I’ve recently come to appreciate the subtle genius of the middle-position selector of the Les Paul.
Need to turn the guitar down but don’t want to walk back to the amp / digital controller? Just turn either of the volume pots to 0 - shuts down the guitar output. (It’s a feature of the circuit design, not a bug.)
Need to turn it up for a solo? Turn the dominant (or both) pots to 9 or 10 - doubles the volume. (That’s a feature of the volume pots, not a bug.)
Need to turn it back to play rhythm again? Turn the pots back to where they were, usually 8 or below.
But most of all…
The middle position lets us mix the outputs of the pickups to taste using the volume pots. (The Rhythm / Lead positions are limiting cases of the mixes available with the middle position.)
Is the bridge too thin and nasal? To get a bridge-y tone with a bit more body, put the bridge pot somewhere between 7 and 10, and the neck somewhere between 2 and 4. (*)
Is the neck too full and jazzy? To snap it up a bit, put the neck pot somewhere between 7 and 10, and the bridge pot somewhere between 2 and 4.
Something balanced? Put both on 6 or 7, or 9 / 10 if you want to be loud.
A Strat offers five discrete mixes of its pickups, the Les Paul offers a (theoretically) continuous variation.
When I’m creating a Preset on the HX Effects, I set the volume pots at 6 (which is the actual mid-point when using a Katana) and the tone pots at 7. Then I can use the volume pots to get a more bridge-y or more neck-y version of the tone, and I’m not having to create something that will deal with the nasal bridge signal, and consequently be useless on the neck, or vice-versa.
Friday 12 April 2024
Tuesday 9 April 2024
The Creation of Marshall Amplifiers
On the third day, the Lord did create Marshall amplifiers, and he played his Les Paul through them, and heard the distortion, and even with the Telecaster and the Stratocaster, even the ES335 and SG, it was good.
Sayth the LORD, this sound shall be only for Marshalls. Not even unto the Hi-Watt and Mesa/Boogie. And the Fender shall be clean, and scooped in the mid-range. Even the amp that is Orange shall not have this sound.
He who wishes for this sound shall not find it in the pedals that are between the guitar and the amplifier. This sound shall be unto the gold-and-black that shall be the sign of the Marshall for evermore.
And those who despair that their guitar may be un-blessed, and have a nasal bridge tone, shall play into a Marshall, and what they hear shall be as from a blessed guitar. For the Marshall is the amplifier of the LORD, and all who play through one shall have good tone.
(Yep, my guitar friend recently acquired an f-off JCM800 head to go with a 2x12 Marshall cabinet. I had a play with it recently. Everything you have heard about the ineffable nature of that Marshall sound is true.)
Sayth the LORD, this sound shall be only for Marshalls. Not even unto the Hi-Watt and Mesa/Boogie. And the Fender shall be clean, and scooped in the mid-range. Even the amp that is Orange shall not have this sound.
He who wishes for this sound shall not find it in the pedals that are between the guitar and the amplifier. This sound shall be unto the gold-and-black that shall be the sign of the Marshall for evermore.
And those who despair that their guitar may be un-blessed, and have a nasal bridge tone, shall play into a Marshall, and what they hear shall be as from a blessed guitar. For the Marshall is the amplifier of the LORD, and all who play through one shall have good tone.
(Yep, my guitar friend recently acquired an f-off JCM800 head to go with a 2x12 Marshall cabinet. I had a play with it recently. Everything you have heard about the ineffable nature of that Marshall sound is true.)
Tuesday 2 April 2024
Politics, Politics, Part One
I have known times when politicians have been out of touch, or have failed to read the electorate. I have known times when they have proposed policies that belonged to a world that had passed already. Even during those times, I had the feeling that they knew what was happening in the world, what were the important issues, and that they shared, broadly, the same hopes, fears and dreams as the rest of us.
Same for journalists, civil servants, local government officials, and to a slightly lesser extent, academics and the managers of State or quasi-State organisations.
But now I feel that our politicians are actually freaking clueless: they do not understand what is happening in the world, they can’t read the electorate, they are focussed on trivial issues to distract themselves and us, and most of all, that they do not share our hopes, fears and dreams. Instead, the politicians, and a significant proportion of civil servants, local government officials, academics and the managers of State or quasi-State organisations, have completely different priorities, leading them to propose policies that make our lives more difficult, and worse than that, think that we should not have the hopes, fears and dreams that we do have.
Most of them were around in 2020-2022. The era of the Coronavirus Act, and the restrictions imposed under a dubious interpretation of powers granted by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, was the most shameful period in the history of UK politics, journalism, academia and public administration, which fell over themselves to outdo each other in their fealty to the Church of the One True Virus, its prophet on Earth, Anthony Fauci, and his Bishop in the UK, Matt Hancock.
Events proved that none of those prophets, nor any of their followers, had the slightest clue what they were doing or talking about. They were panicked and bullied by the press - who wanted to Get Boris - and their own advisors, who had delusions of competence and held us in contempt. None of them had the gumption to ask: if this is so deadly, how come anyone was left alive on those cruise ships?. It’s a simple, common-sense question, and nobody asked it.
Most of them are still in one post or another. But now they know they aren’t up to the task of sorting out the cultural, economic and political mess that is post-Brexit UK. So they are in denial, and sling distractions in the political air like so much chaff.
Part of this is a moral and psychological panic caused by the events of the annus horribilus of liberal politics, 2016. I’ll talk about that later.
Same for journalists, civil servants, local government officials, and to a slightly lesser extent, academics and the managers of State or quasi-State organisations.
But now I feel that our politicians are actually freaking clueless: they do not understand what is happening in the world, they can’t read the electorate, they are focussed on trivial issues to distract themselves and us, and most of all, that they do not share our hopes, fears and dreams. Instead, the politicians, and a significant proportion of civil servants, local government officials, academics and the managers of State or quasi-State organisations, have completely different priorities, leading them to propose policies that make our lives more difficult, and worse than that, think that we should not have the hopes, fears and dreams that we do have.
Most of them were around in 2020-2022. The era of the Coronavirus Act, and the restrictions imposed under a dubious interpretation of powers granted by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, was the most shameful period in the history of UK politics, journalism, academia and public administration, which fell over themselves to outdo each other in their fealty to the Church of the One True Virus, its prophet on Earth, Anthony Fauci, and his Bishop in the UK, Matt Hancock.
Events proved that none of those prophets, nor any of their followers, had the slightest clue what they were doing or talking about. They were panicked and bullied by the press - who wanted to Get Boris - and their own advisors, who had delusions of competence and held us in contempt. None of them had the gumption to ask: if this is so deadly, how come anyone was left alive on those cruise ships?. It’s a simple, common-sense question, and nobody asked it.
Most of them are still in one post or another. But now they know they aren’t up to the task of sorting out the cultural, economic and political mess that is post-Brexit UK. So they are in denial, and sling distractions in the political air like so much chaff.
Part of this is a moral and psychological panic caused by the events of the annus horribilus of liberal politics, 2016. I’ll talk about that later.
Tuesday 26 March 2024
Chasing Tone
When I play an acoustic, the sound is what it is. I can modify it slightly by the choice of pick, where I pick the strings, and where or if I rest my right hand on the body. These are slight changes on the fixed underlying sound of the guitar, which is itself a variation within narrow limits of the fundamental sound of an acoustic.
Then there’s the electric guitar. There are a bunch of genre-based sounds for the electric. There’s the “jazz tone”; the “Nashville country twang”, if anyone still uses it; the “blues tone”, which is not to be confused with the edge-of-breakup “blues-rock” tone; there’s the heavily distorted “metal tone”, with variations for each type of metal; and then there’s the “ambient sound”, characterised by endless variations of echo, delay and reverb. There’s the Andy Summers chorus sound, the Eddie Van Halen “brown sound”, the Hank B Marvin 60’s instrumental sound, the “legendary Beano album sound”, and of course, there’s The Edge. The list goes on quite a way.
There’s a relationship between tone and music. Put a Blues Drive in the chain, and you’re going to wind up playing minor pentatonics. Flip to the neck pickup and keep a clean sound, and you’re going to play some kind of jazz. Perhaps if I knew what the music I was looking for was, I could find the sound for it. Or do we find the sound and then the music comes?
I want some sustain (reverb YES, compression NO) to open up the sound, a little texture (distortion or overdrive) and some variation (modulation). It needs to be full (some gain and easy on the treble) as well as well-defined (not too much gain or bass). No one effect should dominate, but all of them should be audible. Each individual note should be a sound interesting enough to listen to on its own. It has to work all over the neck, not just in one position, and it has to work at bedroom volumes.
Also, can I get some vanilla ice-cream and an espresso with that?
There are three reasons for spending a lot of time futzing around with pedals and effects boards. Such as I have been doing for far too long.
A) You play in a tribute band and want to get the exact sound the originals got.
B) You play in a repertoire band and the song sheet for next Saturday has a U2 song followed by an early Police song. You have to get close to the spirit of The Edge and Andy Summers.
C) You are trying to find your sound.
Of these A) and B) are business reasons, but C) is in danger of being a search for one’s identity. Those of us with diffuse identities may be spending a lot of time on a fool’s errand.
Then there’s the electric guitar. There are a bunch of genre-based sounds for the electric. There’s the “jazz tone”; the “Nashville country twang”, if anyone still uses it; the “blues tone”, which is not to be confused with the edge-of-breakup “blues-rock” tone; there’s the heavily distorted “metal tone”, with variations for each type of metal; and then there’s the “ambient sound”, characterised by endless variations of echo, delay and reverb. There’s the Andy Summers chorus sound, the Eddie Van Halen “brown sound”, the Hank B Marvin 60’s instrumental sound, the “legendary Beano album sound”, and of course, there’s The Edge. The list goes on quite a way.
There’s a relationship between tone and music. Put a Blues Drive in the chain, and you’re going to wind up playing minor pentatonics. Flip to the neck pickup and keep a clean sound, and you’re going to play some kind of jazz. Perhaps if I knew what the music I was looking for was, I could find the sound for it. Or do we find the sound and then the music comes?
I want some sustain (reverb YES, compression NO) to open up the sound, a little texture (distortion or overdrive) and some variation (modulation). It needs to be full (some gain and easy on the treble) as well as well-defined (not too much gain or bass). No one effect should dominate, but all of them should be audible. Each individual note should be a sound interesting enough to listen to on its own. It has to work all over the neck, not just in one position, and it has to work at bedroom volumes.
Also, can I get some vanilla ice-cream and an espresso with that?
There are three reasons for spending a lot of time futzing around with pedals and effects boards. Such as I have been doing for far too long.
A) You play in a tribute band and want to get the exact sound the originals got.
B) You play in a repertoire band and the song sheet for next Saturday has a U2 song followed by an early Police song. You have to get close to the spirit of The Edge and Andy Summers.
C) You are trying to find your sound.
Of these A) and B) are business reasons, but C) is in danger of being a search for one’s identity. Those of us with diffuse identities may be spending a lot of time on a fool’s errand.
Friday 22 March 2024
Why I Just Bought a HELIX Effects pedal
Helix have built a suite of products around a microprocesser and two chunks of software: a bunch of algorithms that emulate various well-known pedals and amps; and a configuration management program for those algorithms. (My guess is that they developed a bunch of specialised software objects on the way to writing the configuration manager.)
The Helix Floor (£1,199) is the top-end version: amp sims, cab sims, mic sims, and effects out the wazoo. The Helix LT (£839) is a (slightly) lite version of the Floor. Both have USB outputs for recording into a DAW, and both have expression pedals.
The Helix Effects (£479) is a single-chip unit that provides the “only” the effects. To record via USB into your DAW, something like the iRig HD2 (£89) is needed. If you want an expression pedal, you’ll have to buy one for a minimum of around £69.(1)
All three use the same configuration management software, and the same set-up of knobs, dials, touch-screens and buttons. The Floor and the Effects have “scribble strips” above each button that show what effect is assigned to it. The LT doesn’t.
All three can have “jam track” output from a phone sent through the FX Loop Return and patched straight to the output, by-passing the effects. (This means we don’t have to buy a mixer.)
The Effects has no amp sims and is for playing through a guitar amplifier and speaker. The LT and Floor have amp sims, and are for venue PA’s, studio desks, recording into DAWs, FRFR speakers and studio monitors. Putting amp sims into an amplifier is regarded as downright perverse.
Who are these for? This is GuitarLand, where hobbyists have loadsamoney, and the pros are broke. Given the cost of separate pedals, power supplies, and making a pedalboard, it’s the hobbyists who buy pedals. (Also, there’s a learning curve associated with the Helix and other stuff, whereas pedals are pretty much plug-it-in-and-twiddle-the-knobs.) The pros go for these integrated units. Less cost, less fuss to transport, and easier to set up on arrival.
I’m a broke hobbyist - the worst of both worlds. I think the functionality provided by the Helix Effects + USB recording + expression pedal is the starting point. And I don’t need to buy them all at once. At the start, I will play it through the Katana on the Clean channel with no effects - except maybe for some channel EQ.
How much am I losing without the amp sims? There’s nothing magic about amp / cabinet / mic sims: they are another bunch of effects, in this case a way of getting the Fender / Marshall / Vox / Hi Watt / Orange / (enter manufacturer name here) clean / driven / distortion / (enter name of effect here) sound that comes from the amp itself.(2)
Using amp sims would mean replacing the Katana, and this is where the previous discussion comes in. “Upgrading” to a conventional valve amp is not a feasible route, for reasons of volume, and it’s still an amp in its own right, so all I’m really doing is swapping one “flavoured” amp for another. The current batch of FRFR amp combos are aimed at being loud, rather than at the home market. That leaves powered studio monitors. A pair of Kali IN-8 (in white, black looks awful) is around £650, and they have their supporters. (There are monitors for £2,000+ the pair, and more than that.) And studio monitors are good for listening to output from DAWs, should I get that far.
Of course, I could swap out the Katana for the monitors whether I use amp sims or not. If I’m happy with the clean / driven / distortion tone I’m getting from the effects (aka pedals) of the Helix Effects, do I really need amp sims? I think the only answer is to try it and see.
(1) All prices exclude cable, which the marketeers assume us to have lying around, since we’re all old hands at this.
(2) Allegedly. Don’t forget that since the mid-70’s, at concerts, we heard those amps through mics, mixing boards and PA speakers, and in many cases what’s on a recording bears only a slight resemblence to what was heard in the studio.
The Helix Floor (£1,199) is the top-end version: amp sims, cab sims, mic sims, and effects out the wazoo. The Helix LT (£839) is a (slightly) lite version of the Floor. Both have USB outputs for recording into a DAW, and both have expression pedals.
The Helix Effects (£479) is a single-chip unit that provides the “only” the effects. To record via USB into your DAW, something like the iRig HD2 (£89) is needed. If you want an expression pedal, you’ll have to buy one for a minimum of around £69.(1)
All three use the same configuration management software, and the same set-up of knobs, dials, touch-screens and buttons. The Floor and the Effects have “scribble strips” above each button that show what effect is assigned to it. The LT doesn’t.
All three can have “jam track” output from a phone sent through the FX Loop Return and patched straight to the output, by-passing the effects. (This means we don’t have to buy a mixer.)
The Effects has no amp sims and is for playing through a guitar amplifier and speaker. The LT and Floor have amp sims, and are for venue PA’s, studio desks, recording into DAWs, FRFR speakers and studio monitors. Putting amp sims into an amplifier is regarded as downright perverse.
Who are these for? This is GuitarLand, where hobbyists have loadsamoney, and the pros are broke. Given the cost of separate pedals, power supplies, and making a pedalboard, it’s the hobbyists who buy pedals. (Also, there’s a learning curve associated with the Helix and other stuff, whereas pedals are pretty much plug-it-in-and-twiddle-the-knobs.) The pros go for these integrated units. Less cost, less fuss to transport, and easier to set up on arrival.
I’m a broke hobbyist - the worst of both worlds. I think the functionality provided by the Helix Effects + USB recording + expression pedal is the starting point. And I don’t need to buy them all at once. At the start, I will play it through the Katana on the Clean channel with no effects - except maybe for some channel EQ.
How much am I losing without the amp sims? There’s nothing magic about amp / cabinet / mic sims: they are another bunch of effects, in this case a way of getting the Fender / Marshall / Vox / Hi Watt / Orange / (enter manufacturer name here) clean / driven / distortion / (enter name of effect here) sound that comes from the amp itself.(2)
Using amp sims would mean replacing the Katana, and this is where the previous discussion comes in. “Upgrading” to a conventional valve amp is not a feasible route, for reasons of volume, and it’s still an amp in its own right, so all I’m really doing is swapping one “flavoured” amp for another. The current batch of FRFR amp combos are aimed at being loud, rather than at the home market. That leaves powered studio monitors. A pair of Kali IN-8 (in white, black looks awful) is around £650, and they have their supporters. (There are monitors for £2,000+ the pair, and more than that.) And studio monitors are good for listening to output from DAWs, should I get that far.
Of course, I could swap out the Katana for the monitors whether I use amp sims or not. If I’m happy with the clean / driven / distortion tone I’m getting from the effects (aka pedals) of the Helix Effects, do I really need amp sims? I think the only answer is to try it and see.
(1) All prices exclude cable, which the marketeers assume us to have lying around, since we’re all old hands at this.
(2) Allegedly. Don’t forget that since the mid-70’s, at concerts, we heard those amps through mics, mixing boards and PA speakers, and in many cases what’s on a recording bears only a slight resemblence to what was heard in the studio.
Friday 15 March 2024
The Real Reason Why The Pros Like Amp Sims (and you should too)
At some point in any review of any guitar amp, no matter if it’s a 1 watt Marshall or a 100 watt Fender, the reviewer will say something along the lines of “this thing can get real loud”. Every amplifier, every review. Maybe there’s a reason?
There is. Guitar amps have Celestion speakers, or something very similar. These have sensitivities around 100 dB / watt at one metre for a 1kHz tone.(1) That’s eight times louder than you play your stereo just before someone else in the house asks you to turn it down.
At one watt. Never mind five, ten, or twenty-eight watts.
It’s not the guitar that’s loud, it’s the speakers.
What everyone wants is a) a decent amount of sound with a “clean” tone, followed by b) that magical edge-of-breakup as the valves start to run out of headroom and clip the output waveform.
However, in a conventional valve amp, achieving the first means that the second is only available at ear-damaging sound levels. Conversely, getting edge of break-up at practice volumes almost ensures that the clean sound isn’t that consistent.
So the world is full of guitar enthusiasts, and indeed professionals, with wonderful valve amps that are forever on 2 and never reach break-up, which is daft, because the point is the edge-of-breakup tone.(2)
Except…. I mean, I can play Band of Gypsies on my hi-fi and hear that tasty Hendrix tone at sensible volumes - granted that the excitement from higher volumes is missing. What’s going on?
The edge-of-breakout tone needs the valves in the power amp to be driven hard, which produces a powerful output. Is there a way of sending the waveform to the speaker without sending all the power? It’s usually called attenuation and can be done in a number of ways, and usually, the cheaper the way, the more that lovely hard crunch turns into an irritating fizz.
At least for analogue methods. Using a decent ADC -> DSP -> DAC sequence may be better, but this starts to turn the amplifier into a hi-fi amplifier, with consequent costs and development programs that only the larger companies can even consider. Guitar makers are old-school electrical engineers unused to the delicate touches required to keep ADC / DAC chips running well, and DSP algorithms are still “secret sauce” even in hi-fi.
The result is that we have amp-simulation software, developed by computer-centric companies. Kemper, Helix, and others.
The idea is to record an amp doing its thing as its designers intended, and then throw some kind of wavelet analysis at the input and the output.(3) This provides a description of the change from before-to-after which can be summarised by a mathematical model, which can be turned into fast algorithms run on multi-core chips in specialised computers disguised as multi-button pedals. The required tone is now available independently of volume levels.
It’s not perfect (though neither is the manufacture of valve amps) but it’s a process that can be iterated for improvement.
So we have a gadget with an ADC at one end, a bunch of algorithms running on fancy chips in the middle, and then a DAC to provide an analogue signal to an analogue amp, or a USB connection to a laptop running a DAW.
And not a speaker to be seen, let alone heard at intolerable volumes. This is why the professionals jumped at using the computerised stuff, despite already having a studio with selection of valve amps and speakers. It was much quieter and much less temperamental (just listen to engineers talk, for instance, about how mic placement changes from speaker cab to speaker cab, even when both cabs are the same make and model).
This also changes the role of the amp / speaker for live listening. We’re not looking for it to provide the tone - clean or beak-up - but to be as neutral or flat as a hi-fi system.(4) Right now the guitar business doesn’t have too many of this so-called FRFR (full-range, flat-response) kit, and what it does have is often described by the familiar phrase “this thing can get real loud”.
Which really does bring us back full-circle.
(As you can tell, getting a Helix LT is now my current first step on the gear-upgrade path.)
(1) Hi-fi speakers are often in the 83 - 90dB / watt range. Which is somewhere between half and a third as loud.
There is. Guitar amps have Celestion speakers, or something very similar. These have sensitivities around 100 dB / watt at one metre for a 1kHz tone.(1) That’s eight times louder than you play your stereo just before someone else in the house asks you to turn it down.
At one watt. Never mind five, ten, or twenty-eight watts.
It’s not the guitar that’s loud, it’s the speakers.
What everyone wants is a) a decent amount of sound with a “clean” tone, followed by b) that magical edge-of-breakup as the valves start to run out of headroom and clip the output waveform.
However, in a conventional valve amp, achieving the first means that the second is only available at ear-damaging sound levels. Conversely, getting edge of break-up at practice volumes almost ensures that the clean sound isn’t that consistent.
So the world is full of guitar enthusiasts, and indeed professionals, with wonderful valve amps that are forever on 2 and never reach break-up, which is daft, because the point is the edge-of-breakup tone.(2)
Except…. I mean, I can play Band of Gypsies on my hi-fi and hear that tasty Hendrix tone at sensible volumes - granted that the excitement from higher volumes is missing. What’s going on?
The edge-of-breakout tone needs the valves in the power amp to be driven hard, which produces a powerful output. Is there a way of sending the waveform to the speaker without sending all the power? It’s usually called attenuation and can be done in a number of ways, and usually, the cheaper the way, the more that lovely hard crunch turns into an irritating fizz.
At least for analogue methods. Using a decent ADC -> DSP -> DAC sequence may be better, but this starts to turn the amplifier into a hi-fi amplifier, with consequent costs and development programs that only the larger companies can even consider. Guitar makers are old-school electrical engineers unused to the delicate touches required to keep ADC / DAC chips running well, and DSP algorithms are still “secret sauce” even in hi-fi.
The result is that we have amp-simulation software, developed by computer-centric companies. Kemper, Helix, and others.
The idea is to record an amp doing its thing as its designers intended, and then throw some kind of wavelet analysis at the input and the output.(3) This provides a description of the change from before-to-after which can be summarised by a mathematical model, which can be turned into fast algorithms run on multi-core chips in specialised computers disguised as multi-button pedals. The required tone is now available independently of volume levels.
It’s not perfect (though neither is the manufacture of valve amps) but it’s a process that can be iterated for improvement.
So we have a gadget with an ADC at one end, a bunch of algorithms running on fancy chips in the middle, and then a DAC to provide an analogue signal to an analogue amp, or a USB connection to a laptop running a DAW.
And not a speaker to be seen, let alone heard at intolerable volumes. This is why the professionals jumped at using the computerised stuff, despite already having a studio with selection of valve amps and speakers. It was much quieter and much less temperamental (just listen to engineers talk, for instance, about how mic placement changes from speaker cab to speaker cab, even when both cabs are the same make and model).
This also changes the role of the amp / speaker for live listening. We’re not looking for it to provide the tone - clean or beak-up - but to be as neutral or flat as a hi-fi system.(4) Right now the guitar business doesn’t have too many of this so-called FRFR (full-range, flat-response) kit, and what it does have is often described by the familiar phrase “this thing can get real loud”.
Which really does bring us back full-circle.
(As you can tell, getting a Helix LT is now my current first step on the gear-upgrade path.)
(1) Hi-fi speakers are often in the 83 - 90dB / watt range. Which is somewhere between half and a third as loud.
(2) Unless you’re Tim Pierce and have your speakers in a soundproofed basement, played as loud as you need with only microphones to hear it.
(3) It probably is wavelet analysis, but it might be something else with the same result.
(4) Yes, I know. But in comparison to guitar amps, decent hi-fi’s are pretty neutral.
Monday 11 March 2024
Health Report
I have another cold. I am sure I caught it on an over-crowded train from Waterloo to Twickenham Saturday afternoon. I gather the match was quite spectacular. My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton wool.
Friday 8 March 2024
Up Close and Personal With Valve Amps
Recently I visited a friend from back in working days. He has a number of Real Guitars and three Real Amps: a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Fender Vibro-King, and an Orange Rockerverb. We had a good time trying each one and I did a lot of hard listening. (Because mostly when we hear amps, it’s at 85+ dB and with a lot of distortion, and to repeat, six rubber bands across a dustbin would sound good at 90dB with distortion.)
I learned a number of lessons:
If you’ve never heard a valve amp up close and personal, you’re going to get a shock. Even at low settings, it has a clarity and punch that makes it sound much louder than the dB meter would say it was.
An electric guitar played through a decent valve amp has a heft of sound that is lost in the recording-mixing-mastering process, and it’s pretty much smoothed out by the live mixing desk as well. Raw electric guitars do not sound like processed ones. (As I’ve said before, a lot of what a contemporary guitarist does is produce electronic sounds to enhance the song soundscape.)
There’s a Rock Music Zone of guitar and amp dial settings and volumes at which Rock / Metal tones exist. Below that, the magic vanishes.
Especially a Les Paul (or any double-humbucker) can sound fierce if wound up to 9 or 10, but below that it cleans up to a “jazz sound”, no matter what you actually play and which pickup you’re using.
Strats sound like quieter versions of themselves.
Dedicated pedals sound way richer than the on-board effects in the Katana.
Of course I spent the next couple of days trying to reproduce, however approximately, the clean tones of the Fenders on the Katana.
Eventually I found that the trick is to use the Crunch channel and to keep the volume down, set power selector to 0.5W, with the Pre-Amp and Master volumes set to 100. Add Spring Reverb to taste. I’ve set the Booster Effect Level so that bringing it in or out doesn’t change the volume, and use the Blues Drive and Centa OD to provide a bit of flavour, and the Clean Boost to leave the tone unchanged. I’ve also set the EQ to dampen the 4kHz, 8kHz and 12kHz bands, which can create a shrill tone, especially on the bridge pickup.
Flip the channel from Crunch to Clean and put the power selector at 25W. The result is just as loud, but not as vivid, as the Crunch channel.
The result has a similar sound, but not the physicality, of the valve amps. The result is far more in-your-face than I would have ever devised if I had never heard the originals.
Am I sold on “upgrading” to a valve amp? Not quite. But that’s another discussion.
I learned a number of lessons:
If you’ve never heard a valve amp up close and personal, you’re going to get a shock. Even at low settings, it has a clarity and punch that makes it sound much louder than the dB meter would say it was.
An electric guitar played through a decent valve amp has a heft of sound that is lost in the recording-mixing-mastering process, and it’s pretty much smoothed out by the live mixing desk as well. Raw electric guitars do not sound like processed ones. (As I’ve said before, a lot of what a contemporary guitarist does is produce electronic sounds to enhance the song soundscape.)
There’s a Rock Music Zone of guitar and amp dial settings and volumes at which Rock / Metal tones exist. Below that, the magic vanishes.
Especially a Les Paul (or any double-humbucker) can sound fierce if wound up to 9 or 10, but below that it cleans up to a “jazz sound”, no matter what you actually play and which pickup you’re using.
Strats sound like quieter versions of themselves.
Dedicated pedals sound way richer than the on-board effects in the Katana.
Of course I spent the next couple of days trying to reproduce, however approximately, the clean tones of the Fenders on the Katana.
Eventually I found that the trick is to use the Crunch channel and to keep the volume down, set power selector to 0.5W, with the Pre-Amp and Master volumes set to 100. Add Spring Reverb to taste. I’ve set the Booster Effect Level so that bringing it in or out doesn’t change the volume, and use the Blues Drive and Centa OD to provide a bit of flavour, and the Clean Boost to leave the tone unchanged. I’ve also set the EQ to dampen the 4kHz, 8kHz and 12kHz bands, which can create a shrill tone, especially on the bridge pickup.
Flip the channel from Crunch to Clean and put the power selector at 25W. The result is just as loud, but not as vivid, as the Crunch channel.
The result has a similar sound, but not the physicality, of the valve amps. The result is far more in-your-face than I would have ever devised if I had never heard the originals.
Am I sold on “upgrading” to a valve amp? Not quite. But that’s another discussion.
Tuesday 5 March 2024
Wim Wender’s Perfect Day
I’m trying to remember when in the last twenty years I must have met Wim Wenders and why he would have been interested enough in my life to listen to me describe it. Up to some details - I have never cleaned up-market Tokyo toilets for a living, and I don’t have any relatives who have chauffeur-driven cars - the life his central character Hirayama leads is very close to the one I lead for a decade or more. The moments when Hirayama (aka, me, played by Koji Yakusho, who is far more distinguished than I) stops reading and turns the light off get the feeling wonderfully. Wenders understands it as the ultimate expression of the autonomy of the single: we decide when our day is done, we end it quietly, and sleep. No-one can suddenly start talking, arrive home late, fidget, throw a mood, or otherwise mess with our final waking moments.
We older single men have our routines, we take small pleasures in some of the moments of our days, we may read, listen to music and watch movies, go to the gym (Hirayama goes to a public bath) and have regular places to eat and drink, and from the outside it looks like a life, and on the inside it can feel like a pleasant routine, but it is paper-thin, and we have no links with the people in it other than our habitual economic relations. I do recall Wenders giving me an ambiguous look when I described it like that, and here we are those years later, and it’s clear he got the point perfectly.
The film is not a portrayal of the joys of the well-organised single life. The repeated morning- and after-work routine sequences create the sense that Hirayama is in some kind of emotional stasis. (See also All That Jazz.)
The film ends with Hirayama being asked, by her former husband, who has cancer, to look after the lady who runs his favourite bar. When asked, he demurs, and the husband, says that he is counting on him. The last we see of Hirayama, he has a tearfully smiling face, intensely staring through the windscreen of his van at the future. He has found, as far as Wenders is concerned, the chance of a connection with another person, and that is a source of both happiness and sorrow.
I do remember Wenders suggesting that maybe I might find a relationship even in those my later years. He seemed to think it would be a Good Thing. Hard to explain the draw of bachelorhood to a man on his fifth marriage, so I didn’t.
“Perfect Day” is the most-misunderstood song. The day isn’t perfect because of what the singer does, or who he does it with, but because he is able to forget what a lousy person he is, or perhaps, what a rotten opinion he has of himself. (I think it’s a drug song, but then I would. Others think it’s a song about being with another person.)
This is where it gets interesting. Perhaps all Hirayama’s “perfect days” are a way of forgetting something that he did, or how he was, at some time in the past. In which case, we have a movie about a man hiding from his past in work, culture and routine.
Which would mean Wenders really did understand my life back then.
Leaving only the question of when and where we met.
We older single men have our routines, we take small pleasures in some of the moments of our days, we may read, listen to music and watch movies, go to the gym (Hirayama goes to a public bath) and have regular places to eat and drink, and from the outside it looks like a life, and on the inside it can feel like a pleasant routine, but it is paper-thin, and we have no links with the people in it other than our habitual economic relations. I do recall Wenders giving me an ambiguous look when I described it like that, and here we are those years later, and it’s clear he got the point perfectly.
The film is not a portrayal of the joys of the well-organised single life. The repeated morning- and after-work routine sequences create the sense that Hirayama is in some kind of emotional stasis. (See also All That Jazz.)
The film ends with Hirayama being asked, by her former husband, who has cancer, to look after the lady who runs his favourite bar. When asked, he demurs, and the husband, says that he is counting on him. The last we see of Hirayama, he has a tearfully smiling face, intensely staring through the windscreen of his van at the future. He has found, as far as Wenders is concerned, the chance of a connection with another person, and that is a source of both happiness and sorrow.
I do remember Wenders suggesting that maybe I might find a relationship even in those my later years. He seemed to think it would be a Good Thing. Hard to explain the draw of bachelorhood to a man on his fifth marriage, so I didn’t.
“Perfect Day” is the most-misunderstood song. The day isn’t perfect because of what the singer does, or who he does it with, but because he is able to forget what a lousy person he is, or perhaps, what a rotten opinion he has of himself. (I think it’s a drug song, but then I would. Others think it’s a song about being with another person.)
This is where it gets interesting. Perhaps all Hirayama’s “perfect days” are a way of forgetting something that he did, or how he was, at some time in the past. In which case, we have a movie about a man hiding from his past in work, culture and routine.
Which would mean Wenders really did understand my life back then.
Leaving only the question of when and where we met.
Friday 1 March 2024
Hypergamy aka The Servant Takes The Money…
The concept of hypergamy originates in India: the word was introduced in a nineteenth-century English translation of Indian law. It referred to marriages where the partners did not come from the same caste, and hence (since the caste system is linear) one had a higher caste than the other, and the other had a lower caste than the one. The concept made sense because the caste system was codified and widely understood in Indian society.
That the translators had to invent a word suggests that there wasn’t already one in English, and so the behaviour had not been identified as a thing-in-itself. Possibly because there wasn’t a defined social hierarchy in English society at the time. This doesn’t mean that some groups of people didn’t think they were better than other groups of people, it means the law or some other institution didn’t codify and enforce those judgements.
Applying the idea of hypergamy without referring to an established social hierarchy is a tricky bit of concept-stretching. There’s a temptation to define it in terms of the economist’s generalised “value”, which might include anything, and which, crucially, depends on each person’s evaluation of whatever it is that carries the “value” - money, status, kindness, influence, social skills and so on. Two people may agree on the facts, on the things to be valued, but assign different values to each of the things. For example, social skills that are valuable to one person, are useless to another.
This makes arguments using the concept of hypergamy tricky. One partner in a relationship may think of it as having an equal flow of value, and hence assortive, while the other sees a consistent net transfer of value from them, and hence sees their partner as hypergamous. At this point, the concept ceases to be useful, because it has dissolves into unresolvable disputes over evaluations, rather than facts. Transfers of “generalised value” are not matters of public fact: the what of the transfer is, but the value each person places on it is not.
So to define hypergamy, we need a bunch of resources that can be publicly observed and measured (in some equally public) way. Typically this would include wealth, income, social standing, political influence, and similar. Secretaries marrying bosses and nurses marrying doctors used to be the romantic staple. This can’t include everything, for a reason we will see shortly.
A question is whether the consistent net transfer of hypergamic resources from A to B, creates an obligation on B to balance it by doing things outside the hypergamy-criteria, that A finds valuable on a personal level. For instance, a man with money, reputation and social standing may have a partner who provides a sunny attitude, support, loyalty and a splendid cooked breakfast. That’s what’s been missing from his life, and that’s the balancing personal value she provides.
Answers can be argued in all directions. We might say that the institution of marriage puts men under an obligation to provide a net flow of resources without thought of “reward”: ask not what your wife can do for you, but what you can do for your wife. We might say she was being a free-loading ingrate if she didn’t provide a balancing personal return. We might say that relationships are not supposed to be zero-sum transfers of resources and favours, but opportunities for each partner to show their love by selfless sacrifice to the needs of the other. And other such sophistries to support our chosen side of the argument. This is a dead end.
The attitude of the partners is important. If she chooses to be a sourpuss to demonstrate that she damn well feels no hypergamy-induced obligations, that’s her decision. She might have chosen to be graceful instead. If A is domineering because “it’s his money”, that’s also his choice: he might have chosen to be gracefully generous instead.
As I understand Dr Orion Taraband’s discussion of hypergamy, his claim is that a) hypergamy is a feature of female nature (and indeed “female nature” may shape the list of hypergamic resources), b) the net transfer of hypergamic resources from him to her effectively makes her a servant (because in all societies, the servant takes the money), and c) women don’t like being in that position, so they turn into sourpusses. Unless they decide to be graceful, and since Dr Taraban practices in the San Francisco Bay Area, he doesn’t see much of that.
There is no causal link between being a (hypergamic) “servant” and being a sourpuss. It’s an understandable consequence, but it’s not inevitable. It shows us that the key question to ask about a possible partner is: will this person turn into a sourpuss if she thinks she’s being paid? To see that question is to see that the real questions is simply: will this person turn into a sourpuss given the way I think I’m going to be behaving in this relationship?, because my behaviour is a factor as well. Some of you can do relationships, and some of us can’t.
The moral of this tale is that men and women need to know what a good partner looks like, and whether they are one themselves. Men need to understand that she’s a good partner because she had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if he doesn’t match up to Dad, she’s going to get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss. Women need to understand that he’s a good partner because he had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if she doesn’t match up to Mom, she’s going to feel very out-of-place around him, and will get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss.
I can’t stress this last point enough. Men who want “good women” must be “good men” themselves, and women who want “good men” must be “good women” themselves. How likely is this in a society in which forty per cent of sixteen year-olds are not living with both their biological parents?
A large proportion of the population simply has no idea what a “good partner” looks like, or how a “good partnership” works. They never see it.
A lot of people make lousy choices of partner: always have, always will. If they didn’t have hypergamic criteria to help them make those lousy choices, they would invent others. If they didn’t make lousy choices, around half the population would wind up single and childless. That’s what is starting to happen now, but not because people are making better choices or preferring to go without. It’s because they can’t find a hypergamically-acceptable partner who makes them think a bad choice might be a good idea.
That the translators had to invent a word suggests that there wasn’t already one in English, and so the behaviour had not been identified as a thing-in-itself. Possibly because there wasn’t a defined social hierarchy in English society at the time. This doesn’t mean that some groups of people didn’t think they were better than other groups of people, it means the law or some other institution didn’t codify and enforce those judgements.
Applying the idea of hypergamy without referring to an established social hierarchy is a tricky bit of concept-stretching. There’s a temptation to define it in terms of the economist’s generalised “value”, which might include anything, and which, crucially, depends on each person’s evaluation of whatever it is that carries the “value” - money, status, kindness, influence, social skills and so on. Two people may agree on the facts, on the things to be valued, but assign different values to each of the things. For example, social skills that are valuable to one person, are useless to another.
This makes arguments using the concept of hypergamy tricky. One partner in a relationship may think of it as having an equal flow of value, and hence assortive, while the other sees a consistent net transfer of value from them, and hence sees their partner as hypergamous. At this point, the concept ceases to be useful, because it has dissolves into unresolvable disputes over evaluations, rather than facts. Transfers of “generalised value” are not matters of public fact: the what of the transfer is, but the value each person places on it is not.
So to define hypergamy, we need a bunch of resources that can be publicly observed and measured (in some equally public) way. Typically this would include wealth, income, social standing, political influence, and similar. Secretaries marrying bosses and nurses marrying doctors used to be the romantic staple. This can’t include everything, for a reason we will see shortly.
A question is whether the consistent net transfer of hypergamic resources from A to B, creates an obligation on B to balance it by doing things outside the hypergamy-criteria, that A finds valuable on a personal level. For instance, a man with money, reputation and social standing may have a partner who provides a sunny attitude, support, loyalty and a splendid cooked breakfast. That’s what’s been missing from his life, and that’s the balancing personal value she provides.
Answers can be argued in all directions. We might say that the institution of marriage puts men under an obligation to provide a net flow of resources without thought of “reward”: ask not what your wife can do for you, but what you can do for your wife. We might say she was being a free-loading ingrate if she didn’t provide a balancing personal return. We might say that relationships are not supposed to be zero-sum transfers of resources and favours, but opportunities for each partner to show their love by selfless sacrifice to the needs of the other. And other such sophistries to support our chosen side of the argument. This is a dead end.
The attitude of the partners is important. If she chooses to be a sourpuss to demonstrate that she damn well feels no hypergamy-induced obligations, that’s her decision. She might have chosen to be graceful instead. If A is domineering because “it’s his money”, that’s also his choice: he might have chosen to be gracefully generous instead.
As I understand Dr Orion Taraband’s discussion of hypergamy, his claim is that a) hypergamy is a feature of female nature (and indeed “female nature” may shape the list of hypergamic resources), b) the net transfer of hypergamic resources from him to her effectively makes her a servant (because in all societies, the servant takes the money), and c) women don’t like being in that position, so they turn into sourpusses. Unless they decide to be graceful, and since Dr Taraban practices in the San Francisco Bay Area, he doesn’t see much of that.
There is no causal link between being a (hypergamic) “servant” and being a sourpuss. It’s an understandable consequence, but it’s not inevitable. It shows us that the key question to ask about a possible partner is: will this person turn into a sourpuss if she thinks she’s being paid? To see that question is to see that the real questions is simply: will this person turn into a sourpuss given the way I think I’m going to be behaving in this relationship?, because my behaviour is a factor as well. Some of you can do relationships, and some of us can’t.
The moral of this tale is that men and women need to know what a good partner looks like, and whether they are one themselves. Men need to understand that she’s a good partner because she had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if he doesn’t match up to Dad, she’s going to get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss. Women need to understand that he’s a good partner because he had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if she doesn’t match up to Mom, she’s going to feel very out-of-place around him, and will get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss.
I can’t stress this last point enough. Men who want “good women” must be “good men” themselves, and women who want “good men” must be “good women” themselves. How likely is this in a society in which forty per cent of sixteen year-olds are not living with both their biological parents?
A large proportion of the population simply has no idea what a “good partner” looks like, or how a “good partnership” works. They never see it.
A lot of people make lousy choices of partner: always have, always will. If they didn’t have hypergamic criteria to help them make those lousy choices, they would invent others. If they didn’t make lousy choices, around half the population would wind up single and childless. That’s what is starting to happen now, but not because people are making better choices or preferring to go without. It’s because they can’t find a hypergamically-acceptable partner who makes them think a bad choice might be a good idea.
Friday 23 February 2024
Electric Piano + Boss Katana - With Added Sound
(Now updated with sound file)
Plug one end of a guitar (or other male-male) cable into the Katana input. Connect the other end to the Headphone socket of your electric piano (a Roland FP-10 in my case). You may need a 6.35mm to 3.25mm adapter. Turn on the Katana. Select the Clean channel, turn the Pre-Amp Gain to zero, and also turn off any boosters / drives. These don’t work so well. Modulations, reverb, echo and delay all work really well. Adjust volume and power level to taste.
(Blogger doesn’t seem to want to embed audio files on their own, there’s some complicated business with links to upload sites instead. So I put it in a movie file. This was played through the FP10’s internal speakers and recorded on my iPhone.)
You’re welcome.
Tuesday 20 February 2024
The Lockdown Policy Test
I propose the Lockdown Policy Test. A policy supported or promoted by anyone who also supported lockdowns, masks, social distancing, the Rule of Six, or other Covid measures, is most likely to be as economically damaging, and socially disastrous as any of the Covid measures. After all, if they were dumb enough, or weak-minded enough, to fall for the obvious stupidity of Covid policies, they will probably fall for other dumb policies as well.
Since the House of Commons, the Civil Service and Local Government is still almost entirely populated with the people who voted for and imposed the Coronavirus Act, and the media is still populated by journalists who went along to get along, and the Universities are still full of academics who stayed silent rather than risk losing their grants…
…we can dismiss just about any policy or issue that any of them are pushing, from the so-called “climate emergency” to sending illegals immigrants to Rwanda, and from Diversity and Inclusion to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, electric cars, zero-carbon, and yadda yadda yadda.
Judge the quality of a policy by the quality of the people, regimes, and societies that adopt it.
Because now and for the next ten years, we will have a test to judge the quality of the people: did they go along with the Lockdown measures?
Since the House of Commons, the Civil Service and Local Government is still almost entirely populated with the people who voted for and imposed the Coronavirus Act, and the media is still populated by journalists who went along to get along, and the Universities are still full of academics who stayed silent rather than risk losing their grants…
…we can dismiss just about any policy or issue that any of them are pushing, from the so-called “climate emergency” to sending illegals immigrants to Rwanda, and from Diversity and Inclusion to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, electric cars, zero-carbon, and yadda yadda yadda.
Judge the quality of a policy by the quality of the people, regimes, and societies that adopt it.
Because now and for the next ten years, we will have a test to judge the quality of the people: did they go along with the Lockdown measures?
Tuesday 13 February 2024
London From Shooters Hill
The Met Office changed its mind about Tuesday being sunny and decided Monday was going to be, so at the last moment Sis and I set out for Falconwood and points towards Greenwich. We found ourselves at the top of Shooters Hill - a high point on the old A2 - and saw this view over London. I may go back with a telephoto lens, but until then, cropping will have to do. Open up the original and zoom in on it. There aren’t many places where the whole length of the town, from Canary Wharf to Westminster appears in one panorama.
Friday 9 February 2024
Guitarists and Triadic Chords
Not only can we not play full-fledged triadic extended chords on the guitar, but we can’t always play the notes of a special-effects chord in triadic order. (We can always do that on a piano.) So guitarists jumble the notes around the fretboard until they find a combination they can play and call that the “D♭13”. If they can’t manage that, they drop one of the notes and try again. This is why guitar chord books will show two different chords in different positions under the same name with nary a word of explanation.
These variations are called “voicings” of the chord. Because that sounds like they meant it.
What does it mean to say you’re playing B♭minor 7♯9 on the guitar, if there are three ways of doing it and each of them has a different set of notes in a different sequence (from the sixth to the first string) and each voicing may be a third or more higher than the next?
It means two things: first that the triadic naming convention rapidly becomes unwieldy above sevenths; second, thatyou’re hip to the tricks of the trade you have the musical taste a) not to make a fuss about the ambiguities, and b) to know which of the “voicing” of an extended chord fits which situations.
It’s even worse than that. Many guitar chords are “voiced” across all six strings. So we can strum an accompaniment easily.
The strummer’s F-major chord in the first position is F-C-F-A-C-F. An F-major triad is F-A-C - in any key. The six-string chord has the 6-4 inversion (C-F-A), the fifth (F-A-C), and the sixth inversion (A-C-F). Two are major fifths (C-F-A, F-A-C) and a minor fifth (A-C-F). All in one chord. It’s triadic sludge. So are all the other cowboy chords (so-called because they can be strummed across all six strings in the first position).
Classical guitarists don’t strum, so this mess does not happen in classical music.
So does this mean (non-classical) guitarists are doing something wrong, or does it mean that conventional triadic harmony is not the best way of understanding what kind of harmonic contributions the guitar can make?
I would say the latter.
There’s a story about Joni Mitchell working with Tom Scott. She’s playing piano and Scott - a fearsome jazz session musician - is in the recording booth. Joni plays one of those “Joni Mitchell” chords, and Scott hits the mic and asks “Is that an A-flat 4th diminished 6th” (or some other such). Joni looks at him, then at her fingers on the keys, and then back again.
“Tom. Ignorance is bliss.”
I’d suggest that guitarist-harmony / chords is more bliss than book. The better songwriters find their “odd chords” by experiment as much as theory. The theorists then rave about so-and-so’s use of a minor ninth sus-2 (or whatever) as if so-and-so thought about it, when in fact, it’s a chord that results when playing something fairly ordinary and moving one finger forward a fret and another backward a fret. Experimenting. And do-able on stage.
Every guitarist has to learn the cowboy chords in all the shapes. And the sevenths and major sevenths, and the sus-2’s and sus-4’s. After that, it depends on what genre they are aiming for. As for learning lots of arpeggios? Only be-boppers do that, and be-bop dominates (non-classical) music teaching, because it has rules. (Of course, classical guitarists learn arpeggios, but that’s because a) Bach, and b) treating a sequence of notes across the strings as an arpeggio - and therefore a “chord shape” - is a way of learning the piece.)
These variations are called “voicings” of the chord. Because that sounds like they meant it.
What does it mean to say you’re playing B♭minor 7♯9 on the guitar, if there are three ways of doing it and each of them has a different set of notes in a different sequence (from the sixth to the first string) and each voicing may be a third or more higher than the next?
It means two things: first that the triadic naming convention rapidly becomes unwieldy above sevenths; second, that
It’s even worse than that. Many guitar chords are “voiced” across all six strings. So we can strum an accompaniment easily.
The strummer’s F-major chord in the first position is F-C-F-A-C-F. An F-major triad is F-A-C - in any key. The six-string chord has the 6-4 inversion (C-F-A), the fifth (F-A-C), and the sixth inversion (A-C-F). Two are major fifths (C-F-A, F-A-C) and a minor fifth (A-C-F). All in one chord. It’s triadic sludge. So are all the other cowboy chords (so-called because they can be strummed across all six strings in the first position).
Classical guitarists don’t strum, so this mess does not happen in classical music.
So does this mean (non-classical) guitarists are doing something wrong, or does it mean that conventional triadic harmony is not the best way of understanding what kind of harmonic contributions the guitar can make?
I would say the latter.
There’s a story about Joni Mitchell working with Tom Scott. She’s playing piano and Scott - a fearsome jazz session musician - is in the recording booth. Joni plays one of those “Joni Mitchell” chords, and Scott hits the mic and asks “Is that an A-flat 4th diminished 6th” (or some other such). Joni looks at him, then at her fingers on the keys, and then back again.
“Tom. Ignorance is bliss.”
I’d suggest that guitarist-harmony / chords is more bliss than book. The better songwriters find their “odd chords” by experiment as much as theory. The theorists then rave about so-and-so’s use of a minor ninth sus-2 (or whatever) as if so-and-so thought about it, when in fact, it’s a chord that results when playing something fairly ordinary and moving one finger forward a fret and another backward a fret. Experimenting. And do-able on stage.
Every guitarist has to learn the cowboy chords in all the shapes. And the sevenths and major sevenths, and the sus-2’s and sus-4’s. After that, it depends on what genre they are aiming for. As for learning lots of arpeggios? Only be-boppers do that, and be-bop dominates (non-classical) music teaching, because it has rules. (Of course, classical guitarists learn arpeggios, but that’s because a) Bach, and b) treating a sequence of notes across the strings as an arpeggio - and therefore a “chord shape” - is a way of learning the piece.)
Tuesday 6 February 2024
Extended Chords
Next up are the chords made up of four notes. These are seventh chords, because four notes each a third apart are a seventh apart from top to bottom. (Weird interval arithmetic again.) In D-major these are:
D-F♯-A-C♯ I7
D-F♯-A-C♯ I7
E-G-B-D ii7
F♯-A-C♯-E iiI7
G-B-D-F♯ IV7
A-C♯-E-G V7
B-D-F♯-A vi7
C♯-E-G-B vii7
Look at the cyclic permutations of (say) ii7 (E-G-B-D). These are: G-B-D-E; B-D-E-G; and D-E-G-B. These are a sixth wide, and have two notes next to each other, the D-E. The first is major, the second diminished (two semitones), and the third can be described as a sus2 (D-E-G) with an add 7 (B).
For a long time classical musicians stopped at seventh chords, with an occasional foray into a ninth as a stunt. Jazz musicians, however, started with sevenths and worked upwards, notionally to five note chords (ninths), six note chords (elevenths) and seven note chords (thirteenths). A jazz pianist or guitarist thinks nothing of playing D♭13, which is
Furthermore we can shift the fifths, sevenths, ninths and so on, up a sharp or down a flat, to get truly wonderful monstrosities such as D♭13: D♭(1)-F(3)-A♭(5)-C (7)-E&flat(9)-G♭(11)-B♭(13).
We can’t play the full-fledged Triadic D♭13 on the guitar, or with a string quartet, and it would need some skilful orchestration to be heard if played by an orchestra. Even if we could, we would only do so very rarely. It’s a mess. As are full-fledged elevenths.
Composers and songwriters know that chords extending above sevenths are a special effect. (Hindemith says as much in an aside in his book on Harmony.) They may want, say, the effect of the root and the eleventh (fourth an octave up), with the third to indicate that the chord is “really” a minor, and a flat (aka dominant) seventh, because that flavours the chord, but the fifth and the ninth don’t do anything musically useful, and are just clutter. So they write the root, third, seventh and eleventh, and everyone calls it an “eleventh chord”.
Suppose we want the special effect of a sharp nine against the eleventh? Write the root, sharp nine and eleventh. How about the third? Sharp nines are flat thirds an octave up, and that sounds messy, so let’s leave out the third. Dominant sevenths are a special effect of their own that will distract from the one we want, so let’s leave out the seventh. Let’s put in the fifth so that the chord doesn’t sound too thin. So that’s root, fifth, sharp nine and eleventh. Which is also called an eleventh chord, strictly an “eleven sharp nine” chord.
Nobody plays or writes full-fledged triadic extended chords. They play or writerandom carefully-chosen groupings of different notes spreading over two octaves. (Playing the same note an octave apart doesn’t “extend” the chord.) And no group of instrumentalists does this more than guitarists - and any other ensemble with less than five players.
Look at the cyclic permutations of (say) ii7 (E-G-B-D). These are: G-B-D-E; B-D-E-G; and D-E-G-B. These are a sixth wide, and have two notes next to each other, the D-E. The first is major, the second diminished (two semitones), and the third can be described as a sus2 (D-E-G) with an add 7 (B).
For a long time classical musicians stopped at seventh chords, with an occasional foray into a ninth as a stunt. Jazz musicians, however, started with sevenths and worked upwards, notionally to five note chords (ninths), six note chords (elevenths) and seven note chords (thirteenths). A jazz pianist or guitarist thinks nothing of playing D♭13, which is
Furthermore we can shift the fifths, sevenths, ninths and so on, up a sharp or down a flat, to get truly wonderful monstrosities such as D♭13: D♭(1)-F(3)-A♭(5)-C (7)-E&flat(9)-G♭(11)-B♭(13).
We can’t play the full-fledged Triadic D♭13 on the guitar, or with a string quartet, and it would need some skilful orchestration to be heard if played by an orchestra. Even if we could, we would only do so very rarely. It’s a mess. As are full-fledged elevenths.
Composers and songwriters know that chords extending above sevenths are a special effect. (Hindemith says as much in an aside in his book on Harmony.) They may want, say, the effect of the root and the eleventh (fourth an octave up), with the third to indicate that the chord is “really” a minor, and a flat (aka dominant) seventh, because that flavours the chord, but the fifth and the ninth don’t do anything musically useful, and are just clutter. So they write the root, third, seventh and eleventh, and everyone calls it an “eleventh chord”.
Suppose we want the special effect of a sharp nine against the eleventh? Write the root, sharp nine and eleventh. How about the third? Sharp nines are flat thirds an octave up, and that sounds messy, so let’s leave out the third. Dominant sevenths are a special effect of their own that will distract from the one we want, so let’s leave out the seventh. Let’s put in the fifth so that the chord doesn’t sound too thin. So that’s root, fifth, sharp nine and eleventh. Which is also called an eleventh chord, strictly an “eleven sharp nine” chord.
Nobody plays or writes full-fledged triadic extended chords. They play or write
Friday 2 February 2024
Chords and Triadic Harmony
A tune is made up of a sequence of intervals.
Chords provide a background against which the melody is set.
Western chords start with Triadic harmony and get more complicated from there.
We start with… Triads. A Triad is a three-note chord. The simplest are fifths: the base note, the one a third in the scale above it, and the one a third above that. The triadic fifths of C-major are
Chords provide a background against which the melody is set.
Western chords start with Triadic harmony and get more complicated from there.
We start with… Triads. A Triad is a three-note chord. The simplest are fifths: the base note, the one a third in the scale above it, and the one a third above that. The triadic fifths of C-major are
C-E-G I
D-F-A ii
E-G-B iii
F-A-C IV
G-B-D V
A-C-E vi
B-D-F viio
Lower case indicates minor chords, upper case indicates major chords, the 'o' indicates a diminished chord. Minor chords have three semitones at the bottom (D-E-F is Tone-Semitone), and two Tones at the top (F-G-A is Tone-Tone). Major chords are the other way round. Diminished chords have two sets of three semitones (B-D-F is Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone). Augmented chords have two sets of four semitones (C-E-G♯ is Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone).
What happens if we play (say) E-G-C (in that order on the piano)? Now the interval at the bottom is minor, not major.
Flipping the notes of those triads around, we get the so-called Neapolitan Sixth chords
E-G-C I 6 (minor)
F-A-D II 6 (major)
G-B-E III 6 (major)
A-C-F IV 6 (minor / sort of diminished-ish)
B-D-G V 6 (minor)
C-E-A VI 6 (major)
D-F-B vii6 (minor)
Flip once more, we get the 6-4 triads
G-C-E I 46 (major)
A-D-F II 46 (minor)
B-E-G III 46 (minor)
C-F-A IV 46 (major)
D-G-B V 46 (major)
E-A-C VI 46 (minor)
F-B-D vii 46 (minor / sort of diminished-ish)
The 6-4 triads get their major or minor flavour from the top of the triad, rather than the bottom, as with the fifth and Neapolitan sixth triads.
All these chords have the property that adding another note a third above the top one just produces the bass note an octave higher. A-D-F goes to A-D-F-A. This is because in the weird arithmetic of notes, a sixth plus a third is an eighth. So these inversions are a Triadic dead-end - though we can add whatever note we want to any of them, and later on, we will.
The idea of the root of a triad was invented to explain why it is that C-E-G, E-G-C and G-C-E are all I chords in C even though they have different bass (bottom) notes. The root of a chord is the note that would be in the bass, if it was re-arranged as a series of ascending triads, filling in any missing notes and allowing for modifications.
Simple enough, surely?
Bassists play the root note, so the rest of us don’t have to.
Classical harmony theory loves these inverted triads, jazzers barely know they exist.
D-F-A ii
E-G-B iii
F-A-C IV
G-B-D V
A-C-E vi
B-D-F viio
Lower case indicates minor chords, upper case indicates major chords, the 'o' indicates a diminished chord. Minor chords have three semitones at the bottom (D-E-F is Tone-Semitone), and two Tones at the top (F-G-A is Tone-Tone). Major chords are the other way round. Diminished chords have two sets of three semitones (B-D-F is Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone). Augmented chords have two sets of four semitones (C-E-G♯ is Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone).
What happens if we play (say) E-G-C (in that order on the piano)? Now the interval at the bottom is minor, not major.
Flipping the notes of those triads around, we get the so-called Neapolitan Sixth chords
E-G-C I 6 (minor)
F-A-D II 6 (major)
G-B-E III 6 (major)
A-C-F IV 6 (minor / sort of diminished-ish)
B-D-G V 6 (minor)
C-E-A VI 6 (major)
D-F-B vii6 (minor)
Flip once more, we get the 6-4 triads
G-C-E I 46 (major)
A-D-F II 46 (minor)
B-E-G III 46 (minor)
C-F-A IV 46 (major)
D-G-B V 46 (major)
E-A-C VI 46 (minor)
F-B-D vii 46 (minor / sort of diminished-ish)
The 6-4 triads get their major or minor flavour from the top of the triad, rather than the bottom, as with the fifth and Neapolitan sixth triads.
All these chords have the property that adding another note a third above the top one just produces the bass note an octave higher. A-D-F goes to A-D-F-A. This is because in the weird arithmetic of notes, a sixth plus a third is an eighth. So these inversions are a Triadic dead-end - though we can add whatever note we want to any of them, and later on, we will.
The idea of the root of a triad was invented to explain why it is that C-E-G, E-G-C and G-C-E are all I chords in C even though they have different bass (bottom) notes. The root of a chord is the note that would be in the bass, if it was re-arranged as a series of ascending triads, filling in any missing notes and allowing for modifications.
Simple enough, surely?
Bassists play the root note, so the rest of us don’t have to.
Classical harmony theory loves these inverted triads, jazzers barely know they exist.
Tuesday 30 January 2024
Roman Numeral Notation
Most music is written in one of the twelve major scales, and the Major scale has a pragmatically-central position in a (western) musician's technique.
Because all twelve major scales have the same intervals, anything we say about the musical properties of one scale will apply to any of the others. The Roman Numeral notation lets us do this: it abstracts out the tonic note, but fixes the Major scale.
I (tonic, first) the note that names the key
Because all twelve major scales have the same intervals, anything we say about the musical properties of one scale will apply to any of the others. The Roman Numeral notation lets us do this: it abstracts out the tonic note, but fixes the Major scale.
I (tonic, first) the note that names the key
♯I / ♭II (sharp first, flat second)
II (second)
♯I / ♭III (sharp second / flat third)
III (third)
♯III / ♭IV (sharp third / flat fourth)
IV (fourth)
V (fifth)
♯V / ♭VI (sharp fifth / flat sixth)
VI (sixth)
♯VI / ♭VII (sharp sixth / flat seventh)
VII (seventh) leading tone to the...
I an octave above the start
Counting the semitones from the tonic, these are the same names (without the adjectives like “perfect’) as the musical intervals defined in the previous post.
All the other (equal temperament) scales can be described in terms of this one:
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: I-II-♭III-IV-V-♭VI-♭VII
Major Blues: I-II-♭III-III-V-VI
Whole-Tone: I-II-III-♯IV-♯V♯VI
(The ability to recite any other scale or mode in terms of "sharp this, flat that" with utter fluency is an essential skill of any academic or jazz nerd. I'm not sure how much it helps, but it sounds impressive.)
Counting the semitones from the tonic, these are the same names (without the adjectives like “perfect’) as the musical intervals defined in the previous post.
All the other (equal temperament) scales can be described in terms of this one:
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: I-II-♭III-IV-V-♭VI-♭VII
Major Blues: I-II-♭III-III-V-VI
Whole-Tone: I-II-III-♯IV-♯V♯VI
(The ability to recite any other scale or mode in terms of "sharp this, flat that" with utter fluency is an essential skill of any academic or jazz nerd. I'm not sure how much it helps, but it sounds impressive.)
Friday 26 January 2024
Health Report
Regular readers will remember that about ten or so months ago I was having pains in my right shoulder and arm. I thought this was caused by bad posture playing guitar, but it turned out to be the bad posture of some of my neck vertebrae. Smart readers went long osteopathy and were not disappointed.
In the meantime, I will carry on with the music posts. The real world looks way too shaky right now and I can’t focus on it.
I had a reasonably pain-free autumn and was okay until the end of December when I must have done Something Stupid which set the pains off again. I’m not getting the fizzing and buzzing down my arms, but I am getting persistent aches in my shoulder and neck, which are turning out to be so distracting that I can’t really focus on anything for long. I’m swallowing ibuprofen with intermittent paracetemol when needed, because the second time around a pain is much less bearable.
I am long osteopathy again. With luck that will work, and isn’t a sign that my vertebrae have got worse.
In the meantime, I will carry on with the music posts. The real world looks way too shaky right now and I can’t focus on it.
Tuesday 16 January 2024
Interval Names
(This is the first of two slightly dry posts on naming conventions.)
The intervals of European Equal Temperament scales are defined by counting the number of semitones between the notes and applying the following names (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music) for a longer discussion, including diminished and augmented intervals)
0 Unison P1
1 Minor second m2
2 Major Second M2
3 Minor third m3
4 Major third M3
5 Perfect fourth P4
6 Augmented fourth A4 / Diminished fifth D5
7 Perfect fifth P5
8 Minor sixth m6 / Augmented 5 A5
9 Major sixth M6
10 Minor seventh m7
11 Major seventh M7
12 Octave P8
The numbers 1,2,3... in the names are given by the number of lines and spaces ("staff positions") between the notes on the familiar five-bar stave. That method of counting notes will work for any scale with any number of notes in it.
C-F is... Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F) = 5 semitones = Perfect fourth.
D-F is three semitones = Minor Third (D-E-F - D is on a line, E is in a space, and F is on a line, so an m3)
B-G♯ is Semitone(C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F)-Tone(G)-Semitone(G♯) = 9 semitones = Major sixth (G♯ is the sixth note in B-Major).
A♭ - E is Semitone(A)-Tone(B)-Semitone( C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E) = 8 semitones = Minor sixth (E♭ is the fifth note in A♭ and F is the sixth)
(You can use any method you like to count the semitones. This is my method at the moment.)
Since the number of semitones between any two notes is independent of the scale or key, interval names are independent of the underlying key or scale, since it depends only on the number of semitones. The same holds for staff positions, so the names of the intervals are also independent of the key or scale.
The intervals of European Equal Temperament scales are defined by counting the number of semitones between the notes and applying the following names (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music) for a longer discussion, including diminished and augmented intervals)
0 Unison P1
1 Minor second m2
2 Major Second M2
3 Minor third m3
4 Major third M3
5 Perfect fourth P4
6 Augmented fourth A4 / Diminished fifth D5
7 Perfect fifth P5
8 Minor sixth m6 / Augmented 5 A5
9 Major sixth M6
10 Minor seventh m7
11 Major seventh M7
12 Octave P8
The numbers 1,2,3... in the names are given by the number of lines and spaces ("staff positions") between the notes on the familiar five-bar stave. That method of counting notes will work for any scale with any number of notes in it.
C-F is... Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F) = 5 semitones = Perfect fourth.
D-F is three semitones = Minor Third (D-E-F - D is on a line, E is in a space, and F is on a line, so an m3)
B-G♯ is Semitone(C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F)-Tone(G)-Semitone(G♯) = 9 semitones = Major sixth (G♯ is the sixth note in B-Major).
A♭ - E is Semitone(A)-Tone(B)-Semitone( C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E) = 8 semitones = Minor sixth (E♭ is the fifth note in A♭ and F is the sixth)
(You can use any method you like to count the semitones. This is my method at the moment.)
Since the number of semitones between any two notes is independent of the scale or key, interval names are independent of the underlying key or scale, since it depends only on the number of semitones. The same holds for staff positions, so the names of the intervals are also independent of the key or scale.
Friday 12 January 2024
Scales
(We are now working in European Equal Temperament.)
A scale is any sequence of intervals (notice: not notes) that adds up to 12 semitones. Think of any bonkers combination, and someone somewhere will have a guitar tutorial explaining why it should be the very next thing you learn.
A key or mode is a scale plus a starting note (the "tonic") that then defines a sequence of notes. We say "the key of G-Major" scale or "the Major scale". (Musical speech is sloppy, so we also say "the Major key" or "the G-Major scale".) Two keys are equivalent if they have the same scale. “Scale” = intervals; key = notes.
There are a number of well-known seven-note scales:
Major / Ionian Mode: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Harmonic Minor: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Lydian Mode: Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Mixolydian Mode; Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Dorian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Phrygian Mode: Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone
The Ionian, Aeolian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Phrygian modes are often called Church Modes, as they were used in early choral singing.
There are two well-known five note (pentatonic) scales:
Major Pentatonic: Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third
Minor Pentatonic: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone
Two well-known six note scales:
Major Blues: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third
Minor Blues: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone
(Minor Third = 3 semitones)
Exactly one scale of only tones: Whole-Tone: Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone (There are two keys: C and C♯. After that the notes repeat, so starting on D gives the same notes as starting on C.)
Exactly one scale of only semitones: Chromatic: Semitone (x12)
If you want to see something truly out of control, look at the eight-note diminished scale.
A scale is any sequence of intervals (notice: not notes) that adds up to 12 semitones. Think of any bonkers combination, and someone somewhere will have a guitar tutorial explaining why it should be the very next thing you learn.
A key or mode is a scale plus a starting note (the "tonic") that then defines a sequence of notes. We say "the key of G-Major" scale or "the Major scale". (Musical speech is sloppy, so we also say "the Major key" or "the G-Major scale".) Two keys are equivalent if they have the same scale. “Scale” = intervals; key = notes.
There are a number of well-known seven-note scales:
Major / Ionian Mode: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Harmonic Minor: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Lydian Mode: Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone
Mixolydian Mode; Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Dorian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone
Phrygian Mode: Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone
The Ionian, Aeolian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Phrygian modes are often called Church Modes, as they were used in early choral singing.
There are two well-known five note (pentatonic) scales:
Major Pentatonic: Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third
Minor Pentatonic: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone
Two well-known six note scales:
Major Blues: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third
Minor Blues: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone
(Minor Third = 3 semitones)
Exactly one scale of only tones: Whole-Tone: Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone (There are two keys: C and C♯. After that the notes repeat, so starting on D gives the same notes as starting on C.)
Exactly one scale of only semitones: Chromatic: Semitone (x12)
If you want to see something truly out of control, look at the eight-note diminished scale.
Tuesday 9 January 2024
Intervals
This is the first of a series of posts about music notation and associated ideas. The world does not need this, but I do, to make my own sense of it. There is a lot of notation in music, and it's not all part of one coherent whole. It's a bunch of tools for specific tasks.
Let's start at the beginning.
A note is a name for a given frequency. The most well-known note is "middle C" (or C4) , followed by "A440", which is the frequency 440 Hz assigned to the A above middle C, A4.
The human auditory system regards two notes whose frequencies are in the ratio 2:1 as very harmonious. This is because musical instruments do not produce pure sine wave tones, but a sound that is a mixture of the fundamental frequency and many others, called “overtones”. Playing A440 will usually also generate an "overtone" of A880, and so it sounds pleasantly matching when played against A880 as a note. This is so much so that two notes related by double frequency are regarded as "the same but higher".
This splits the range of audible frequencies into ranges called octaves. Pick a starting position, say A4 = 440, and we have octaves as follows:
A7 = 3620 (almost the highest note on the piano)
A6 = 1760
A5 = 880
A4 = 440 (“tuning A”)
A3 = 220
A2 = 110
A1 = 55
A0 = 27.5 (lowest note on the piano)
(Why is it the lowest? There are pianos which go even lower, but below about 25Hz, the human ear stops hearing a continuous sound and starts to hear the individual beats. The highest note on the piano is 4120Hz and it's very difficult to produce an acoustic instrument that can produce that with significant volume.
The octaves are not the same size in terms of the range of frequencies, but the ratios of the frequencies are all the same. Each octave is double the previous one.
Each musical culture picks a different number of different frequencies within an octave to be its "notes". European music eventually settled on a series of frequencies, each one related to the previous one by the same ratio, the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). This is called Equal Temperament, and it makes manufacturing and learning to play musical instruments way easier than the other European system did.
The "distance" between two notes is not measured in hertz (the ear doesn't work like that), but in powers of the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). A power of the 12-th root of 2 is called a semitone. (Mathematicians can prove this is indeed a distance function as an exercise.)
Let's start at the beginning.
A note is a name for a given frequency. The most well-known note is "middle C" (or C4) , followed by "A440", which is the frequency 440 Hz assigned to the A above middle C, A4.
The human auditory system regards two notes whose frequencies are in the ratio 2:1 as very harmonious. This is because musical instruments do not produce pure sine wave tones, but a sound that is a mixture of the fundamental frequency and many others, called “overtones”. Playing A440 will usually also generate an "overtone" of A880, and so it sounds pleasantly matching when played against A880 as a note. This is so much so that two notes related by double frequency are regarded as "the same but higher".
This splits the range of audible frequencies into ranges called octaves. Pick a starting position, say A4 = 440, and we have octaves as follows:
A7 = 3620 (almost the highest note on the piano)
A6 = 1760
A5 = 880
A4 = 440 (“tuning A”)
A3 = 220
A2 = 110
A1 = 55
A0 = 27.5 (lowest note on the piano)
(Why is it the lowest? There are pianos which go even lower, but below about 25Hz, the human ear stops hearing a continuous sound and starts to hear the individual beats. The highest note on the piano is 4120Hz and it's very difficult to produce an acoustic instrument that can produce that with significant volume.
The octaves are not the same size in terms of the range of frequencies, but the ratios of the frequencies are all the same. Each octave is double the previous one.
Each musical culture picks a different number of different frequencies within an octave to be its "notes". European music eventually settled on a series of frequencies, each one related to the previous one by the same ratio, the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). This is called Equal Temperament, and it makes manufacturing and learning to play musical instruments way easier than the other European system did.
The "distance" between two notes is not measured in hertz (the ear doesn't work like that), but in powers of the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). A power of the 12-th root of 2 is called a semitone. (Mathematicians can prove this is indeed a distance function as an exercise.)
Given a note X, the note one semitone up is X♯ and the note one semitone below is X♭. Replacing a note by the flat or the sharp is called flattening or sharpening the note. Under Equal Temperament, (X-1)♯ is the same note as X♭ - these are called enharmonic equivalents.
For more details, see the excellent and best-selling Your Brain on Music.
For more details, see the excellent and best-selling Your Brain on Music.
Friday 5 January 2024
Ear Training
One of the many skills academically-trained musicians have is being able to identify an interval - the distance between two notes. There are twelve in an octave, from the minor second - 6% increase in frequency) - to the octave - a 100% increase in frequency.
There is of course an app for that. Several. I tried Earpeggio, which offers a wide range of tests. I passed the test of identifying which of two intervals was greater, and I can reliably spot a unison (same note, no difference) and an octave.
You’d think anyone could tell the difference between a minor third and a major sixth, seeing as how they are different ends of the octave, but nope. Major thirds went unidentified. If I’d been guessing, I would have got about two out of the twenty examples right, so even 50% isn’t awful. I noticed that as soon as I had two succeeding intervals close together, I was much more accurate, since I was relying on the memory of the previous note. But an interval on its own… ouch.
However, I’ve never done this before, so it’s not hopeless.
My quick foray into identifying chords was much less impressive.
It’s a neat thing to do when you have twenty minutes to spare in a quiet place, or with headphones.
There is of course an app for that. Several. I tried Earpeggio, which offers a wide range of tests. I passed the test of identifying which of two intervals was greater, and I can reliably spot a unison (same note, no difference) and an octave.
You’d think anyone could tell the difference between a minor third and a major sixth, seeing as how they are different ends of the octave, but nope. Major thirds went unidentified. If I’d been guessing, I would have got about two out of the twenty examples right, so even 50% isn’t awful. I noticed that as soon as I had two succeeding intervals close together, I was much more accurate, since I was relying on the memory of the previous note. But an interval on its own… ouch.
However, I’ve never done this before, so it’s not hopeless.
My quick foray into identifying chords was much less impressive.
It’s a neat thing to do when you have twenty minutes to spare in a quiet place, or with headphones.
Monday 1 January 2024
Happy New Year and A Prosperous 2024 To You All
Nothing says "Happy New Year" like three abandoned boats on Dungeness beach.
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