Idiot's Guides - Music Theory
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What’s confusing is that instead of notating swing as it’s actually played (with triplets), most swing music uses straight eighth notation—which you’re then expected to translate into the triplet-based swing.
So if you’re presented a swing tune and you see a bunch of straight eighths, you should play them with a triplet feel instead, like this:
In swing, straight eighths are played with a triplet feel.
Some arrangers try to approximate the swing feel within a straight rhythm by using dotted eighth notes followed by sixteenth notes, like this:
In swing, dotted eights and sixteenths are played with a triplet feel.
Whatever you do, don’t play this precisely as written! Again, you have to translate the notation and play the notes with a triplet feel.
The swing feel is an important one, and you find it all over the place. Swing is used extensively in jazz music, in traditional blues music, in rock shuffles, and in all manner of popular music old and new. Learning how to swing takes a bit of effort; it’s normal to play the stiff dotted-eighth/sixteenth rhythm instead of the rolling triplets when you’re first starting out. But that effort is worth it—a lot of great music is based on that swinging feel.
Getting the Word
Before we end this chapter, let’s take a look at one other notation challenge: how to add words to your music.
Notating lyrics is something that all songwriters have to do, and it isn’t that hard—if you think logically. Naturally, you want to align specific words with specific notes in the music. More precisely, you want to align specific syllables with specific notes.
This sometimes requires a bit of creativity on your part. You might need to split up words into awkward-looking syllables. You also might need to extend syllables within words where a note is held for an extended period of time. This requires a lot of hyphens in the lyrics, as you can see in the following example:
Notating lyrics; split words in syllables, and extended syllables.
Just remember to position your lyrics underneath the music staff. If you have multiple verses, write each verse on a separate line; then break each word into its component syllables and carefully match up each syllable with the proper musical note.
Exercises
Exercise 17-1
Write out how you would play each of these marked-up notes.
Exercise 17-2
Add grace notes to every quarter note in this melody.
Exercise 17-3
Add slurs to each pair of eighth notes in this melody.
Exercise 17-4
Use phrase marks to divide this melody into four natural phrases.
Exercise 17-5
Translate the following straight rhythm into a swing feel using triplet notation.
Exercise 17-6
Compose and play a four-measure melody with a swing feel, in the key of B♭.
Exercise 17-7
Write the following lyrics under the appropriate notes in the melody: “Tangerine elephants high in the sky, crocodile tears in my beer.”
The Least You Need to Know
Curved marks are used to tie identical notes together, slur neighboring notes together, and indicate complete musical phrases.
A dot above a note means to play it short (staccato); a line above a note means to play it long (tenuto).
You play grace notes lightly and quickly before the main note.
Turns and trills ornament a main note by the use of rapidly played neighboring notes.
A glissando indicates a smooth glide from one pitch to another.
Swing music is played with a rolling triplet feel, not straight eighth notes.
Lyrics must be broken down into syllables to fit precisely with notes in the music.
PART
6
Composing and Arranging
In this final part, you learn how to create and arrange your own music, write for specific voices and instruments, and produce good-looking master scores and lead sheets.
CHAPTER
18
Musical Genres and Forms
In This Chapter
Discovering classical music forms
Turning on to blues and jazz
Learning more about folk, rock, country, and other popular music
Although basic music theory applies to all forms of music, it helps to know the different genres and forms out there. Yes, a quarter note is a quarter note is a quarter note, but how those notes are put together distinguishes jazz sounds from country or symphony sounds from today’s pop songs.
Classical Music
Our examination of musical forms starts with what most of us call “classical” music. It turns out there are a lot of different types of classical music, many of them associated with specific historical eras.
Classical Music Through the Years
Laypeople tend to refer to all serious music prior to the dawn of the twentieth century generically as “classical” music, no matter when it was written. That said, there was a distinct Classical era that ran from 1750 to about 1820, but that wasn’t the only era in which so-called classical music was created.
The history of serious classical music is divided into the following major eras:
Medieval (also known as the Middle Ages; A.D. 500 to 1400). This early music is characterized by chants and other simple nonsecular forms of monophonic music. Notable Medieval composers include John Dunstable, Lionel Power, and Guillaume de Machaut.
Renaissance (A.D. 1400 to 1600). Music from the Renaissance era is characterized by a rise in polyphony, primarily within vocal forms. Notable Renaissance composers include Josquin des Préz, Guillaume Dufay, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
Baroque (A.D. 1600 to 1750). Baroque music is characterized by flamboyant, heavily ornamented melodies. Notable Baroque composers include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi.
Classical (A.D. 1750 to 1820). Music of this era is characterized by simple lyrical melodies, often expressed in majestic orchestral and choral works. The most important Classical composers include Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Joseph Haydn.
Romantic (A.D. 1820 to 1900). Romantic-era works are characterized by emotional musical expression and sophisticated harmonies, often employing chromaticism and a moving away from traditional tonality. Notable Romantic composers include Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvořák, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Richard Wagner.
Twentieth Century (1900 to present). Contemporary classical music adheres to no single style and is often wildly experimental in terms of tonality, rhythm, and form. Important composers of the twentieth century include Aaron Copland, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Shoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky.
Classical Forms
Each musical era is distinguished by its own unique musical forms. Here’s a list of the most popular forms, in rough chronological order:
Plainsong. The earliest music of the Medieval period was an unaccompanied monophonic chant performed by the monks of the early Christian church. These chants were based on the seven so-called church modes—Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.
Mass. This is the music of the Roman Catholic Mass, beginning in the fourth century A.D. Originally consisting of plainchant melodies, more modern Mass settings (modern being from the fifteenth century or so) utilize melodies from secular songs.
NOTE
Around A.D. 600, Pope Gregory I moved to standardize the Mass and encourage a ritualized use of music by the church. The resulting chant eventually became known as Gregorian chant.
Motet and grand motet. The motet is a short, unaccompanied choral work for two or more voices, popular from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. In Europe, the motet evolved into the grand motet, an expanded form that contrasts solo voices (accompanied by continuo instruments, such as bass viol or harpsichord) with a larger chorus.
Madrigal. This piece of secular vocal music from the Renaissance period survives in Christmas traditions to this day. The typical madrigal is a polyphonic composition for four to six voices, typically unaccompanied, based on a poem or other secular text.
Ballet. This is an entertainment in which dancers perform to music to tell a story or, in some cases, to express a mood. Over the years, music for the ballet has proven a vital form for serious composers such as Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Wagner.
Sonata. This piece of instrumental music is performed in several distinct and contrasting sections, called movements. Sonatas typically are written for a soloist and small ensemble.
Concerto. This piece of ensemble music is for voices and instruments, typically with a solo instrument or voice in contrast with an orchestral ensemble. It was developed by Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and their counterparts in the early eighteenth century and continued onward into the Renaissance with important works by Mozart, Haydn, and others.
Suite. This longer instrumental form incorporates multiple contrasting sections, typically constructed from individual dance movements, often in the same key.
Opera. A long, complex dramatic work, the opera incorporates both voices and instruments. You can think of an opera as the classical equivalent of today’s popular musicals, mixing music with a dramatic plot—kind of like a stage play with much of the plot being told via song.
Aria. A vocal piece (a song, operatic in nature) that can be either standalone or part of a larger vocal piece (a song, operatic in nature) that can be either standalone or part of a larger work, such as an opera. Over time, arias have become longer and more complex, serving as a type of showcase for the vocalist.
Operetta. A newer, less-ponderous type of opera, the operetta is a form of light entertainment that was a definite contrast to the often self-consciously “heavy” music of the times.
Oratorio. This dramatic musical setting of a sacred libretto is for solo singers, choir, and orchestra. An oratorio is like a religious opera but without the scenery or costumes; oratorios are typically performed in concert halls or churches.
Symphony. An extended work for an orchestra, a symphony typically is in three or four distinct movements. The modern symphony is a large-scale instrumental composition, much like a sonata for orchestra, usually in four movements.
Symphonic poem. This is a single-movement orchestral work on a symphonic scale. The symphonic poem is a type of Romantic-era programme music—an instrumental work that tells a story, illustrates a literary idea, or evokes a pictorial scene.
Chamber music. This work is for small instrumental ensembles designed to be played in small halls or private residences—the antithesis of majestic, concert-hall symphonies. One of the most popular forms of chamber music is the string quartet, consisting of two violins, a viola, and a cello.
NOTE
Learn more about the history of music in my companion book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music History (Alpha Books, 2008).
Blues and Jazz
Now let’s move to two musical forms that have influenced and informed just about every type of popular music today—blues and jazz.
The Blues
When you think of the blues, you may think of an old black man singing with his acoustic guitar or wailing on an electric. Or you may think of a group of black singers singing a capella. Or you may think of a bar band cooking along to a boogie-woogie beat.
The blues is all of this, and more. In fact, the style commonly called the blues is actually an entire family of musical styles, all sharing similar roots in the African American slave community of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
All the different blues styles are based on the concept of “blue notes,” or the flattened notes of the normal major scale. These blue notes help distinguish what we call the blues scale. In the blues scale, several notes of the major scale—the third, the fifth, and the seventh—are flattened. This creates so-called blue notes between the normal scale notes. The resulting blues scale is a six-note scale (not counting the octave) that looks like this, in relationship to a major scale:
1-♭3-4-♭5-5-♭7
This blues scale is unusual in that it doesn’t have a second or sixth degree, but it does throw in a flatted fifth in addition to the regular perfect fifth. It’s the flatted third, flatted fifth, and flatted seventh notes—the blue notes—that define the color of the blues scale. Here’s how this looks in traditional music notation, in this instance the C blues scale :
The C blues scale.
Also distinctive are the chords played behind the melody, the unique blues progression. Most blues tunes follow a classic 12-bar chord progression. This 12-bar form is comprised of three phrases, each four bars long. Musically, the chords of the blues progression go like this:
I-I-I-I IV-IV-I-I V7-IV-I-I
This blues progression is utilized in many forms of popular music, not just the blues. You’ll find this progression used in many songs of the Great American Songbook, much rock and country music, and a whole lot of jazz. It’s a uniquely versatile chord progression, with many popular variations. (You learned about the blues progression in Chapter 10.)
Jazz
Jazz is America’s homegrown classical music. Derived from the blues, it is one of this country’s truly indigenous musical styles. For a time, jazz was the country’s popular music; audiences listened to and danced to jazz music just as they dance to rock or country or hip hop today.
So, what exactly is jazz? Some people might define jazz as music with improvised solos. Others might define it as music with a swing beat—a rolling spang spang-a-lang spang-a-lang kind of rhythm. But other types of music feature improvisation, and lots of jazz has a rock beat instead of a swing beat.
The truth is that jazz is a blend of several different musical styles and is itself represented by multiple stylistic variations. The first jazz music was born in New Orleans between 1885 and 1915. This type of jazz—call it classic jazz, New Orleans jazz, or Dixieland jazz—grew out of the existing blues, ragtime, and brass band traditions.
NOTE
One name towers over all others in the history of early jazz: cornetist and vocalist Louis Armstrong. Armstrong’s small ensemble recordings of the mid-1920s, famously known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, revolutionized jazz music and introduced the era of the virtuosic leader/soloist. Armstrong also pioneered the vocal style of scat singing, improvising on nonsense syllables instead of actual lyrics. He was the first singer to scat sing on record (“Heebie Jeebies,” 1926), when he purportedly dropped his lyric sheet while recording and was forced to improvise nonsense lyrics.
Dixieland jazz quickly morphed into hot jazz, which introduced full-blown improvisation into the mix. During the 1930s, hot jazz evolved into swing, and most jazz groups grew into big bands led by legends such as William “Count” Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw.
Big bands became less fashionable after World War II, as jazz musicians began to explore more complex harmonic structures. This new music, called bebop, featured wildly inventive (and fast-paced) improvisation and became the dominant form of jazz for the next several decades.
Post-bop, jazz has become a bit of a niche genre, splintered into several different variations. There’s cool jazz (a more melodic, more intellectual approach as practiced by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and others), modal jazz (based on modes instead of chord progressions), hard bop (a less-frenetic offshoot of bebop), soul jazz (melding jazz improvisation with a contemporary rock/soul beat), free jazz (with fast tempos and complex chords and harmonies), fusion (merging jazz and rock), and even smooth jazz (laid-back jazz improvisation over simple beats and chords).
What all these variations have in common is a focus on improvisation. Jazz is, at the end of the day, all about solos and individual expression.
Popular Music
You might find it hard to believe, but classical music was the popular music of its day. So was jazz. But neither is all that popular with today’s listening audience. Today’s popular music is simpler and more accessible than the serious music of decades and centuries past. We’re talking music, typically short songs, that are more easily grasped by listeners and more easily played and sung by performers.
In reality, there are lots of different types of popular music, including the following:
Folk. This is any music based on the folk tradition, typically played on traditional instruments such as acoustic guitars and banjos.
Country. Derived from a blend of Appalachian folk music and rural blues, country music is simple and folky, often performed with guitars and fiddles—and a distinct vocal twang. Over time, country evolved through and into a variety of related styles, including Western swing (country + jazz), honky tonk (electric + traditional country + blues), bluegrass (Western swing + traditional country + honky-tonk), countrypolitan (country + pop), country rock (country + rock), alt country (traditional country + honky-tonk + rock + folk), and Americana (country + folk). Then there’s the contemporary country of today, which sounds pretty much like classic rock with a few steel guitars and fiddles thrown in (and with all the guys wearing cowboy hats).