The Smush Newsletter, Oct 10th, 2001, Vol 1.10 Contact: oskillator@hotmail.com Home: http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/ Back issues available at http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/news.html Table of contents: 1. Walking on Sound ............... 16 2. The Smush Music Theory Primer .. 37 3. New Smush Music ................ 195 WALKING ON SOUND ---------------- After reading last week's dissertation on walking on sound, a friend of mine mentioned that one possible problem with the theory would be if someone wasn't expecting a modulation or something and his foot fell into a crack in the sound ... that could possibly be painful experience. I was about to say that it would be a lawyering problem. He then mentioned that it would be like that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Ryker's old captian appears on the vidscreen and they have to go salvage the Pegasus, which is halfway phased inside an asteroid because they had illegally developed a phasing cloaker. At that point, I realized that I would have to make people sign a waiver. I'm not a lawyer or anything, and I want to avoid the courtroom as much as possible. So if you go to dance on my sound, you have to either know the songs in advance, or know enough music theory to predict the chord changes when they come so that you won't slip and fall. You'd have to sign an affadavit to that effect. But you wouldn't need much schooling, really, in fact, i can teach you all you need to know right here in this newsletter. With no further ado, here is: THE SMUSH MUSIC THEORY PRIMER ----------------------------- Word gets around that music theory is difficult to learn. This is mostly propogated by rock and roll bassists and drummers who can barely count to four. Yes, certainly if you want to get a job in the music theory industry, it's going to take quite a bit of work, but the layman can learn enough to enrich his music listening experience -- and keep his foot from slipping -- in just a few minutes of reading and a few hours of practice! If you're the type of person who's always staring blankly when all your beer buddies friends talk about "notes", "key signatures" and "scales", read on! The first thing you must do when you listen to a song is determine which key it's in. This is determined by listening to the lead singer. The note that each section ends on will be the tonic unless the section ends in a "deceptive" cadence (yes, that's a technical term). You should be able to tell it's a deceptive cadence by context. Usually, unless the music is written by illiterate pop barbarians, the song will always end on the tonic. Also, there will be a profusion of modulations from the fifth to the root. This gives a warm and fuzzy feeling. If you have no heart, you can tell because the fifth is "one fifth" of an octave above the tonic, also known as the root. Since an octave is 12 half tones, one fifth of an octave is 2.4 half tones. But how do you get to know that interval in your head? One easy way is to run this program in basic: sound 440, 10 sound 440*2^(2.4/12), 10 440 hz is the standard A key, but you don't need to concern yourself with actual letters. Just remember that even though it's the first letter of the alphabet, it's the 6th letter of the C major scale. So when you see 440A, think 4406, because it's really a 6th. And since the pianoforte was invented, people have been using the twelfth root of two to calculate what the proper frequency of notes was... remember, each octave doubles, so multiplying by the twelfth root of two twelve times would double the frequency! So to go 2.4 half steps up, or one fifth of an octave, we raise two to the power of 2.4/12 and multiply that by the pitch we're finding the interval for. But what if you don't have basic? Well, it's a fast download off of any microsoft piracy site, but say you're not even at a computer. Say you printed this out and are reading it on the toilet. You know how the major scale goes, right? Every kid learns it. "Do re mi" etc. From the Sound of Music, the nun with the guitar. Well, it goes like this in terms of halfsteps... 0 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 ... that matches C D E F G A B C if you were wondering... if you integrate them, using simple calculus, that's 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12 halfsteps. See? C to C, twelve in an octave. So an easy way to remember where 2.4 is, it's a little bit above "re" Now that you've established the root of the key, also known as one (1), we can go on to the scale. Well, remember how the major scale was 0 2 2 1 2 2 2 1? That sounds "happy", or so we're trained to think. The minor scale is the opposite, and it's halfstep pattern is 2 1 1 0 1 1 1 0, or performing the simple integration that we applied before, 2 3 4 4 5 6 7 7 .. yes, that's right, the fourth is the same as the third... this is because 4*3 is 12, and remember the number of halfsteps in an octave? Right, twelve. If that's too confusing for you, just remember that happy = major and sad = minor. Or if that's too confusing for you, happy = major, anything else = minor. Now that's the key signature. If you want to impress your friends majoring in music theory, try to bet them that you can name the key signature of a song that's playing on the radio. It's easy! Once you have the root, say it... remember to specify in letter form!! So convert that 6 back to an A! And then add on the happiness factor A.K.A. major vs. minor. They'll be stunned, believe me! Now that the hard part is over... it's a little know fact that all songs use one of the following chord progressions. If you memorize this chart then you'll never have to take another music theory class in your life: Progression 1: C major, F major - Note that it's only two chords. This is what first time composers use when they first pick up the guitar. Progression 2: c Minor, F major - It's what first time composers write when they're sad, due to the lowercase c in front. Progression 3: C Major, F major, G major - Here we get the meat and potatoes of the classics. Remember Bach's "Air on a G String"? That used this progression. So does the Beavis and Butthead theme song. Progression 4: C Major G Major, F major - Like the above, for people who want to sound like Bach, but just slightly reversed Progression 5: C Major G Major A Minor F Major - since A Minor is, for the most part, equivalent to C Major, this progression has obsoleted the classic C/G/C/F because people prefer not to repeat chords like that. Progression 6: c Minor B Major A Major G Major - Note the descending quality of the last three chords. The C sets you in the root key, then the B, being right next to the C harmonically sets you off your stride. The next two chords bring things slightly back into place, and remember when I said a fifth to root cadence will bring you a warm fuzzy feeling? That sometimes applies to G to C as well. That's a special case, though, don't try it for more complicated key signatures. Progression 7: C Major, a minor, F major, G Major - This is so similar to 5 that it's not even worth noting. Progression 8: C major B Major F major - Again. B major == G major, because 7 * 5 = 35, and 3+5 is 8, and 8+5 is 12. See how it all comes back to the octaves? Progression 9: b Minor G major C major - This is only an intro, so don't let it fool you! If you think you're going to hear b minor after that C major then your foot is about to get injured! And last and least, progression 10. C F C C F F C C G F C C - This was popularized by Flamenco-style guitarists in spain in the early 1400s. Heavy metal guitarists have adopted it and now nearly every heavy metal song uses this chord progression... you'll note that the chords are neither major nor minor -- the heavy metal guitarists dropped the 3rd when they realized they could tune their guitars in such a way that they could play this chord progression using only one finger if they did. Pick up a copy of the latest "now that's what i call music" at your local Wherehouse and you should be able to find each of these chord progressions in at least one song on the album. Over the past fifty years people have subconsciously altered their tastes to enjoy these and only these chord progressions, and in equal doses, so the scientifically proven song measurement system that the engineers an Now That's What I Call Music Intl. has taken this into account. One last thing. Once every few years a daring pop musician will come out with a chord progression that is "fresh" and "different". Luckily, in much the same way that all sounds can be defined by the addition of sine waves, all chord progressions can be deconstructed through various permutations of the Circle of Fifths. What is the Circle of Fifths? Well, back when the Fifth was discovered as the Perfect interval by Andre Felipe in 1568 (prior to that, all intervals had been integral, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on), he tried to come up with a system that would classify all fifths into easily categorizable "boxes", or as they came to be known later, "circles". For example: C is 1, so we start with 1. A fifth is 2.4, so we add 2.4 until we get an octave. 1 ----> 3.4 ---> 5.8 ----> 8.2 ---> 10.6 _ _\/ /| 12 _ 0.1 (here we modulo by 12 to |\ |/_ simplify calculations) 10.6 <--- 9.3 <---- 6.9 <---- 4.7 <---- 2.5 See, when you work it all out, it becomes an oblete circle! Circle of fifths! Thanks to my friend Beke and his brother Deke for helping me work out the diagram there. I hope you're viewing this with a monospaced font! Now you are a full-fledged music theoretician, ready to tackle any song that the world may throw at you. I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors. An aside. You can't rely on any of the above if you're going to listen to smush music. You're just going to have to wing it. NEW SMUSH MUSIC --------------- Yeah, we wrote some of that.