Author: DrH2O
Date: 2008-08-11 18:54
My teacher tries to infuse some music theory into my lessons as I progress, but as a total musical neophyte I must admit be being totally bamboozled more often than not.
Our most recent theory discussion was about 7th chords. Figuring that I could learn dominant and diminished 7ths better if I made sure I really understood how they're constructed, I went hunting for more information and being forced to confront my total ignorance of all things theoretical I've decided that music theory was created by a someone with a twisted mind and Klose was a co-conspirator determined to make it as obscure as possible.
For example -
Giving words meanings that run contrary to their usage in lay English:
LEADING - dictionary def. 1. chief; principal; most important; foremost;
2. coming in advance of others; first. It therefore follows that a leading tone should be the first tone of a scale not the LAST!
INVERSION - dictionary def. the act of reversing the order. It therefore follows that a chord inversion should go in reverse order instead of moving the root up an octave.
DOMINANT - dictionary definition. ruling, governing, or controlling. So the dominant tone will be the leading tone, wait, no, that's the last tone, so then it should be the first tone of the scale, no, that would make too much sense, let's make it the fifth tone, that should throw everyone off!
So, no matter how eloquently my teacher might have explained things to me, it was totally hopeless from the start because what I though I understood, I clearly didn't!
But now that I have the vocabulary sorted out, I figure I'm halfway there. Hardly! What really is a dominant 7th chord? One def says it's a major triad and a flatted 7th - so what's dominant about that? Another def says you start with the dominant tone in the major scale and then renumber the tones taking the new 1, 3, 5 and 7 tones without flatting the 7th tone. Gives you the same set of results I guess, but isn't it helpful to keep track of what scale each dominant 7th is really associated with? So a Cmaj7 would be CEGB. Using the first definition a dominant 7th based on a C major triad would be CEGBb, but using the second definition the dominant 7th should be GBDF with no C in sight. CEGBb should be the dominant 7th based on the F scale shouldn't it? Does it matter how you think of it? Or is it really more of a tonal thing? Klose puts his in order according to the root of the dominant 7th not the root of the corrseponding major scale - is that the most useful way to think of it?
Then diminished 7ths. Leading tone, 2nd, 4th, flatted 6th was the simplest definition I found. So a diminished 7th based on Fmajor would be E-G-Bb-Db. But Klose doesn't "spell" it that way. He writes it as E-G-Bb-C# and makes enharmonic substitutions like that throughout his diminished 7th exercises, like writing Bb-Db-E-G instead of A#-C#-E-G for the diminished 7th based on Bmajor. I have to admit that at my level, I appreciate having Bbb written as A, but when I'm trying to go through the inversions I end up mentally double-clutching when the note name doesn't go up by a third. Why not write it to be consistent with the key signature as much as possible or is there some other reason to change the "spelling"?
Can anyone clarify the how and why (in fairly simple terms)?
Thanks,
Anne
Clarinet addict
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