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“Scales, Chords, Modes and other nonsense,” I said.

“NONSENSE???  WHADDYA MEAN?”  said my friend who plays jazz.

I suppose I should give you a little background...

A  friend of mine and I were talking the other day.  I play “folk” music and he plays jazz.  He was really annoying me by saying that jazz is “significantly” harder to play than bluegrass.  I asked him why he thought that and he said it was because of the harmonic structure of jazz, professing it to be more complex. 

I told him that I’ve known a lot of good bluegrass musicians who have successfully crossed over into playing jazz, but I’ve not heard of many jazz musicians who have successfully made it in the bluegrass world!  I told him it was because “you guys pay too much attention to scales, chords, modes and other nonsense.”

I really only said that to annoy him....and I did.  I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation.

But he did have a point.  The harmonic structure of jazz is more complex and it is harder to play.  It’s always been that way.  These days, for the most part, you need a college degree to play jazz professionally

That gave me pause for thought.  

Conversely, “folk music” IS easier to play and you don’t need a college degree to play clawhammer banjo.  My thought was:  What if folk musicians knew about scales, modes and chords but just not to the same degree as jazz musicians?  Frankly, I frequently come in contact with budding musicians who don’t know a thing about how to build a chord, the structure of a major scale and think that Ionian is a form of propulsion from Star Trek.  

This made me wonder what they could do if they knew more about music and how it works.

Rather than go into teaching mode to try and explain scales, chords and modes, I will simply say that there is a solid benefit for all “folk” musicians to learn about music theory.  

Here is the reason why:

First, scales are directly related to keys.  Knowing how to build and play a major scale (and other scales) is an integral part of playing the correct notes in a tune that will invariably be in some key.  Unknowingly playing some notes that usually fall in the F# scale will most likely sound pretty odd when played in the key of Bb.

Second,  a good foundation in knowing how chords are formed will enable you to better accompany your fellow musicians and will also help you understand more about how to improvise.  

Learning about modes will help you with all of the above and more.

Now....you don’t need to go to college to learn these things.  There are excellent resources for all this information in book form as well as on the internet. The two most difficult things about learning these subjects is sorting through the stuff that you don’t need to know and then knowing how to apply the information that you do learn.

Now would be a good time to let you know that I do workshops that cover the nuts and bolts of scales, chords, and modes, and I do all the sorting for you.  My workshops start from the basics and move forward to cover musical information that will help students apply the information that they learn.  You don’t need to know everything about music in order to play it...but you do need to know more than just tunes in order to become a good musician.

Contact me if you are interested in an upcoming workshop!

Jazz musicians need not apply....unless you want to learn to play bluegrass better.   

Stick to picking.....

Robert

e-mail:  robert@sticktopicking.com