maleza

I've been developing a method for learning and playing western music based on some unconventional but no new concepts.

It takes ideas from Bela Bartok, Barry Harris, John Coltrane, Pat Martino and two relatively recent projects; HAVISY and Meta Harmony.

My departures from said works consist in aplying the concepts on "all minor thirds" tuned string instruments, ditching note names in favor of duodecimal notation and how that enables a one to one correlation between the mental representation and the instrument.

For me, after thirtysomething years trying to actually get music, it feels like a revellation. It took me from perpetual novice to interesting harmonic improvisation in a few days.

So I whant to share it in the hope that it will probably help others.

I won't claim that this is THE method. It is just what works for my terribly monotropic and glitchy brain and will probably help you if that's your thing too.

A thread...
#musictheory #musicharmony #guitar

Jun 24, 2025 at 12:59amWeb
Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025

Most western music (atonal included) takes into acount tonic, subdominant and dominant functions. It's the movement and ballance between these three groups of notes which shapes our harmony. Over the instrument we can find them by playing three diminished chords one semitone apart each.

Lets identify them with numbers instead of their usual names. This will help us to apretiate proportion and get rid of the C-Major-centrism.

If we have twelve notes from zero to eleven our groups will be:

0 3 6 9 Tonic function.
1 4 7 A Dominant fuction.
2 5 8 B Subdominant function.

If we tune a stringed instrument, a guitar for example, all-minor-thirds that's exactly how they are going to apear on the fretboard.

0 3 6 9 0 3
1 4 7 A 1 4
2 5 8 B 2 5
3 6 9 0 3 6
etc.

This alone can lead to some Neo vibes. It's just fretboard diagrams but now we can see functions at first sight and this opens the door to a ton of niceties that we are going to explore in this jurney.

Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025

Let's take a look to some chords under this perspective.

Barry Harris and Pat Martino simplifyed a lot chord deduction by defining them in terms of transformations to the diminished chord. For example, if you rise any note of a diminished what you get is a minor seventh chord. This helps to find new chords without having to remember too many shapes. Learn all possible diminished shapes, remember the transformation rules and you're done.

My preference is to define them, instead, in terms of notes we take from each function. Given our prefered tunning, there are not many shapes to remember anyway and they can be moved freely over the freetboard with no changes. This will help us see harmony in a way that I find enlightening.

We will focus for now into five species of chords, all of them taking notes from the tonic and dominant functions. Later, we will see how the subdominant function interacts with, and enriches them.

They are: diminished, major 6, minor 6, dominant and dominant flat five.

Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025

Diminished chords take all of their notes from the same function. With our current tunning they have the simplest of the forms: just a bar.

Since they form two tritones (0-6 and 3-9) its feeling is unresolved and give no clues about where to resolve. This makes them a nice choice as pivot or passing chords.

Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025
Minor 6 chords take three notes from the tonic function and one from the dominant function. This imbalance gives them an opaque sound. We can also observe that beyond having a tritone over the tonic function, it feels resolved by the dominant function note.
Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025
Major 6 chords are formed with two consecutive notes from the tonic function and two (also consecutive) notes from the dominant function. Notice how as note distribution becomes balanced the sound feels also more stable. Also, as we take more notes from the dominant function it sounds brighter.
Show threadmalezaJun 24, 2025
Keeping this tendency dominant chords take one more note from the dominant function. The result is an even brighter sound and certain instability due to the forming of a tritone, this time over the dominant function. They are like a mirror of the minor 6 chords but this time instead of keeping us back to the tonic function they ask for more forward movement. I love how obvious this starts to look like. We are physically, graphically and harmonically playing with movement and equilibrium. It feels like moving weights around to observe its musical effect.