A NOTE FROM DICK GROVE

Here we are with the second of our monthly news letters! We hope you enjoyed the first one and got something from our articles.

In this months 'MUSIC NOTES' I have an article on Blues Harmonization which I hope will fill in some areas for you that will enable you to harmonize your original blues melodies. My other article has to do with how keys are chosen for instrumental performance and for singers.

Dana Rasch has an article for all of you guitarists on chord melody and comping which should give you some neat ideas that you can work on on your own.

Dana and I both hope you like our idea of a monthly electronic newsletter and would appreciate getting some feedback from you - pro and con!

Music is a lot of fun - but it is even more fun when you see yourself improving and being able to do more of the things you want to do musically. We are here to help you achieve those goals.

Enjoy -

Dick Grove & Dana Rasch

CHOOSING A KEY

by Dick Grove

Any player or writer, when approaching the treatment of a song, must decide on a key in which to play or arrange a piece of music. This article is to suggest a very efficient technique with which to find the best key o fit a specific restriction that you must work within.

The most common reason to pick a specific key for the music is when a singer is involved. Each singer prefers the song to be in a key that is the most comfortable for them to sing in context to the range of the song and their own personal singing range.

Singers, generally speaking, have a soprano or alto voice range if female, and tenor, baritone or bass range if male. If you had five singers, each with a different range as explained above, you could conceivably end up doing the song in five different keys!

Instrumentally, songs are usually played in what is called the 'standard key'. This is usually the key the lead sheet or sheet music is written in. A standard key is chosen so that the song, when written out, is centered around the lines and spaces of the treble clef. This is to make reading easier because the result of centering the song on the staff is that you have a minimum of ledger lines.

Orchestration is the art of assigning the notes of a composition to specific instruments, and staying within the best natural placement of that instrument, so that the key doesn't force the song to be played too low or too high. The point is that the standard key is not necessarily automatically the best key for an instrumental performance. In each case then, it may be necessary to consider the best key in which to perform the music.

Regardless of whether you are picking a vocal key or an instrumental key, the actual technique is about the same. We are going to go through the process so that you will be able to determine the best key fast and efficiently!

The melody of each composition creates a 'span' of distance from the highest note in the song to the lowest. This is the 'range of the song'. The problem is to make it fit the range of the singer or instruments.

If you have the music to the song, it is fairly simple to find the highest and lowest notes. If you are doing it by ear and do not have access to the music, then you must sing the melody and in that manner find the highest and lowest notes.

Now here is the tricky part; you must now decide what notes of the scale are the outside notes of the span of the song. One way to do this is by using numbers. This means that each note of the major scale of the key signature can simply be called by numbers (i.e. - I st, 2nd, 3rd, etc up to the octave). The best way is to do it by using solfeg syllables (i.e. DO, RE, MI, FA etc up to the octave DO).

If you refer to our January 15th MUSIC NOTES, you will find the solfeg table of all diatonic and chromatic tones and can use this to work this technique to find the best keys. This would be a good way to get into the solfeg approach, as you can get familiar with the syllables by actually applying the approach to produce a result, instead of just 'practicing exercises'.

For example, if the song in question had a range where the lowest note is the 5th note of the scale (or SO), and the highest note is the lst note of the scale above (plus an octave - a Perfect l I th interval or DO), then you could find the span of that song relative to any key! In 'C', it would be the tone 'G' up an I I th to 'C'(SO to DO). In the key of 'F', we would find the tone 'C'up an I 1 th to 'F'; in 'G'we would have the tone 'D' up an I 1 th to 'G', etc. Go to a keyboard and play the lowest tone with your left hand, then the highest with your right. Now play the two tones that create the span in different keys, always starting with the 5th scale degree in the left hand and the tonic or 1 st degree of the scale in the right. You want to hear and see the span in all keys.

Now we will ask the singer their most comfortable singing range, and of course if you are the singer, you will know your most comfortable range. In asking the range we mean to determine the lowest and highest notes that the singer does not feel strained when singing, and the tone that the singer can best maintain pitch and tone quality. It is a very critical factor that every singer must realistically deal with every time they sing a new song!

Depending on a given range, you will end up with a vocal range span, but with one big difference. The instrumental or singers ranges never change, whereas the span of each song can be somewhat different (a larger or smaller range).

At this point you need two pieces of information: (1) the span of the song, (2) the singer's span or the best instrumental register placement span. The top note of (D) above is now looked at in terms of the top note of the span of the song. If the singers top note is 'Bb' and the top note of the song is 'D', then we need to determine what note of the scale (of the key signature) is 'D'. The two methods we mentioned is by either by thinking numbers, or solfeg syllables. For example, if 'D' is the 6th degree of the 'F' major scale or LA (because the key signature is 'F'), then we consider the singer's top note of 'Bb' to be the 6th degree or LA of the best key. 'Bb' is the 6th degree or LA of the 'Db'scale, so we would be transposing and playing or writing the song that was presented in the key of 'F', into the key of 'Db'.

Lets try a 'trial run'on a tune. We start with these facts:

1.    the Beatles standard 'Yesterdays' is written in the key of 'C'
2.    the span of the melody (in 'C') is from 'A'below Middle 'C' to 'C'an octave higher
3.    the singer's range is from 'F'below Middle'C'up to'N above Middle 'C'

Conclusion:

1.    the span of the melody is from the 6th degree to the tonic of the scale (a major 1Oth).
2.    the highest note of the melody is the tonic or DO
3.    the singers top note therefore will be DO or the tonic of the new key of 'A'.

It is not uncommon to find situations where the singers range is not as large as the span of the melody of the song and as we still have the problem of finding a key that the song can be performed comfortably we will have to do something sneaky to change the range of the song to fit the span of the singers voice. On device that can often solve the dilemma is to find the extreme highest or lowest tone of the melody and invert that note an octave higher or lower. Quite often that extreme note is a 'pickup' tone. and that tone can be considered a kind of 'throwaway'tone as it can be changed or substituted for without taking away from the strength of the songs melody.

We will now take an example of a song, written in the key of Eb in which the range is from 'G' to 'C'. Then we will state the vocal range of a soprano voice, an alto voice, a baritone voice and a bass voice. Now that we have the information we need (the span of each of the different voices and of the song), we can determine the best key in which each of the singers would perform the song.

Now we can work our process four times, once for each of the different singing ranges.

1.    Bass range: 'F'to 'C' / Song range: MI(3rd) up to LA(6th).

2.    Baritone range: 'Bb'to 'Eb' / Song range: MI(3rd) up to LA(6th).

3.    Alto range: 'E to 'A' / Song range: MI(3rd) up to LA(6th).

4.    Soprano range: 'C'to 'G' / Song range: MI(3rd) up to LA(6th).

Use this process every time the subject comes up of picking an instrumental or vocal key. It is fast, easy, and gets the job done! Good luck!

Dick Grove

Since triads are so flexible on guitar, it is easy to understand how important it is to know your triads all over the neck, in all keys, and to have some ability to voicelead them.

The following example shows the same idea with 4-part chords. This is certainly not all of them, but you'll get the idea! If you have all of these shapes under your fingers and develop a comfort zone with them, your comping and chord melody playing has to improve substantially!

Try finding as many 4, 5, 6 and 7 part implied chords as you can, keeping the same 'D' top note. You'll be surprised at how many there are.

BLUES HARMONIZATION

by Dick Grove

It would not be an exaggeration to say the what we call "the Blues' is the most unique musical form ever invented! It defies all the European rules of 'what is possible' and yet speaks to every soul in a personal and undescribable manner. Every contemporary musician, whether self-trained or schooled could consider the Blues as his or her 'right of passage' into being a spontaneous musician. One can play the blues every day of their life and still feel an energy and 'right now' anticipation that transcends any other form of our music of today.

Like Louis Armstrong said when someone asked him 'what is the Blues", his answer was, "if you have to ask, you'll never know" - or words to that effect! The Blues is a 'state of mind'that is a reflection of the human condition, stated in a way that all can understand perfectly and understand without a word being uttered. When Joe Williams (of the Court Basie Big Band) sings the Blues it is immediately captivating.

How is it that we can listen to the 'same thing'over and over and still be totally caught up in the message? I think the answer is the naturalness of the music, and the complete avoidance of 'the rules'of music. It makes its own statement, but in a unique way that transcends any language. It is its own language of life, and that is why we all relate to it so completely!

To talk about the Blues is like talking about religion - there are untold sects or 'styles' of the Blues. In that sense, the Blues crosses over the evolution of musical styles. It was around in 1910, and it is alive and growing in 1998. The point to all of these positive comments about the Blues as part of our musical heritage, is that no matter the stylistic shading that is applied to the Blues, there is a basic core existing that should be understood if we wish to advance our own abilities to play the Blues and evolve our own ability to have the voice of the Blues in our music.

The real basis of the Blues starts with the 12-bar form, although the Blues style and feeling can be adapted to any form. George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" is a timeless creation that utilizes the Blues feeling but with a symphonic orchestra and not with the traditional 12-bar form. The 12-bar form however is catching - you can never hear enough choruses when a master is playing the Blues.

The next essential aspect of the blues is the flexibility and looseness of the way melody and harmony relate to each other. This is the area in which the so called 'rules' seem to get broken, but it still sounds great! How can this be possible? How does the player understand this? The secret is in the fact that the major scale of the key signature is 'bent' - or what I term 'Modified'. This creates vertical relationships that allow the melodic tones to chromatically stylize the music, and added to the rhythmic feel or 'groove'allows the player to freely create Bluesy sounding melodies, by ear, in a very unique manner.

What we wish to look at in this discussion of Blues Harmonization, are the many possibilities we have to vary the chords in a 12-bar Blues. The principle reason to vary the chords is to accommodate a melody, or to provide new improvisational changes to play on. Style also is a factor in the sense that when jazz is applied to the Blues (as opposed to Rock 'n Roll), the chromatic character of jazz begs for more interesting and larger chord forms.

The form of the 12-bar Blues is three 4-bar segments which we could identify as the A. B & C sections. We are going to look at possible chord progressions for the 12-bar Blues in that A. B, C format. You will see a number of different harmonic solutions for first, bars I through 4 of the Blues, (or the A section), secondly bars 5 through 8 (or the B section) and lastly bars 9 through 12 (the C section).

We will start with the basic I - IV - V Blues, and evolve to more jazzy, chromatically intense chord progressions. What is neat about this presentation is that any version on a line can be interchanged with any other line, with the sum result of literally dozens of possible chord progressions that will play nicely on the 12-bar Blues.

Here are some ways you can work with the material in this article:

And Finally the C Section

We will be doing more articles on harmonizing melodies in 'MUSIC NOTES'.
I recommend saving your downloaded copies in a loose leaf binder, as the articles will connect from one to the next. You will not only pick up a lot of helpful techniques and tips on improving yourself, but experience our approach to teaching and getting to those areas that produce immediate results. Once you get involved with our regular courses using our videos, cassettes and books you will make real progress towards your goals.

Have fun with this one and 'GO FOR IT'!

Dick Grove