Animals as leaders theory?

[Lives Once Abstract]

Does anyone know the actual theory behind his music? like what type of scales and arpegios he uses? along with chords? i know how to play a few of his songs but i have no idea what im actually playing if that makes sense?

i know he uses alot of jazzy influence, but its nothing like any jazz ive ever heard

[Wings of Obsidian]

Originally Posted by Lives Once Abstract

Does anyone know the actual theory behind his music? like what type of scales and arpegios he uses? along with chords? i know how to play a few of his songs but i have no idea what im actually playing if that makes sense?

i know he uses alot of jazzy influence, but its nothing like any jazz ive ever heard

Tosin has a real mastery for extended jazz chord voicings via the extra range on the 7 and 8-string guitars. I mean, some of the stuff he uses are chords made of parallel 4ths and 5ths (turn those into arpeggios). Any really dissonant-sounding "sus" or "add" are probably also a good guess.

Another really important thing is Tosin's selection of which intervals to use, which can really affect the sound and selection of chords.

I'm not a theory wiz. But that's just my:

[celticelk]

Personal opinion, and I'm really *not* trying to be an asshole about this: if you don't understand what you're playing, you might as well not play it. You're just parroting back muscle movement, and as impressive as the movement might be, it's a short step up from training monkeys to do backflips or something.

Ignorance, fortunately, is curable: if you can play the notes, then you can figure out what they are, and from there you can arrange them into a chord or scale through their relationships to each other and to the prevailing tonality of that section of the song. If the notes in a particular passage are G, B, D, and F#, for example, and the rhythm part underneath the lead line is a syncopated open E, then you can say that (a) Tosin's playing a Gmaj7 arpeggio and (b) that he's doing it to establish an Emin9 sound, which is the relationship those notes have to an E root. This requires that you know some stuff about musical theory; if you don't, check out pretty much any of the threads in this subforum for further advice, with particular attention to SchecterWhore and Solodini's recommendations. You might also check out some of Tosin's lessons from various sources on YouTube for some insights into what he was thinking when he wrote particular songs or sections; there's an entire clinic from his recent Australia tour that's especially helpful in that regard.

[Lives Once Abstract]

its not that i dont "know" what im playing, i just dont know the overall theory of it all.

im young, and the only thing close to be able to read and understand musical theory is what ive aquired through choir in high school. i "understand" it, it all makes sense and clicks with ease. but i dont know specific naming of things. i can learn a song of his and half through the first couple of measures i get the feel of the... direction? i guess? that his music is going in and the rest of the song comes very easily.

and i agree with what you are saying. but i dont KNOW what a paralell 4th or 5th are. im sure in my playing i do, but cant name it if that makes sense? i mean major chords are based on 1st 3rd and 5ths, am i correct? does parralel mean octaves?

[celticelk]

No worries - everybody has to start out not knowing this stuff. In my opinion - and I'm sure others here will say the same - the single best thing you can do for your playing is to develop your knowledge of theory.

With respect to parallel fourths and fifths: I think what WoO meant to say was stacked fourths and fifths. Most familiar chords are stacked thirds: a major triad, for example, is a major third (C-E) followed by a minor third (E-G), while a minor triad is a minor third (C-Eb) followed by a major third (Eb-G). Different harmonic structures are formed when other intervals are stacked: you might form a chord from stacked fourths, for example, spelled C-F-Bb, or from stacked fifths, spelled C-G-D. Stacked fourths are often found in jazz tunes, particularly modal jazz of the Sixties; the chords in the head to Miles Davis' "So What" are stacked fourths with a major third on top, for example. Stacked fifths can be found in "Message In a Bottle" by the Police (the verse riff is stacked fifths built on the notes C#, A, B, and F# in sequence), Joe Satriani's "Secret Prayer" (the intro section, which recurs later in the song as an interlude), and Tosin's "Inamorata." Parallel fourths and fifths, on the other hand, refer to intervals which stay constant as the root notes shift, rather than changing to reflect the intervals in the scale. (If you're playing diatonic fourths in C major, for example, you'd play C-F, D-G, and E-A, all *perfect* fourths, followed by F-B, which is an *augmented* fourth; the parallel fourth would be F-Bb, which uses a note that's not from the C major scale.)

[Wings of Obsidian]

Originally Posted by celticelk

No worries - everybody has to start out not knowing this stuff. In my opinion - and I'm sure others here will say the same - the single best thing you can do for your playing is to develop your knowledge of theory.

With respect to parallel fourths and fifths: I think what WoO meant to say was stacked fourths and fifths. Most familiar chords are stacked thirds: a major triad, for example, is a major third (C-E) followed by a minor third (E-G), while a minor triad is a minor third (C-Eb) followed by a major third (Eb-G). Different harmonic structures are formed when other intervals are stacked: you might form a chord from stacked fourths, for example, spelled C-F-Bb, or from stacked fifths, spelled C-G-D. Stacked fourths are often found in jazz tunes, particularly modal jazz of the Sixties; the chords in the head to Miles Davis' "So What" are stacked fourths with a major third on top, for example. Stacked fifths can be found in "Message In a Bottle" by the Police (the verse riff is stacked fifths built on the notes C#, A, B, and F# in sequence), Joe Satriani's "Secret Prayer" (the intro section, which recurs later in the song as an interlude), and Tosin's "Inamorata." Parallel fourths and fifths, on the other hand, refer to intervals which stay constant as the root notes shift, rather than changing to reflect the intervals in the scale. (If you're playing diatonic fourths in C major, for example, you'd play C-F, D-G, and E-A, all *perfect* fourths, followed by F-B, which is an *augmented* fourth; the parallel fourth would be F-Bb, which uses a note that's not from the C major scale.)

Ah yes thank you! ^^^ I did mean STACKED 4ths and 5ths. (Sorry, when I look at my hands, I screw up the names because the notes look parallel on the fretboard. So yeah, my mistake.) But if you do what celticelk said and play chords of stacked 4ths and 5ths and move them around in different (some odd) intervals, you could get some really nice sounds - especially that "suspended" sound that Tosin really likes in his chord voicings.

Oh yeah, one more thing, celticelk, that for calling me by my nickname: WOO. (Haha! Everyone on other forums calls me that, you are the first on sevenstring.org to do so.)

[Lives Once Abstract]

Originally Posted by celticelk

No worries - everybody has to start out not knowing this stuff. In my opinion - and I'm sure others here will say the same - the single best thing you can do for your playing is to develop your knowledge of theory.

With respect to parallel fourths and fifths: I think what WoO meant to say was stacked fourths and fifths. Most familiar chords are stacked thirds: a major triad, for example, is a major third (C-E) followed by a minor third (E-G), while a minor triad is a minor third (C-Eb) followed by a major third (Eb-G). Different harmonic structures are formed when other intervals are stacked: you might form a chord from stacked fourths, for example, spelled C-F-Bb, or from stacked fifths, spelled C-G-D. Stacked fourths are often found in jazz tunes, particularly modal jazz of the Sixties; the chords in the head to Miles Davis' "So What" are stacked fourths with a major third on top, for example. Stacked fifths can be found in "Message In a Bottle" by the Police (the verse riff is stacked fifths built on the notes C#, A, B, and F# in sequence), Joe Satriani's "Secret Prayer" (the intro section, which recurs later in the song as an interlude), and Tosin's "Inamorata." Parallel fourths and fifths, on the other hand, refer to intervals which stay constant as the root notes shift, rather than changing to reflect the intervals in the scale. (If you're playing diatonic fourths in C major, for example, you'd play C-F, D-G, and E-A, all *perfect* fourths, followed by F-B, which is an *augmented* fourth; the parallel fourth would be F-Bb, which uses a note that's not from the C major scale.)

thanks alot man, this helps alot, i understand that actually. imma go get crazy with muh 8 and see what happens

[Lives Once Abstract]

btw, ill be a senior next year and i will be taking music theory so i hope to learn alot.

[SchecterWhore]

Most of what I would have said has already been said by the other contributors here; you already have some good stuff to go off of. Analysis is a good skill for any musician to have, so my general recommendation is to learn concepts that you can apply to any any situation and expand upon as you encounter new music. I was fortunate enough to learn from people who had this sort of pedagogy in mind, and I'd like to think that other people have the same general attitude towards music.

I'm going to isolate a small bit of this discussion in order to introduce a couple of ideas. There was talk a little earlier about the words "parallel" and "stacked"; they belong to two different realms - the horizontal and the vertical. I'm going to talk about verticality first: whenever you have one pitch, or a chord, it's said to be a vertical sonority. However, when looking at a melody or a rhythm, where music is moving in time, we can consider it a horizontal event. Obviously, as music is an art that exists in time, all music has a horizontal aspect (unlike, say, a painting, which remains constant and unchanged no matter how long you look at it), but verticality is something that's unique to just a few musical cultures. Western music (like Western European, not like John Wayne) has the most complex vertical definition of music, and we therefore have systems by which to codify vertical events. We refer to two or more pitches sounding at the same time as "harmony". celticelk mentioned stacked fourths and fifths.



What we have here are various intervals being stacked on top of one another. The first is a bunch of stacked seconds, a secundal harmony. The second one is a bunch of stacked thirds, a tertian harmony. Tertian harmony makes up the great majority of Western harmonic music. The third one is built of stacked perfect fourths, or quartal harmony. The last one is stacked perfect fifths, and is called quintal harmony. Stacked sixths and sevenths are usually just different versions of tertian and secundal harmony, so I didn't list them here.

When vertical intervals meet the horizontal dimension, we have ways of describing their motion:



Hopefully, this will help you to describe music. I was more wordy than I hoped to be, but I think you'll find that music becomes a little less mysterious as soon as you learn to start applying labels to things.

[Wings of Obsidian]

SchecterWhore: Great example of stacked chords and intervals!

You want to get into Arabic, Middle-Eastern, and Indian music? They all use notes in intervals (1/4) that we don't use in our Western music here in America - thus, we cannot hit some of the notes that they play on our fretted instruments.

[Varcolac]

Can too hit the notes. So long as you're playing a violin-family instrument, you can play all the maqams you want. The freedom of a fretless fingerboard...

Alternatively, remove the frets. They're speed bumps!

[Wings of Obsidian]

Originally Posted by Varcolac

Can too hit the notes. So long as you're playing a violin-family instrument, you can play all the maqams you want. The freedom of a fretless fingerboard...

Alternatively, remove the frets. They're speed bumps!

That's what I meant. Damn, I need a Vigier fretless guitar now!

[Lives Once Abstract]

well you guys are helping out alot. thanks schecterwhore, much appreciated.

[SchecterWhore]

Originally Posted by Wings of Obsidian

You want to get into Arabic, Middle-Eastern, and Indian music? They all use notes in intervals (1/4) that we don't use in our Western music here in America - thus, we cannot hit some of the notes that they play on our fretted instruments.

'MURRICA!

I'm not too interested in microtones, actually. Or at least I don't put a whole lot of science into them. After all, I have trouble enough with getting my violinist to play in tune with only twelve tones. Whenever I've needed to grab an in-between note, I go for a bend. I doubt I'm ever going to be able to tell the difference between 3/9th's and 4/9th's flat, but there's still plenty of music to make in the meantime. Really, the only instruments that are locked into their pitches are claviers, xylophones, and, uh, the melodica. Some instruments have more perfect intonation or greater fluidity of pitch than others, but you can more or less fudge it.

[Lives Once Abstract]

Originally Posted by SchecterWhore

'MURRICA!

I'm not too interested in microtones, actually. Or at least I don't put a whole lot of science into them. After all, I have trouble enough with getting my violinist to play in tune with only twelve tones. Whenever I've needed to grab an in-between note, I go for a bend. I doubt I'm ever going to be able to tell the difference between 3/9th's and 4/9th's flat, but there's still plenty of music to make in the meantime. Really, the only instruments that are locked into their pitches are claviers, xylophones, and, uh, the melodica. Some instruments have more perfect intonation or greater fluidity of pitch than others, but you can more or less fudge it.

harps? harmonica?

[SchecterWhore]

Harps have pedals, and you can also slide on the strings. Harmonicas can bend pitches.

[celticelk]

Originally Posted by Lives Once Abstract

harps? harmonica?

I once saw a jazz harpist play some awesome bendy stuff by working her sharping levers in real time, and bending notes on blues harmonica is an old and honorable practice. Hell, Thelonious Monk used to imply quarter-tone dissonances by striking two adjacent keys on the piano and releasing one quickly. Extended techniques abound for every instrument, if you dive deeply enough into studying them.

[Adam Of Angels]

Originally Posted by Wings of Obsidian

Another really important thing is Tosin's selection of which intervals to use, which can really affect the sound and selection of chords.

Can you expand on this? I don't exactly follow the meaning of this. I'm one of those guitarists that is self taught, and can play most things, but doesn't have concrete terms for what he's doing.

[SchecterWhore]

Originally Posted by celticelk

I once saw a jazz harpist play some awesome bendy stuff by working her sharping levers in real time, and bending notes on blues harmonica is an old and honorable practice.

Harp kicks ass. My favorite part about the instrument is that its open key is Cb.

Hell, Thelonious Monk used to imply quarter-tone dissonances by striking two adjacent keys on the piano and releasing one quickly. Extended techniques abound for every instrument, if you dive deeply enough into studying them.

When I took jazz history, the instructor's take on that was that Monk was telescoping his melodies - collapsing a melodic series of notes into a harmonic sonority, then releasing notes in the order that they came in the original melody. Sounded good to me. And while we're on the subject of microtones in piano music...

Henry Cowell - The Banshee


Cowell is the man. I've never heard anybody else make such conventionally beautiful music at the piano whilst banging the keys with their entire ....ing arm.

Henry Cowell - The Tides of Manaunaun

[Lives Once Abstract]

lol i feel stupid. i had no idea harps had pedals. and how can harmonicas bend pitches?

[SchecterWhore]

It has to do with how you control the air flow, as well as changing the shape of the resonant space (the mouth).



It's very difficult to bend on chromatic harmonica, though, so it generally doesn't happen.

[edsped]

I think a good bit of the stuff Tosin comes up with isn't based on any strict theory but rather just his own sort of "personal theory" that most guitarists develop. In other words, finding and using patterns or progressions or arpeggios or whatever that sound good for what you want to do and not thinking about it in too much of a theoretical sense.

[SchecterWhore]

So the OP's supposed to figure out what Tosin is doing by disregarding the music and doing whatever he feels like? Sounds like a great way to learn to me.

[edsped]

Is that what I said?

[SchecterWhore]

In other words, finding and using patterns or progressions or arpeggios or whatever that sound good for what you want to do and not thinking about it in too much of a theoretical sense.

I think that's what you're advocating here. It's not that it's a bad approach, and I agree that one develops their identity through selectivity and personal preference as opposed to imitation and exercise. But imitation and exercise are essential in forming the groundwork for the identity that comes later. It's easy to stress the artistic identity, as that is the romantic ideal that Western civilization glorifies. However, I feel that the nature of the question has more to do with developing a vocabulary.