KVR Audio

cj31387 · Post by **cj31387** » Wed May 23, 2012 4:46 am

Hi, Can someone link me or explain how scales work? I've read certain degrees of scales work together best with other degrees, like 1 3 5 are very good for release and the others are passing tones which cause tension. Can anyone link me some info on how to better understand scales pertaining to melody writing? like im making up a example, 2 to 4 gives a certain sound or tension, after that you might want to have a note of release ect... Thanks.

tapper mike · Post by **tapper mike** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:03 am

It' reads like you've got the concept down. You shouldn't really need more information what you need is to practice it and listen for it.

There are several flavors of notes not all related to the key. Some are chord tones, some are scale tones and some are "outside" There are also strong and weak beats. Weak beats are usually the subdivisons of the beat. When you put a non chord tone meaning a scale tone or an outside tone that doesn't belong to the chord on a weak beat it is less noteable then if you put it on a strong beat. So both order and placement of the note in time have a direct impact on how tense (dissonant) or smooth (connosant) it sounds. There are degrees of connosant and dissonant.

It's time for you to develop your ears. Play a full C Major chord C-G-C-E-G
Play it at an exact quarter note interval. Don't try to build a song, don't play other chords just play it and repeat it and repeat it. And record it.
Now play the chromatic scale one note per beat so you can hear the scale and the chord. This is a listening exercise not a performance exercise the goal is to recognize how the parts sound not on what some one tells you. If you are not hearing it you are not gettting it and no amount of type will make you get it. What do you hear? When you play a C over a C major chord what do you hear? Are you listening? When you play the C# note over the c major chord what do you hear? Listen for the texture. Play the entire chromatic scale across two octaves. Now try it again with the C minor chord and the chromatic scale. Go back and try C major 6 chord the C Dominant 7 chord and the C Major 7th chord. What do you hear when you listen to the chromatic scale note by note against them. If you are not hearing degrees of connosance and dissonance you are not listening. If you are not hearing how one note sounds more or less dissonant against an extended chord like a 6th,7th,9th chord you are not listening. The thing is you have to listen to it to hear it and recognize it. You may find you really don't like those "outside" notes at all when used against a chord. That's fine plenty of musicians have had long careers coloring inside the lines. You may be one of them.

You don't need harmonic tension to bring tension to a song. Metre will do just fine If you know what you are doing and are really good at it. Heck tuning and use of other techniques for in/out relationships will also do fine.

You don't need a passing tone. If you are moving from a chord tone to a chord tone you can just use the chord tones. But it won't sound or feel the same.

You can play "color" tones from outside the scale by themselves or in conjuction with other notes.

You can devise techniques for playing inside and outside chord tones like BB Kings "Bittersweet" sound of combining the minor blues scale on one part of of a melody thus "bitter" and combining scale/chord tones on the other side for the "sweet"

The important things are YOU, LISTENING and APPLYING. Because if you don't hear it in music you already listen to then either you need to change your listening habits or apply yourself to listening for it. If you are not getting it either you aren't hearing it which means you aren't listening for it or you aren't applying it.

Finally it may be what you are looking for isn't there because you don't know what you are looking for hence can't find it. As I alluded to earlier Technique such as metre (timing, tempo, dynamics, accents) Also affect the general feel of a piece. It's not note selection alone.

JJBiener · Post by **JJBiener** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:45 am

Tapper Mike makes some good points. The exercise could be accomplished just as easily by playing a C chord in your left hand then going through the chromatic scale with your right. You can also try the chord in your right hand the chromatic scale in your left. Also, once you do this in C, try it for all the chords, C#, D, D#, etc. One thing that might be helpful is if you identify what you're playing as you play it. If you have C3, E3 and G3 in your left hand and C4 in your right, it is a C8. C#4 is a Cb9. D4 is a C9, etc.

There are rules you can read that will tell what notes go with what chords and what will be consonant or dissonant. Those rules don't always work. For example, if you play a B and C at the same time, it will sound dissonant. However, if you play those notes with an E and a G, it makes up a Cmaj7 chord which is very pleasing to the ear. These are the kinds of things you need to experiment with.

This is something I can speak to from experience. I come from a very classical background. I started learning classical music on piano when I was a kid. When I started writing music, it was dull and predictable. It was the piano player for Woody Herman's Thundering Herd who taught me about experimenting, and even then it took me years to understand it. It has taken a long time, but I have reached the point where I am no longer constrained by chords and scales. I can sit down and create on the fly without really having to think about it. You can get there too. It just takes some work.

cj31387 · Post by **cj31387** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:59 am

Thanks for all the info, have either of you sat down and tried to personally classify note relations and rhythms to emotions, or a unique classification/organization which you use? I've been wanting to do that but don't know how to go about it really. I think having my own classification of what i think is happy, sad, epic, impending, gloomy, joyous on the note side, or on the rhythm side, marching beat, dance beat, waltz beat, hip hop beat, war beat, tribal beat ect... Would create a good reference for me personally. If either of you have done that, could you suggest how to go about doing that?

Also back to the scales, I was wondering if there is a document somewhere that says scale degree 5 goes to 1 very well or 4 to 1, but actually documents all the scale degrees and combinations. Or what is the mathematics behind that? I'm currently learning basic music theory right now and taking my time with it, but am at the very beginning still. However I've written songs for 13 years without theory.

Thanks

tapper mike · Post by **tapper mike** » Thu May 24, 2012 5:35 am

If I did that for others it would as Bill Evans says Deny you the opporitunity of discovery. Some misguided teacher asked me how I felt about the pentatonic scale once. I feel nothing for nor against the pentatonic scale. I don't hear it on an emotional level it doesn't speak to me. It's only in the context of performance meter, accent supporting harmony and the notes chosen does it have any intrinsic value.

And thats the big thing "In Context" I love Dominant7flat9 chords I love b13 chords when I hear them in the right context they are magical to my ears. But if not in the right context they sound horrible.

Which follows into my next point.

Scales. I won't waste my time explaining all the scales in the universe. If you want to know scales play them. it serves neither me nor you any good to ramble on about the hungarian gypsy minor or superlocrian if you never use the damn thing. If you never actually study it and perform it and go thru scale patterns with it and write songs with it and learn songs that use it. It's blockage. Blockage is an excuse that keeps you from playing and writing.

If you want to learn about intervals
http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/the ... ervals.htm

Disclamier: I do use the superlocrian scale when soloing over altered chords.
It's much easier if you actually just find a book or video or website that explains the scale show how it's played and practice it then if you manually work out the interval using w/h intervals. It's used over altered chords. You won't find too many altered chords in pop/rock/country. And you modulate to a different scale when you move to a different chord that isn't in the construct of the melodic minor. So you have to think on your feet. Which is why it's better just to memorize the scale rather then having a generic w/h representation of scales taking up space in your brain but not helping you learn the scales.

metalifuxx · Post by **metalifuxx** » Thu May 24, 2012 6:31 am

The band Phish use a lot of the tension/release methods to modulate between different scale structures/modes and time signatures in their live jams and certain song structures. It sometimes borders on the atonal, but there is a rise/fall tension/release pattern that is usually happening that lets them transcend between different genres/moods in one song/jam. A lot of the in between stuff is all improvised.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 25, 2012 7:01 pm

tapper mike wrote:The important things are YOU, LISTENING and APPLYING.

I have to reinforce this message.

Who'm I to say that this 'documenting', 'classifying', and approaching music like a philatelist or something isn't going to be more for you, cj31387, than getting busy finding things out directly, but it isn't how it's done. No one got their mastery of music by doing anything other than DOING IT. It isn't maths, music. You're actually asking after largely subjective descriptions for a labeling system.

Better to look at the intervals of a tune and note how it made you feel. Which may not be quite what it did for me or another person.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 25, 2012 7:07 pm

cj31387 wrote:like 1 3 5 are very good for release and the others are passing tones which cause tension.

well, passing tones don't do anything per se except for passing between 'chord tones'. You could run the entire scale over a given chord and create no tension whatsoever.

BUT, if you hang onto '2' over a tonic minor chord, for instance hang onto a B over an A minor chord, that has a certain twinge. But if it passes, it may not have any such effect.

cj31387 wrote:gloomy, joyous on the note side

the note isn't per se going to give you any of that.

You'll be resricted to, eg., <perfect fifth is 'strong'>. At most. Context is EVERYTHING

como baila · Post by **como baila** » Sat May 26, 2012 10:11 pm

We are not all wired the same.

There are many ways to learn and many ways of knowing. Few of us will become 'maestros,' but we all can incrementally improve.

I do best when someone outlines the forest, so I can know where the trees I'm examining stand.

I really like jacmuse.com site, because it discusses exactly the issues you are asking about (and most others) with notation and midi examples of everything you're reading about.

It's also hypertext linked and cross-linked, so you can go off and follow any particular aspect of what you are studying without having to follow a paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter linear approach to what you want to learn about.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=350527

Como

cj31387 · Post by **cj31387** » Sat May 26, 2012 11:12 pm

thanks Como that side looks very good.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Sun May 27, 2012 10:25 pm

como baila wrote:We are not all wired the same.

There are many ways of knowing.

The word knowing indicates that experience has been applied. Gathering information without applying it does not mean knowing something.

No one is wired in such a way so that application of information directly [here, directly to some music] can be bypassed on the way to knowledge.

this outlook is new to the generation that's always had the internet, and encouraged thusly to remain in isolation from the life of doing. It occurred to me recently the more information the populace has access to, and this peculiar overconfidence out of that, the less is really known about things. Everything linked to the next thing is great for people that know what they are doing.

For novices, it seems to work more like lab mice responding to stimuli, always able to follow the first impulse into distraction. You don't have to ever suss a single thing and you believe you are doing new things at every click.

You may have convinced yourself you will obtain no mastery. I think given that kind of modus operandi you may well be right. I don't think it's for the greater good that you encourage people to restrict themselves to ways fitting your comfort level frankly.

dalor · Post by **dalor** » Sun May 27, 2012 10:45 pm

I'm just sneaking into these threads every now and then, although I don't understand it all (yet) I find it quite interesting, especially tapper mike's comments!

What jancivil said +1 (note to myself, more applying!)

cj31387 · Post by **cj31387** » Mon May 28, 2012 3:25 am

I totally agree jancivil this is a new problem for this generation. People subconsciously think well everything I want to know is on the internet, when I need to know it I'll just Google it. But they always put off committing it to memory. So they don't really know much. I am guilty of this too. The more senses you use in learning something the better you retain it, computers don't offer much sensory knowledge.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Mon May 28, 2012 7:24 pm

I have a suggestion, rather than trying to examine the full chromatic at once, try out notes that don't belong to a harmony, say in a basic chord progression and see how you 'resolve' the tensions in the context of that flow.

Or don't resolve, try things out experimentally. See how holding a single note over changes works...

say you have Am, G, F, G, Am. Hold that B and find out how it works for you... It is a chord tone half the time with a tension the other half. The chord moving into congruence with the B is a release. etc.

metalifuxx · Post by **metalifuxx** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:01 am

Great example and lesson (albeit guitar)

The last couple years I have been employing bending/vibrato in various degrees to accomplish a tension/release build that steps outside traditional blues scales a bit, and lets me get into other scale modes/territories. Not always doing a full two note double stop octave bend, but only bend up/down a step with some lingering finger vibrato, will let you transition into either say a more jazzy suspended type scale or into a harmonic minor, but then you can resolve back to a traditional blues by going back to the minor fifths that are common in pentatonic patterns.

Basic scale tension and release