The Commonality of Music

Listen to this podcast where I share the overlaps between classical music and every other type of music:

Hello again this is Duane and this is more good stuff you really ought to know. One thing you ought to know is about the commonality of music, the things that are in common between styles or generous of all kinds of music. In the past unfortunately those musicians with the more formal training have kind of looked down their noses at those who didn’t have the benefit of a formal training and improvised. That was a serious mistake as they’re learning now; there have been some wonderful teachers that have pointed out the great masters such as Bach and so on were all great improvisers. There’s nothing new about improvising, people have done it down through the centuries.
In fact most written music was first improvised and then because the composer liked what he heard himself improvised he got it written down one way or the other. Bach would often improvise his preludes and feuds in church and if it went well then he would go home and write it down, if it didn’t another day he would come. Particularly in the last century classical musicians kind of looked down their noses at Jazz musicians.

Unfortunately people like Leonard Bernstein and Andre Previn came along to kind of pop a bubble in that myth and show that all music has commonalities, it’s all made out of chords, it’s all made out of scale fragments, it’s all made out of patterns, it all has dynamics, it has chord progressions and so on and so on, so forth. Look at Fur Elise with me if you will [Duane playing piano] and so on like that. Now let’s just consider the little portion that’s right there. [Duane playing piano] We have a little pattern and then we have [Duane playing piano] the A minor chord, if you add up those notes, [Duane playing piano] it’s A, C, E that’s A minor, we’re in the key of a minor by-the-way. There are no sharps or flats in the key signature, so it’s either in the key of C or it’s in its relative minor, A minor. How do we know? We look for the primary chords in the key of C. Do we see them? Do we see C, F, and G? No not in this song. What we see [Duane playing piano] A minor.

The next chord is what? [Duane playing piano] E, G sharp, B, and D. Is there a D? No there’s not. That’s the E chord isn’t it? Then A minor [Duane playing piano] A minor, E, A minor, so we just have two chords. [Duane playing piano] A, A, A, that’s the one chord in the key of A minor, the five chord in the key of A minor, one chord, the five chord, the one chord. Now listen [Duane playing piano]. The first section of that great tune Summertime has just two chords, A minor, E, A minor, E, A minor, E, A minor, and then it goes onto the four chord which would be D minor and so on, but my point is there’s very little difference at all in the form between Fur Elise [Duane playing piano] and Summertime [Duane playing piano]. There’s a different feeling, a different rhythm and so on, but it’s the same chord progression, so look for those kinds of things, because they occur in all kinds of music. Just another one of the good stuff you really ought to know. Thanks for being with me, see you next month. Bye.

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