Harmony for the compleat idiot (III)

...continued from front page

Remembering that the first flat is "Bb" and the first flat key is "F" and that everything works cumulatively and clockwise, here we go...

The first Flat key is "F" with one flat (Bb) so the notes in the key of "F" (and therefore the notes that make up the F major scale) are:

F G A Bb C D E F

The second Flat key is "Bb" with two flats (Bb and Eb) so the notes in the key of "Bb" (and of the Bb major scale) are:

Bb C D Eb F G A Bb

The third Flat key is "Eb" with three flats (Bb, Eb and Ab) so the notes in the key of "Eb" (and of the Eb major scale) are:

Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb

Are you getting the picture now?

Here's Ab:

Ab Bb C DB Eb F G Ab

Here's Db:

Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C Db

Here's Gb:

Gb Ab Bb C Db Eb F Gb

How did you go? If you got any wrong go back and find your mistake. This stuff is vital, you need to be able to rattle these off in your sleep.

Here's our cycle with some additions. The great big arrow on the outside tells you where the flat keys start and which direction they go. The thin arrow tells you where the actual flats start and which direction they go:

The Sharp Keys

I told you last issue that we'd learn the secret pattern of sharp keys. Sharp keys can be worked out using a similar system on the cycle but there are some important differences:

1. With Sharp keys, everything works anticlockwise.
2. The first sharp key is "G".
3. The first sharp is F# .

(Now before you go blind looking for F# in the cycle, relax: it's not there. We just pretend that "F" is "F#" for the purpose of working out sharp keys, we then pretend "C" is "C#" and so on...)

Here's yet another cycle (we'll soon have enough to run the Tour de France!). This one has (in addition to all the stuff we've seen already) two new things:

1. A new big arrow telling us where the sharp keys start and which direction they go in.
2. A new thin arrow telling us where the actual sharps start and which direction they go in.

Check it out and see if you can work out how to make sharp keys:

(Hmmm. This cycle is starting to look like some strange critter from a video game!)

Time's up! Did you get it?

Let me run through it for you:

The first sharp key is "G" with one sharp (the first sharp, F#). So...

Here are the notes in G Major:

G A B C D E F# G

Let's do another one a bit further round the cycle:

E Major

E is at 8 o'clock (see it?). G is the first sharp key and therefore has one sharp, move anti clockwise on step and you come to D. This is the second sharp key and therefore has two sharps, move another step and you come to A. This is the third sharp key and therefore has three sharps, move another step and you come to E. This is the fourth sharp key and therefore has four sharps. BINGO!!

The key of E major has four sharps.

Go to the arrow labelled "sharps start here". Notice that it is at "F" ? Therefore the first sharp is F#. Move one step anticockwise and you come to the second sharp (it says "C" but we know it means "C#" for this purpose). Keep going and you'll get the third and fourth sharps "G#" and "D#". Soo....

E major has four sharps.

The four sharps in E major are: F#, C#, G# and D#.

Soo...

Here are the notes in the key of E major (and therefore the notes in the E major scale if you play them in order. Remember "Doh a deer" ?):

E F# G# A B C# D# E

You now have enough information to work out all the sharp keys. Go to it, I'll give you the answers next time and remember: no homework = no elephant stamp!

Chord Symbols

Remember way back in part 1 (before we became enmeshed in the intricacies of major scales) that I said that harmony was the business of playing more than one note at a time?

Musicians have, over the years come up with different systems for indicating which group of notes they are talking about. We will look at the system which is in common use now (although some hidebound academics like to pretend that it doesn't exist!). This is the chord symbol system.

The simplest symbol in this system is a capital letter like these:

C or F or any other of the first seven letters of the alphabet.

This symbol means that the notes indicated are the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes in the major scale of the letter. The chord formed by these notes is called a major chord.

"C" means the chord of C major and consists of the notes C, E and G.

"F" means the chord of F major and consists of the notes F, A and C.

"Eb" means the chord of Eb major and consists of the notes Eb, G and Bb.

"A" means the chord of A major and consists of the notes A, C# and E

Often we drop the word major and just call the chord its letter name. For example:

"C" means a C chord

"F" means an F chord

...and so on.

It doesn't matter how many times each note is played in different octaves, as long as all three notes are there, you have the chord.

(Guitarists: play an open C chord and you'll see that it is made up of the these notes going from lowest to highest:

E, C, E, G, C, E

3 E's, 2 C's and 1 G. six notes in total but they are all either C, E or G. Therefore this a C chord)

Some harmonic implications can be drawn from which of the three notes is on the bottom but for the present we will ignore them. For our current purposes if all three notes are there at least once then that's the chord.

Tune in next time to have your sharp keys corrected and learn more about chord symbol land. Maybe we'll even give you an elephant stamp...

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Girl Pilot: family business

...continued from front page

Stylistically, Girl Pilot have been compared to SuperJesus. "We've also been compared to Killing Heidi, just because we've got a female vocalist but some people criticise us for it." says Sarah. The band is also influenced by silverchair, The Living End, Motorace..."We have lot of influences really." Hardly surprising for a young band. What is more surprising is the way they blend and modulate those influences into their own coherent sound. "The band formed last year." says Sarah. "We've got a soundproof room at home. Our parents are very supportive."

And they are not famous just with their families. Girl Pilot have won a number of competitions, including Launchpad and the Knox FreeZa Battle of the Bands. They also scored a track on the overseas promo CD Melbourne Fresh.

Relationships between band members are good, because of their close family ties. "We get on really well in the band - the brother-sister relationship helps," says Rob. It probably helps also that Girl Pilot have a relatively unstressed philosophy of performance, both relaxed and ambitious. "We just get up there and do it as best we can. We want the crowd to enjoy what we are doing. We'd like to be right up there with the best of them in five years time." Girl Pilot got a chance to do just that at the recent Rock for the Roses benefit [insert jump here]. The first band to play at the newly-refurbished QBH, they opened for the likes of Bomba, The Screaming Jets, Ross Wilson and Rose Tattoo.

Mike and Rob write the band's music. "We just play and if we come up with something that sounds good, we work on it. We record any good ideas on eight-track." Meanwhile, Sarah comes up with the lyrics. "It's subconscious: I don't really think about what I'm writing. It's just about life I guess. Like our song Fact or Fiction - it's about everything passing by, about kids being forced to grow up because of technology, about not being able to make sense of things."

But Sarah is not one to preach. "We are not trying to teach the community a lesson. This is just what we think. People can make up their own minds about how true it really is."

A snippet of Girl Pilot's Fact or Fiction

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