Cape Cod Acoustics
  • Home
  • Your Lessons
  • Performance services offered
  • About Gene
  • Contact
  • Guitars, Ukes & Accessories
  • Acoustic Guitar Blog
  • Tips for guitarists
  • Guitar Gallery
  • More...

Predictability - good thing? bad thing?

10/14/2016

0 Comments

 
One of the most basic and vitally important aspects of music that I stress with my students is predictability. In a pure playing sense this involves anticipation of musical changes – thinking ahead to the next chord, the next verse, the next group of notes. I tell them that this means having to divide their brain in half: how do I sound right now but also how will I sound on the next musical change? Not an easy thing, especially for the beginner, but success in this division of the thought process is the difference between connecting the chain and just dealing with individual links.
 
But how much does pure predictability play into this? A lot, especially in popular music. Most of the time the relative popularity of a song or even an entire genre of music is entirely dependent upon a simple concept. Whether the listener is aware of it or not, any song that has consistent, predictable changes is much more likely to be popular than one that is seemingly random and scattered in form.
 
One of my students and I were discussing this just today. He has played guitar casually for many years but decided he wanted to take things to the next level and began lessons with me a few months ago. He is absolutely thrilled to discover this concept of predictability and like so many others I’ve heard say over the years, he said, oh my god, I never thought about that but you’re right! THAT’S why such-and-such a song sounds so much like another, and that’s why I could learn and remember it! And that’s why I like it!!!!
 
This gets into a bit of a thorny area although I would probably not bring it up with anyone who has an ironclad interest in just one kind of music.
 
I have no doubt that for as long as humans have made music it has been important that it be predictable because after all, music is a primary form of communication. To communicate we must be able to be understood and the only way we can learn to be understood is through repetition – and that leads to predictability. There is great comfort in this.
 
So sooner or later aspiring guitarists realize that successful songwriters tap into this need, whether by chance or by design. For a very long time the verse/chorus/verse/chorus (with the occasional bridge to mix things up a bit) structure has been used in lyrics. In popular music, the I-IV-V and II-V-I progression is drilled into our ears from the moment we begin listening to popular music. Blues, folk, country, rock, even jazz songs come home to those progressions in whole or part, most of the time.
 
Is this good? In the end, does it really matter? Well, I guess that depends upon how much one values originality. Blatant pandering such as I often in hear in “modern” so-called country music sometimes borders on downright rip-off. I have this vision of recording company big shots sitting around in a board room in LA or Nashville with their in-house writers and A&R people instructing them to come up with yet another potential hit filled with clichés for the latest pretty boy singer in a bent cowboy hat.
 
The challenge, as I see it anyway, is to come up with songs that are just a tiny bit different in structure but still give the listener something that they can hold onto. This might be done with chord structure (a small key change here, a chord outside the scale-line structure there) and/or rhythmically. In modern acoustic guitar music I hear this from bands like Mumford & Sons, the Punch Brothers, Cactus Blossoms, Wood Brothers and many more.
 
About now it may sound like I have disdain of predictability in music. Far from it! I love the blues and there is no more predictable form of popular music, in chord structure anyway. And classic country singers like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline stick to three or four chords in most of their great songs. What most blues and those country legends have in common is raw, honest feeling. On the opposite extreme of complexity but playing with equal amounts of feeling are many of the greats of jazz. But their music takes some hard turns and the listener is constantly challenged. Whether one has the patience and endurance to submit to those turns is an individual choice. Is there predictability in jazz? Sometimes but it may take some effort to discover. And the acceptance of the fact that it may not be there at all.
 
Just about all the students I’ve ever taught have that ah-ha moment at some point when they realize that the basic structure of much of American popular music in all its forms can be of great comfort and yes, enjoyment. And then many of begin to wonder – how can I make that a bit fancier. Make it my own. And that’s where I come in….
 
Peace & good music,
Gene

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Gene Bourque

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed