Download the pdf: Relative Beat Strength

The virtual barber shop is fun! You’ll need headphones. I remember experiencing something like this at Disney World as a kid.

Phantom words creates the effect of a single word using separate sounds, demonstrating how your brain constructs meaning out of meaningless noise.

Temporal induction of speech shows how our brains fill in gaps when data is missing.

The scale illusion demonstrates how our brain groups notes together. See this image for the notation of what’s being played and what you are probably hearing.

Phantom melodies demonstrates how our brain picks out melodies from patterns at high-speeds.

Have fun!

By far the most popular and most controversial post of 2007 was The Zen Of Attraction. I’m surprised at the attention it received because I wrote it as an aside. Some people loved it and some people hated it. But what was most interesting for me was how many people hated not the article, but me. I mean these were just simple ideas that are totally debatable. This post led me to define some comment rules that include no personal attacks. I’m willing to debate ideas but not whether I’m a good person or not. It was a very interesting experience!

The second most popular post was iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack. This little app got some serious link love from TUAW, Ars Technica, and many other fantastic blogs. And a big reason why I didn’t blog as much as I did in 2006 was because of Twitter. If I ever had something short and simple to say, rather than try to develop it into at least 250 words, which I previously believed warranted a blog post, I would just post it to Twitter, which has a limit of 140 characters. I think my strategy will change some in 2008. My new Lifestream category will probably see a lot more action whenever I find that 140 characters is not enough. The most significant change is that I won’t keep such a tightly controlled niche blog. The only thing tying this blog together is that I am writing it, not the subject matter. So if I feel like saying something, this blog will take priority.

Along similar lines as iQuickTwitter were my many posts on automation. Some of them were conceptual, like Automation As Part Of An Integral Life Practice and Automating The Quality Of Your Attention. While others were specific and geeky, like IM Status: Update Your Skype, iChat, Or Adium Status With Quicksilver, Top 5 AppleScript Productivity Hacks for WordPress Bloggers and Podcasters, and Blogging With Quicksilver And AppleScript. I’ve really grown to see automation as an important part of life that I need to revisit again and again.

Some of my favorite songwriting articles were Applying The 80-20 Rule To Your Songwriting, my Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast, The Secret Alchemy Of Songwriting, 5 Sure Fire Ways To Kick-Start The Songwriting Habit, Rewriting Song Titles For Practice And Inspiration, and What Makes a Good Song? My biggest disappointment of 2007 was the small amount of completed songs. I finished only about half a dozen songs and published just one of them, which I’m quite proud of, “When The Wall Falls Down.”

I also didn’t write about ear training or music theory nearly as much as I did in 2006. But I have a few favorites, such as How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies, my Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast, Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale, and Ear Training or Listening Practice?

Two great moments of 2007 were getting my new MacBook Pro and iPhone. The new Mac inspired a whole new series of podcasts called Graham English Talks and introduced my own videos, like The Best Of Dwight Schrute Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. The iPhone inspired Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies For Your iPhone and made my tech life much more streamlined.

2007 was definitely a year of social networking. Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, Stumbleupon, and many other social networks occupied a large part of my time online. And there were many benefits like making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, finding a larger reach for my articles and music, and discovering new forms of self-expression. It confirms how important relationships truly are.

Which leads me to the very best of 2007, You! My life wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling without the special presence of you. The support of my readers and listeners has made the tough times easier and the good times even better. I sincerely hope that we stay connected through 2008. Thanks for sticking with me through 2007. w00t!

Taking a look at the C major scale, you can see that each note has a relative degree of stability or instability. We also call this consonance and dissonance. Traditionally, the rules of counterpoint dictate that the unison, third, fifth, sixth, and octave are consonances. The unison, fifth, and octave are perfect consonances while the sixth and third are imperfect consonances. The second, fourth, diminished fifth, tritone, and seventh are called dissonances.

It’s important to note that dissonance doesn’t mean being wrong or bad. Dissonance simply indicates an increase in musical tension.

So a diagram of the C major scale, showing the relative degree of stability to instability, would look like this:



How can you use this as a composer?

Think of where you want to take the listener. A melody is like a roller coaster. It goes up, it goes down. It builds tension and releases tension. The final release doesn’t come until the ride is over and you are still again. Your job as a melody writer is to take your listener on a journey, weaving through tension and release just like that roller coaster ride.

A very practical way to illustrate this is to look at the end of melodic phrases. Perhaps your entire melody has 8 melodic phrases. It would make sense to increase tension in the first few phrases by ending on relatively unstable tones. Then you can resolve it, but not completely, on the fourth phrase. Increase the tension again, and then release it completely on the last phrase by ending on the first or fifth scale degree.

This is also a great strategy for improvisation. If you’ve got 32 bars to solo, don’t resolve until the very end. Or, depending on the section that follows, you may want to increase the tension during the entire solo so that the following section can provide the release.

We just looked at how to use tension and release on an entire melody by choosing stable and unstable tones for the endings of melodic phrases. You can also look at the individual melodic phrases and determine the motion between tension and release you would like the listener to feel within each phrase. You can zoom in and out as far as you need to help you create the desired effect.

Obviously, tension and release are created by a combination of factors, like rhythm, harmony, motion, and so on. I’ve only discussed one aspect of tension and release in melody so far. Here’s the bottom line, whenever you need to make a melodic choice, ask yourself, “What level of stability or instability am I trying to create?” Then make the appropriate choice.

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“On this experimental record, I’ve been trying to explore more jazz harmonies. The thing is — and I’m gonna piss off a lot of people here — the II-V-I hits my barf button like nothing else. It’s the most horrible cadence in the known universe, so I’ve been looking at jazz that takes off in other directions.”
- BT, music producer

Now I respect everyone’s right to have a musical opinion. But I bring this up to warn people against forming strong negative opinions (aka limiting beliefs) about something as basic as the fundamentals of music.

I respect BT as a musician. He puts out great music. But his comment is the equivalent of Michael Jordan saying that lay ups make him want to puke. Better yet, it’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that biceps are a terrible thing. Maybe the reason BT makes such good music is because of his strong opinions. I don’t know. But I do know that the average musician is going to need as many choices as possible in their musical lives. Why limit yourself?

Do what you need to make the basics interesting for you. Just don’t close the doors on a boundless library of musical experience.

• The Rules and Principles of Counterpoint
• Deceptive Cadences
• Advice To Beginning Musicians
• How To Master Musical Textures
• Internalize And Eternalize The Music By Transcribing Solos
• Learn Orchestration Free Online
• Piano Voicings Part 6: Clusters
• Piano Voicings Part 5: Kenny Barron Voicings
• Piano Voicings Part 4: Upper Structure Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 3: Fourth Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 2: So What Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings
• The Holy Six
• Top Secret Patterns (shhh, they’re free!)
• Who Else Wants To Master the Diminished Scale?
• The Golden Mean in Harmony Part 2: Tritones: The Devil’s interval
• The Golden Mean in Harmony Part 1

Dick Grove has taught music to well over 25,000 musicians! He teaches stuff you won’t get in music school. And he understands how to give you a strong musical foundation so you don’t fall for the dangers of intellectualizing your music… and you can become a truly spontaneous musician.

Watch and learn…

• The six different ears a musician must have
• The “tree” approach to musicianship
• Why you should know at least some piano or keyboard
• The logic to being a spontaneous musician…

Click here to find out more about Dick Grove’s music theory and ear training.

Recognizing that C and F is a perfect fourth is a cognitive exercise. You have to think about it. Maybe only for a split-second, but you still have to translate your physical experience, a verb, into a mental object, a noun.

The experience of C and F is a physical experience. It is a physical vibration traveling through the air and affecting your physical ear. You, who knows the sound of a perfect fourth, and a non-musician, who doesn’t know the name of what they are hearing, still hears the exact same physical vibration coming through the air. That means that the cognitive part of your ear training obviously separates you from the non-musician.

Many musicians only take it that far. They get stuck in their heads. I’m sure you know musicians who seem to know a lot but still don’t have “that feel.”

So naming intervals and understanding music theory is done with the mind while experiencing sound is accomplished by the body. Both are very important.

Take a look at the word emotion. It means, with motion. When we talk about our emotions, we say “I feel…” You feel things in your body. When you sing a tone, you feel the experience in your body. It’s real on the gross level. Whereas the mind experiences things on a more subtle level. If I punch you in the gut, you really feel it. If I insult you, you experience it in a different way. Sometimes that experience will have correlates in the body. So they’re intertwined. But if I punch you, your mind has no choice but to follow your body’s commands. You keel over. If I insult you, you have the choice of ignoring me and directing your mind elsewhere.

If you’re only working on the cognitive, or mind, aspect of ear training and music theory, you’re missing a large chunk of the experience of sound. Singing what you hear brings what you are learning into the body so that you can embody your knowledge of music. It’s not just a theory or skill anymore. It’s part of your identity.

Therefore, you can improve your musicianship by singing, and embodying, everything you learn. Here’s a couple of practical exercises to try.

• Reach out to your instrument and play any two or more tones. Then sing them from the bottom up or top down.
• When you hear sounds that you would like to emulate, try emulating them with your voice first.

Got any exercises of your own to share?

You do a lot of work on your instrument technique, your knowledge of music theory, and your craft of music composition. Do you also have a plan to improve you, the musician?

Take two musicians and give them the same four bars of music to play. One musician will sound different than the other. And one musician will probably sound more appealing to you. If they’re playing the same notes on the same instrument, how can this be?

I once studied with a teacher who didn’t teach me how to improve my art. Instead, he taught me how to improve the artist. He would have an audience present and ask me to affect them in a certain way. Just by tweaking the thoughts in my mind, he could get me to tap their feet or get them to lean forward. It turns out, just by thinking differently, I could control the energetic component of my art. Most of the time, the instructions were to control how I felt in my own body. In a sense, I was giving my attention not to the art, but to the artist.

It’s surprising to see how the way you feel when you make music affects the way your listeners feel.

The next time you play in front of someone, hold a listener response in your mind. Then see how you can manifest this response with your focus and your feelings. You’ll be amazed.

In 1973 he founded the world-renowned Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and guided this highly regarded institution into the top rank of leading contemporary music schools, mainly on the concepts and methods included in some 70 music education books he authored during this period.

Dick Grove was very active in the music education field, creating many of the courses for the “School Without Walls”, as well as products for Grove/Rasch Music Education Systems. These products are based on his 20+ years of classroom experience in the fields of harmony & theory, keyboard, eartraining, improvisation, composition, arranging, orchestration, songwriting and contemporary musical styles.

Dick Grove passed away on Dec 26, 1998.

He will be remembered forever by all of his students and friends.

Dick Grove’s Credits

• Consonances: unison, third, fifth, sixth, octave
• Perfect consonances: unison, fifth, octave
• Imperfect consonances: sixth, third
• Dissonances: second, fourth, diminished fifth, tritone, seventh

• Direct motion: when two or more parts ascend or descend in the same direction by step or skip.
• Contrary motion: when one part ascends by step or skip and the other descends–or vice versa.
• Oblique motion: when one part moves by step or skip while the other remains stationary.

Four Fundamental Rules

• First rule: From one perfect consonance to another perfect consonance one must proceed in contrary or oblique motion.
• Second rule: From a perfect consonance to an imperfect consonance one may proceed in any of the three motions.
• Third rule: From an imperfect consonance to a perfect consonance one must proceed in contrary or oblique motion.
• Fourth rule: From one imperfect consonance to another imperfect consonance one may proceed in any of the three motions.
• *Oblique motion, if used with due care, is allowed with all four progressions.

FIRST PART

• Note against Note: It is the simplest composition of two or more voices which, having notes of equal length, consists only of consonances.
• *More perfect than imperfect consonances should be used. Imperfect consonances are more harmonious than imperfect ones.
• *The beginning and the end must both consist of perfect consonances. The beginning should express perfection and the end relaxation. Since imperfect consonances specifically lack perfection, they cannot express relaxation.
• *In the next to the last bar, there must be a major sixth if the cantus firmus is in the lower part; and a minor third, if it is in the upper part. Thus, the seventh degree has to be raised in the Dorian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian modes. (The second degree of a mode occurs always as the next to the last tone in the cantus firmus, the seventh degree always as the next to the last tone in the counterpoint.)

The effect is strong because the deceptive cadence creates the possibility of preparing the actual close again and, through repetition, of ending with increased power.

1. Get a cheap instrument.
   You probably have an idea of what instrument you want to play already. Don’t waste your money on the best instrument money can buy. Check Craig’s List and eBay for a working instrument. You probably don’t even need to spend $100 bucks no matter what instrument you’re thinking of playing. Then, when you’re ready to upgrade, return the favor by putting it up for sale for the next generation of newbies.
2. Just play.
   The saying goes: there are no mistakes, only opportunities. Don’t worry about sounding bad or making mistakes. And don’t try to sound like your favorite guitar shred master at this stage in the game. Just mess around without any idea of sounding good. Just make sound.
3. Begin to learn the fundamentals of music.
   After 15 days, if you’re still interested in your instrument, begin to learn the fundamentals of music. A great place to start is MusicTheory.net. Make a commitment to study music theory for the next 15 days. A single lesson should only take 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Find a music teacher.
   If after another 15 days you feel like you still want to continue, find a local music teacher. Interview teachers as if you were hiring an employee. You pay them so they work for you. Ask lots of questions and make sure they feel like a good fit. Expect to pay around $50 a lesson and ease into a regular schedule of weekly to biweekly lessons.
5. Study music theory.
   If after 45 to 60 days you still feel motivated to continue on your musical journey, make a dedicated commitment to study theory. For conventional training, a university setting can’t be beat. For alternative options, try a home study musicianship course. The most comprehensive home-study musicianship courses that I believe in are available at Elite Musician Society.
6. Find people to play with.
   Your musical journey will maintain motivation and gain speed if you’re not alone. Check Craig’s List for beginning musicians who are looking to play with people. Teach each other what you know. Learn a couple of simple songs together. You can also search for group lessons to get your feet wet.
7. Keep studying, keep practicing, and keep playing with people.
   In order to keep progressing, remember the 80/20 rule: 80% of your success comes from 20% of the things you do. Resolve to spend more of your time doing more of the things that contribute the greatest value to you and your music.

Good luck!

• Polyphonic, while literally meaning “many-voiced,” refers to multivoiced texture of considerable interlinear independence, often imitative; it is understood to have qualitative implications beyond its literal, limited meaning.
• Homophonic would literally denote a condition of interdependent voices, but its traditional connotation is of texture where a primary voice is accompanied by a subordinate fabric sometimes interactive in tentative ways, the bass normally in a contradirectional or other contrapuntal relation to the primary voice (or voices).
• Chordal is a term referring to texture consisting essentially of chords, its voices often relatively *homorhythmically related.
• Doubling refers to lines *homorhythmically-homodirectionally-homointervallically associated.
• Mirror association, usually understood as strict, involves a relation that is homorhythmic-homointervallic-contradirectional.
• Heterophonic is a relation that is *homodirectional (parallel in contour) but *heterointervallic-having minor diversification of interval content.
• Heterorhythmic is a term that means having dissimilar rhythms (see below).
• Sonority is defined as the overall resonant character determined by texture (including doublings) and coloration (including articulation and intensity of dynamics.)
• Counterpoint (contrapuntal) is a condition of interlinear interaction involving intervallic content, direction, rhythm, and other qualities or parameters of diversification.
• Monophonic means single-voiced (monolinear).

From Theory of Harmony by Arnold Schoenberg:

*In the following system, the prefixes homo- (uni-, or co-), hetero-, and contra- are adopted to refer to conditions of identity, mild and very local diversification (as in the conventional “hetereophonic”), and more pronounced contrast, respectively. Moreover, three specific parameters (aspects, dimensions, spheres of reference) are adopted as relevant to the evaluation of textural conditions: these are rhythm (specifically rhythmic pattern), direction (of melodic succession), and linear intervallic content.

1. Within the parameter of rhythm, the terms homorhythmic, heterorhythmic, (both of these in conventional usage), and contrarhythmic all emerge as potentially applicable and useful.
2. Within the parameter of direction, the terms homodirectional, heterdirectional, and contradirectional (“motion” in a straight line exists as a possibility along with motion up and down) all have potential applicability to relations among components of texture.
3. Within the sphere of intervallic content, the terms homointervallic, heterointervallic, and contraintervallic can all be used to describe particular textural situations and relations, usually applying to specific intervals rather than classes.

Understanding musical texture will give your music more creativity, originality, depth, as well as justification for your musical choices. Master these qualities and experience unlimited compositional options.

within another system of minor thirds:

And you could repeat that entire pattern by another interval, thereby creating a system within a system within a system! Patterns can be extremely complex mathematically. Developing your own will help strengthen your creativity as well as your chops.

In a solo, use patterns as a starting point or as a connecting point between phrases. Exploit their repetition to increase tension. Winding down a solo with a descending pattern is an effective way to give the listener something recognizable to hold on to as they ease back into their seat. And, of course, you can use a super fast and complex pattern to just plain astonish your audience.

Get all of my TOP SECRET patterns for free:

Musical chords have a non-Euclidean geometry that has been exploited by Western composers in many different styles. A musical chord can be represented as a point in a geometrical space called an orbifold. Line segments represent mappings from the notes of one chord to those of another. Composers in a wide range of styles have exploited the non-Euclidean geometry of these spaces, typically by utilizing short line segments between structurally similar chords. Such line segments exist only when chords are nearly symmetrical under translation, reflection, or permutation. Paradigmatically consonant and dissonant chords possess different near-symmetries, and suggest different musical uses.

Full Story: Princeton University – Composer reveals musical chords’ hidden geometry

My reflections:
I’ve always found the link between music and math fascinating. These naturally occurring patterns that can be explained by numbers become mysterious when demonstrated through music. The artistic part of me is most alive in the questions and mystery of life. While the scientific part of me wants answers and to figure things out. But it’s not a struggle between two opposing viewpoints. It’s two parallel lines following a path through time. Hidden beneath the surface is infinity.

A major benefit to this scale is that you only have to learn it in three different keys since it repeats itself every minor third. Another useful aspect of its symmetrical and repeating nature is the use of scale patterns. Patterns can be a wonderful source of inspiration for solos as well as being useful in improving finger dexterity. And now for some practical applications:

In this example, the scale (whole step-half step) is played over a Dmin7 chord and ends nicely by leading into the third (G#) of the E7 chord.

This example is similar to the first but uses a different diminished scale over the same chord (Dmin7).

This is a nice long run over a G7 chord.

Here’s a pattern in the style of John Coltrane.

Get 17 of my favorite diminished scale patterns for free:

Chaos: complete disorder and confusion; behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions; the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.

Chaos theory: The branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences.

Phi: The twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet ( Φ ).

Golden Section: The division of a line so that the whole is to the greater part as that part is to the smaller part (i.e., in a ratio of 1 to 1/2(√5 + 1)), a proportion that is considered to be particularly pleasing to the eye.

Mandelbrot, Benoit (1924– ), French mathematician, born in Poland. He is known as the pioneer of fractal geometry.

Fractal: A curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

The concept of harmony goes all the way back to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (580–500 bc). Pythagoras said that whether two notes sounded good together had to do with simple ratios:
1:1 unison
1:2 octave
2:3 fifth
3:4 fourth

We also find the 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 proportions in the first and strongest overtones (also called partials or harmonics) which exist within every musical sound (except for a pure sine wave), blending with the fundamental tone.

This natural kinetics gave birth to Western harmony, including the circle of fifths, major and minor scales, and dominant and subdominant harmony which, by the way, is the building blocks of The Blues.