MLT Club Member David Herrick
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Thanks, Jacki! It will probably be pretty subdued here as well, but it’s an excuse to stuff our faces with unhealthy food, which is the freedom that we Americans hold the most dear.
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Well, Jung, I’m just piecing things together as I go, but I find it easiest to think in terms of C Ionian, i.e., all the white keys, and extrapolate to other modes and other keys from there. It only makes sense to me on the piano, not on any stringed instrument.
The chords of C Ionian are the ones with no black keys. So position three fingers for C major and slide them to the right one key at a time: C major (C-E-G), D minor (D-F-A), E minor (E-G-B), F major (F-A-C), G major (G-B-D), A minor (A-C-E), and whatever you call B-D-F. (I think that’s B diminished, but I’m still working on all that diminished / augmented / sustained stuff.) If you write an Ionian mode song in the key of C, these are all the three-note chords you can choose from, assuming you stick to an every-other-key finger spacing.
There are also some four-note possibilities, such as D minor 7 (D-F-A-C), E minor 7 (E-G-B-D), G major 7 (G-B-D-F), and A minor 7 (A-C-E-G). I imagine you could also have C-E-G-B, F-A-C-E, and B-D-F-A, but I don’t know what you’d call them. Anything with any black keys is excluded, and if used would be borrowed from another mode.
Right now I’m in the process of writing chords for a melody that I came up with 30 years ago, but until now I had no idea how to start. This mode stuff really helps; thanks for turning me onto it!
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I just had an “aha” moment with regard to the utility of thinking in terms of modes. If you’re composing chords for a song, or trying to figure out the chords for an existing song, you can use modes to eliminate “incorrect” chords in places where you can’t decide among two or three similar ones.
For example, if the song is in Ionian mode in the key of C (all white keys on the piano), and you’re not sure whether you need A major or A minor at a certain point, go with A minor because it’s all white keys.
Of course one can always borrow chords from another mode to spice things up here and there, but I imagine by sticking to one mode you’d have a lot more hits than misses on your first draft.
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Thanks for those travel suggestions, Jung. I’m looking forward to making the trip someday, but first I’ve got five more states in the northwestern U.S. to visit, and then I’ll expand my horizons internationally as a reward for earning my geographical merit badge.
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Thanks for all that info, Howard! As much as I enjoy reading about Australia, I’ve never thought about the paleoclimate. If modern humans had been around back then, the whole continent might have become as densely populated as Europe.
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My next-door neighbor is from Newfoundland. The first time I spoke with him I noticed that his accent sounded a lot more Irish than Canadian, and he said that a lot of Newfoundlanders are descended from Irish immigrants. It kind of makes sense when you look at a globe: the Atlantic is pretty narrow at that latitude.
Jung, I have yet to visit Canada, unless you count looking down on Toronto during a flight from Boston to Chicago. I had never even heard of Tim Horton’s until I joined this club and saw Jacki mention it. I gather it’s the equivalent of Starbucks in the U.S. Those little doughnut thingies look delicious, so I guess it’s time to file my passport application.
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Well, Jacki, I did come across this:
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Sorry “aboot” that, Jung. I hope this makes up for it:
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Happy Canada Day to Jacki, Jung, and any other denizens of the subarctic in this club!
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Jung, if anyone can do that sort of thing on ukulele, I’d be super impressed! With just four strings, each with only a one-octave range, the possibilities are much more restricted.
Mason Williams, the composer of Classical Gas, also was a comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers TV show in the late 60’s, in which capacity he hired a talented young comedian by the name of Steve Martin.
Yes, Lisa’s performance on Time of the Season is a wonderful sample of a style we don’t get to hear much of from them.
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Ah, the “one-man band” again. Incredible! I’m not really a guitar aficionado (it’s amazing that I haven’t been kicked out of the club yet), but this guy has superhuman capabilities. Thanks for posting this medley, Jung.
I’ve always thought that Classical Gas is one of the most fascinating instrumental songs of the 60’s. I just found this bit of trivia about the title on Wikipedia:
“Originally named ‘Classical Gasoline’, the tune was envisioned to be ‘fuel’ for the classical guitar repertoire. The title was later inadvertently shortened by a music copyist.”
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That’s pretty cool, Jung! It does sound great all by itself. It looks like he’s doing that thing from the Chet Atkins video, playing rhythm notes with one or two fingers and melody with the rest. I wonder what percentage of guitar players have mastered that skill.
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I just realized that the ending of the Beach Boys’ “The Man with All the Toys” is pretty much identical to the ending of “Deep Purple”. And “Deep Purple” came out a year before the Beach Boys’ Christmas album!
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We’re definitely on parallel paths on this music theory journey, Jung. I’ve been reading/watching material on these same topics. I’m just unendingly amazed at the interplay between the analytical and the emotional with regard to chord structures and progressions.
That’s very cool that you’ve seen some real-life examples of the situation in that video. I had always just thought of it as laughably absurd (which was the general attitude of that show), but yeah, people can surprise you.
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Jung, you just rekindled the memory of my first exposure to this piece, in a short-lived but surreal sitcom from the early 80’s. I couldn’t find just that scene on YouTube, but I found the whole episode, and I’ve cued it to the right point. It ends at 21:01.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwK6t4U_5NM&t=1132s
