Page 14 - Write Away Magazine April

Now That You KNOW

Last time, we worked out the logic of 7th
chords. Though that probably isn’t how
they came into usage, it was at least a

way of understanding where they came The Rules.....
from. (Fun Fact: the “acceptance” of
certain tones as “harmonically pleasant”
follows an evolutionary path…..first,
humans noticed that the octave could
work….then the fourth and 5th ……

then the third….then the major sev-
enth….ALMOST following the scientific
study of frequencies, which had noted
that dividing a vibrating string in half

produced an octave, which was twice the
frequency of vibration….too much
science, nevermind, not fun after all) .

A couple of conclusions that might be
important to songwriters: Those words

“acceptance” and “harmonically
pleasant”…..what do those mean? Why
should we care? We should care
because, at its core, songwriting is

communication with our fellow
humans……(analogy:don’t tell me how
funny you are if no one laughs!).
“Harmonically pleasant” or “Consonant”
might be described as the comfortable

feeling of “coming home” to familiarity.
“Dissonant” might be then analogous to
visiting a strange, far-off culture. Not a
hard value judgement, a feeling…..a feel-
ing that our fellow humans might share

as a group. Nothing wrong with the far-
off culture, but I’m not feeling familiarity
there…..make sense? When we “resolve”
from V7 (the famous
“dominant seventh”) to the “Root”

(Imaj7), what we are doing
emotionally is bringing the listener

14 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk