What a racket! … When dissonance is a good thing.

Dissonance gets a bad rap. The word has negative connotations, bringing to mind a cacophonous racket that peels the enamel from ones teeth. Throughout the centuries though, our ears have become more and more attuned to dissonance.

Back in the dim and distant days of the early Christian church, music basically consisted of plainsong, which are chants sung as linear monophonic lines.  It seems amazing to think that no one thought to say,  “Hey Roger, if we sing this in thirds it will sound brilliant” (At which point, someone presumably pointed to the sign nailed to the wall reading “public displays of harmony punishable by death”). Anyway- around about the Ninth Century, that veil was lifted, and it was just a matter of time before The Everly Brothers exploded onto the scene.

By the 1900’s classical music aficionados were well acquainted with the sound of close harmony. Its gradual integration into the wider public consciousness though, was in a large part due to the jazz and the film music of the 20th Century. Before John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, the fathers of modern film music were figures such as Erich Korngold, Bernard Herrmann and Dimitri Tiomkin. In many ways, the music these eastern European composers developed for film, represented an intersection between the traditions of the romantic music of the 1800’s, and the Big Band era of the 1930’ and 40’s. Actually, some of these ‘serious’ composers worked in Hollywood rather begrudgingly to earn a living. Nevertheless, as we are often reminded as writers, often it’s the phone call that gets the ink on the paper - not waiting for the muse! 

Anyway we are getting off the trail……So what does ‘dissonance’ sound like anyway. Not always how you think.  

Fig 1 shows a typical big band voicing of D 6/9 for 4 trumpets. Listen to the exposed tone interval between the A and B and then the effect as the same interval sits in the middle of the chord. The clash of the exposed tone is softened by the notes around it. 

This is how you would play this on the guitar- and if you feel like a stretch you can add the root .

Note, that playing the root is not always necessary. When you’re in a band, the bass player is usually covering the roots. But even as a solo guitarist, don’t always feel you have to religiously stick to root position chords. The ear has the ability to fill in the gaps. It’s an interesting area, and one we cover in the Implied Harmony chapter in MCAG.

Of course, stronger dissonance can be very effective as a device for setting up a sense of tension. Here would be an example of a “Hermann-esque” voicing for four french horns using two stacked Major 2nds.

The double set of major 2nds is quite difficult to replicate on the guitar in standard tuning. But for practical purposes, a similar effect can be achieved with a major 2nd crunch either at the top or in the middle of a dominant 7th chord with a flattened 5th (Fig 1). To put this into some kind of context, here is a chord sequence, which in Jazz is known as a 2-5-1. Don’t get too drowned in the theory at this stage. Just listen to the effects of this strategically placed dissonance within the Ab chord.

First we see the folk open chord voicings.

Now the same sequence using jazz voicings.

In Fig 2c we see that the D7 has been replace or ’substituted’ by our Ab7b5 shape adding some ‘crunch’.

These chords may be unfamiliar to you at the moment. In a later blog, we will be looking at basic jazz harmony and ‘extensions’. So we’ve seen how these ‘clashes’ can be used dynamically. But equally, these same intervals can impart a very emotive quality.

Ok- let’s take a quick detour…

For me, George Martin was the “fifth Beatle” hands down. (aided by some very skilled and experimental engineers like Norman “Hurricane” Smith and Geoff Emerick at Abbey Road in the 60’s). Even though the Beatles’ songs were largely triadic harmonically, Martin brought a whole new layer of sophistication to their arrangements. Think of the sped up piano solo for “In My Life” or his string octet arrangement for Eleanor Rigby. Here are the opening chords to Yesterday, which you would typically see in a standard songbook. Interestingly, this sequence also includes a 2-5-1 progression in E minor. Paul McCartney definitely was inspired by jazz standards, and you can also hear those influences coming through in his songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’.

These basic shapes can be enhanced with the use of major and minor 2nd intervals. This is how I would play the sequence, and the effect is much closer to the quality that George Martins’ string quartet arrangement brought to the record.

In the first chord we’ve added an A to create a major 2nd tone at the top of the voicing.

In the second chord, the 3rd (A) and the fourth (or eleventh in this case) are spaced a tone apart.

Again, we have the interval of the tone between the root B and the 7th A of the B7

..and lastly, a minor 2nd between the F# and G natural in the E minor chord.

Listen also, to how leaving the ‘leading note’ of B is at the top of every chord, makes the transitions sound much more fluid than the original sequence. 

I can remember listening to “A Day In The Life” for the first time. Just after the line “made the grade”, the piano briefly hits an A minor with an added 2nd. The opening to the Soliloquy in Rodgers & Hammersteins’ Carousel uses a similar voicing in C minor. Incidentally- if you want to hear a voice, listen to Gordon MacRae’s definitive version. These were only very brief moments, but I was immediately captivated. I can remember quizzing my music teacher about it.

“Well” she said, “ it looks like the 2nd and 3rd notes sitting next to each other within the C minor chord are creating a sort of pleasing dissonance”.

To which I replied “You had me at dissonance!”

So here are some more examples of the way dissonance can enhance simple chords on the guitar

The 1970’s was a great era for the introspective singer songwriter. And with it, came plenty of opportunity for more sophisticated harmony. You can hear this same beguiling dissonance of the minor 2nd in Neil Youngs’ intro to Old Man, or the opening to John Denvers’ ‘The Eagle & The Hawk’. James Taylors’ “The Frozen Man” uses an internal minor 2nd clash. Although Joni Mitchell used many altered guitar tunings, the D (add2)/A from “A Free Man In Paris” is a good example of the kind of hybrid jazz folk harmony present in albums such as Court & Spark and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns.

When I listened to this great music, I was on a mission to go beyond the sheet music chord diagrams. I wanted find the chords would give me the same feeling as the recordings did.

Without some knowledge of concepts, I found it quite frustrating not being able to realise some the sounds I had in my head. But much later I found a name for the lovely lydian clashes of Christopher Cross’ ‘Sailing” or the Jazz harmony in a Steely Dan horn arrangement. All of this is for another time … and we shouldn’t get too hung up on any of this. 

In an interview with the Beatles, a musicologist once commented “You seem to make extensive use of the Mixolydian mode” -  to which Ringo replied: “I had one of those but the wheels came off’. It didn’t stop them writing some of the greatest songs in history - in fact, one could argue that the knowledge may well have hindered them!

In todays World, the abundance of information can be intimidating (and often paralysing). My feeling is, let’s acquire some strategic distilled knowledge, and keep in “under the hood”.  Let it tick along in the background. That’s where it should reside. If you start to overthink things, or place too much importance on it, then it stops serving you. Whatever genre you play, an awareness of these core principles will make you more rounded musician. and your playing will naturally progress as a result. 

For me, ones taste and style are inextricably linked. When we hear even a fragment of music that briefly resonates, we should pay attention. Find out why how it works and learn to replicate it at will. This inquisitive, experimental process is how we develop our own voice and style. If you think playing the guitar is fun - wait to you feel what it’s like to truly express yourself through the instrument!

If you’d like to learn sixteen of the key principles that I use in every aspect of my work as a guitarist and musician, check out Modern Concepts For Acoustic Guitar.

Have a great weekend!