Re: Happy tab, or music of any sort

[btd@carina.cray.com (Bryan Dongray)]

anderson@ppg01.sc.hp.com (Allen Anderson) on 19 Jan 1996 19:26:06 GMT wrote:
> Does anyone know where one might find some tab or musical hints as to
> playing Happy songs?  Chords would be fine...

Just don't use minor chords, and generally stick to I IV V (eg C F G).
Also if possible make it "catchy" by using a pentatonic scale for
the melody (eg C D E G A in C major, or "the black notes" in F#).

I notice many of Kate "popular" songs are so pentatonic, and she even
cheats by "using the black notes" and using lots of Ebm and Abm
to give them "haunting" or "pondering thoughts" sound. There's
probably a term for these, but I just barely sideline in music.

On the "one chord" of Rubberband girl, ISN'T IT AMAZING that KaTe can
put out a single chord based tune that is so popular (and IMO, so good).
OK, the melody is full of 6ths, 7ths and occasional 4ths (on the tonic
of that chord) to give it that Kate sound.

If you've still not lost interest, another excellent use of dischord that
does not sound dischordant, is "Free as a Bird" by the Beatles, the main
piano backing goes (very basically, NB C4=Middle C, C5=top C, B4=Cb5):
	A	ie A3	A4  C#5 E5
	A/F#	ie F#3	A4  C#5 E5
	Am/F	ie F3	A4  C5  E5
	E	ie E3	G#4 B4  E5
repeated.
Notice A-minor with a base note of an F, ie an E and an F, WOW dischord!
but it sounds so "right"! I guess the two octave distance helps.

I guess this fits with my wifes observations that so many excellent
music "writers" never had formal training (not only modern stuff, but
also classical, eg Mozart). I'm not knocking those who have been
formally trained, but I can see how a lot teaching is to get the pupil
to think and behave in a standard way. Other well thought of people such
as Einstein, Pascal and Edison always had terrible school reports, they
just were not "teachers favourite", ie thinking the way teachers wanted
them to - fortunately.

I'm glad KaTe was mostly self taught (ok, a few chords from her dad) and
similarly her singing and dance styles would have been far different,
so perhaps not making the style we know (and love).

			Bryan Dongray