change

In Friday's Richmond Browne quote he states, "The listener is constantly making predictions; actual infinitesimal predictions as to whether the next event will be a repetition of something, or something different. The player is constantly either confirming or denying these predictions in the listener's mind. As nearly as we can tell, the listener must come out right about 50% of the time--if he is too successful in predicting, he will be bored; if he is too unsuccessful, he will give up and call the music 'disorganized.'"

Let's use the Af Af At (AAA with fills) Chorus Form as reference. continue reading...

Yesterday's dynamic change works best with live musicians that can react to your dynamic change. Our next two tips (today and tomorrow) works with both a live band or jam track.

Now use chord change as your trigger to change volume.

Play the I Chord (first four bars) at a given volume. When you reach the IV Chord (Bars 5 and 6) play at a different volume (louder or softer). When the I Chord returns in Bar 7, once again change your volume. Change again for the V-IV-I lick (Bars 9 and 10) and then again for the Turnaround (Bars 11 and 12).

Give this a try with your favorite jam track.

Now that you've recorded yourself to a jam track, listen back to your use of dynamics (volume change). Did you stay at the same volume the entire time?... if you did, it's not uncommon, but it's time to fix this.

Varying volume is the strongest tool available to us to convey emotion to the listener. Along for the ride is tone. As we change our volume, our tone and how our rig (mic and amp) responds changes. This is why we use the term "dynamics" and not just volume change... when we change the volume, many other factors are dynamically changed with it. continue reading...