A few things I learned recently.
1) TRITONE SUBSTITUTIONS
My brother Jona came from the Elements Songwriting Camp a few weeks ago. He told how he met Gerard Salonga and how they talked for a while about tritone substitutions.
Tritone what? So I did what any decent music theorist would do. I googled it.
Found that I could change the bass on a C7 and make it an F#7 as I transition to an F (root) chord. And so on and so forth. Thanks Jone and Gerard.
2) MORE SUBSTITUTIONS
I'd listened to a Joe Pass instructional video (Hot Licks) a few years back and learned some chord modifications I could do. Flat 5th, sharp 5th, Flat 9, Sharp 9, 13, and their combinations.
But now armed with the tritone insight, the next part of the video finally clicked in my mind. I could look for modified chords which had some notes in common and use them for substitutions.
A long time ago, I saw in the Jingle magazine OPM issue how Apo Hiking Society's "When I Met You" would transition AM7 to D using G13, D#9 instead of the usual Em, A7. And now I could finally explain why that worked.
G13 shares the notes E, G, and B with Em. While D#9 has the notes G, C#, and F from an A7#5. And so on and so forth. Next up: make it automatic. And learn how to build scales based on those chords.
3) UNIFIED THEORY OF MUSIC
Jona also mentioned how he now had a "unified theory of music". I asked him what it was and he only anwered cryptically along the lines of "stuff you do that makes music music."
He explained in more detail eventually. But then I had observed enough of him, Noel Cabangon, Alvin Barcelona, and even some of my students to form my own theory. Something close to "laging galing sa puso" as Bro. Alvin told us during practices for his IMPinoy concerts.
4) VOCALIZATION
Noel Miranda asked Jen and me to sing "Mercy and Compassion" for the whole high school.
The show started early in the morning and I needed to be alone in one wing of the chapel to vocalize. I asked Ma-an for advice and she said the sound should fill up my sinuses. She used to tell me to sing like the sound was emanating from the area around my nose and forehead, but it was the first time I had heard mention of sinuses. Those few minutes in the chapel was also the first time I could feel and visualize sound filling the spaces in my sinuses. And that did it.
5) PREREQUISITES
I was surprised that we had to sing on stage. I thought we would be off to the right of the stage where I could read lyrics. I hadn't memorized the song yet. So I had to improvise. Got a few pieces of bond paper and a permanent marker, wrote my verse down, and taped them to the monitor. Voila--instant teleprompter!
Once I felt comfortable with the notes, and was sure I could read the lyrics if I suddenly forget, I had a chance "na kumanta malalim na lugar"/to sing from a deep place. To make music. To communicate.
6) PRACTICE
Just came from playing a Mass and a few Christmas songs with EnPsalm--friends I'd been singing with for more than 20 years. I had the pieces. I wrote down the chords. My guitar was tuned, my hair waxed, my blazer on.
Still I made mistakes.
For the first song which I had never performed before, I was foolhardy enough to start playing without the chords in front of me.
For the other song, I had written down the chords because I'd also never performed it and I wanted to apply the new chord sunstitutions. Turns out complicated chord names aren't easy to speedread. And I had to stop for 2 or 3 measures.
:( especially since we were getting paid and I thought of myself as a professional. Not professional enough it seems.
Reminds me of something Junji Lerma mentioned in a Klaseng Ibang Klase session maybe 7 years ago: "If you can't play it standing up, lying down, sleepy, or drunk, don't bother playing it." This must have come from his experience at the UP Conservatory where he had to learn pieces until he could play them perfectly, and maybe even put in his own personality, or better yet actually say something new.
How long did that take? And how much did he learn from mastering even the simplest of pieces? nd how can I recreate that experience for myself?
Hmmm...
No comments:
Post a Comment