I’m currently going over the IFR Jam Tracks Level 2, Pure Harmony and was wondering how other people hear the chords. When you hear the 4 chord (say after the 1 chord in the first progression), do you hear/feel the 4th Harmonic Environment ?
When I’m playing over one of the Seven Worlds tracks for the 4th HE, note 7 always stands out, and characterises this HE. But when I play over the 4 chord I don’t get the same feeling.
Is this something to do with with the tonal centre being different in these two cases?
The PDF that goes with jam track 1 in that set ‘Chords 1 and 4 (campfire guitars)’ has something to say about the 7th of the chords? I’m not quite sure if it’s the same thing you are describing, but have you seen that?
I’ve had that set of tracks for ages and have only just got around to starting with them myself, so I happen to be on the same ‘page’.
Yes, I’ve looked though the PDFs that came with the Jam Tracks. I don’t think it has to do with 7ths in chords and triads. It’s more about getting the same sense of the HE that we develop when playing over the Level 1 Jam Tracks (Seven Worlds), getting that same feeling when it’s the 4 chord being played in a chord progression.
At the moment I’m not making the connection between the 4th HE and the 4 chord in a progression.
Hi Marie-Elaine
Have confidence in what you hear. I think what you’re hearing correctly what’s going on in the 1-4 chord progression.
When you play the 4th harmonic environment alone, you’re hearing the tonal center as the 4 (say F in the key of C), and all the other notes move away and come back to the 4 as the tonal center home base. In that, the 7 (B in the key of C) has that distinctive sound as a tritone from the 4 (F in the key of C).
When you play the 1-4 chord progression (say C-F chord in the key of C), then you’re typically hearing the 1 (root C) as the tonal center, not the F (4). Especially if the progression starts on 1 and moves to 4 then back to 1. So the F chord tones (F A C E) are more consonant to the chord of the moment, and other tones are dissonant while the F chord is in the air. But it has a different sound flavor because the tonal center is the 1, not the 4. (B keeps more of the sound of a major 7th interval to C, and not a tritone to F.)
I think the point of learning to improvise in the harmonic environments is to recognize when the tones are consonant (chord tones) and when they are dissonant (non-chord tones), and develop a relationship to those basic consonant sounds. In short, when the F chord is “in the air” the tones F A C & E are more consonant than when the C chord is in the air (when C E G B are consonant). Of course the C & E are consonant over both chords.
But all this is fluid. The relationships among all the sounds are shifting all the time in a piece of music … with different degrees of tension & release. What music does for me in general is play with the sounds so that the flow goes in one direction, then another; patterns in the air with degrees of consonance & dissonance that move around in pretty ways. I’m sure a good musician (not me) could make the 4 chord transition sound like the 4th HE by fiddling with rhythm and what tones fall on stressed and unstressed beats, but to me, it’s not what usually happens to my ears.
David Reed has a nice video that explains some of tonal centers and harmonic environments & modes here:
In short, theory is only a rough guide to what you are hearing. What you hear is the real point.
Thanks Allan @hender99 I think you’ve hit the nail in the head. It’s all about how I’m feeling the Tonal Centre. Note 4 is definitely the TC when I’m listening to the Seven Worlds Jam Tracks, but this is not the case when I’m listening to the Pure Harmony tracks. You’re right, the other chord (eg the 1 chord) sets up the TC, and in that context the 4 chord has a certain sound.
I had a play with track 10, where the 6- chord sets up note 6 as the TC and alternate 6- chord and 4 chord. Again, different feeling created on the 4 chord.
A whole lot of combinations possible here, I guess.
@hender99 You beat me to it. I’d been pondering & was just logging in to offer an explanation along the same lines. It’s very nice to find that your thoughts concur with mine.
Wow, all three of you are just beautiful. This kind of conversation is exactly what I had hoped would happen with the IFR student forum, and it’s why I haven’t participated myself until now. This thread is a perfect example of you guys exploring issues and resolving them on your own. Special thanks to @hender99 for a beautiful explanation of exactly what’s going on here.
So this gets to the heart of what the “harmonic environments” mean. It’s not about playing the notes in a particular order on your instrument (e.g. 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4). And it’s not about what chord is sounding in the background (because as @mem pointed out, the 4 chord can be sounding in the background but we DON’T hear the 4th harmonic environment). It has to do with the TONAL CENTER.
Specifically, here’s the definition of the 4th harmonic environment:
“The 4th harmonic environment is how the notes of the major scale sound to our ear when we’re feeling note 4 as the tonal center.”
That’s it. And as @hender99 also wonderfully pointed out, this feeling of the tonal center can sometimes be just a passing sensation, as all of these feelings can be very fluid in musical compositions. This is why it’s important to get to know all of these sensations for ourselves, so that we can recognize them instantly whenever we happen to feel them while we’re improvising.
But for right now, I think the big discovery is contained in the little experiment that @mem already invented:
First go to the Seven Worlds jam tracks and practice improvising in the first harmonic environment. Notice how each note sounds.
Then stay with the Seven Worlds jam tracks but go to the fourth harmonic environment and notice what sounds different, which will be the striking sound of note 7 in this harmonic environment.
Then go to IFR Jam Tracks Level 2: Pure Harmony Essentials and practice improvising over a track that alternates between chords 1 and 4. Notice that the overall melodic sound of each note is identical to your experience in the FIRST harmonic environment.
What this experiment shows you is exactly what @hender99 explained, that when you’re improvising over that chord change you’re actually feeling note 1 as your tonal center the whole time.
Beautiful discussion, people. It’s inspiring and humbling to be able to serve musicians like yourselves.
Thanks for this David (and your other responses in the forum), your inputs are very useful and are certainly helping me in my music journey!
For me currently, I think delving into Exercise 3 has been adding a layer of confusion to my understanding, so I’m going deeper in Exercise 2 and really trying to get familiar with the Seven Environments, before I’ll return to Pure Harmony. I’ve been jamming with the Seven Worlds tracks and also pulling out the chord tones, then I’ll revisit combining chords.
Hi @mem, that’s a great insight. Studying the chords separately is endlessly enriching, and it’s exactly what will give you the clarity you need to enjoy improvising over chord progressions. In fact, I don’t even think of it as going back to Exercise 2. For me, whenever you’re aware of the chord notes in a harmonic environment and you’re using them consciously, you’re practicing Exercise 3. It’s just that right now you’re realizing that there is much to be gained from studying the chords individually (e.g. Seven Worlds Expanded) before trying to combine them (e.g. Melody Paths). But all of this is part of Exercise 3.
One nice thing is that we can practice this new consciousness of the chord notes using the same jam tracks we used for our Exercise 2 practice, namely IFR Jam Tracks Level 1: Seven Worlds. The other resource that I encourage you to use every day is our audio course Sing the Numbers 2: Seven Worlds. In this audio course, we study each harmonic environment three different ways (in three separate audio tracks). For each harmonic environment, one of the tracks is purely an exploration of the chord notes. This would be fantastic for you right now because you’ll hear so many catchy melodies sung in tonal numbers with just the chord notes. So this really burns these tonal numbers into your mind, which will give you so much more clarity of vision when you later go to improvise over chord progressions.
So for this deep dive into the chord notes of each harmonic environment individually, I can’t recommend enough both your IFR Jam Tracks practice and your Sing the Numbers practice. These two activities together will have you feeling supremely confident with the chord notes in all seven harmonic environments in a very short time. And then I think you’ll really enjoy improvising over chord progressions, because you’ll be feeling so much control over all of these sounds in your music.
And please keep sharing your discoveries and experiences here. I love how thoughtful you are about your music practice and I think it’s a great example for other people who are navigating these same issues.
I had read this topic before, but decided to re-read it again today. There is so much information packed in there that multiple reads are necessary for me. (It’s like with the IFR book, I learn new things each time I re-read a chapter again.- and I’m still at the beginning of exercise 3.)
I’ve spent some time recently on trying to feel the numbers on the 1st and 6th harmonic environment (HE). I am quite happy with the progress I made. I can play one note at random on my instrument (or sing or imagine a sound). I can then almost instantly know where I am on my tonal map. This is, on the 1st and 6th HE and when using IFR Jam tracks level 1 (7 Worlds).
But this doesn’t work that well, or at all, when I am playing with a backing track with chord progressions (well, any real music really). Even the ones where to tonal center is 1 or 6 (the HE I am comfortable with).
Using the same example used in this topic about how the notes sound when the chord 4 is being played in the first HE:
I have a different experience than what’s described in the 3rd point above. I feel the notes sound a bit different when the chord 1 or the chord 4 are played in the background. If I try to feel a note while chord 1 is playing, I instantly recognize the note. I don’t often recognize the same note if chord 4 is playing (or other chords in other chord progression). I read somewhere that the notes have two “feelings” or “colors”, one because of their relationship with the tonal center, and one because of their relationship with the chord currently being played. Is this correct? Is there a description of this in the IFR book?
If this is correct, what’s the best way to correctly feel these notes? If there are two different “colors” at the same time, on the notes as I describe above, should I try to focus my attention only to the color in relation to the tonal center, or should I learn this additional color of the relation with the current chord. For the latter, this seems like a large amount of combinations (at least 7 notes * 7 tonal centers * 7 chords.)
Thank you.
By the way, I re-discovered this topic by using the search function of the forum. I was impressed to see how much I could find by just searching on the keyword “environment”. I am super happy to see how valuable this forum is and always impressed by the quality of the contributions here.
It’s wonderful to hear from you! I don’t want to dominate the discussion because I think it would probably be more valuable to hear how other musicians experience this. But here are two quick observations that I would like to share back with you:
I think you might be overthinking this whole issue. I don’t mean that in the philosophical sense that you’re thinking incorrectly. The question you are raising is totally valid and you’re framing it very well. But I mean in the personal sense. Is this really an impediment to your musical enjoyment right now? Does it really matter if you are thinking about the notes in the “correct” way? I say this because I know you personally and I know how thoughtful you are. That’s a wonderful quality but it can sometimes get you stuck because you haven’t given the other parts of your musical personality time to catch up with your intellect. So logically, you’re already seeing 3 steps ahead and you’re asking all the right questions. But you won’t find satisfying answers to those questions because your personal experience with the sounds is lagging behind. So just be aware that there’s also a tremendously important role played by unconscious learning, the kind of learning that comes from singing your favorite songs in the shower, playing your heart out and expressing yourself passionately on your instrument, going to concerts and listening deeply to the most beautiful moments. All of this real world experience with harmony gives you perspective. If this makes sense, here’s a concrete action you can take right now. Temporarily set aside the work you’re doing on both ear training and improvising with chords 1 and 4. (Don’t worry, you’ll come back to it soon enough. I’m just proposing a short detour.) Take a few weeks and learn to play 10 songs on the guitar that use chords 1 and 4. Don’t worry about analyzing them, and don’t get stuck obsessing about whether you are “hearing” the notes in the right way. Just learn to play the songs and make them beautiful. Use our chord melody technique to reproduce the entire song (melody + chords) all by yourself on the guitar. You’ll find a bunch of great example songs in this Spotify list that we created for our video course “Recognizing Chords by Ear”. All of the songs on this list have important sections that are just chords 1 and 4:
Pick a few songs and learn to play them beautifully on the guitar. Then KEEP playing them! Try to find at least one that you would enjoy having in your permanent repertoire of songs to play for other people. Keep coming back to this song, expressing both the melody and your own improvisations, and really turn it into something beautiful and powerful that you can express on the guitar. This emotional relationship with songs using chords 1 and 4 could be the missing piece that you are looking for. And don’t get me wrong. If your experience were different, I would be recommending something else. Some people have ONLY played songs all their lives, and they still don’t understand anything. So for them I would recommend the IFR Jam Tracks, Sing the Numbers, etc. But in your case, I think you’ve done that deep exploration of the individual elements, and now the part that’s more blurry is the broader context or perspective. So my first reaction to your question is that you might be at a great moment in your life to just learn some songs using these harmonic concepts, and that might help you to be more at peace with the duality of how these notes sound over both chords.
You’ll be happy to know that my second point is shorter. It’s just a validation of what you’re saying about how the notes continue to feel different to you when the chords change. The best way to think about this is the idea of “duality”. Each note has BOTH its relationship to the tonal center AND its relationship to the chord of the moment. And that’s a huge part of the richness of western harmony. This video illustrates this duality with a playing example that will help you feel the notes both ways simultaneously:
I hope some of this is useful. But let me be clear that I think you’re hearing all of these sounds exactly as they are, which is wonderful. I think we’re all just struggling for the right words to describe what we hear and feel when we listen to these notes. But everything you explain sounds 100% right to me, which is why I think that the strategy of more innocent playing (and especially playing SONGS) could be just what you need in order to feel like more of a veteran or an expert in this terrain. (There’s only so much confidence you can gain from understanding principles in the abstract, no matter how right they are. But when you combine that with lots of real world experience, that’s where you’ll feel things coming together and your confidence will take off.)
Thank you for everything you do for our forum, Dave!!!
David
You are right @Dave, some real nuggets in this thread I had forgotten about, thanks for resurrecting it!
I was working on 1st and 4th, which are closer to each other than 1st and 6th, so your task might be a bit more tricky than mine was. With 1st and 4th, the only note differentiating the scales is note 7, so I really homed in on that note when playing over the two Seven Worlds tracks for 1st and 4th HE, to hear the difference. The same with Pure Harmony chord progressions with 1 and 4 chords, working around note 7 with first the 1 chord in the back, then the 4 chord in the back.
As @ImproviseForReal said, note 7 sounds like it does in the 1st HE Seven Worlds track. So, my conclusion was that the tonal centre has a stronger “pull” than the current chord. So, I don’t get that “odd” feeling with note 7 that I get in the 4th HE. What I do get when the chord changes in the back is a different set of “comfortable” notes, ie the chord notes. So, when its the 1 chord, notes 1,3,5 are comfortable, and for the 4 chord its 1,4,6
I couldn’t find it in the book, but I think David talks about this in a video. The way I think about this is that the tonal centre provides the biggest “pull” of gravity, that is always there. Our ear can pick up on the relationship between each note and this centre. Chords can change over this constant centre, and the chords provide a (sometimes fleeting) set of notes which are comfortable at the time, but not for very long if the chord changes.
Rather than two different colours, I think of a “real” colour, as painted/absolute, in relation to the tonal centre, and an apparent/relative colour that we think we see, relative to the current chord. This apparent colour may be just an illusion, created by the chord, but we perceive it differently because that is how our brains work.
You have probably seen optical illusions which are designed to trick us into seeing something that is not there, like the grey strawberries, that is how I think tonal centres and chords are working with our ears.
Your question prompted another great response from @ImproviseForReal, that’s advice I think I need to follow as well, so thank you for raising it. Letting these concepts sink in at an experiential level as well as an intellectual one!
