Tension note.

What are tension notes?

Usually, we see these in jazz music. Normally, we use 1-3-5 in major chords. Occasionally, to add a little touched taste, we use 1-3-5-7, we call it major7.

For jazz players, they tend to add in more. If i draw out a scale in two octaves:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16;
where 1=8, 7=15, etc.

So jazz player sees 9, 11,13 as tension notes. Not only these, even the b7, b9, #9, b13, #13 are tension notes as well. Chords involved will be written out such as:

Cmaj9 (1-3-5-7-9 / C-E-G-B-D) or can be written as CM9 (different from c minor 9 "Cm9")

C 9 (1-3-5-7b-9 / C-E-G-Bb-D) - C dominant 9

C mM9 (1-b3-5-7-9 / C-Eb-G-B-D) - C minor major 9

G13 (1-3-5-7b-9-11-13 / G-B-D-F-A-C-E)

Gb13 (1-3-5-7b-9-11-b13 / G-B-D-F-A-C-Eb)

F9 (1-3-5-7b-9 / F-A-C-Eb-G)

So, tension notes' chords tend to have too many notes and are relatively hard to play. Hence, as in making assumptions in physics, we cut off some of the "unwanted" notes:

• The 3rd, 7th and the last tension notes are the most important amongst all others. The 3rd governs the chord's major/minor. The 7th governs the dominant7 / major7. Last tension note is the note you want if you are using such chord.

• The root can be cut off since there'll be a bassist to assist the playing. Playing root is a redundant.

• The 5th sound is not so important, as well as other "lower ranked" tension note. (For 7-9-11-13, 13 is the last tension note and 7-9-11 are the lower ranked.)

Tension notes make jazz chords very difficult to obtained by hearing, especially those root-eliminated chords.. Some chords even have two wanted tension notes, such as:

Cmaj7 (b9 b13).. These species sound pretty wierd!! LOL! But fun to have a try on it..

Augmented and Diminished scale.

Actually i'm not too sure how augmented and diminished chords are used. But, the theory is based on whole tone (WT) and half tone (HT) scale.

For diminished scale, we use whole tone half tone method:

WT-HT-WH-HT-WH-HT-WT-HT

For example, for C diminished we take:

C-D-Eb-F-Gb-Ab-Bbb-B-C (9 notes)

Same method to obtain chord, Cdim7, 1-3-5-7, C-Eb-Gb-Bbb.

OR maybe can use half tone whole tone. Try it out.. Since it already sounds wierd, i can't really differentiate the difference between the usage of WT-HT or HT-WT.

For augmented chords, we use whole tone scale:

WT-WT-WT-WT-WT-WT-WT


Caug scale:


C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-C (7 notes)


C aug means 1-3-5, C-E-G#.

Try it out! Do combing on your left hand (chord) and run up and down with the respective chord scale, should sound quite diana krall, hehe.. (but hers is much more difficult..)

Scales? These are some of what i know!

In scales, we take C major as a main reference, it's easier to imagine. Imagine on a keyboard, 'C' is the 'do', or 1st. It then continues to 'D-E-F-G-A-B'. While looking to the black key, we notice that there are black key gap in between some two adjacent white keys. In this key, it's obvious that 'E-F & B-C' have no gaps in between.

• If there is a gap, we call it wholetone (WT).

• If there is not having any gap, we call in semitone (ST) .

For any major scale, it's ascending this way:

WT-WT-ST-WT-WT-WT-ST


To makes things easy, just imagine the black keys of piano, it's exactly the same.

So, what about minor? It's something like this:


WT-ST-WT-WT-ST-WT-WT


Observe it carefully, it's actually just a shift of the major scale. Hence, we can say that if you play C major scale, but start with A (the 6th note), it's the minor scale of that particular key, in this case, A minor scale:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Neither sharp nor flat occurs, it's just another identical C major scale, just that there is a shift.

Same thing applies to some basic jazz mode,

Dorian: starts with 2nd.
Phrygian : starts with 3rd
Lydian : starts with 4th
Mixolydian: starts with 5th
Aeolian: starts with 6th (another name for minor scale)
Locrian : starts with 7th.

Hope that it cures the curiosity on basic scale forming.

Sad Sad Sad.

A shocking message from my mom yesterday night. My one of my musical tutor, Uncle Benny Ng just passed away. It was a very shocking news, three days back i just called him up and talked to him regarding the woodwind performance during the Christmas. Two weeks back we were still talking to each other in the church camp at port dickson. He looked very healthy. This is such a sudden breaking news.

He is my tutor on clarinet. He plays clarinet and alto saxophone in big band. He has a plenty of precious big band orchestration scores, bought in during the 50's or 60's, if i'm not mistaken. A soloist on jazz for both of his instruments too. He then did some research on the way all those orchestration instruments goes harmony and sounds nice. Having all sort of information, knowledge and experience in big band orchestration (anything, from woodwind tenor sax to brass trombone to string violins), he is one of the rare musician in this country.

During the classes with him, he actually taught me how to appreciate music, especially the classical and big band orchestration style music. And why is emotion in music so important. If not, i may still stop at the level, "technique good means music good".

So, he always tell me to reinforce the church band. He said just chords will not serve well, must put in some harmony and feel or emotion (spiritually). Actually, harmony is a much deeper knowledge then mere chords. In fact, the major and minor chords, although is the main building blocks of music, it was already outdated before baroque music. It was used during the renaissance period. We, usually, don't see any harmony on piano as the purely major or minor straight forward three notes 1-3-5 chords. at least it'll be inversions. Harmony is much harder. But it's just too hard for me, i'm still finding a way to arrange even a simple duets, not to say a orchesration...

Hope that god will be with his family to comfort them..

Rest in peace, Uncle Benny!

Brief intro to soud.

hmm...

All sound come out of vibration of a material, and it travels through air. So, you can't hear any sound in vacuum.

When a material vibrates, it has its vibration rate. This is proportional to the frequency. Human only listen to frequency from 35Hz to 20kHz.

35Hz is something very bassy, 20kHz is very high pitch. So, it's actually inaudible for older people. We human is very sensitive to sound around 1kHz, our speaking voice is approximately in those range as well.

Everything vibrates, but they don’t produce the same sound. Every material has its own characteristic on the vibration they produce and its effects on air. For example, you tie a string on a material, and apply some tension on it. Tension makes sure that you won’t get anything too bass till inaudible, since at least we need 60 cycles per second of vibrations. If you tie it to

a glass, it may sound ‘glassy’. Tie it on a wood, you may find it ‘woody’. And, tie it on a table and it’ll become louder (because table has a depth, just like the different sounds produced by an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar.

So, take guitar as an example. The sound come out of it depends not only on its wood. It depends also on its inner brace and dimensions design. Yet, wood

really affect much of the tonal quality. However, some guitar manufacturers, such as the Ovation USA, are using the helicopter blade material to replace the wood of the guitar’s body. Also, if Taylor and Martin both using the same grade’s wood to build a guitar, it won’t sound the same, because the design each of them using are so different. If considering the string? But the main point here is that all these sounds very different form the plain pure sine wave.

This is what we call musical instrument.

This can be imagined as few waves, each with its own frequency and amplitude (loudness) all blended up together. And this will give out something very special. For any two instruments, they’ll sound maybe very different or slightly different. Again, this is caused by the dimension of the ‘guitar sound box-its inner resonance’, the strings used and the wood. There are many other factors as well.

Same thing applies to speakers. But for speaker, it’s much more difficult to design (I think so), because it has to be able to reproduce full range frequencies.

Just a share of knowledge! Found these online.

The limits in music??!

What’s the least division of frequency that human’s ear hear? Is it okay to further divide what we hear in a chromatic scale? I’m not so sure, but then if the frequency between two adjacent notes is almost or smaller than the ‘theoretical least division’, it’ll sound very smooth. But, not every instrument will be able to play it. This is because for any instrument, if the frequency is divided into a very small division, it causes the main characteristic of each instrument to break down, since every instrument’s frequency is combined by countless types of frequencies.

Or maybe we should say that human ear will not be sensitive enough to differentiate these small parts. Any instrument that plays it will sound almost the same. And, we won’t like it very much, because it’s not arpeggio, nor octave.

The question comes back to how we judge an instrument? A good violin should sound a bit ‘rough (woody) but smooth’. This kind of characteristic is mainly caused by the characteristic of materials (wood) used. We can say that this is actually a slight ‘out of tune’ frequency that blend together with the correct frequencies. It means that there is a lowest possible limit, if we don’t want to get a pure waveform in the violin. To carve a good violin, you need maple at the back end, and spruce at the top. Good guitar needs a spruce top as well, and an Indiana rosewood body.

Pure wave = the whole orchestra will sound like computer generated sine waves..

There is also a limit in musical tuning. For every frequency division on every adjacent note, they cannot be perfectly divided. Hence, some says that B flat is the weakest key. This shows that it’s meaningless to further separate the note into a smaller portion, since we can’t even notice the non linear division of notes, most people can’t get a perfect major key scale, what if we say about chromatics and higher division than chromatics?

Some argue also that maybe there will be a better material to build a better sensitivity instruments, (no sine waves orchestra, but slight different superimposed waves). In this case, like i say before, we will need a whole new theory. Just like how Einstein broke Newton’s law, not easy!

It's all bout taste 2.

If we don't want to equalize the positioning, want to make it 'live', it is not possible as well, since 'live' itself is already isn't that 'live'. Only if we decide that what we hear in a concert to be a reference of 'live'.

Concert and real unplug acoustic (like how we play at house) are very different. The sound we equalize in concert shows is a lot more than what we did in an CD album. Live stages forbid any acoustic feedback. To achieve this, especially on a large stage or hall, it's virtually impossible without any EQ. But it's different in recording studio.

But concert tends to be more 'powerful' than CD, because the artists want to create a more lively concert, for their fans to 'get high'.

It's just like preaching on stage and writing books. Both content are the same, just that the presenting style different.

SO, back to it.. If 4 person play band in a room. All set their sound to what they like, will it sounds great?

• If it sounds bad, they need some equalization so that they don't eat up other member's main frequency.

• If it sounds great.. EQ is not needed.

Brass band, Big band, Classical orchestra sounds very nice unplug and unEQed.

Why? How?

Their skills? Our system's problem causes us not to originally reproduce the sound?

Some people like Rock, Noisy music, Some like live with lots of dance music, Some like jazz quartet-passion but quiet. Some like classical violin solo, some like orchestra, the louder the better, but do not like rock. Some like songs recorded in 50's methods, they say got feel...

It's all bout taste, it's art anyway.

It's all bout taste 1.

Suppose you have an instrument, if you want to record it, some usual methods are:

• Mic it (closely or far).
• Connect line out from that instrument (if it has one) to a mixer.
• take both natural sound and line out sound (mic+pickup).
• etc..

Which will you chose?

In the 40's, mostly they mic the guitar. Recently get an album with plenty of Robert Johnson songs inside. Yes! the legendary blues guitarist, playing his legendary skills on Gibson L-1. I thought it'll be fantastic. But when I play the CD, i realized that it was recorded on 1936... It shouldn't sound awesome..

That time, there were LP, that is, Long Play. I believe, if they were to record just ONE song into ONE LP, it should sound nice. But since it's a 'Long' Play, they were trying to compress everything into one LP. So, what they did?

• Cut off the bass frequencies, because bass frequencies carries the heaviest memory.
• But it really sounds bad.. Again, the engineers those days did something:
• Boost back the low frequencies on the phonograph itself. But, it didn't sounds that awesome as well, yet at least better.

If a LP recorded with just ONE song, i think it should sound very nice, seriously, since it manage to play even the ultrasonic range. We must ask Phil Jones from AAD about why is this so.. He is an expert, tons of researches on speakers' behaviour on this company.

Hence, equalization makes the early 40's recordings very unpleasant to listen to.

Today? We equalize(EQ) the sound as well. But does it sounds better? Some yes , some not so..

The dilemma are:

• If i want to record a guitar sound, should i place my mic in front of the guitar? Or at the sound hole? Or 45 degree to the sound hole? Or to the bridge? Or through a warm sound amplifier? Or through line out? Or through line out via my favorite Boss direct box? * Every sounds are different.

• If we want to record what exactly our ear hears, we place double mics at ear level. Will it records ambient noise? Will it be lack of bass? Will it left out the 'pick' sound?.....

• If we record with mic, which mic? Some laggy mics produce 'warm' sound. Some ultra-fast-reaction mics produce too 'dry' the sound. Some bass are heavy, Some mid range frequencies are full. How?

It's all depends on the artist. Know why Jimi Hendrix's Strat can be tuned to such a powerful state? Why my Yamaha never ever get BBKing's Gibson sweet sound? Know why people buy Steinway and Sons and not multi-purpose Clavinova even the price are 10 times more?

They want that sound. They tuned the tone till what they want.

If the recording studio were to ask Mr B to record via the studio ultra expensive rack system+guitar amp, Mr B will stick to his maybe not so expensive old lovely sweet amp. Musicians, is that so?

So, it's all bout taste.