The right notes

I’ve always wondered when I listened to music that I liked, “what made it hit with me”  There is a rolling nature to the music that I really enjoy, and I ‘m not talking about the beat or the timing necessarily, because I’ve enjoyed my share of Brian Eno inspired dissonance.  What I mean is that the music, regardless of its rhythm, seems to roll through my brain with an ease as if all the right notes are being played.  Of course, whoever writes the music is playing the “right notes”, more or less, but when the music really hits, it leads and there is no particular moment when the listening process is interrupted by a thought that “gosh, that is the wrong note” or “are they in tune” ….  When I started studying music and music composition, part of the  answer to the question “how does music ‘hit’” became obvious; it is simple music theory in the construction, but simple theory is not enough.  A composer has to know when to play a note and when not to play it, when silence is better than sound, if this note should be for this or that length and should it be held or ‘hammered’, up or down, and how far, muted or full ….  These are all questions that go into the process of composing parts when playing music, but there is more.  There is something else that goes into playing “the right notes”.

I don’t speak for anybody else, or really from anybody else when I talk about what my composition process is.  I taught myself from the knowledge base that exists.  Yes, there are too many to mention influences, and I was not [necessarily] the one who invented “Western tuning” [equal temperament], but nobody ever told me how to go from knowing the notes to knowing which notes to play.  I feel that it is a process that all people who choose to compose music eventually struggle with, and they either master the process to their own satisfaction or they “flame out” – as one local composer once commented to me about it.  You can know all the notes, but you might not be playing all the right notes. 

As I’ve learned to become a better player – I still consider myself barely decent, not as good as I want to be, need to be, and am working to be – I’ve struggled with the process of learning how to know that I am playing the right notes without thinking too much about it.  There’s the level of playing where everything fits within the theory structures and appears to be “right”, but that is almost wholly dependent upon the composer having followed the rules and made it “easy”.  After it is easy, and maybe recorded, the harder parts come into play.  Is the recording at an accurate pitch?  Is the mastering level at a constant reference tone?  Was there something else in the writing which was “hidden” by the use of standard tuning and fingering of progressions?  It is these things that become important to think about, know and anticipate as the playing level – the improv & anticipation – increases.  Music construction is object oriented story telling.  Knowing which fingering position to be in and why can be an important difference when the time comes to “write now”.  Writing now is what makes a live band sound better than a studio band, or a studio construction more pleasing to the ear than a live band out of synch because the engineering wasn’t quite on the same wavelength as the playing. 

My goal was to move from teaching about music application in an education framework toward producing music.  Since I had come from a background where teaching the “object” included the need to “perform” – to demonstrate the object in use – I knew that it was important that I learn to play the instruments I was going to be discussing conceptually, and in theory.  This process of expanding the reach of the producers’ chair is not an easy one to master because there are so many other aspects of what have to be done to actually call yourself a Producer and to produce professional music that gets reproduced in media and paid money for performance, broadcast, and mechanical usages.  It’s a joke, really, to think that a Producer can master all that needs to be done. 

One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve worked on my playing – it was a hobby for twelve years before it became a passion and obsession for longer than that – is that in order to create “music that flows together” all the right notes must be all the right notes.  You really can’t pick and choose which position your going to play in, what notes in the “shells” you are going to play or leave out, or simply play at random if all of the notes you can play are not the right notes to be played to write what you are trying to “write”.  Every note must fit within the structure of the song.  While I know that there are those who say “it’s music, you can play what you want”, and I understand what they are saying, somewhat to a degree, but in the end, you can’t “play what you want” once you set the song off on a course that the music is “supposed to follow”.  You can play the dissonant note, but when you do you will interrupt the playing of the music as an experience for the listener, who is the audience for whom professional music is intended.  Playing the right notes is not only a matter of knowing which notes are “available”, but when and how to touch them for maximum effect. 

Gosh, it’d be so sweet to hear all the right notes again … .