Can it really be too quiet? – apparently so…

Let’s face it, every day we are faced with a constant barrage of noise.  Whether it’s car stereos, other people’s mobiles, radios, overheard conversations or traffic it’s always there.

In your home there’s ticking clocks, creaking pipes, gurgling fridges, humming electronics; in the country there’s noisy animals, aeroplanes, walkers and cyclists to spoil your peace.

Trains often seem especially noisy.  Maybe it feels worse because there’s no escape.  Unless you hide in the toilet.  Some people just talk very loud, maybe to the audience that is trying hard not to listen.  Others have very leaky headphones and it shouldn’t have to get to the point of deafening yourself to only just be able to hear your own music.

So you’d think that the quietest room in the world would be the most calming place to be. Not so.  A quiet room typically measures about 30 decibels.  The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in south Minneapolis measures -9 decibels.  Bear in mind it’s a logarithmic scale so that’s about 1000 times quieter.  The Guinness book of records recognises it as the quietest room in the world, although there are claims that quieter rooms have been measured.

The room is heavily insulated so that no sound can get in.  It is also constructed so that no sound is reflected, it is all absorbed.  This makes it so quiet you can hear your own organs.  Sounds peaceful, but there’s a problem.  It’s a strange experience, many walk straight out.  It’s so disorientating you’ll need to sit down.  No one has lasted more than 45 minutes. In the dark after only 15 minutes you tend to have psychosis-like experiences.

So if you do find a bit of peace from time to time be thankful.  And if you start hallucinating then maybe you’ve overdone it and it’s time to move somewhere more noisy.

Chords (part 1)

If you’ve been following the series of blog posts so far, well done, I guess that means it’s making some sort of sense.

It may seem that these posts are back to front compared to many books. There is a reason for that. I’m not explaining the mechanics of playing an instrument. Books that do this usually start with a few notes or chords to get you going. These posts are more aimed at people who can already play but want to learn more about how music is constructed.

This means I can introduce the scale / major Key system first as I think chords then make more sense because you can see where they fit in.

It also means you’ve done all the hard work already so this is the easy part.

Furthermore, I can then introduce the structure of chords independently of Keys and you can go and work them all out for all keys if you like. This is why introducing intervals then the circle of fifths / fourths first really helps as it’s the foundation for working out any chord you want to.

A chord in essence is basically a group of notes played at the same time. The simplest types of chords are known as triads and contain 3 notes. A major triad contains the root, major third and perfect fifth; A minor triad contains the root, minor third and perfect fifth; A diminished triad contains the root, minor third and diminished fifth.

We can now work out each chord for each of the keys using these formulas and referring to the circle of fifths:

Major – I, III, V
Minor – I, bIII, V
Diminished – I, bIII, bV

So for the key of C we have:

Cmaj, Dmin, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj, Amin and Bdim

   I           ii           iii        IV      V            vi              vii

Looking at the Circle of Fifths below we can see that these chords comprise of the following notes:

Cmaj =  C E G

Dmin = D F A

Emin = E G B

Fmaj = F A C

Gmaj = G B D

Amin = A C E

Bdim = B D F

Of course you can use any number of apps to tell you notes in a chord, one I use a lot is Piano Companion by Binitex.  However, the advantage of working them out yourself means that over time you are more likely to remember Keys, the chords in each Key and the notes in each chord which can only help improve your playing.

The 3 most important chords in any Key are the I, IV and V chords.  This is borne out by the fact that many, many songs in different styles use these 3 chords as a basis. You can find songs in classical, pop, folk, country and rock music that use these 3 chords as a basis.

But triads are only the starting point, you can use extended chords which add in additional notes to give your chords more colour and there are many more chord / song structures which can be used.  More on these next time….