The Pursuit of Tone and A Minor Event
Good week to you!
The focus has been on the key of "C." It's the only one out of fifteen keys that has absolutely no sharps and no flats. It's all the
The Pursuit of Tone and A Minor Event
Good week to you!
The focus has been on the key of "C." It's the only one out of fifteen keys that has absolutely no sharps and no flats. It's all the white keys of the piano, pure and uncomplicated. To a point. As promised in the last post, we get to the dark side of things now.
Quick recap - we number the seven notes of the Major scale, beginning with the root note or tonic, which is "C".
C D E F G A B 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am - Bdim I - ii - iii - IV - V - vi - vii°
Each of the seven notes can be used to build a chord or a scale. Because of the relationship between notes, scales/chords built from the 1st, 4th and 5th notes are Major; scales/chords built from the 2nd, 3rd and 6th are minor. The 7th note yields the mysterious-sounding diminished chords and scales.
It's because of this particular sequence of distances (or intervals) between notes that the Major scale has its up, happy and bright sound. Now, change the sequence and watch what happens.
If you begin this scale on the sixth note and use all of the same notes as the Major scale, you get the relative minor scale (also known as the natural minor or Aeolian mode.) Since the sixth note of the C Major scale is "A", then this will be known as the A minor scale (note the lowercase "minor" - this is important.)
A B C D E F G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The order of notes has changed, yet it is still the same seven notes of the C Major scale. When played in this order, the steps between notes become altered slightly, which gives minor chords and scales a darker, more somber tone. Now remember - the point at which we begin on the scale has changed, so the notes have not. Which means that each of those notes retains its Major/minor/diminished quality. You'll just encounter them in a different order like so:
Am - Bdim - C - Dm - Em - F - G i - ii° - III - iv - v - VI - VII
Leading the way...
Chords have an interesting relationship with each other. Some lead to one another in a natural, expected way while others have a prickly sort of chemistry that seems forced and rough. It's the push and pull of these elements that creates musical tension. Our ears are attracted by (and spirits moved by) certain types of musical conflict and a good road map for that is this charting of chord progressions:
I chord leads to any chord
ii leads to IV, V, vii° chords
iii leads to ii, IV, vi chords
IV leads to I, iii, V, vii° chords
V leads to I chords
vi leads to ii, IV, V, I chords
vii° leads to I, ii chords
These rules were made to be broken, of course, and there's more down the road about borrowed chords and note replacement, but generally speaking, when moving chords through a piece of music - the above standards for western music apply.
So, in crafting a look at the world of the natural minor, I went totally overboard and composed a three-part arrangement for mountain dulcimer ensemble called "A Minor Event." Tuning is CGC. The file has individual pieces for the chords, lead and counterpoint as well as the.tef file for TablEdit users. Even if you don't have the registered version of the program, you can download the free TEF Viewer to listen to the piece.
First off - go to Play > Relative Speed and set it for 62. Experiment with different tempos and see how it sounds to you. If you're not familiar with multiple modules with TablEdit, take a look at the top right hand corner of the main screen when you open "A Minor Event." You'll see three green tabs with numbers. Each one of those represents a part of the arrangement. You can click each one to bring the tablature to the front (unfortunately, no way to watch all three at once, unless you print it out, but then it's not moving and scrolling and playing music, is it? No fun there.) Slowing down the playback will a