Meddlings: Movement II (Post 2)

Progress with Progressions

Hello everyone! Sorry for the kind of late post. Here's your reward for waiting so patiently!

So this week/cycle/period of time (the unit of time between posts is beginning to get confusing), I have been focusing on chords. Since improvisation has no real set melody, it relies on keys and chords as its skeleton - they basically denote which notes sound "right" or "good," and which notes sound "wrong" or "dissonant."

Until this point in time, I've primarily improvised under the context of a progression referred to as I - iii - IV - V (I have deviated from this a bit when I play however... either because I stylistically choose to or because I play the wrong chord in the wrong order and need to improvise a new progression. That often ends up with mixed results). Anyway, for those of you who may be a little bit confused, I'll do my best to give a brief explanation of music theory in relation to these chord progressions.

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So a chord is a series of two or more notes that is played together. They can be spaced in different intervals, and pitched in different keys. Additionally, you can play chords that are minor and major without changing key signature. Below is a picture of thirds (chords spaced so that the notes are on every other key) pitched in C Major. You'll notice that each chord is labelled with a Roman numeral. This numeral represents which note of the scale it is derived from (I is rooted on the first note of the scale: C. ii is rooted on D, the second note of the scale, etc.), and whether it is upper or lower case denotes whether the chord is a major chord (uppercase) or a minor chord (lowercase).

Major chords are the "bright," "cheerful," and "happy," chords you typically here in songs. Minor chords are often incorporated in as contrast, or to create a completely different sounding song. They are typically described as "dark," "gloomy," "spooky," or "sad." In one key signature as the chords go up the scale, the positioning of the notes makes it major or minor. This is based on the root of that chord's scale. I think an example would help illustrate this a little better.

In the image above, the second chord in the line up, the ii-chord is minor, and it starts on D. When played in C Major, in which there are no sharps or flats, the chord is played as D-F-A. However, if you were to play a D chord in D Major, it would be played as D-F#-A. You'll notice that in the key signature D Major, the F has a sharp (#). So by playing that same basic structure of the chord in a different key signature, the F is lowered a half-step and the chord is made minor.

Chord progressions are exactly what they sound like - series of chords that follow a pattern to create a certain feel in the music, usually ending each cycle of the pattern with a resonating chord (usually the V chord).

Chord progressions are also an important for transitioning in keys, which I'll be focusing on later in the project. Something interesting I do want to point out is the Circle of Fifths (below), a musical diagram that progresses from C Major (or A Minor) by fifths in either direction, and showing how all the keys are connected through chord spacing.

Pretty cool huh? Even if you didn't quite understand all that, the Circle does provide a pretty cool representation of how many patterns can be found in music theory. I'm barely scratching the surface here.

So that's kind of a brief explanation of the basics of basic chord theory and progressions.
If you managed to make some sense of my attempt at teaching basic music theory - congratulations. If not, I'm sorry - I'm not that great at explaining music theory. Regardless of whether you understood or not, if you want to learn more, check out this site:
Chord Maps: This provides very in-depth information on chord theory from the basics to some of the (slightly) more complex techniques/variations. I used this for a lot of my research on chord formations, progressions, and variations.

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So going back to what I practiced/focused on this week, I ended up coming up with a few nice-sounding progressions:

I - iii - vi - I - iii - V and
I - iii - vi - IV - V

They've both got a lot of major chords that sound really nice, and the minor chords provide nice contrast that leads into ear-pleasing resolution with the V chord. After consulting with some sheet music that was laying around my piano, I cam across another chord progression I ended up utilizing:

iii/I - IV - I - V (The first / means that the left hand played a iii-chord, but my right hand improvised as if it were playing a I chord)

As per request, I also dabbled into some jazz improvisation. Jazz is actually the first style of piano improvisation I had ever tried, but it was a bit mangled, repetitive, and unstructured. I followed a (little) more closely to the classic 12-bar blues style of :
I7 - IV7 - I7 - I7 - IV7 - IV7 - I7 - I7 - V7 - IV7 - I7 - V7
(The  7 just means that the sevenh note of the chord is added to the three-note basic chord, and then lowered a half-step. This makes it sound "jazzy").
I also varied the "turnaround" or final 2 bars as:
I7 - IV7 - I7 - IV7 (Each chord for half a bar/measure).

In addition, I incorporated inversions and slash chords.
Inversions: When I rearrange the notes of a chord (i.e. play them in a different order).
- Ex. C - E - G can be re-arranged into the inversions E - G - C and G - C -E. Each inversion has a slightly different sound.
Slash Chords: When I play the notes of the chord with both hands over different octaves.
- Ex. The I7 in C Major (C - E - G - Bb) can be split between two hands - the left hand playing, let's say... C - Bb, while the right hand plays E - G - C. This creates a bit of a 3-dimensional sound to the chord.

Finally, I was a bit at a loss at what to do for maybe a third song, and I considered only posting two videos... but I ended up deciding on doing a bit of twist on a classic song.
Heart and Soul by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser
I basically did some improvised variations on the song, using the melody as as inspiration for the majority of the improvised melodies, and utilizing the main chords of the song. Additionally, sticking with my theme of using varied chord progressions, I ended up playing some sections of the song with the old I - iii - IV - V pattern that I had used in the past, and it ended up not sounding half-bad. Even with the chord variations, I think that I managed to keep the Heart-and-Soul-feel going.

Moving on...
Hardship wise, I think that I shared my fair share of hardships in my last post. Again, finding the time to sit down, noodle around on the piano, and record a good decent session, and also edit it into a video that could be posted and embedded was hard, what with other activities. today, I'm actually participating in a band concert (on trumpet) that's been rehearsing after and during school, and that has drained a lot of my time. Additionally, I learned the piano tuner is coming to to fix the key and tune the piano up on Monday. My solution until then: use this synthesizer that was sitting upstairs in my parents' room collecting dust. It's an old Roland JV-30, and is hooked up to this Aiwa CX-NA111 stereo because we don't have an amp for it. Check out this sweet setup:

And... if you look carefully... you may see it on the left side... yes.
A camera and a tripod. A HDR-CX190, if you were curious.

This is another thing that held me up - for the sake of providing a little bit more novelty, convenience, and/or entertainment to my viewers. It also made me a lot more conscious about my piano form (wrist movement, finger movement, angle, etc.). I'm going to be paying more attention to that now as well. If you look on the right side of your screen, you'll see a poll. If you would kindly take the time to do that, it'd be much appreciated.

And now... for the recordings. They are the reason that you've put up with all my ramblings for the past couple minutes you've been reading.

First up: Using the chord progression I talked about first: Morning Sunshine (titled by: Mom). This bright, cheery song in D Major is reminiscent to waking up in a good mood - happy, full of energy, and ready to start the day. Something like this (<- click for a link to a video clip. Sorry, I didn't realize the hyperlink color would be so similar to the text's normal color).

Next: The jazz song requested by Catelyn Huang in a comment for the last Movement post, and by a few other people verbally to me, in person, at school. It's called: Genius Hour Blues (Because this is the Genius Hour Project, and this work can be long, tedious, and blues-inspiring... It's a really clever name. Hehe...) It's in C Major. The fast run of notes at the end is called a cadenza - it doesn't really follow any time or tempo - so I can just play whatever. And playing fast like that is kinda fun (and it seems to impress some people). Also, I made the video black and white because, well... it's jazz.
*Does Jazz Hands*

Finally - the Heart and Soul variations tune: Soulful Hearts (super creative name). It's basically variations on the main melody and chord progressions of the song in C Major.

Well, that about concludes this post. I hope you enjoy the recordings. If they're not already up, they should be added to the blog playlist very shortly.

Back to the grindstone! (For school. And band. And this project. Sigh....)

(Sorry - this is a repost - the version I posted about an hour ago got reverted to an old draft by accident. Sorry!)