Well kids, it has been a while since I’ve had the time to inflict you with my mumblings. Had a ton of fun recording with a bevy of beauties this past two months and now things have calmed down and my idle mind is looking for something to prattle on about. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of using shortcuts in Music Theory. The first thought off the top of my head is that I hate them, don’t like them, won’t give them the time of day, they are a cop out and inhibit constructive educational methods.

Okay, now that the vitriol has been flushed from my system and my musical elitism put back into the deep freeze, here’s the deal. Whatever you gotta do to remember things…that’s what you do. Yes, it’s always better to know everything at expert level. But something I’ve learned through the years is that every expert is shitty at something so there’s no shame in using some crutches when it comes to musical rules that seem random and disconnected at first. With an open mind, a ton of practice  and experience, even an idiot like me can one day hope to connect enough dots and make sense of it all.

When I was in high school I came off the basketball court into the music room and there was no-one, let me repeat, NO-ONE more inept than I was in reading a choral score. I can still remember the fear and confusion of looking at four part choral music and wondering why the words were repeated four times and what all the lines, dots, squiggles and letter abbreviations meant. And so, as if I were writing this to myself when I was that lunk-head jock, I will share a few of the things that made my life just a little easier at those early stages. This will be really basic so you geniuses can go outside and pull the wings off flies or cure a disease or something.

The Grand Staff

You might be confused by all the lines and dots when you look at a simple piano part. Don’t be. Just accept that music exists in time and in space. Time is represented by symbols that happen left to right just like reading these words. Stuff that happens first is on the left and as the stuff happens there will be little symbols on the paper from left to right to indicate that. The last stuff that happens will be all the way to the right. By space, I mean that music exists in pitch. This means that stuff happens up high in little girlie voices and other stuff happens deep down. This stuff is shown in symbols that are on the paper up high and down low. The background upon which all this stuff happens is called the Grand Staff.

The Grand Staff is ten horizontal lines in two groups of five with a big space in the middle. Don’t let this big space fool you into thinking it has mystic value. The pace between the two groups of five lines has the same value as any space between any two lines. Now, the top group of five lines is called the Treble Clef. There is a reason for this but for now just take a shortcut and memorize this. Say “Treble Clef.” The bottom group of five lines is called the Bass Clef. As you have probably already figured out, high sounds will appear up high on the Treble Clef and deeper sounds will hang out on the lower lines of the Bass Clef. If you draw a line halfway between the two groups of five lines you can call that line Middle C. And if you know where one note is on this confusing mess of lines and spaces then you can begin to figure out every other note. More on this later.

The Musical Alphabet

When students of mine balk at learning a bit of music theory I ask them these questions. 1. How many letters in the English alphabet? 2. How many letters in the musical alphabet? and 3. What are you so afraid of or are you just generally a lazy bastard? The answer to 1. is of course 26. The answer to 2. is 7…A, B, C, D, E, F and G. The answer to 3 ranges from “Nothing and no.” to “Looking stupid and yeah, I guess so.” But when you realize that the basic musical alphabet is made up of just 7 little letters, how can it be that difficult to figure out what they mean? And if you are afraid of looking stupid, no problem. Keep shaking in your little corner. It just leaves more “knowledge stuff” for everyone else to play with.

Alright, so what do all the lines mean in terms of the musical alphabet? The first thing to understand is that between the lines there are spaces. Every line and space has a name. But instead of Bob or Cathy we call them by initials like B and C. Let’s say that the very bottom line of the Bass Clef is called G. As you count up toward the top of the page, every space and every line will be called by the next letter in the musical alphabet. But wait! The bottom line is called G and that is the last letter! What do we do now? Ah, the great musical truth known as “We never run out of shit” comes into play. We just start over. So, the space above G is A, the next line is B and so on. It’s okay to point and talk aloud so point at each line and space and say the name out loud.

Ah, but what do we do when we get to that big space between the Bass and Treble Clefs? Remember, the big space isn’t any more important than any space between any two lines. Also remember that we drew a single line right between to two clefs and this line is called C. So, the top line of the Bass Clef is called A, right? The next space is called B. Then comes the line in the middle of no man’s land called C. The next space is D and that puts us on the bottom line of the Treble Clef. See if you can go the rest of the way to the top line.

The Nonsense Sentence approach to shortcuts

Most of you have heard the phrase “Every good boy does fine.” Some of you will make the connection that the first letter of each word corresponds with the name of the five lines of the Treble Clef. This is one of the first shortcuts taught to kids trying to learn their notes. The problem is that the kids memorize a nonsensical sentence without making a personal connection between the words in the sentence and the notes they are attempting to learn. If they get the sentence wrong all sorts of hell breaks loose. What if they say to themselves “All Good boys etc?” So the shortcut becomes a long cut which confuses rather than clarifies the student. But, being a strong proponent of nonsense myself, I would amend the process in the following manner.

If the Nonsense Sentence approach is to be used then each student should compose their own personal Nonsense Sentence. The old standard “Every Good Boy” is not only boring but casts an image of good little boys wearing school ties going around doing good little things while studying hard to be even better. Very few notable musicians fit into that mold so to hell with it. Make up your own. When I teach this method to my students we have a few laughs but I can guarantee that before they’ve made up three new sentences they already know the notes. Let’s do one together, hmm let me think, how about “Elvis Got Big Damned Feet.” or “Elephants Go By During Floods.” See, it’s easy.

How about the lines of the Bass Clef? The old standby is “Good Boys Do Fine Always.” Jeezus! I much prefer something a bit more original and with a twist. How about “Grannie’s Bed Doesn’t Fold Away?” Or, “Gertrude Beat Danny’s Fat Ass.” See how a little originality makes you want to learn? Go ahead, make up a pile of these things. And every time you get a good one it will drive those notes into your brain a little deeper. Every time you look for a word that starts with F your brain keeps repeating “F,F,F” and associating the letter with the top line of the Treble Clef.

Have some laughs, don’t be afraid to look stupid and quit being lazy bastards. Knowing stuff can be a lot of fun.

Have you ever thought about old friends or relatives, people with whom you share memories, people who stand out in the landscape of your life like a proud oak tree in an otherwise level pasture, people who have influenced your ethics and integrity…have you ever felt the need to connect with these individuals only to realize that you’ve waited too long or that you’ve wasted your opportunity to express proper gratitude because you’ve been too busy, you had work to do, the kids have a game, you feel stupid for waiting so long? (Jesus! Speaking of long…that’s last sentence has to be some kind of record, even for my long-winded ass.)

To answer my own question in one word, yes. Yes, I’ve done all the above and more and I’ve lived long enough to regret it from time to time. In recognition of my own gratitudinous ineptitude, a condition defined here for the first time in medical history, I would like to draw the reader’s attention, and man, does he need attention, to a man who is most assuredly my oldest friend in this lifetime. I say my oldest friend for two reasons. First, we’ve afflicted each other since the time I was just entering my my highly impressionable teen-age years and secondly, if years were pounds he would be at least a welterweight. For those of you unaccustomed to counting in pugilistic units, that makes him about 147 and easily older than anyone I know on this side of the churchyard wall.

I first met Ben Bollinger Sr. or “Papa B” playing pick-up basketball when I was in the eighth grade. Papa B’s son was to become my most influential mentor in music as in other things and had invited me to come play hoops with a few of his high school singing students. I was tall for my age and when we were choosing who we were to guard Papa B looked me up and down and declared. “Let me teach Stilts here how it’s done.” The next two hours were like nothing I had experienced before. I couldn’t decide if my ribs were cracked from laughing or from Papa B’s elbows. He looked normal enough but I swear the man’s elbows had to have been sharpened on a lathe. I instantly knew Papa B to be a generous man. He doled out punch lines and rib-crushing elbows as if they had no value on the open market. And his timing? His timing was exquisite. As we ran down the court side by side he would set up a funny story. Then as the play developed he would build to the punch line and just as I had a chance at the ball he would pop the line, I’d start laughing my ass off and he’d elbow me in the solar plexus rendering me frozen in time just long enough for me to miss my chance.

There are a lot of good things about Papa B that he probably wouldn’t feel comfortable being aired publicly so I’ll stick to what I know and have experienced personally. Suffice it to say that he has done more for the less fortunate than most can hope to accomplish. Now…back to the good stuff. During my college years we did a bit of traveling and I’ll be damned if one of us didn’t always pull the short straw and end up as the other’s roommate. I learned a lot during that time about how to handle myself when on the road. Those lessons served me well later in my career as a road musician.

Rule number 1 is that no matter how thoughtful you might think the hotel people are, if you eat and drink all the shit in that little ice box under the sink…somebody has to fork over some cash. And rule number 2 is that if you are sharing a room, you must always lock the bathroom door…no matter what religion the chick is. There’s a whole lot that can go sideways when you tour as a rock musician, but over the years these two rules or some slight variation thereof have kept me out of a ton of trouble so Papa B…thanks for that.

As far as humor…simply the best. The friggin’ corniest…but the best. His repertoire is endless but I want to take a moment to share a few tidbits. Now you have to understand that the jokes themselves are long and depend on Papa B’s inimitable delivery for a successful outcome and this couldn’t possibly come across on the written page. But friends of Papa B’s will recognize these as being among his best punch lines.

1.”Fifi, I said get out from under the couch before this man shits all over you.”

2. “Oh that…that’s his asshole, he’s not used to stopping so fast. ” and my favorite…

3. There’s the fizz, the fuzz, the fizzy-fuzz, the poop, the poopedy-poop, the tear-ass and the rattle.

Now it’s about a hundred years later and I hear through the grapevine (Janice) that it’s Papa B’s birthday. I can’t wait to walk into the presence and be met with his usual greeting, “Aw Jeez, Strobl! You never knew anything and learned even less. Come here you worthless bastard. I always knew you’d never amount to anything!” Goddamn man, that cake will have so many candles that it will show up on GoogleEarth.com, won’t it? If he can blow out a conflagration of that magnitude I hope he remains healthy long enough to go help out those guys running the wind farm out in the desert.

On the serious side, Papa B has influenced me more than he can know and I’m very grateful for the chance to let him know about it. He’s a hell of a man with compassion and a sense of humor equal to someone ten times his weight class. Those who have been blessed with knowing him are much better people for it. Standing next to him in line at the airport is infinitely better than going to the opera, the circus or a strip club with anyone else, and more rewarding. Papa B is all sunshine and good intentions and I know I’m not alone in wishing him not only the happiest of birthdays but many healthy returns of the day. As Duke Ellington might have said, had he been fortunate enough to know my oldest friend, “Papa B, we love you madly.”

To continue on the subject of Mouth Mechanics in general and Voiced Consonants in particular, Here is a little written homework assignment for all of you singers who are not competing for the title “LQBM”  (Least Qualified Band Member.) To review definitions for a moment, Voiced Consonants are those sounds which are not vowels, are created using the same mechanics as the Unvoiced Consonants, and are produced concurrent to phonation or the vocal cords engaging to create pitch.

The more obvious Voiced Consonants are those which can be sustained over long notes. These are L, M, N, the American R, V (F) and Z (S). Less obvious but voiced nonetheless are those which combine pitch with a slight burst of air. These are B (P), D (T), Soft G as in George and J (CH), and Hard G as in gag (K).

The consonants in parenthesis are the Unvoiced versions created with the same mechanics but without pitch. G and K for example are both formed by releasing the closure created by the base of the tongue meeting the tip of the soft palette. The difference between God and Cod therefore rests merely upon a split second of pitch.

Yes, it can be argued that there are many permutations of these sounds but these should be enough to get you started. Besides, the time you spend offering evidence that X is not really just KS would be better spent making yourself better, wouldn’t it?

Okay, so you wanna get into this right? Here’s the first assignment:

You’ll need multiple copies of your lyric sheet for this exercise.

1. Go through your lyrics very carefully and identify EVERY Voiced Consonant by underlining it.

2. Now go back and circle each Voiced Consonant which is at the beginning of a new word or a new syllable.

For example:  the word new begins with an EN sound which is a Voiced Consonant. In the word renew, the second syllable also begins with the EN sound and should be circled.

3. Go back and make a box around every Voiced Consonant which is either at the end of a word or at the end of a syllable inside a word.

For example: The word exam ends with the EM sound. In the word examination, the second syllable also ends in the EM sound.

4. Go through your lyrics and notate each Voiced Consonant which begins a word or syllable on a pitch higher than the note immediately previous to the Voiced Consonant sound. Use the “My Bonny” example as your guide.

This all might seem like busy work but repetition is key if you want to instantly and instinctively identify problem areas that can actually become very helpful tools in the development of more expressive singing.

The thing you are trying to accomplish here is to understand the difference between consonants you sing through and those which sonically interrupt the act of singing. Let’s use the word accomplish as an example and assume that its three syllables go up the first three notes of the major scale. We would separate the word like this…Uh-kahmp-lish. The EL sound of the syllable Lish must be identified as being at the start of the last syllable and not at the end of the second syllable (The P is a puff of air and the subject of a different article altogether. Forget it for the moment and concentrate on the EL). And yet, how many singers would place the EL sound on the same note as Kahmp and then find that they must quickly slide up to the next note with their mouth open while singing the Ih vowel. And if the melody required the third syllable to be sung at a larger interval the slide would be even more exposed as would be the singers sloppy approach.

So to review:

Voiced Consonants have pitch.

Voiced Consonants must be be executed (Some of you probably want the sentence to end right there, I’m sure) with the same support and attention to sonic detail as the vowel sounds.

When a Voiced Consonant begins a word or syllable, it should occur on the same pitch as the word or syllable itself.

When a Voiced Consonant ends a word or syllable, it should not fall off in pitch but rather provide the word or syllable with a clean cutoff with sonic and rhythmic accuracy.

As in all things artistic, there are many exceptions. Artistic singing has more to do with communicating ideas and emotions than it does with carefully obeying arbitrary rules posted on the internet by pedantic maniacs like yours truly. However, slovenly executed Voiced Consonants are like a quarter-inch hair mole hanging from an otherwise stunningly beautiful woman’s nostril. No matter how badly you want to get into the vibe of the moment, you find your focus returning to that one little follicular blemish. So if your listeners are being distracted and can’t get into it because you’re sliding around on your consonants, no matter how artistically intended,  it might be a good idea to adopt the motto, “It’s perfectly okay to know what I’m doing.” Do some homework!