Developing Musicality, part 2: Tone
In part 1 of Developing Musicality, we talked about rhythm as one of the most essential aspects of music.
Tone is also an aspect of music. Tone is determined mainly by frequency, with notes we perceive as higher in pitch having higher frequency, and notes we perceive to be lower having lower. Timbre (the quality of the sound, not only the technical pitch) as well as the length of the tone is part of tone. That’s why the same pitch played on the bassoon sounds very different from the same pitch (note) played on the cello, and a tone played for 1 second sounds different than that same tone held for 3 seconds.
While rhythm can be thought of as mainly concerning itself with communicating the x axis of duration (how do we divide up the musical information over time), you can think of tone as having more to do with what is presented along the vertical y axis - how much musical information is put into a moment.
Tone provides the color and shape to any given musical subdivision of time. Melody and harmony are only possible with tone.
When you think about “how does this song go, what is the tune?”, you’re thinking of the melody. In very complex pieces, there are many melodies woven together. That is usually the case in classical music. But the main series of notes that you hum when you think of a tune, even a classical music piece, is the melody. (If you hum Ode to Joy now, da-da-da-da… you are probably humming the melody). When voices are part of a piece, they almost always carry the melody and we tend to give melody more conscious attention.
And when we say, “What chords go well with this melody?”, we are talking about harmony, which includes chords and melody together. Chords are groups of tones (usually triads, sometimes with other notes added on) that are meant to go underneath a melody to support it and fill it out. Melodies will feel surprisingly different depending on how the chords configure and change underneath. Chords also have duration (how long they are held), and they generally change less often than the melody, so that a few notes of a melody will unfold over the same held chord.
When we want to develop our musicality we will get into our ability to create pitches and tones, sing or play different notes and intervals. We also develop the ability to join tones together as chords and chord-melody combinations to create certain feelings for the listener.
When we play the notes of the C scale over a major triad, such as the F chord, which is the notes F, A and C all played at once, it will have a distinct type of mood, quite different from the feeling we get from playing the same C scale over a minor triad (D-F-A). What makes a triad minor or major has to do with how many whole steps and half steps sit between the three notes. In a minor triad, there is one whole step and one half step between the bottom two notes, with two whole steps between the top two notes. In a major triad there are two whole steps between the bottom two notes, and one whole step and one half step between the top two notes.
My Invitation to You for exploring Tone: Sing and Play Melodic Instruments over a Drone
The beauty of drones is that because they are unchanging, you are completely freed up to explore pitch without anything shifting underneath you. You can find what sounds and feels “good” to you, pitches that seem to belong with the drone note, and also find pitches that don’t feel like they pair well together with the drone note. Both of these discoveries are important.
Here is a drone for you of the note G. I am playing only the note of G in different octaves, which means that you can play or sing any note from the G major scale over it: G A B C D E F# and have it sound like it fits well. But these are not the only pitches you can sing over G and have it sound harmonious. What else can you find? If you want to sing first and then identify your pitch, you can use a chromatic tuner like this one: https://chromatic-tuner.com/. Alternatively, you can find the notes with an instrument, such as a keyboard.
Using a G drone, you can also play any chords from the key of G major and it will sound quite well together:
G major (G-B-D), a minor (A-C-E), b minor (B-D-F#), C major (C-E-G), D major (D-F#-A), and f# diminished (F#-A-C).
More important than any of that (and if you’re just starting out), drones make it easy to just sing and play around without knowing what pitch you’re singing, and just experiencing from within what you sound like over the drone as you change your pitch.
When you are interested in holding musical space for others, drones are wonderful, because like a basic beat, but with tone rather than rhythm, they create a simple holding container inside of which the players can express themselves freely without fear of doing anything wrong. The strong, overriding note unifies any kind of piece, even when all kinds of not-completely-fitting sounds appear in the container, they are sublimated into the song container.
Here is a sound sample of what it sounds like when someone explores sounds over a drone:
Here is a sample I made where I am pretending to be both “client” and “therapist” to illustrate how drones can be used as a background container for a therapeutic musical encounter between two people. In this example, when the “therapist” comes in, she is also mirroring/responding to the client’s verbal offer. In my template-y example here, the client says “This is my song”. Therapist mirrors and supports: “This is your song”.
Find Unison
In terms of specific skills development, you can use drones to to work on pitch matching. To do this, practice finding the drone note and singing it. This is finding unison, where you sing or play the same pitch you hear. To develop this, practice with drones of the other notes in the musical kingdom as well. This collection of cello drones is perfect for this exercise.
Cello drones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MimVnBAuYqA&list=OLAK5uy_kHG9fAU_mcPFJcKzx2J2eNlWt9g5At7Lw
Find Intervals
Once you can find unison without trouble, you work on finding harmonies, first with single notes and gradually over time, with two or more notes at once, if you have an instrument you can sing with as well. (For example, over a G drone you can create sing the note E while plucking the note B on your ukulele.)
When you are developing harmony, play with finding other notes in the scale, in varying intervals away from the drone note.
In the key of G, using the drone I gave you above:
The second is A
The third is B
The fourth is C
The fifth is D
The sixth is E
The seventh is F#
The most common-feeling harmonies will be thirds, so B and E (because E is a third below as well as a sixth above, G).
Other familiar harmonies will be the 5th (D) and maybe also the 4th (C).
The combinations with the most tension will be the 2nd and the 7th.
(For now, I have left out getting into major/minor in the intervals, but for those who want to get into it, you can think about finding minor thirds and comparing them to the majors - in this case A# versus B).
Have fun exploring!
In the next post, Developing Musicality, part 3, we’ll look at how we can use familiarity with key signatures to facilitate musical experiences in ourselves and others.