The Language of Music, The Charts of Poetry
"Professional writers don't have muses; they have mortgages." - Larry Kahaner
Marty McFly is full of nonsense. “Watch me for the changes?” Come on, Marty. Blues progression is basic. Three chords. Everyone knows a Blues is four bars of I, two of IV, two of I, one of V, one of IV, two of I. Unless, of course, there’s an extra IV in the first four bars, or it circles back to the V on the last bar, or someone gets wild and throws a vi in there. Point is, no one in that very professional band Marty’s moonlighting for needs to watch him for the changes. They got it.
The easiest way for me to understand a piece of music I need to play, as a guitarist, is with charts. The old joke is “how do you get a guitarist to play softer? Put sheet music in front of them.” Well, I can read three different clefs, and the joke about how to get two oboe players to play in tune? Shoot one of them. Let’s not make hurtful assumptions about people’s musicality.
If I’m stuck songwriting, I can say “Okay, let’s do a A-B-A-B-C-B structure. Run a minor descending pattern through the verses, half-time major 50s progression for the chorus, we’ll do a Get Saved progression for the bridge, back to the chorus and see what the drums wanna do when we get there. Sure Marty. We’ll do it in B.”
I’ve just written:
verse: |G#m7 |F#7 |Emaj7 |D#7(#9) |
chorus: |Bmaj7 |G#m7 |Emaj9 |F#7 |
bridge: |Emaj7 |F#7 |G#m7 | |
When I hear a pop song—song on the radio, song in a commercial, “Stand By Me” played by the buskers at the Grand Avenue Red Line station circa 2010—I can usually name the chord progression. I can tell by the color of the music what key it’s in. If I’m off, it’s usually by a fourth or a fifth, like “oh I didn’t realize the guitar solo in ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World actually modulates from D major to A major, that’s cool.” Play enough music, the repeating structures are easy to hear. That’s what fun about jazz to me, I don’t always immediately know what’s going on.
I keep wanting to get better at jazz guitar. I keep wanting to really learn jazz piano. If those things really animated me (i.e., if there was a paycheck involved), I could do it. But another part of me likes not knowing. Keeps jazz surprising. And that’s the kind of relationship I have with poetry.
I haven’t found as easy cheat codes with writing. Before we get too carried away with the term “cheat code,” I should clarify the cheat code is first draft, not final product. There’s room for the drums to dictate groove and feel, room for the bass to operate within various timbres and rhythms, room for everything to grow. A chord chart is not a song, what the band plays is a song.
If I’m stuck in poetry, I’ll put little tic marks on the side of the page for line breaks. “Here’s 14 lines, it’s a sonnet now, go.” Or “nine lines, three tercets, write a poem, go.” I’ll even break into the toolbox, like “hmmm, haven’t used a simile in a while, let’s try one.” It’s not a way to write the most cohesive poetry, or even to get that satisfying “I really wrote a poem” feeling when you set your pen down, but it gets me out of my head with writer’s block. Also, cohesion in poetry? Boring. I can’t stand being able to pinpoint through lines and know precisely “what’s this poem about” on first read. Disconnecting lines helps with that mysterious feeling, like a notey jazz guitar solo. Or you can always have a cat pee on your poetry manuscript.
There are only two cheat codes I have for prose. One, which I frequently have to deploy in Cracked articles where I could rant for hours, is paragraph caps. Three paragraphs, get out. Five paragraphs, get out. Make sure you hit this point, that point, but get out in that amount of space.
The other is Dan Harmon’s story wheel. If you, like me, get a germ of an idea for a story—a dress shirt doesn’t fit before a funeral, a person is having trouble cooking a fish, etc—but don’t know how to execute it, do as Dan Harmon says and de-mystify it. My little multimodal heart says “write eight prose poems and call it a story,” but whatever works for you. The biggest thing is covering your tracks. No one wants to be able to guess the ending, you gotta make sure your writing isn’t paint-by-numbers. Don’t watch any Community episodes with that Channel 101 blog post open next to you, by the way.
Oh, and that throwaway “having trouble cooking a fish” line? That’s a real, very good short story called “The Fish” by Lydia Davis. Does that story follow the story wheel? No. Is it better than anything you can write using some loser blogger’s writer’s block tips? Yes.
The chart’s not the music, what the band plays is.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
5 Links To Either De- Or Re-Mystify Music:
“What key is ‘Hey Joe’ by Jimi Hendrix in?” is a question I thought had a pretty easy answer (E major), but apparently it’s not so easy. Adam Neely breaks it down in this fascinating video.
Watch Larnell Lewis play “Enter Sandman” after hearing it for the first time. I’ve seen incredible sightreading, I’ve seen drummers pick up songs faster than makes sense, and this is the most amazing musicianship I’ve ever seen.
Charles Mingus is my favorite jazz musician to totally buck the “just part a chart in front of someone” way of playing jazz. His orchestration is always a treat. Since it’s Christmas, here’s a track he did with the narrator of A Christmas Story.
Speaking of Christmas movies and Community, wanna cry to “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas?” It’s free on YouTube.
Best NBA Christmas Day Plays of the Decade? Sure, why not!