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Mental Manipulation

  • Through my years of teaching jazz students, one of the more frequent topics that comes up is ear development. Of course ear development or “training” as it is often referred to, is only valid IF the musician actually uses the ear for their own personal musical discretion. That is another topic in itself but in this article I will assume good musical values are in place.
  • Traditional basic ear training seems to focus on intervallic discretion and relative pitch. Although both are useful tools, intervallic discretion usually focuses on the texture/tension aspects of intervals in a context related to the root of the Major scale or “DO” (pronounced dough :), similarly, relative pitch relates to “DO” as well. Thus, one learns to recognize a Major 6th by relating it to the root only. This is all good stuff but the jazz musician lives (or should at least) in a harmonic world. A world where tonalities are frequently being manipulated in some of today’s modern compositions. For me, a great tool has been to identify harmony in some of these various ways:
  • 1) the type of chord I am listening to, regardless of instrument
  • A) the voicing
  • B) the bass note
  • C) the melody traveling through the chord (should there be one?)
  • 2) the relationship of a certain note of the melody to a chord identified by a scale step, e.g. flat 5, sharp 9, etc.
  • 3) the feeling of the chord and it’s place in tonality (provided the music has some diatonic elements), e.g. II chord, or IV chord, minor IV, flat 6th, or secondary dominants (V of II, V of VI). Unfortunately, in my many years of teaching college educated music majors, I find it unexplainable and inexcusable that less than 5% of students know what chord of the scale they are hearing. Sure, they know it on paper and even write music using this material but for some reason fail to recognize these distinctive harmonic relationships by ear. A II chord progressing to a V chord to a VI should be unmistakable in sound, whether played on a guitar, a piano, or a 100 piece orchestra.
  • Having said all that, let’s get to this little mental manipulation exercise. In this context, mental manipulation is the power to manipulate a tonal center in the mind. Not an easy task, since tonality is a strong entity in music. The strongest representation of tonality in an instant of time is the Major triad; simply proven by the overtone series:
  • E (fundamental) E1, B, E2, G#. Any guitar player can prove this by finding the order of harmonics on the low E (6th).
  • The Experiment:
  • 1) From silence, play any mid range note.
  • 2) Listen to it as the root of a Major scale without playing the triad or the scale.
  • 3) When you think you can hear it in your head play the Major triad with this note as the root and see if it sounds exactly as you expected.
  • 4) Play the same note alone again. Think of the tune “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (or any simple tune that begins on a Major 3rd) DO NOT SING THE TUNE just hear it in your head… Concentrate…
  • 5) Play the triad that would place this note as the Major 3rd (if the note was C play an Ab Major triad) when you play the triad, if it sounds as expected, congratulations, you succeed, you have broken the original tonal center mentally.
  • 6) Play the same note alone again. This time think of the tune, “Deck the Halls” because that starts on a perfect 5th.
  • 7) Go to step 3.
  • Hint: you can sing the new melodies which begin on the same tune for a while but keep in mind doing that is more physical than mental. So, sing at first but work toward mental manipulation.
  • Get it?
  • You can take this experiment as far as you like. For instance think of a tune that begins on a Major 7th, (for example “Early Autumn”) and try to NOT SING, but hear it in your head. Go to step 3. Etc.
  • Conclusion:
  • You will find it is not easy to manipulate tonality and it shouldn’t be. If it is easy, then you are being too intellectual and not emotional enough. Music operates on our emotions. We are effected by it, manipulated by it. Tonality can create expectations, therefore giving us the gift of surprise. Think about that.
  • Benefits:
  • If you can manipulate powerful tonal centers, just think how you can manipulate people! (are you laughing? If not, GET A SENSE OF HUMOR) Seriously, this builds up your musical instincts. We all have them but often never get to them as they get washed away by pressing buttons, keyboards, or frets out of sheer technique. It’s good to see what lies behind all that technique. Who knows, you may even discover those ruts vanishing….