I'm big on journaling. Whether it's about my reflections on musical exploration and direction, planning my goals, expressing what's on my mind as an outlet, or anything else of that sort, I value writing as one of the most important practices for progress and development in any given field. The supporting evidence through studies and statistics regarding the improved performance between writers and non-writers in their given fields are everywhere. If you're not journaling, you really need to - especially if you aren't seeing any progress despite your best practical efforts.
A novel thought occurred to me recently. Instead of journaling in English, it's possible that I express my thoughts in notation instead. I do feel some kind of resistance to this practice, as I value writing in natural language so much and feel that I rely on this practice so much to record ideas in a way that information can be interpreted objectively.
To give an example of what I mean, imagine the reflections I would like to record are something like "focus on emotional expression and personal conviction in my practice", but instead of writing that in English I decide to write musical phrases with that intention instead. It may not be possible to return to those phrases a few months later and interpret the same meaning that I originally intended.I've decided to go through with this anyway. I'm convinced that this practice will really improve fluency in notation on so many different levels. I always have a lot on my mind, and thoughts reach their full potential when they are put into action, so what better way to utilise this potential musically by translating all of my thoughts from English into music?
This brings up a point that I wish to emphasise about music theory. The first point is that the purpose of music theory is mostly to provide a vernacular to identify and recreate musical concepts, this is of benefit for two major reasons:
- It provides a standard in which musicians who are familiar with the terminology can communicate their ideas verbally.
- It provides structure and objectivity to what may otherwise be somewhat ambiguous. Providing musicians with ways to identify common frameworks and key elements in which they can interpret and express musical ideas accurately and efficiently.
I would argue that although it is of great benefit, standard music theory isn't necessary under only one circumstance: that if you don't abide by standard music theory, you develop your own discretionary methods in musical analysis that achieve the same effects.And to beat a dead horse, I believe the best way to do this is in writing, or more specifically, notation.By regularly and thoughtfully exploring music in notation, implicit learning takes place as you develop your own understanding of how pitches and rhythms on the stave relate and interact, how they may be expressed instrumentally, and how they personally relate to your thought processes, allowing you to discover and refine your musical identity.
Other than making sure that I'm up to date on all of my student's lessons, my other focuses are on exploring polyrhythms and becoming familiar with the Lydian Chromatic Concept.
- Choose a time signature. (example: 4/4).
- Choose how many bars I wish to apply the polyrhythm to. (Example: 1 bar).
- Choose how I wish to evenly divide the bar(s). (Example: equally divide by 3).
- Choose where to begin the first polyrhythmic accent. (Example: first beat).
- Calculate it, and notate it.
In this example, one bar in a time signature of 4/4 equally divided by three, beginning on the first beat, requires that the accent occurs every 1 and 1/3rd of a beat as 4 divided by 3 = 1 and 1/3. So to calcuate and notate it, I tie crotchets and triplets like this:As each quaver in the triplet is 1/3rd of a beat. Tying them as shown in the bar above adds up to:
- A crotchet (1 beat) + a quaver triplet (1/3rd of a beat) = 1 + 1/3rd of a beat.
- Four quaver triplets = 1 + 1/3rd of a beat.
- A quaver triplet + a crotchet = 1 + 1/3rd of a beat.
- Therefore, dividing the bar of 4/4 into 3 even beats.
I actually do this pretty methodically and systematically through each numerator, denominator, and amount of bars.
Given my impatience, I thought "What gives? I already use these scales? They're just like any other scales and I don't have those magical powers that all these Lydian Concept guys have, so it's probably bogus which is why it's marketed in a big, expensive, and notoriously convoluted book".But as I'm still keen on discovering how my understanding on harmony can be improved by understanding the function of fifth intervals, and how all other intervals are somewhere on that ladder of fifths, I had to admit that I'm likely wrong in my assumption that the concept is a hoax and that I really hadn't actually put in the time and effort to really discover the intricacies of these scales (as opposed to naively just noodling over the scales).