent, natural ability for theory, ear, goals, etc.

Well, since I did not get a direct answer (except perhaps from Gary and his trumpet (Baritone Horn, Tuba), let me ask it a different way:

Instead of dancing around the real issue, which is learning the foundation of how these chords are constructed, WHY WOULDN'T a teacher teach this SIMPLE, UNIVERSAL RULE:
>> ANY diminished triad can be constructed with a root, a minor third, and a diminished fifth << ?

Notice that it works for zither, hum-strum, and ooude, as well as the more popular instruments.

Ed

Here:-


- you insist that construction (architecture?) cannot be taught without recourse to spelling.


And yet, in your very next post you posit (a formula which, incidentally, has already been touted in various guises in this thread around a half a dozen times) -



Do you not see that this approach needs no recourse to spelling whatsoever?

OK, Dire Tonic, one more time -

I am imagining myself trying to teach my theoretical clarinet player how to play a diminished triad built upon any root that she chooses or encounters.

We can assume that the player understands scales and intervals. I picture saying something like this: "You can build a diminished chord on any note, by playing the root, and then a minor third above it, and then a diminished fifth above the root. Let's try it starting with G."

Without referring to letter names and symbols (without spelling), how will this student proceed?

(In other words, No, I still do not understand.)
Ed

By counting intervals and then by rote.

In the playing of a diminished chord from any given note, you play the note, then the sound which is three semitones above that, then the sound which is three semitones above that, then the sound that is three semitones above that. By the fifth note you'll be an octave above your starting note. You don't need note names or fifths for that. To understand written music that you are playing, it's a good idea to know it.

I think it is coming into focus slowly - let me see if I understand your method:
[1] Clara the Clarinetist plays a G (which is sort of "spelling" because we have named the note.)
[2] She next THINKS up a minor third, and plays a second note (hopefully it is something like Bb, but we are not naming it.)
[3] She next THINKS up a diminished fifth from the root, and plays a third (unnamed) note.
[4] Clara repeats this group until she has them memorized, and calls them "a G diminished triad".

Now do I have it about right?
Ed

“Ok, Clarence. Today, we’re going to learn about the diminished chord and we’re going to learn to play it as an arpeggio because clarinetists can’t play chords”.

Clarence’s teacher then proceeds to lay out the lesson as follows.

Play any note.
Play another note, 3 semitones higher (he knows his scales).
Play those two notes in a repeating pattern until memorized.
Climb an additional 3 semitones from the higher of the memorized notes.
Play the accumulated sequence of three notes up and down until well under the fingers.

Then, teacher sets him some homework.

“Clarence, for next week, I’d like you to practise what we’ve learnt today. Then I’d like you to add two more additional intervals of 3 semitones to round off the full octave arpeggio and practise that too”.

When next he visits his teacher, he’s beside himself with excitement.

“Wow, that diminished thing you taught me was amazing!” says Clarence. “I couldn’t stop myself! I’ve been able to extend the arpeggio to cover the full range of the instrument. What’s more, I found there are two other arpeggios just like the one you taught me but with different notes. But what’s really weird is, there aren’t any more!! There’s only three different ones! What a fascinating construction, such sublime architecture. I was thinking of naming each of the three of them but I’m a bit spoilt for choice….in fact…do you know…..I don’t think I’ll bother!”

They both smile.

And since for brass players ultimately the chromatic scale may be the most important scale of all, I would assume the same is true for woodwinds. We get students to absorb the sound and fingering, independent of notation. It is a rudiment, a foundation step. So this is one way in. Since each “chord” will have to be played in arpeggiated form, obviously it is easier to teach such a concept on the piano. And of course this is why all serious students are at least encouraged to study some kind of keyboard instrument – and why some piano proficiency is always a requirement at musical schools.

Exactly, because this completes the mathematical series and shows that this endlessly repeating sequence always lands us on the octave.

When next he visits his teacher, he’s beside himself with excitement.

This is EXACTLY how I teach. First you get the concepts through sound, through feel, through remembering the patterns.

Then we talk about such chords whenever they appear in music.

Finally, we talk about how to notate these chords, what rules exist, how context determines spelling, and so on.

- Yes!

I think earlier, talking about Cdim (Cdim7), you laid out something like:-

C, <D# or Eb>, <F# or Gb>, <A or Bbb>

..and as so much has been said about the diminished's multiple personality I thought it might be timely to jot this out for an illustration and direct comparison of two typical alternatives...




To answer LoPresti’s earlier exception to my apparent snub at spelling, I certainly don’t eschew notation, far from it. We use it to communicate with each other, for some of us to write and others to play wonderful (and not so wonderful) music and I’ve had considerable reliance on it as a memory and writing aid. Others have learned to be great musicians without it, but that is an aside.

In counseling against getting hung up on spelling I meant in particular to avoid obsessing over exactitudes of grammar and enharmonic niceties. It can only make for a dry and dusty academic wrangle. In practice as can be seen above - and to echo what you say in your conclusion, Gary - when taken in context, in a specific key, the movement of neighbouring voices has a habit of regulating the spelling as a matter of routine.


In the course of this thread, I remembered a line which made me hoot. It’s from Alan Bennett’s screenplay about the english playwright Joe Orton…

Kenneth Halliwell: Can you spell?
Joe Orton: Yes, but not accurately.

We know why this is funny in relation to the written word and we should know why, in relation to written music, the joke would fall flat.

You guys lost me a long time ago, but I think its cool...the can of worms that has been opened from my simple little post on how to read chord charts.

Virginia, to get up to speed on the essential. You don't need to be a genius or advanced, and that is the most important point - how to get people to learn in a real way. Here's the deal.

A while back I wrote a set of ideas which I hoped might help if you worked through them, and you found them helpful and printed them out. The most important idea was to get familiar with chords by playing with them at the piano, seeing what's happening with the piano keys, and what you hear.

The crucial thing is that when you press down a key you will always get the same pitch. When you press down two keys at the same time, you will always get a certain quality of sound. For example, if you play CD together, you get a grating ugly kind of sound. If you play CG together, you get a smooth, easy sound.

Meanwhile these things have been written into notation. A few hundred years ago a system was invented to put it into code, like spelling and grammar. If we're going to read and understand music, we need to have a handle on both of these worlds. I tend to think that the first one is the most important. The notation symbolizes the sounds and how they work.

So at the level that I suggested, you play three white keys: CEG. then you play the same thing, moving the middle note down by a half step to the next black key. You will hear a major chord the first time, and a minor chord the second time. This gives you a feel for the role of this middle note. Some people cannot hear the difference between major and minor in the beginning, or they can't recognize them to name them. But they still feel "something different", maybe a mood, quality, or colour. These are the essential things. When you get a feeling for these things through experimentation, and then study theory as well, then the theory will make more sense, because it will link to something concrete and real. In language, grammar and spelling work that way.

Back to our CEG (major) and CEbG (minor). Recently I came across a chord in Mozart that was written as CD#G. Take a moment to locate Eb, and then D#, on the piano. You will see and hear that this will be the same piano key. So when I played this "CD#G" chord, I heard the "C minor" sound, and so would any listener, which is the important point. Mozart had some reason for choosing D# instead of Eb. It had something to do with what notes were before and after, or what other notes were in the other voices. The important thing is that as an amateur pianist, I could play those three notes together, and that both my audience and I can hear that "minor third chord" sound --- the real thing that you get by playing at the piano.

If you stay as simple and real as possible, then the complicated things you encounter in music tend to work themselves out.

We are on exactly the same wave-length. You’ve used a key signature, but I don’t think we need one.

In your first example, we have what would be notated as a Cdim7 because of the bass note – C

But if we look at your chord vertically:
A-->>>Bb
Gb-->>>Gb
Eb-->>>Eb
C-->>>Bb

A-->>>Bb
F#-->>>G
Eb-->>>Eb
C-->>>Bb

It’s common sense that our destination chord is either Eb or Ebm here. When ascending, whenever possible notation prefers a letter change. So if it is going to Eb, there will be an F# to move to G. But to Ebm, Gb will be the “common tone”, and so F# would be wrong.

BUT: If we have a B7/Cb7 instead (using the chord symbol for the SOUND), we run into a “German 6th situation”, and traditional rules would recommend this:

A-->>>Bb
Gb-->>>Gb
Eb-->>>Eb
Cb-->>>Bb

A-->>>Bb
Gb-->>>G
Eb-->>>Eb
Cb-->>>Bb

Our generic 7 chord will take on the aug6th spelling (A instead of Bbb) but we will want to keep the Gb simply because that is a standard spelling. Cb Eb F# A is of course possible, and I’m sure it shows up somewhere, but it is not the “default”.

For me these are not THEORETICAL problems. They are real-life, practical notational decisions. Recently I was notating Death of Love and Trust, Grusin, and I did not have the music. By the way, when I finally DID see the music, it was not really what he played.

So right in the middle, in this sophisticated blues tune, he moves from Ab something to Db something (these are open-voiced 9 chords), and he slides down to C7#9 to E6/B to B7 add 13 to Bbsus9. All the theory books in the UNIVERSE are not going to show how to notate that. When you do it, and see it, it is just logical and readable. In the classical world E major would be Fb major, and it would be a “Neopolitan” kind of thing, and then the C7 chord leading into it would be bVI7 in that key and would turn out to be Dbb7, spelled:

Dbb Fb Abb Bb

And that would be utterly INSANE!!!!

Virginia,

Let me boil it down for you. In the end, all the rules in the world are just handy-dandy guidelines for people who are learning. When you have learned all the rules, the last rule is: there ARE no rules.

You have to think of English to understand. We can talk about all the spelling rules in the universe, but in the end there are countless words that are unique. Not only would we have to learn the rules for every language we have borrowed words from in order to apply logic, sometimes we borrow words from languages when THOSE words are also borrowed and do not obey spelling rules in THAT language.

So think of phonetics vs standard English. In a perfect world, everyone would pronounce words the same way, so all we would have to do to invent a phonetic system is to stop arguing about symbols. But we have the additional problem of an incredible range of pronunciation for the same words.

So there are two extremes:

1) There are rules for everything, and if you just learn them all, you will be ready to read and write anything in music.

2) Just ignore all the rules and do whatever works.

One is a lie. Rules are not enough.
Two is usually disastrous because it results in chaos.

Some kind of happy-medium is where we all end up. Rules when they work, figuring out solutions by intuition when the rules just don't work.

I still think the same as in my previous post. If you start with simple chords by themselves on the piano, observing and exploring, and stay simple, then these things will not be overwhelming. I can argue that in learning spelling and grammar, we also start out by speaking and hearing. We pick up the patterns of language, and this goes hand in hand with the written language. Music is not exactly the same as spoken language, but there are some similarities.

there are two simple transitions:-

Cdim to Eb
Cdim to E

they have a lot in common with fragments of a score I had to prepare involving a key change from Eb to E so I wouldn't (couldn't!) have scored those without the key sigs.




Yes it would.

I know the Grusin piece fairly well and sketched it out some years ago. I saw no problems but that may be because I cast all caution to the wind. It's no surprise that the sheet music isn't a faithful copy - I mentioned before what a travesty the piano-copy industry is. Occasionally an accurate transcription pops up but that's pretty rare.


Other than where he adds upper register RH flourishes to a sustained chord underneath, I don't recall any 9* note chords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syObAJjtPdk

Which part are you talking about?

(*edit for senior moment! - sorry I read 9-note, I guess you meant 9ths?)

- it's just everyday thread drift. Ignore it!

This I have done, for the most part.:)

First of all, I also had no trouble. My one dilemma was time signature. I was rather shocked to find out that Grusin wrote it in ¾, because the bass notes consistently come on 1 3 and 5 in 6/4 time. But that makes it cool, in a way, because TECHNICALLY it is a waltz, ambiguous, sort of ONE two THREE one TWO three. And when we have notation in mind, we can never be sure that what we hear, in our imagination, is actually what anyone else will hear, just from the sound.

The spelling? Clear-cut. I was just pointing out that IF I followed rules, instead of pure instinct, I would have been in trouble.

I do a lot of realizations of this sort for students. I make them buy the sheet music – my support for the music industry – but will give them my view as a supplement, since it is not available, and not all can simply listen and play.

My writing was probably clear as mud. A typical measure starts with Db Ab Eb in the LH, Bb in the RH melody quickly followed by Gb Ab Db. You put it altogether and you have Db Gb Ab Bb Eb, but voiced Db Ab Eb Gb Ab Db Bb. That’s the kind of chord that I just process as a very tasteful, spacious voicing. The crux of it is a Dbsus(4), and moving from one sus to another, without every having a qualifying major or minor 3rd is a “feel”, and very effective. There is no 7, so if I HAD to give it a name, I would say Dbsus add 9 and 13, but that is a mess. Some chords either have to be written out or listened to an played as they are. You can give the root and a function, but the real deal is just too hard for a symbol. So for that chord I might simply write Dbsus add9 and figure that Bb in the melody, top note, will be heard as what it is. Or figure out that lots of 5ths and 4ths get put in those chords, for atmosphere.

1:24, Db something to C7#9 but almost certainly written C E G Bb Eb, to E6/B, etc.

Rant coming:

LAZY LAZY LAZY LAZY. It is the fault of the COMPOSERS. They need to get OFF their butts and WRITE their own music correctly. Grusin is no more improvising in this piece than Chopin was when writing down his nocturnes. What he plays CAN be written down very accurately. It is elegant, beautifully constructed. He has the skills to write out his stuff. But he doesn’t care to. He leaves it to other people.

So almost always these guys leave their music in the hands of HACKS, and in defense of those hacks, they are probably paid very little. In the long run it is really stupid. It won’t decrease the amount of money they make, but they will leave no permanent record, and that makes their music unplayable for those who do not have the listening skills to reconstruct it purely through ear work.

Granted, things that are largely improv, created on the spot, are not meant to be permanently written down. In that case reproducing exactly what is played only creates very inferior copies of something original. But back in the time of Tchaikosky composers took the time to take things written for full orchestra and make their own transcriptions for piano. To the best of my knowledge there is no piano transcription of Princess Lea’s Theme. In defense of Williams, the amount of music the man has composed is frightening, but it would have been nice if he had taken that piece, which really is as much a tone poem as anything written in the 1800s, and had made a fine transcription.