Facing a fear

I've always been crap at harmony. I never really got it. I understood why it had to be studied ('you've got to know the rules to break the rules') but as I never really managed to grasp the rules it all felt a wee bit pointless.

At school I did AMEB musicianship and I managed to muddle through inversions labelled a, b and c. At uni it was all figured bass notation from the word go and to say I floundered is to put it mildly.

My first year at uni, while amazing in so many ways, was certainly no great triumph compositionally. I didn't really know what to do or what was expected of me. I'd applied for composition on a whim really - the application form asked whether I wanted to audition or submit scores or do both. I had some scores from the HSC I was quite pleased with, so I ticked both boxes and sent them off. My audition was a disaster but to my surprise I was accepted for composition so I figured I'd give it a go. But the combination of me being clueless and my 1st year teacher not exactly being sympathetic to the sort of music I liked (or indeed seeming to take any interest in me at all) wasn't an ideal one. I started writing a piece that was entirely theoretical because that's what I thought was wanted and chugged along at it for a good long while. Every week I'd go to my tutorial, every week my teacher would say 'any problems?' and I'd say 'no' because I was too timid to admit I hadn't a clue what I was doing. Behind the scenes I quietly determined to switch to musicology as soon as it was allowed (3rd year). I never had a tute with him that lasted more than about 7 minutes. Except for once.

One day I actually decided this was insane and I should ask him for help. I think I was having trouble modulating or something. So I asked the question. And he said 'oh you should just use a Neapolitan 6th'. I drew a blank but I continued my new line of actually asking questions and asked what that was. I recall him being angry but I suspect he was just startled with a touch of aghast. I was told at any rate, in no uncertain terms, that I should go and look it up and why didn't I know it already.

So I approached my harmony book for enlightenment, my pretty purple-covered harmony book that had held so much promise and excitement at the beginning of the year, but alas, like so much between those covers, I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

Somehow I got through that year, and fortunately I never had to do harmony again but it burnt me, that Neapolitan 6th. It left a scar that has always made me feel slightly inadequate (under, of course, the layers of total conviction of my own compositional genius :-) ). Time and time again I've approached the grape-covered Aldwell & Schachter. Time and time again I've been rebuffed with an endless landscape of marching verticals.

The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis

But not this time. I've given Aldwell & Schachter their marching orders and have gone and spent over £80 on Jane Piper Clendinning's The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis (book, 3 CDs and anthology of scores). It seems to cover a lot of what more traditional harmony tomes cover, but it's doing it gently I think, with CDs, putting concepts in context, handling counterpoint as well as the endless marching cadences. And it starts from a laughably basic 'this is a treble clef' and goes all the way through to 'this is total serialism' by way of Scott Joplin, Brahms, and The Beatles as well as the inevitable tritone. 

So I'm facing this fear in a practical way. The old way didn't work and just left me feeling more inadequate than ever, so I'm hoping a new approach will provide fresh insights. Who knows, maybe by the end of it I'll actually know what a Neapolitan 6th is!

Comments

[Tchatchke]

[this is good] Hmm...maybe I should pick up a copy...

[minim]

I'm really enjoying it so far - even the really simple stuff. Loving going through things I'd forgotten I knew. There'll be an update post very soon...