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New MED Standards by Kalavinka(OR "all the awkward chords you hoped you'd never have to learn made easy with MED")Please note to save space the included example files are set for use with MIDI.
IntroductionMED's built-in block, sequence, section divisions make it easy to structure your musical creations as you go, from totally freeform constructions to the slowly evolving bottom-up movement often found in dance music and electronica. But what about structuring a song along more traditional lines. No problem. This tutorial looks at a way of using the very same features to "rough out" a song in a more traditional structure, working from the top down. That is not to say it couldn't be applied to electronica, try listening to some Kraftwerk! I'll be focusing on Blues and Jazz. If you are into rock it should still be useful because rock is at its heart based around Blues (likewise many other popular forms such as modern R&B, Hip Hop). Those of you with a good knowledge of rock will be able to think immediately of how bluesy even the most progressive rock outfits started out. If you already play guitar, you'll already be more than familiar with chord progressions. This may be easy for you if you know a lot of chords, but if you don't I hope it will be of some use in emphasising a few less obvious ones. Skip the bits you know already! If you don't play an instrument and just "MED to MED", you might have seen on sheet music such strange symbols as Dm7 floating above the staves. Actually we can use MED to break these open to see what notes these are made of and make use of tried and tested ways of structuring music by moving from one to another smoothly. I'll also be including MODS which give you a chord alphabet to string together progressions of your own. You might want to change these to reflect your preferred song settings. I will indicate a MOD to load by providing a screenshot or some other image to click on. Incidentally, a well documented and copyright-murky technique used by post-war Jazz musicians was to take an established Jazz tune ("standard") and re-use the sequence of chords but with different melodies to create a new standard. This was often rendered murkier by the title only being slightly different, with interesting use made of synonyms (e.g. Charlie Parker's many different bird references). Since many pop tunes have a fairly limited range and arrangement of chords (and consequently feel a bit too similar), I hope this will encourage you to be daring! Please don't feel you have to wade through it all at once - just use what works for you.
Part 1 - Intervals
Select above picture to download example..
|
| 2nds | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> D | major 2nd | 2 semitones (difference) |
| D -> E | major 2nd | 2 semitones |
| E -> F | minor 2nd | 1 semitone |
| F -> G | major 2nd | 2 semitones |
| G -> A | major 2nd | 2 semitones |
| A -> B | major 2nd | 2 semitones |
| B -> C | minor 2nd | 1 semitones |
so the minor 2nd is one semitone (difference); the major 2nd is two semitones
| 3rds | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> E | major 3rd | 4 semitones (difference) |
| D -> F | minor 3rd | 3 semitones |
| E -> G | minor 3rd | 3 semitone |
| F -> A | major 3rd | 3 semitones |
| G -> B | major 3rd | 4 semitones |
| A -> C | minor 3rd | 3 semitones |
| B -> C | minor 3rd | 3 semitones |
so the minor 3rd is three semitones; the major 3rd is four semitones
* You can see the Major/minor pattern changing as more of the intervals span white-white notes like EF (we'll come to fourths and fifths in a sec...).
| 6ths | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> A | major 6th | 9 semitones (difference) |
| D -> B | major 6th | 9 semitones |
| E -> C | minor 6th | 8 semitone |
| F -> D | major 6th | 9 semitones |
| G -> E | major 6th | 9 semitones |
| A -> F | minor 6th | 8 semitones |
| B -> G | minor 6th | 8 semitones |
so the minor 6th is eight semitones; the major 6th is nine semitones
| 7ths | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> B | major 7th | 11 semitones (difference) |
| D -> C | minor 7th | 10 semitones |
| E -> D | minor 7th | 10 semitone |
| F -> E | major 7th | 11 semitones |
| G -> F | minor 7th | 10 semitones |
| A -> G | minor 7th | 10 semitones |
| B -> A | minor 7th | 10 semitones |
so the minor 7th is ten semitones the Major 7th is eleven semitones
Okay now for the 5th and 4th which we skipped. 5ths and 4ths unlike the others can be "perfect".
For 4ths the smaller is called perfect and the larger augmented (i.e. a bit bigger)
| 4ths | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> F | perfect 4th | 5 semitones (difference) |
| D -> G | perfect 4th | 5 semitones |
| E -> A | perfect 4th | 5 semitone |
| F -> B | augmented 4th | 6 semitones |
| G -> C | perfect 4th | 5 semitones |
| A -> D | perfect 4th | 5 semitones |
| B -> E | perfect 4th | 5 semitones |
so the perfect 4th is five semitones; the augmented 4th is six semitones
Likewise for 5ths the larger is called perfect and the smaller diminished.
| 5ths | ||
|---|---|---|
| C -> G | perfect 5th | 7 semitones (difference) |
| D -> A | perfect 5th | 7 semitones |
| E -> B | perfect 5th | 7 semitone |
| F -> C | perfect 5th | 7 semitones |
| G -> D | perfect 5th | 7 semitones |
| A -> E | perfect 5th | 7 semitones |
| B -> E | diminished 5th | 6 semitones |
so the Perfect 5th is seven semitones; the diminished 5th is six semitones
Actually 4ths and 5ths are usually perfect so the "perfect" can be dropped. You should also have noticed that an augmented 4th is the same size as a diminished 5th. This interval is also called a tritone. The tritone is arguably more perfect than its supposedly perfect neighbours!!!
(Some of this terminology should look familiar if you've used the sample editor to make chords out of a sample - the next section is about how "nice" these sound).
Part 2 - Dissonance and character of intervals
People have varying sensitivity to how notes sound together. If you follow the harmony encouraged by strict music theory, your music may sound rather dull. All the notes will always sound together, called "consonance". At the other extreme is the duff notes we might wish to learn to avoid (which may not be so different on the ears from the purposeful dissonance introduced by modern composers!).
A common "mistake" (or endearing feature, depending how you look at it) noticeable in *some* early MODS was a tune that sounded predominantly like this, but then you would hear a dissonant note that didn't seem to fit. And why not? Who says what's wrong - if your ears like it that's enough. If I didn't need to get this tutorial finished, I'd be trawling through old Amiga CD-ROMS to find some classic examples.
Jazz and especially Blues depend on "blue notes" for a lot of their qualities. These are notes (especially the so-called "flattened" notes) which are not strictly in the western equivalent scale and clash slightly or impart or suspend some tension, probably as a result of African scales being combined with western in its American heartlands. Blues licks are of course especially fundamental to rock.
There is of course nothing whatsoever wrong with imparting dissonance purposely, especially since Schoenberg who was a master at willful dissonance, but learning to control it gives you freedom to use it more expressively, as subtly or as obviously as you like.
Modern composers sometimes use dissonance in a very obvious way and other times more subtly to make their music interesting. Sometimes interesting tension comes through without the composer having an explicit intention for it, which indicates how well accepted it now is.
With movement, dissonance can be resolved, adding to the story being told by the music. The ways this happen in Jazz are far more subtle and interesting than the simple minded Minor->Major so preferred by propaganda material from failed totalitarian regimes!
In the second half of the MOD [Intervals.med], I have started with dissonance and travelled through imperfect consonance and ambiguity to end on pleasing (but dull) consonance. This is a very obvious form of resolution, but we will see later how this can be achieved within chords themselves.
Here's how the intervals fit into the different categories, then:
Dissonances: tone, semitone, minor 7th, major 7th
Imperfect consonances: major 3rd, minor 3rd, minor 6th, major 6th
Amiguous: tritone (or augmented 4th/diminished 5th)
Consonances: unison (ie. same note), octave, fifth, fourth
Generally speaking, dissonances feel tense. Consonances feel more relaxed. Movement that resolves tension into relaxation progresses.
Part 3 - Some useful seventh chords EXPLODED!!!
Select above picture to download example..
(MIDI Advised as there are no samples included)
It may seem I'm starting with rather complicated types of chords, but sevenths are an interesting bunch and can be greatly simplified in some cases without losing their character. Now is a good time to look back over the intervals. Following [1] I'll introduce them as two sets of three (with "root" as the base note):
First lot - 7th, minor 7th, major 7th chords:
7th: Major triad (root, third, fifth) + minor 7th, e.g. C, E, G, Bb
major 7th: Major triad (root, third, fifth) + major 7th, e.g. C, E, G, B
minor 7th: minor triad (root, minor third, fifth) + minor 7th, e.g. C, D#, G, Bb
NB: Symbols - the number 7 is used for added minor 7ths (ie. 7th and minor 7th above) and a delta symbol can be used for added major 7ths. I can't find delta so I'm going to use "maj7", since it seems to be used in sheet music I have. See below for more on how these are written.
I think of Arpeggios as simply exploded chords. The MOD does this to the chords in turn. Many instruments do not play chords (often because the physics is against them), or are limited to what chords are easy to play. I can't play some 7ths very easily on harmonica because I would have to suck while I blow (some might say not totally impossible - I'm no Philip Achille!).
Playing arpeggios instead is useful in this case, but MED can be used to provide simple chord accompaniment to a single note instrument. If you have an amenable friend with a guitar or piano life is even easier.
Before we move on to the next set, try the below MOD which plays the chords to the Jazz Standard "Autumn Leaves". The block list becomes the list of chords in order of appearance and the playing sequence is the progression of chords in the song.
If you are not familiar with the song, a nice exercise is to add another track and construct a melody to fit the chord progression. Even if you do know the song, you can construct a different melody as I described earlier.
Select above picture to download example..
(MIDI Advised as there are no samples included)
Second lot Diminished 7th, Half-dimished 7th, Minor/major 7th: (listen along to [7ths_part2.med] - these are usually less common)
Dimished 7th: diminished triad (root, minor third, diminished fifth) + diminished 7th, e.g. C, Eb, Gb, A
Half-diminished 7th: diminished triad (root, minor third, diminished fifth) + minor 7th, e.g. C, Eb, Gb, Bb
Minor/major 7th: minor triad (root, minor third, fifth) + major 7th, e.g. C, Eb, G, B
NB: Symbol dim7 is added for Diminished 7ths, m7(b5) is addded for half-diminshed 7th and I'm using m7(maj7) for minor/major - I've no idea if it's right, so I'll do the usual cop-out and say checking it is left as an exercise for the reader.
Let's recap:
[root]7
7th
root, third, fifth + minor 7th
[root]maj7
Major 7th
root, third, fifth + major 7th
[root]m7
Minor 7th
root, minor third, fifth + minor 7th
[root]dim7
Diminished 7th
root, minor third, diminished fifth + diminished 7th
[root]m7(b5)
Half-diminished 7th
root, minor third, diminished fifth + minor 7th
[root]m7(maj7)
Minor/major 7th
root, minor third, fifth + major 7th
I'm going to end it there, although there's much more I'd like to go into, because I don't want to write a book myself and but it seems like a good place to stop. The main thing I wanted to show is more of an approach - using the block list to make all the chords you need, then using the playing sequence to build the progression. I've concentrated on sevenths but there's no earthly reason to stick to that. Experiment!!!
The bibliography below has some ideas if you want to take it further. Thanks for reading this tutorial.
Bibliography
Most of the material in this tutorial is based on this book (and the book goes a lot further - highly recommended):
[1] "Practical Jazz", Lionel Grigson, Stainer and Bell (1988)
But there are also many "chord dictionaries" available, suited to various instruments that could form good source material without too many whys and wherefores such as:
[2] "All the Jazz chords you'll ever need!", Jack Long, Music Sales Corporation (1999)
And some excellent accessible theory books suited to those who just need to pick a few bits out rather than study for grades:
[3] "The complete idiot's guide to music theory", Michael Miller, Alpha (2002)
(Personally I find the "official" theory reference books rather difficult in their approach - I have a back to front approach by their standards - but they are good for reference)
