{"id":87382831,"date":"2022-12-07T13:30:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T13:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=87382831"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:30:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T13:30:59","slug":"the-language-of-music-the-charts-of-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=87382831","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Music, The Charts of Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Professional writers don’t have muses; they have mortgages.” – Larry Kahaner<\/h2>

Marty McFly is full of nonsense<\/a>. \u201cWatch me for the changes?\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s moonlighting for needs to watch him for the changes. They got it. <\/p>

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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 \u201chow do you get a guitarist to play softer? Put sheet music in front of them.\u201d 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\u2019s not make hurtful assumptions about people\u2019s musicality.<\/p>

If I\u2019m stuck songwriting, I can say \u201cOkay, let\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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\u2019ll do it in B.\u201d<\/p>

I\u2019ve just written: <\/p>

verse: |G#m7 |F#7 |Emaj7 |D#7(#9) |<\/p>

chorus: |Bmaj7 |G#m7 |Emaj9 |F#7 |<\/p>

bridge: |Emaj7 |F#7 |G#m7 | |<\/p>

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When I hear a pop song\u2014song on the radio, song in a commercial, \u201cStand By Me\u201d played by the buskers at the Grand Avenue Red Line station circa 2010\u2014I can usually name the chord progression. I can tell by the color of the music what key it\u2019s in. If I\u2019m off, it\u2019s usually by a fourth or a fifth, like \u201coh I didn\u2019t realize the guitar solo in \u2018The Middle\u2019 by Jimmy Eat World actually modulates from D major to A major, that\u2019s cool.\u201d Play enough music, the repeating structures are easy to hear. That\u2019s what fun about jazz to me, I don\u2019t always immediately know what\u2019s going on. <\/p>

I keep wanting to get better at jazz guitar. I keep wanting to really learn jazz piano. If those things really <\/em>animated me (i.e., if there was a paycheck involved), I could do it. But another part of me likes not<\/em> knowing. Keeps jazz surprising. And that\u2019s the kind of relationship I have with poetry.<\/p>

A bunch of unreadable nerdy music stuff and then a shift to poetry? I gotta sub this blog!<\/p><\/div>

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I haven\u2019t found as easy cheat codes with writing. Before we get too carried away with the term \u201ccheat code,\u201d I should clarify the cheat code is first draft, not final product. There\u2019s 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. <\/p>

If I\u2019m stuck in poetry, I\u2019ll put little tic marks on the side of the page for line breaks. \u201cHere\u2019s 14 lines, it\u2019s a sonnet now, go.\u201d Or \u201cnine lines, three tercets, write a poem, go.\u201d I\u2019ll even break into the toolbox, like \u201chmmm, haven\u2019t used a simile in a while, let\u2019s try one.\u201d It\u2019s not a way to write the most cohesive poetry, or even to get that satisfying \u201cI really wrote<\/em> a poem<\/em>\u201d feeling when you set your pen down, but it gets me out of my head with writer\u2019s block. Also, cohesion in poetry? Boring. I can\u2019t stand being able to pinpoint through lines and know precisely \u201cwhat\u2019s this poem about\u201d 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. <\/p>

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<\/a>, 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. <\/p>

The other is Dan Harmon\u2019s story wheel<\/a>. If you, like me, get a germ of an idea for a story\u2014a dress shirt doesn\u2019t fit before a funeral, a person is having trouble cooking a fish, etc\u2014but don\u2019t know how to execute it, do as Dan Harmon says and de-mystify it. My little multimodal heart says \u201cwrite eight prose poems and call it a story,\u201d 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\u2019t paint-by-numbers. Don\u2019t watch any Community<\/em> episodes with that Channel 101 blog post open next to you, by the way. <\/p>

Oh, and that throwaway \u201chaving trouble cooking a fish\u201d line? That\u2019s a real, very good short story called \u201cThe Fish\u201d by Lydia Davis. Does that story follow the story wheel? No. Is it better than anything you can write using some loser blogger\u2019s writer\u2019s block tips? Yes. <\/p>

The chart\u2019s not the music, what the band plays is. <\/p>

Sorry you got an email, <\/p>

Chris<\/p>

Thank you for reading shipwrecked sailor. This post is public so feel free to share it.<\/p><\/div>

Share<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div>

5 Links To Either De- Or Re-Mystify Music:<\/p>