Struggling with Jazz Theory Chords

We do something a little different on this episode of The Rhythms of Focus. Join me for an informal piano practice session and get a glimpse of my own wandering mind as I reflect on the role of emotion in learning.

We explore the constant tension between free play and structured learning and the need to make real-time choices while respecting limits and using questions as a container for confusion.

I end with a developing piece called “Witch/Which Beauty.”

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of The Rhythms of Focus. I thought today I would sit down at the keys and just kind of, um, have a practice session, kind of describe what goes on.

The Practice of a Passion

You know, I think something that's not often talked about is, the sense of passion and mastery, when it comes to wandering minds, ADHD and the like.

There's the so-called, interest-based mind — which I still have troubles with the idea of using that phrase, because brains all flow with emotion and there are many emotions.

And, interest is an important one, certainly, but even there, Dr. William Dotson psychiatrist points out, what one client abbreviated to the Chin Up Emotions: challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and then passion.

And I'll leave aside for a moment that there are many other emotions as well that can be very driving, even for ADHD and wandering minds, and perhaps even especially so.

But for the moment, I just wanted to get into this idea of passion, which I, to some degree, maybe even entirely, equate with mastery. Because mastery is a path, it's something we do over time, it's, it's not a line that we cross so much, although I think that idea can be put in there too.

So the idea of mastery, it's in many ways simple, it's that we be with a thing every day. If you can do that, you know, here I have this practice I picked up from my piano teacher from years past who said, touch the keys every day. Which has since translated into this idea of a visit every day, being with something every day.

And if you do that, there's a good chance you're on the path of mastery. And there's something incredibly organizing to that process.

Anyway, I'll just play a piece here. I like minor keys.

I often play in what are called a modal style of playing, where I stay within a scale.

This piece that I'll play here is called "Speaking Spirits."

A Balance of Play and Structure

Whenever I sit down to practice, I have to balance there's part of me that wants to play and goof off and go wherever the heck I want to go. And this other part of me that says, well, if you just do that, nothing will get learned, nothing will happen, nothing will grow, there is no structure.

And this is kind of a major issue, if you will, for wandering minds in general. This tug of war between the ideas of play and structure. We manage this with the ideas of agency that we are able to pause and make a decision and say, okay, what if I go in that direction?

And then at that point we throw ourselves into play once again. But it becomes a real time issue, it's a constant thing.

For example, if I am playing a piece and I'm enjoying it, there's this part of me that wants to keep enjoying it, just wants to keep going with it, keep going with that flow and finding where it goes and all that.

But, if I let it go on too long, it grows bitter. You know, there's a, I think a philosophical, something about the respect of death in that. But there's also, this feeling of, I need to respect limits, right? It's, it's that there's something to learn in that.

Anyway, I think I'm going off on a tangent now.

Sitting with Frustration

Let me tell you what I've been studying lately. So I've been looking at this book, "The Jazz Piano Book" by Mark Levine. Bought this many years ago when I was in college. And when I had looked at it then, it didn't make much sense to me. There were these things that were written in there, these chords.

I'm just flipping through it now if you hear the paper rustling, I was looking at the chords and I'm like, where are you coming up with this?

I'm even looking at it on page two and it says that there's a G7 cord. And there's no G in the chord. Like what are you doing? The G7 flat 9 it starts in an F in the base, and then there's a B, and there's an E, A, G, sharp and a B, and he calls that a G7 flat 9.

And maybe it is. But there's no G and that just bugs me. And that just in itself — I ran into a couple of incidents like that in this book and that was enough to stop me. That one stopped me many years ago, and only recently have I come back and started to play with it. So if I take that chord that I just mentioned, let me play this here.

Right? That's supposedly somewhere in there, a G7 flat 9. Here's the 7 here's the major third, which makes it a major key. This E is a sixth, which he doesn't mention anywhere. And then there's this G sharp, which is the flat 9. And again, we've got this B at the top, which is a repeat of the B before, which is that major third.

Now that resolves into a C— is it a dominant? Yeah, dominant C. But once again, here's a 9 in here in the right hand and a sixth and a third in the base, the major third of the E. So it goes and I'm like, how? How, why is that the cord? What are you talking about anyway? So once again, I got stumped.

Using Questions to Contain Confusion

So what do I do with that? I think the important thing is to be able to add questions to things and recognize the question as being the container.

So I look at the thing and say, my question is essentially, huh? Just H-U-H question mark. Huh? Then I can resolve that a little further into, well, as I was talking about, I don't see these, in one case, I don't see the root note in the chord at all. And the other one, it's at the very top. Does that count and what are the sixths in there doing?

So anyway, I make these questions. Whether you understand the music of it or not, it's regardless of whatever field you're in, you'll have your own unique questions to you. But the questions do, help contain the confusion.

And so once I do that, I can start flipping through and going, okay, well maybe I'll just play these chords a little bit here and there, and then I'll get to something that might make more sense and I can come back to this.

I can resolve into something about this and ah, you know, I get to the next little bit here and it starts talking about triads. Oh, okay. These make sense. The C major triad, here you go, starts with a major third and then a minor third on top of that.

And you call that a C major triad. There's a major, that's a minor. We got the C minor triad, which reverses it. You got the minor in the bottom and the major top. Right. So you got just basically you move the middle note down a half step. There you go. Diminish, you move the top note down a half step, which means there's two minor triads in there.

And then you got the augmented triad where you've got a major in the bottom again, and then another major on top. So it's all just a mix of different majors and minors and how they all play out.

And you keep playing with these things and realize, oh yeah, I could do that, I could do that and then, oh my goodness, is this hard? The simple, supposedly simple, minor 2 7, 2 seventh, and then you go to a major, a dominant seven for the fifth. And go to the, root note or little, major seventh in that guy.

It's a nice little combination you got there, you know. Sounds good.

And then you just goof off. So it is like, okay, there's a part of me that just wants to start playing and then I start playing.

What if I did a minor there?

Would it still resolve well?

Yeah. And what if I throw in other things?

And then I don't know what I'm doing. Then I want to go back to something that has structure, something I can hold onto and say, yeah, I can make some sounds. And I kinda listen to myself. I say, you know, what am I interested in playing right now? And maybe something I've been doing recently.

Here's one called "Witch/Which Beauty" that I kind of like.

Anyway, that one still needs work. I'm playing around with it. You can tell that there's some structured kind of form in there — or at least I can tell.

Anyway. Not sure if you guys are enjoying this sort of thing. Uh, I thought why not do an episode where I'm just kind of making some sounds and talking about it out loud.

If you're enjoying this and would like to hear more of these, let me know and maybe I can make that happen. Alright, till next time.

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The Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.