A NOTE FROM DICK GROVE

Welcome to the November issue of MUSIC NOTES. I hope you have been adding to your collection of articles throughout the year and are beginning to get a sizable notebook of  information. I also hope that these random topics have helped to fill in some possible gaps and have helped you.

If you are relatively new to our newsletter I would like to remind you that all issues are available to you back to January 1998. Be our guest!

I would like to report that a growing number of our students are taking advantage of the college credit units that are now possible with all our courses. I would like to clarify some information in this area. Our first level courses, such as ‘See It - Hear It / Hear It - Play’ Pt 1 ‘Beyond Chops’ Pt1 and Jazz Keyboard 1 are considered undergraduate units.

‘See It - Hear It / Hear It - Play’ Pt 2, ;Jazz Keyboard’ 2 and all four quarters of the CAP Composing & Arranging Program are graduate level units.

Take a good luck at Dana Rasch’s  new web site telling all about his new, 11-week intensive guitar course. The URL address is: http://www.beyondchops.com/ and Dana can be Emailed at: dana@beyondchops.com Let Dana tell you all about it as well as explain how it will help your own individual playing situation. Here is your chance for a one-on-one  conversation with this great player, teacher and author.

We are happy to also announce, in conjunction to his opening quarter, that Grove/Rasch Music Education Systems is sponsoring a drawing for a free, $3,500.00 scholarship to the February – April 1999 quarter. All of you who attend will never be the same! You will be receiving a year of education in 11 weeks!  An intense environment that will change your life!

There is still time to take advantage of our sensational discounts. Check out our End of the Year Newsletter at: http://www.dickgrove.com/a2b

Here is a timely way to not only get a great discount on course prices, but you also save off the price increase stating on January 1, 1999.

Plans are definitely moving ahead for my new, dedicated improvisation course (for all   instruments) that should be ready somewhere during the first quarter of 1999. Each segment will include my video lesson, supported with play-along practice tracks, text and Assignment books (for the key or clef of your instrument). Now we will have a great course for you horn players, bassists, woodwind players, singers and your average tuba player!

Enjoy -

Dick Grove

STYLES OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

by Dick Grove

As we all gradually develop a greater ability to express music, either as a player improvising, a composer creating from scratch, or an arranger organizing and presenting a finished product, we reach a point where what we play and write becomes more and more important.

Once we can play or write music, even at an intermediate level, we start to become interested in styles of music. This article will try to shed some clarification about musical styles and try to give you a personal way to relate to contemporary musical styles.

We deal with music on two levels, the first having to do with simply how we listen to music, and the second to do.with our own playing or writing of the music we personally prefer.

In both instances we need to understand how to get more out of the music we listen to and learn from, and certainly how to make greater progress is hearing ideas and executing them.

To become more effecient and consequently make faster progress, there is a very effective way to approach the overall problem, which is to look at our contemporaryh styles from the standpoint of the harmonic differences between the them.

A great deal of the characteristsics of contemporary styles has to do with the rhythmic nature of a particular style, based on the rhytnmic ‘feel’ of the style. Often the most identifying characteristic of a style is the rhythm.

Melody uses the stylistic rhythms, added to the harmonic character to create melodic styles.
An improvisor must understand the melodic style he or she is working with, otherwise we would be trying to solve all styles with the same answer and obviously the result would not sound authentic.

The melodic character of a style however, is seriously effected by the unique features of the
harmony. and this aspect is what we will be looking at today.

In its most fundamental aspect, we can say that all contemporary styles of music are based on four different styles of harmony. Try to realize that when we improvise, we must adhere to the chord progressions of the compoeition. Therefore we are reacting to what every the harmony tells us. We have to ‘hear’ ideas that fit the specificis of the progression.

Those styles are;

The characteristics of this harmonic style is to have a completely diatonic major or minor harmonic basis. The majority of contemporary pop, middle of the road, contemporary Broadway, New Age and contemporary jazz styles limit the harmonic possibilities to non-altered chords. This limits the uniqueness of the melodies and although momentary key centers can change, the overall impression is rather bland.

This style features definitive leading tones found in the IImi7 (or IV), V7 and I6 or ma7 chords
as well as the Plural Substitute chords: the VImi7, IIImi7, IVma6 or 7 and VII diminished 7th
chord. Improvising around these definitive tones produce more melodic results.

Chromatic II – V – I styled compositions now include altered tones of the major scale combined with diatonic chords. The melodies are more sophisticated and in general requires a better ear and mastery of the instrument to improvise and write in this category. This harmonic style has the most possibilities and therefore has the most variety from the standpoints of uniqueness of melody and variation of chord progressions. Traditional Broadway, standards, jazz, bossanovas, swing and jazz waltzes all utilize this complicated harmonic style.

We mentioned above how the definitive leading tones are found in diatonic harmony. Now that the chromaticism of altered chords are added, there are even more definitive leading tones as four chromatic leading tones are added to the two diatonic leading tones. The leading tones predict where they are going allowing the improvisor to ‘hear ahead’.

The Blues is really unique to American contemporary music! It spans the Dixieland, ragtime era through swing, be-bop, Elvis, all contemporary rock groups, disco, rap, and jazz eras. You could say that the Blues is ‘a state of mind’. In a sense it breaks all the rules, and makes a believer out of everyone who hears the music.

The Blues, from a harmonic standpoint, is essentially a ‘dominant’ sound. This is another way of saying that the pentatonic and Blues scales are used by all as they contain non-leading, altered tones of the major scale

Blues can be played in any meter, any tempo or feel. The Blues impression can be applied to compositions other than the standard 12-bar blues, including standards and original compositions with endless thematic forms.

Modes are completely diatonic harmony and although diatonic can create interesting colors as when the half-steps of the major scale are displaced or placed in different scale degree positions the entire impression changes. 

There are two approaches to modal harmony. The most used and practical is to use what is called ‘Static Modes’. This implies that a mode (or Modal scale) is the basis of the harmony and repeats measure after measure, sometimes for an entire composition or can change after 4, 8 or 16 bars. Instead of thinking chord  changes we think scales, and so improvisation is based more on playing scales as opposed to chords.

The second approach is based on diatonic chord changes of the mode in force. There are six modes, each of which can be thought of as a displacement of the Ionian Mode or major scale.

They are:

2nd degree:  Dorian Mode

3rd degree:  Phyrgian Mode

4th degree:  Lydian Mode

5th degree:  Mixolydian Mode

6th degree:  Aeolian Mode

7th degree:  Locrian Mode

When melodies are harmonized by diatonic modal chords they are usually restricted to triads, although larger chord forms can be used. In most cases, the melody note will function as the root, 3rd or 5th of a diatonic triad. This approach is typical of pop ballad styles.

The final harmony category is called Symmetric Harmony. This is found in fusion music and in the more sophisticated contemporary compositional styles. It ‘fuses’ together the characteristics of all harmonic styles and is therefore the most complicated and unlimited in possibilities.

It takes a better musician to be able to ‘hear’ and play spontaneously as well as to play melodically in this area. What makes it so difficult to hear is that unlike the II – V – I style of music which features leading tones, symmetric harmony does not ‘lead’ in the same fashion. It is more a matter of playing from scales again, except they now include Melodic Minor and Symmetric 8-note scales along with the Major scale and its Modal displacements. Any tone of a scale can now function as a leading tone, moving up or down a half-step.

>From a chord progression standpoint, the roots of the chords also do not lead, compared to the 5th movement of the IImi7 – V7 – I sequence. Roots of chords will move in symmetric intervals. Symmetric intervals means intervals created by taking an octave and dividing that octave into even divisions (symmetric musically means equal-distant).

If you take the octave containing 12 half-steps and divide it you will find four possible divisions:

When roots of chords move in these non-leading intervals, the impression of the chord progression is that of ‘floating’ without a strong sense of the basic key center or ‘DO’.

The point of all this information is to see that first, one needs to be able to identify the differences between these harmonic characteristics; secondly, realize that all compositions fall into one or the other of these four categories (although sections of compositions can change harmonic styles.) Thirdly, part of your musical training is to be familiar with being able to hear and be comfortable with any of the categories. Finally, you should approach listening and creating music from the awareness of the harmonic style of the moment.

I hope you have found the above of interest and hopefully that you already have had some awareness of this organization of harmonic characteristics. Feel free to call me if you have questions or wish to do more in this area.

Musically,

Dick Grove 

WHAT IS A DOUBLE ALTERATION?

Chord symbols are a kind of musical shorthand that tells a musician the structure of harmony within a given key center. Chord symbols are an approximate representation of a restriction of tones to use for a number of beats of the pulse of the music. We say approximate because they are not to be taken literally! A 3-part triad can be applied as a 5-part form of the chord for example!

In the August issue of MUSIC NOTES I have an article about Chord Symbol Terminology. Within
that article we discussed altered chords and how functions of a chord and be flatted or sharped.
In some instances, the same tone can be both flatted and sharped. When this happens it is called a double alteration. If you had not read the August article, I suggest that you do so in conjunction with this article.

Here is how it works:

There are only two functions of a chord that can have a double alteration. The first is the 5th of a chord, and the other is the 9th of a chord. The 3rd and 7th can not be altered as these are definitive tones that create the chord form itself. If you altered the 3rd of a major chord you have made it a minor chord which is no longer functioning as a major chord in a tonality.

The possible tones of all chords will be some combination of the following:

Example 1

 The 5th of MAJOR CHORDS can both be flatted or sharped. (written as C(b5), C+ or C(+5,b5)

The 5th of min7th CHORDS can both be flatted or sharped. (written as Cmi7(b5)
or Cmi7(#5) or Cmi7(+5,b5)

The 5th of DOMINANT 7th CHORDS can both be flatted or sharped.
(written as C7(b5), C+7 or C+7( b5 )

The 9th of DOMINANT 7th CHORDS can both be flatted or sharped.
(written as C7(b9), C7(+9) or C7(+9,b9)

The 5th and 9th of DOMINANT 7th CHORDS can both be flatted or sharped.
(written as C+7(b5), C+7(+9,b9) or C+7(+9,b9,b5)

There are some distinctions you should understand about the precise terminology used to communicate these altered tones. The b5th of a Cma or dominant 7th chord is the tone Gb.
The enharmonic of Gb is F#. The difference between the two letternames harmonically is the following:

(1) the b5th means the 5th of the chord has been replaced by the b5th (the perfect 5th is not in the chord)

(2) the +11th means that all the chord tones below the +11th are implied (including the 9th, 7th, 5th, 3rd and root)

The altered I chords function as a I chord in a major tonality. The alterations add color and create a
suspended impression, ultimately resolving to the 5th of the chord or in the case of the +5, moving up
to the 6th.

The altered dominant chord functions as a V chord in minor, with the various options of altered tones
creating the possibilities of from one to four altered tones. The enharmonics all have harmonic
importance as follows:

Like the major chord discussed above, the altered 5th replaces the perfect 5th of the chord,  whereas the upper extension of the +11th or b13th imply all chord tones below it, including the perfect 5th.

The alteration of the 5th and 9th allows us to harmonize melody notes that connect the diatonic tones of a major scale, without changing chords per note. This attribute also allows a jazz or fusion improviser to play through scales that contain all the altered extensions of chords.

From a chord voicing standpoint, these double alterations are valuable for ‘clustered’ voicing effects that add a great deal of modern sophistication to the impression. Clusters are chord voicings that organizes tones in 2nds instead of the conventional 3rd intervals that we know from spelling chords.

These colorful altered notes are strong, projecting melodic tones. You will find them used in melodies of standards, movie themes, jazz compositions and fusion-styled compositions. They give a composition a great deal of sophistication and sense of style.

Their biggest contribution however is including them melodically and harmonically increases the musical possibilities to be utilized. Melodies are more unique, memorable and varied because of the options contributed by the addition of these chromatic tones.

This fact in turn increases the difficulties of developing your ear to be able to hear chromatic tones and harmonies. Our See It - Hear It / Hear It - Play It’ Part 2 covers the eartraining aspects in great depth.

I hope this information fills in some small 'crevices’ in your foundation, and more importantly I would wish you to experience the benefits of including these special sounds into your musical vocabulary and expression.

Dick Grove

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