Finding the Joy in the Journey

Sometimes frustration can drive you to lose all interest in a project, and being someone with ADHD makes it harder to continue when you're constantly running into brick walls. Your blood pressure goes up, you think about all those times when you were in grade school and felt so stupid for not being able to complete tasks that now, that you're older, you find mundane.

This is how I felt about music theory. I thought, "There is absolutely NO WAY I am ever going to be able to learn this stuff. And besides, I'm naturally gifted at music, I can just make it on talent." Now, you can probably sniff out the flaws in my logic from where you sit, but understand that I had already come pretty far as a young person at that time on just talent alone. It also helped that I had a mother who had been trained vocally and passed on her knowledge to me through hours of practice. But the one thing she couldn't teach me was very much in music theory.

Jazz Composition and Arranging Book

Fast forward years into the future. Imagine the frustration of a songwriter that doesn't understand why certain chords sound good together. What exactly is a 'voicing' or 'phrasing'? Why do some chords sound awful, but you know they're right? What are closed chords? What are open chords? Gah! I can't remember how that sounded in my head now that I'm trying to put it down on paper? Or, that sounded so much better when I played it a week ago and now it sounds really messed up. What happened?

Sure, I understood how to piece together songs and have had a slowly growing understanding of keys and scales (major and minor) over the years. But a pentatonic scale? or a lydian or dorian scale?

Enter the Jazz Composition and Arranging in the Digital Age book, by Richard Susan and Michael Abene. These guys aren't exactly making it a cake walk, but I like that just fine. I have had Sibelius for a few years and have arranged a few things on it here and there, but these guys tell you some tips and tricks to make your arranging run smoother. Plus, there's a website that will let you listen to examples in the book. They explain how to arrange for small ensembles up to large, all while explaining to you how different voicings sound in those groups. What works well, all while explaining concepts of music theory.

I found the blues scale and it rocked my world. I know how it's supposed to sound and have played them before, but to find out there's a formula to the blues was just awesome! It takes the guess work out and simplifies things so much more!

There are things I'm still striving to understand, like how these make a Cmaj7 chord:

But, I'm not deterred. I know I will run into road blocks. That's part of learning and every day, I'm learning something new. I've found the joy in the journey.

Forward we soldier on!

Amy