In another lifetime, I played musical instruments. I was pretty good with technique, good at improvising, and after playing guitar for a few years, my understanding of theory grew into a harmonic sense that was quite a bit sharper than my peers.
But, enough about me …
So I’m listening to NPR for some reason about 2 months ago, and they have an interview with Dick Hyman on. He’s not that big a name to most people, but he is to me, so I’m listening in.
And he said something so cool, that had never dawned on me:
In jazz, there’s a saying that either you’re playing the blues or you’re playing ‘I Got Rhythm.’ Next to the blues, it’s just about the most common jazz form.
Now. I knew a lot of standards, but I never played “I Got Rhythm”. So I start humming it to myself … ta da dum da, dum da dum da … and I can visualize what he’s saying about the harmony. And I start thinking it through, and it’s like one turnaround following another, all the way through to the bridge.
And now, because it’s 2013, even though I haven’t really played guitar in 25 years, I can go to Wikipedia where it tells me that the harmony for “I Got Rhythm” is so popular that the chord changes are known as “rhythm changes”. It all looks so familiar, and I could rattle off a dozen tunes with similar changes … including a bunch of rock songs.
Weird. This is all navel-gazing … but it means a lot to me.
It's education ... and I'm envious.
Posted by: mike shupp | March 02, 2013 at 01:11 AM
As an economist, the thing that I find weird about how the internet has affected our world is that: 1) the cost of trivia is now super low, but also 2) the value of knowing trivia is super low too.
The first part makes me want to consume more trivia, and the second part makes me think I shouldn't bother.
Posted by: David Tufte | March 03, 2013 at 07:58 PM
This is probably the same thing you're saying, but the vast majority of any blues-based music breaks down into one basic chord pattern, made up of three chords, the base "I" chord, the "IV" chord, and the "V" chord. The pattern goes: I, IV, I, V, IV, I, repeated over and over, with a little variation of the individual notes. Robert Johnson, BB King, Eric Clapton, Aerosmith all use this.
I've played piano my whole life, and was trained classically, but now that I no longer take lessons and just teach myself, I find the vast majority of popular music falls into this pattern.
Posted by: Kit L. | March 07, 2013 at 09:51 PM
Yeah ... the blues pattern is very well known.
What got me was the "rhythm changes". I knew those too, but I never knew the source.
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