RIFFS:
Labels get a bad rap.
The desire to fit everything into neat little boxes is annoying:
Is it cool jazz? Or hard bop?
Is pop punk really punk?
Is a hotdog a sandwich?
We rebel against the tyranny of stuffy, pretentious lingo.
But there is great power in naming a thing.
It puts convenient handles on unwieldy concepts.
It’s mise en place for your brain. A name is a low-resolution rendering of reality. In other words: a map.
Labels help us think clearly.
Last week we talked about listening vs hearing.
My definitions of these terms are complete and total bullshit.
They don’t appear in any dictionary. And that’s ok. Labeling them that way allowed me to communicate my ideas to you.
That’s the power of labels.
Listening & Hearing go hand-in-hand with Labeling.
Things to notice as you listen…
(…so you can label them & communicate them to others):
verse
chorus
bridge
etc
4/4
6/8
“there’s a 2/4 bar that sets up the second chorus”
etc
ii-V-I
“it goes to the four minor”
1564
etc
maj7
7♯9
“are you singing the flat seven here?”
etc
groove
backbeat
shuffle
second line
etc
instrumentation
“there’s a pad in the intro”
“B3 enters at verse two”
“the bass drops out for the first four bars of the down chorus”
etc
That’s all music theory is: naming things.
Not everything needs a name, but avoiding names is dumb.
It’s confusing for you. It’s frustrating for the people you’re playing with.
Life is easier with labels (theory) than without.
The exception:
Old, overly formal names can feel stifling, weird, and out of touch.
🙅♂️ “they use the modal interchange to pivot…”
👍 “Things We Said Today goes from A minor in the verse to A Major in the chorus”
🙅♂️ “I’m using phrygian dominant here”
👍 “the 3 chord is major, so I get to play all these cool half-step moves”
Context is king—learn the labels that are important in YOUR context.
Music-school theory is great…
…for music school.
But casual, workmanlike, street-level, real-world theory is for EVERYONE.
If nerding out on classically-derived edge case theory is appealing for you, by all means have at it.
But if you find that stuff unappealing?
Don’t let someone else’s nerdy hobby turn you off of a truly useful tool.
That’s all I got this week.
See you next Wednesday,
Josh