Well to widen our perception, we've stepped into the beautiful world of music that Victor Wooten lives in. In his book The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music, he has described music as a being. He offers us some of the most profound yet simple truths concerning music. But before I share those truths, let's understand him musically first. Listen to the link here: "Isn't She Lovely," Victor Wooten covering Stevie Wonder.
In this piece, we can hear him identifying a Stevie Wonder classic and translating it to communicate his own musical message. I specifically chose this piece because of the genre of this specific song. Not only does it show his fluency and talent on the bass guitar, but it also shows a very important side of Wooten musically that I will come back to later.
For now, we can enjoy some of the technique he is using in playing the bass. Slapping is a technique often used on the bass guitar that has been perfected by artists like Jaco Pastorius and Marcus Miller. In comparatively recent years, we've seen this style of play passed on to other instruments. Justin King and Raul Midón are two artists I particularly enjoy who have developed a similar style for the guitar. It's a technique that utilizes variations of hammer ons and pull offs to varying degrees. As Sam commented in our last club session, it tends to sound like another bass is being played simultaneously.
In the video above, we can hear Wooten returning to the main melody of "Isn't She Lovely" while alternately taking us through a musical conversation chromatically. This rendition is a fun way to introduce some notions behind Note Theory.
The chromatic scale utilizes all 12 notes within an octave.
While it is used in Occidental music, we primarily see the use of the diatonic scale--seven notes.
Diagram from What To Listen For In Music, page 43
The chromatic scale is evenly spaced out in intervals of half steps.
The diatonic scale pattern follows the interval steps of whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. (Sing do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti do).
In Occidental culture, we rely on the special relationships that exist in these scales. The note theories we will examine will center on these scales as well. Although, we will spend time looking also at the step patterns for minor scales, the pentatonic scale, and music modes. But the amazing reality is that the world of music stretches out much further than these theories. As noted by Leonard Bernstein in his lecture series The Unanswered Question, "if the piano encompassed only natural untempered tones, it would encompass 77 different keys in one octave."
To give us some perspective, remember that the scale was not tempered until 1700 by Andreas Werckmeister. Until that point, every time an orchestra wanted to play a song in a new key they had to re-tune each instrument. In 1711, Cristofori invented the piano. And in 1722, Bach was so thrilled with this new standard that he composed The Well Tempered Clavier which at some point utilizes each of the 12 keys.
By looking at the some of the science behind sound waves, we see how different levels of vibrations per second communicate different pitches. Each note is simply a type of vibration. What a spectacular notion that the vibrations set into the air by vocal cords, strings, and assortments of materials actually communicate something meaningful.
Wooten describes rhythm as melody slowed down. What does that mean? Rhythm is melody slowed down. Okay, well let's think about some of the concepts we've discussed concerning the science of melody. A sound wave is measured in vibrations per second. It's a form of energy that oscillates. The number of times this vibration oscillates per second is called a frequency, which we measure in Hertz (Hz). We distinguish assorted sounds from musical pitches based on the consistency of the sound wave or Hz. For example, the A4 (or middle A) resounds at an even 440 Hz. If you double that number, you get the next octave up: A5, 880 Hz. And if you reduced that 440 number by exactly half, you get the octave below: A3, 220 Hz. This discovery of the octave is said to originally have been made by Pythagoras. The story goes, he was walking down the street, heard the tinkers and blacksmiths at work, and realized that the pitch made by one mallet against an anvil would be the exact same tone, only higher, when struck by a mallet that was half the size of the first. Hertz and frequencies were discovered much later of course. But the idea of an octave began with Pythagoras in ancient Greece. Wooten played a harmonic by lightly placing the length of his finger across a fret, striking across each string, and quickly (almost simultaneously) releasing his finger from its placement over the fret. You can listen to a very clear and lasting harmonic right at the end, at minute 7:23 of the "Isn't She Lovely" cover at the top of the page. Much like a whistle tone performed by singers or perhaps similar to the job of a capo, the frequency of the sound wave is raised by powers of 2 and 4 to create that bright, silvery tone.
Figure by Jack H. David Jr. from "The Mathematics of Music"
With this in mind, let's look at Wooten's idea that rhythm is melody slowed down:
"A-440 means that a note vibrates four hundred and forty times per second right? [...] If you keep cutting that number in half, 440, 220, 110, 55, etc., you will eventually get beats per minute. At that point, it's called rhythm" (38).
So inversely, melody is rhythm sped up. I find this truly amazing. For rhythm and melody and harmony are all tightly related. Musical elements are essentially an expression of math and science.
We can even see a visual representation of the sound wave through the experiment called Ruben's Tube.
It's amazing to see the fire respond to the oscillating vibrations of air that is moved by the resounding pitch. The sound wave, when constant, should look like a perfect sine wave. Musical pitches show that consistency in the formation of their wave.
Figure by Jack H. David Jr. from "The Mathematics of Music"
And these vibrations are the same vibrations that cause our hearts to sing upon hearing Bach for example:
Wooten looks at each element of music as an equal partner in forming music. He points out that whether or not we are playing any particular notes, the music is always going. "Most musicians think that Music is made up of notes. They forget that notes are just a part of Music, and a small part at that. If you stop playing them, Music would still exist" (42). Tied into that idea, he claims, "You should never lose the groove in order to find a note" (33). As we examine melody, I would like to highlight this perspective. Melody and harmony are executed through notes, but they do not originate from notes. We use music theory to discuss certain relationships between these notes. But those are terms by which we can make music a tangible idea, those terms are not music in it of themselves. This idea is similarly seen in math and science. Science is not test tubes, pH balances, or E = mc2. Science is the tree that sprouts from a seed. Math is not 1+1=2, y=mx+b, or quadratic equations. Math is meaningful patterns that exact real world realities. Music is not notes on a page but rather a language that communicates emotions, cultures, and stories.
This perspective is the truest way to examine melody. We cannot talk about note theories until we apply that understanding of music to our undertakings.
Wooten claimed to hate the genre of Bluegrass music. In his mind, Country music and Bluegrass were the same simple musical formulas of 1, 4, 5 (notated in Roman Numerals when speaking of chords, as I, IV, V ). The I, IV, V pattern in music is the idea that the diatonic scale can coincide with numbers to more clearly identify harmonic and melodic relationships.
To better understand the I, IV, V relationships, first let's look at how we form different types of chords based off of the diatonic scale. For example the C major scale could be represented as such:
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1
We call the 1st degree, tone 1 or C, the tonic because it is the tonal foundation. Or when referring to a chord, we call it the root since it is the base of a chord. Next we go to the 5th degree, or dominant, because of its relative power connected with the tonic. Directly after is the 4th tone, or subdominant. The relationship here is strong. You can hear the 1, 4, 5 expressed to some degree in most music. In fact if I were to hum the 1 and 4, you would instinctively long to hear the 5. You can even find this relationship in a lot of music outside of Western culture as well. Another valuable tone quality is the 7th, or the leading tone, named for often leading back to the tonic. So to create a chord, there are certain stable formations of notes that achieve a beautiful sound.
Since about the sixteenth century, music has relied on the triad chord formation. The triad creates a harmonic relationship taking the 1, 3, and 5 from a scale to form a full sound that either leaves you feeling resolved, leads you into the next chord, or altogether leaves you longing. It's a responsive relationship. So the C major chord would consist of a C, E, and G.
To change from a major chord to express something different you can change the quality of the 3rd and 5th notes. By making the 3rd go down half a step (making it flat) you create a minor chord. In the key of C that would be a C, E♭(a.k.a. F♯), and the G. If you raise the 5th half a step, you created an augmented chord. So an augmented C or C aug would be C, E, G♯. One of the last primary chord formations is a diminished chord. For a diminished chord, you flat both the 3rd and 5th. So a diminished C, or C dim, would be a C, E♭(D♯), G♭(F♯).
Another way you can alter the triad is by adding a note onto the triad formation-- perhaps a 7, 9, or 13 (9 and 13 would correspond with the same notes as if you kept counting up into the next octave above, so 9 would correspond with 2, a D in the key of C, and 13 would correspond with 6, an A in the key of C).
Using that same idea, let's look at the C major chord scale:
M m m M M m Dim M M: Major
C Dm Em F G Am Bdim C m: Minor
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Dim: Diminished
The same scale pattern that allows you to find the relationship between notes to create a triad chord then can be used to find a new relationship between those chords. We see tone 1 (or I in proper Roman Numeral notation), is a Cmaj chord, which if we wrote the notes out individually, would look like C, E, G. To find the chord of tone 2 or II, we look at the D scale and locate the 1, 3, 5 again and then flat the 3rd to create the minor chord. I'll create a second post entry to examine closer the chord relationships of the I, IV, V because, although melody and harmony are strongly related, I will draw the line of distinction between melody and harmony here for the purpose of clarity. I am already giving you quite a lot to digest, so we'll save the topic of chord progression for the next entry and relate it to the topic of harmony. Just note that Country and Bluegrass is known for falling into the I, IV, V pattern. Which for many musicians, Wooten included, this pattern is often considered simplistic and perhaps even base.
(In the following club session, we will enjoy this TedTalk by Benjamin Zander, titled "The Transformative Power Of Classical Music." What a beautiful look into the musical world he offers here. However we will come back to his perspective, Wooten has more to say on the matter of musical expression that we must return to.)
So Wooten HATES country music. Upon hearing the genre, he shouted out, "I hate bluegrass music!" (55). He just felt it was too basic. It wasn't something he enjoyed. It doesn't groove like Stevie! It doesn't require technicality or musical prowess. It's easy to play. Of that he was sure.
And yet,
here he is finding the groove in this rendition of "Hoedown" originally by Aaron Copland performed with his fellow band members, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It's truly spectacular.
As he tells it, Wooten was met by a mysterious, profound man who changed his whole view of music. Wooten has come to see music as a language and each piece of music or genre is a different conversation. He found that when he disliked a particular genre or style, the fault wasn't in the music but rather in him. While I do not think that every musical conversation is necessarily equal in value of what each genre may have to offer, I do think that understanding each conversation is invaluable to our witness as Christians and vastly important to our ability to express truth. As we discussed earlier on, since the devil has no stories, he can only pervert and twist the truths that already exist. It is our job to discern where the truths and the lies come into play. And performing that duty musically is an exciting and beautiful challenge--one in which will grow and further you as long as you continue to practice your discernment. If you lackadaisically attempt this goal, you will find your values and morals put at risk. So one of my goals in Music Club is to attack this challenge together, so we can ensure the fight for truth is at the forefront of our minds.
One last insight into melody and music in general can be seen in the following performance by Wooten's fellow band member and leader, Bela Fleck. He is known as probably the world's best banjoist. We saw him above playing with the Flecktones, making the Bluegrass genre come to life. Now we are going to look at another expression of music that lives within his banjo. Many musicians struggle to play varying musical conversations. They learn one style of play and never see the world of music beyond that genre. However, part of the reason Wooten plays so well alongside the Flecktones is because Bela Fleck knows the capacity of music outside of genre classifications. Despite Wooten's divergent background in music, he is easily able to groove along with these different artists because they each see the conversations of music beyond the barriers of style. Here we see the banjo express a whole new tone color than what is usually demanding of it. Please enjoy Bela Fleck performing the Prelude from Bach's Violin Partita No. 3:
