Chords

[Michael Bishop]

LOL That’s hilarious JB–yes, the mic NEEDS replacing; in fact I just did a private video for a friend using it and we both noticed some, “midi/robotic” type of resonance/feedback or something that was recorded and transmitted in my voice and I noticed it too, very weird sounding to say the least. It doesn’t have to be an expensive/elaborate mic either. Oh well, it served it’s purpose.

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael, thanks for your detail remarks. The whole reason I made my chord/mode table was because all these terms make a 12 note scale extremely confusing to me.
I refer to the table quite often and type all my music into the PC to transpose and edit. Maybe after I’ve done the course I will be able to do these things in my head.

I used it again yesterday when I was practicing long tone exercises with my Korg Tuner. For a moment I thought there was something seriously wrong with the sax, ha-ha! I’d forgotten I had to transpose the note, then I fetched my Chord table to see which note I was actually playing. The good news is my sax seems to be well tuned across the range. At this stage if a note sounds funny its usually all my fault 🙂

[Michael Bishop]

If you want to play with a band, having to commit this stuff to memory is simply a MUST. It’s not difficult or anything, to the contrary it’s all very straight forward stuff but it’s REALLY important. I was with a couple of guitar guys who clashed a month or so ago when we got together to do some Improvising because there was confusion as to whether they should be playing an Am7 chord or A7 chord–do you know what both of those are and the differences between the 2? We we’re playing in a minor Key so the answer is Am because dominant chords are composed of a Major Triad and a flat 7–you NEVER play a Major chord/triad over a minor scale! We use dominant chords over Major Scales–they were playing in Am so for me on Tenor that day it meant B minor. Now here’s the funny thing–you never play a Major chord/triad over a minor scale, but you can flatten the 3rd and 7th notes of a Major Scale–makes them minor when we do that-because the 3rd and 7th are the 2 notes that really gives the Blues that “bluesy” sound, and it works even though you’re playing in a Major Key LOL You can take it one step further and throw in a flat 5 note (also called a diminished fifth) and it works over a Major Scale, even though it’s a minor interval LOL When you play with a band, you GOT to know these things and with time/working on Johnny’s exercises you WILL understand these things, so don’t “freak out” by all this music theory talk right now LOL These are the kinds of things that Johnny teaches and once it’s part of “you” then it’s all becomes no-brainers and you don’t even think about it anymore.

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael

I spent quite a few hours last night studying the frequency xls I sent you.

I was under the impression that scales had notes which weren’t equidistant, but after about 8 hours I proved the setup to myself from the frequency data.
As I said before the difference between C-F and F-F# is the same step ratio wise, with the tonic note doubling in frequency for each octave.

I worked out the equidistant spaces for an ‘improved’ seven note scale and matched the frequencies to the notes frequency using a logarithmic graph with an R² value for best fit indication. Anyway after a long time I compared my new finished table with my Chord/Mode table, aaand it was exactly the same!!!

All that story of w-w-h-w-w-w-h (Ionian mode) and the rotation of this sequence for different modes, comes about due to the black and white keyboard pattern on the piano. The truth is that all the notes in each scale are equidistant from each other. This is how we recognise if we are playing the correct notes in a scale because the steps in pitch sound the same. There is no such thing as a half-step and I have to wonder how many people know this?

See my new exercise which was the result from this frequency study. Octave Pitch Equidistant Exercise

[Anonymous]

One thing i learnt from playing chords on the guitar for over 40 years, if you have some sheet music in front of you showing the melody, never ask a wind instrument player to write out the chords (sorry guys) 9 times out of 10 what they think works in theory sounds crap in practice, and i end up correcting all the chords.

Wind instrument players hear in terms of arpeggios, where as guitarists/piano players hear in terms of chords. Just from my own experience with other players in the past.

[Author]

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