We’re all born to speak. Only severe defects, severe accidents, stop us.
Singing is natural, but not quite all of us take to it. Culture can see that few of us can afford to practice it.
Me, I’d rather belong to a tribe that sang indifferently, but together, than have perpetual seats at the concert hall. (And these days Id’ rather play Bach on my own keyboard, however poorly I perform, than listen to my old collection of Bach played by Helmut Walcha, Wanda Landowska, Richter ...)
When we speak our vocal chords vibrate. When any string vibrates, a tone, a complex tone, variable tones, are generated. As Pythagoras showed, a vibrating string divides along its length into sub-vibrations, producing sub-frequencies: overtones. Complex sound.
With a matched set of strings, as on a lute, as on a piano, the complex tones, selected played, produce complexities that stimulate us pleasurably but that are not so complex as to be beyond comprehension.
We "all" speak, fewer of us sing, fewer still pluck, blow, or beat instruments. But when competent pluckers, blowers, strikers ... singers get together, wow.
Macroinformational potential emanates with such vibrations, whether from one vocal chord or a full orchestra with chorus.
My efforts thus far to talk about music as macroinformation at Macroinformation.org have not developed satisfactorily. When I get an idea it thus far hasn’t developed as clearly or as far as my discussions of jokes, movies, drama ... poetry .. theology or politics. Now I try again:
Macroinformation Generated from Metadifference
Strike middle C on a keyboard. The single note is complex. (Delving the complexity must follow, but not in an introduction.) All the other notes, including notes not in Western music, are implicit in it; some aggressively implicit: the G, for example. Strike the C and the G keys more or less together. The result is more complex, the metadifferences more urgent. The "single" sound of a chord, even only two notes, has more macroinformational potential than the single sound of the C alone.
Play a standard C chord: C, E, G. Music theory tells us that the E is a major third above the C. The G however, already established as a perfect fifth above the C, is a minor third above the E. ! Minor as well as major is implicit in the simplest triad.
(If all notes are implicit in one note, are all chords implicit in one simple triad?) (Are all words implicit in one word? I don’t think so; but I see that all chords are implicit from a single triad, from a single two note chord.)
Had I been given standard music lessons, a teacher would have shown me a C chord: middle C, next E up, next G up. At some point the teacher would have shown me the first inversion of the C chord: E, then G, then C. Around then I would also have been shown the second inversion: G, then C, then E. Before I could play at all well I’d have to be able to play inversions of C all the way up and down the keyboard: with some sureness of hand, and some velocity. Long before that I would have been shown the F chord and the G7: and D major, G major, etc. And C7, and C major 7, and so forth -- diminished, augmented, suspended ... -- all of them invertible.
As it is I’ve picked much of this up from the REAL Book (some of the charts sketched from recordings (and live performances) by friends of mine: though they were my friends long before I ever had an actual copy of the REAL Book or tried a bit at playing myself). Benny Golson’s
Killer Joe commences with measures which rock back and forth between the 7 chord of the Root and the 7 chord of the Root’s 7, the rocking quickening to within the measures as the form progresses. Joe Zawinul’s
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy commences with measures which rock back and forth, slightly syncopated, between the Root 7 and the 7 of the perfect IV of the Root. As with the Golson piece, the measures increasingly pick up something of the companion chord. In both cases other complexities are soon introduced, but for the moment I focus just on the openings.
The Golson example rocks modally, the Zawinul example rocks right in the heart of standard Western harmony. Modes are very old, but standard harmony is more familiar: or was until Miles Davis.
Both examples
start with seventh chords: typical jazz. My source, the Bb REAL Book, is already transposed: D7, C7 (not D, C!) for the Golson tune; C7, F7 for the Zawinul.
When starting, and ending, with seventh chords, what is the Root? Complex, complex, complex. Jazz typically plunges us into the middle of the sea: where some of us are comfortable.
However complex, this is not unreachable by analysis.
Now: a seventh chord, C7, for example, un-inverted, plays: C, E, G, Bb. That is: base note, major third, minor third, minor third.
A standard major triad sounds (ahem)
complete to standard Western ears. A seventh chord, in context of nothing, implies something else. A C7 implies F major. Zawinul follows C7 with F7: implying Bb major! (And Bb is the 7 of C minor: and itself implies F major, which implies C7!) In other words jazz of this sort plunges us straight into the
middle of ... we don’t know what! (Some people like being at sea; many don’t. But anyone will be stimulated by these complexities.)
Analyzing the metadifferences involved in imbalances subverting balances may prove to be as complex as looking at a pound of lard and talking hyperstring theory, but I hope you see: given enough scut work, it could be done. And should be done: at least once: just to show that it can be.
I’m not going far into the mine here. I’m showing that there is a mine: very deep.
Meantime, imagine for yourself, with just another tiny push from me, how many directions we could go from here: Rhythm complexities: four against one, three against one, two against one, two against three ... one against three, four ... Imbalances subverting balances, all generated from metadifference ... initially, from difference.
PS My examples of macroinformation thus far have primarily involved verbiage. Sure: I’m a speaker, a writer ... was involved in English. But it was music that ravished me before I spent much time as a kid reading Soroyan, or Dickens, or Keats. Ah, but then the culture also encouraged me to talk (and write) about Dickens, Keats ..., and smacked me if I tried to talk about Louie, Kid Ory, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. So: I grew up with my literature more stroked than smacked, my music more smacked than stroked. I was an adult before I acquired -- by my
self
