Writing About Music

This is a relatively busy week. I’m hoping to “transmit” two Berklee Press book/CD packs into production (meaning, give a production manager the Word and Finale files, for layout in InDesign, and play-along audio CD masters for duplication), and have also been reviewing the printer’s final proofs for my wife’s book that we’re self-publishing.

Pronouncing something “done done done” is a little hard for me, as at these milestones in project lifecycles, I still sometimes find scary, horrendous mistakes. There are just so many inventive ways that mistakes can creep in, by my own hand as much as anyone else’s. Each one gives me a new form of publishing PTSD. The cumulative effect has been to add a level of anxiety to the end game of publishing, for me.

The best way I’ve found to control this is to maintain a series of checklists, for different stages of book and CD production. At this relatively grizzled stage of my career, I’ve got some good lists! So here are a few things I’ve seen that you might look for when finishing up your own project—book, album, concert program, and so on. It might seem like I’m associated with a lot of disasters! But they’ve been accumulating gradually over a long time (and hundreds of projects), so maybe it’s not as bad as it looks….

In no particular order:

1. Typos on the spine. The trick with book/CD jacket spines is that on the proof, they are oriented sideways. If you don’t print it out, it’s particularly difficult to spot typos on them. Some typefaces and letter combinations are especially hard to see in some fonts: li instead of ll, and so on. In one book, no fewer than five competent professionals signed off on the last proof with a typo on the spine, including me. It did go to press with this error, and we spent thousands of dollars reprinting it. I am forever traumatized by this. So, I always print out hard copies to proofread at a late stage of the publishing process and turn the paper sideways to proofread the spine. It’s easier than turning the computer sideways to check. I also proofread covers backwards and forwards—an old proofreading trick that sometimes brings subtle things to light, because you’re not distracted by the content.

2. Leaving a co-author name off the cover. This one fortunately didn’t go to press, but it made it awfully far in the production process. One author was my primary contact on this project, and the graphic designer on that cover was his friend, rather than our usual designer. So, the designer just put his friend’s name on it, and it took me a looong time to notice this. Fortunately, we caught it. That would have been another traumatic disaster, and the forgotten co-author would have never forgiven me.

A way to avoid this kind of thing is to give the designer an explicit “art direction sheet,” which includes a detailed set of instructions about exactly what needs to go on the cover: title, subtitle, author names, CD included icon, logo, and so on. You need to think about this kind of thing away from the heat of the battle, before the proofs come and the deadline is too close, when you can be deliberate and detailed. I could give you my list of excuses for not doing an AD sheet that time, but you’d just scoff at me for them, and you’d be right to do so.

3. Typos in page headers, particularly chapter titles. Left-hand pages have the book title at the top, and right-hand pages have the individual chapter titles. These get typed in by the layout artist and seem to be typo traps, for some reason. I see mistakes in these all the time: headers that don’t match their chapters, wrong chapter numbers, wrong words, wrong punctuation, typos, and so on. Chapter titles need to be cross-checked in three places: the table of contents, the chapter opening page, and the chapter’s header pages. Anything that the production team needs to rekey can be a similar typo trap: title pages, copyright pages, index, etc. In the first book Berklee Press I ever edited, they spelled my name wrong in my editorial credit on the title page. It said something like, “Edited by Some Bozo Who Can’t Spell His Own Name.” We never checked it, and it went to press like that. An excellent lesson for me in humility as well as project management.

4. CDs with files as MP3s, not AIFF or WAV. This is a great danger when people create CD masters in their home studios using iTunes, rather than having a professional engineer do it. That’s very rarely the case with our books, but it’s happened a couple times, when authors have done some professional-level engineering work and want to self-produce their play-along CD. If you Q/C-check CD masters on a computer, you might not catch it, if you don’t deliberately check the file type. But MP3 files won’t play on many CD players, and of course, the sound quality is inferior. See my CD Mastering Checklist for a list of similar things to check on CD masters.

5. Leaving the engineer(s) off of the recording credits. This is a subjective call by the author, but often, the engineer makes a very profound contribution to an accompanying recording, and they deserve to be listed as a key contributor to a project.

6. Notation files with the wrong text. This is a common mistake in pedagogical music books, which we nearly always catch, fortunately, but it’s something easy to overlook. The issue is that layout artists often can’t read music notation, so it’s not always clear to them whether or not the notation logically matches the text. It’s important to have a couple thinking musicians review proofs for the logical flow of the material, rather than just people confirming that the spelling and punctuation are correct.

7. Omitted paragraphs of text. This happens when layout artists transfer Word files into graphic design programs. You have to compare the original text with the layout, to confirm that no text is missing. Like item (6), it’s best for the author to check these, as that’s the person most likely to catch it.

8. Repeated systems of notation. This issue usually happens when there’s a change in the music system layout. Say you have a piece that’s six systems long. At first, two fit on the title page, three on page 2, and one on page 3. We decide to move the header up and squeeze three systems onto page 1. While we might only think we are changing page 1, pages 2 and 3 also readjust automatically, and so we must change the exported graphics for pages 1 and 2 and delete page 3, in order to avoid repeated systems. This is an example of how a relatively small change might have far-reaching repercussions.

9. Roman numerals in front matter. Our house style, shared by most commercial publishers, is to have the copyright page, table of contents, acknowledgements, etc. set in lowercase Roman numerals in italics, and then page 1 is the first page of chapter 1. Designers new to book publishing are often unaware of this publishing convention and start page 1 with the title page.

10. Butt-ugly covers. This is often a failure of vision and patience, more than a proofreading mistake, but the affect on sales can be devastating, even to a really good book or album. Bad covers are sometimes the result of committee syndrome, or just bad communication with the graphic designer. A few times, covers go to press that are really not good enough, and sad to say, sales suffer as a result. In happier news, there have been a few instances when we put better covers on back-catalog books, and sales increased as a result. Everyone judges books by their covers—and by their titles too. It’s worth trying hard to make these really good.

Are you as exhausted by this list as I am? I’m stopping at ten, before the self-loathing gets too thick. So much can go wrong. But for me, the point in publishing is ultimately to make high quality information and art available to people, and making sure it’s all easy to “digest” is a high priority. It’s important to get it right. There’s enough junk out there already, without us piling on more.

Checklists can be a great help in ensuring quality. Developing them is an aspect of management strategy—devoting time to plan how to make the project good, rather than only reacting to what’s in front of you. This is a critical dimension of effective project management, and it can help you avoid some of these nightmares.

As a musician, you will need an endless stream of photos of yourself. Every couple years, you will need new high quality images. Certainly, you need new ones every five years, to keep up with your current wardrobe, body shape, hair, artistic incarnation, etc. These photos need to be high resolution digital files: figure, 9×12 and 300 dpi. The lighting should look deliberate, and the focus should be tack sharp. You should have vertical, horizontal, and square options, to suit different layouts for various types of publications. There should be action shots of you on stage, and then poised studio portraits. You need some with your instrument and some without. Some cheery, some intense, some active, some relaxed. These will go on your various websites, on CD covers, on ads, in any books you write, and on and on. Photos make everything better. You need a zillion of them. And they need to be high quality.

It’s so common for me to ask an author for a photo for their bio page or for a book cover, and for them to have absolutely nothing appropriate. They might only have out-of-focus, low-resolution snapshots, or headshots from forty of fifty years ago—no exaggeration. The result? Less personal exposure for them, and fewer chances to associate their face with the art they have to offer, which makes it less “real” to the potential buyer. If you’re active in your career, or plan to be in the future, you need good photos. And this is true of a lot of people other than musicians, too! Anyone active in the world, anyone with a song and dance (literally or figuratively) needs them. Particularly musicians, though.

Ideally, you’d have a professional photographer take them for you. If you don’t like paying professionals for their hard work, maybe you can barter. My own best coup in this regard was trading a few dozen eggs from my chickens for a photo session with a photographer I like a lot. It resulted in this album cover shot, which I think is perfect for it:

You can sometimes find student photographers or emerging pros who are looking to build their portfolios and will do photo shoots for little or no money. Try Craigslist. Particularly if you’re just accumulating your general arsenal of photos, and don’t have a paying opportunity lined up for financing them (i.e., publishing contract with advance money, well-paying gig, etc.), it makes sense to go this route. This can be a way to get good work inexpensively. Then again, if funds are available, there are great benefits of working with a pro—paying someone to do a good job. Make sure you have the rights to use the images as you wish.

Whenever you have a performance, try to get photos taken, so that you can have fun action shots of music being made. These are really useful, and also nearly impossible to obtain from scratch, on short notice. It’s a good idea to train the people around you to take better photos. If I had my way, all musicians would be excellent amateur photographers, so that they could trade photography favors with each other.

Here are some DIY tips. Though, you should periodically have an experienced photographer take some for you too.

1. Buy a good digital camera and a good external flash, and loan it to a friend, if you need to, to get photos of yourself. Certainly, these days, it shouldn’t be less than 4 megapixels or so, and DSLRs have many benefits over other cameras. This costs about the same as one good professional photo shoot, so it will pay for itself. Good lenses and a good flash are often more important than getting a really high end camera body.

2. Good photos don’t have extraneous clutter in them. They are well lit, perfectly sharp (or deliberately and dramatically blurry), and have really great facial expressions. If any of these elements are missing, the photo is likely garbage and shouldn’t ever be shown to a stranger whom you are trying to convince to buy something. Don’t kid yourself into believing that you have good photos when you really don’t.

3. The eyes are the most important point of focus, nearly all the time. That said, artistic license allows for any of these rules to be broken. But there is a universe of difference between a well-executed artfull photo and a crappy snapshot.

4. Photos are all about light. Artificial light is difficult to make look good. Outside a photo studio, it’s generally easiest to take well-lit photos outdoors, either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the sun is most cooperative. Cloudy days can work well too. Intense sunlight generally doesn’t look great, in photos, often causing too much contrast, and making your subject squint.

5. Indoors, point your excellent flash at the ceiling, not directly at the subject. This makes the light much nicer, and it’s why your on-camera built-in flash doesn’t produce good results very often.

6. If you are charged with taking a photo, it’s generally worth it to annoy people a bit in order to get better results. They will forgive you in two seconds after the shot is done. Take away their drink, move their purse, ask them to stand differently or raise their chin, tell them to smile, tell them not to smile, tell them to stand up straight, and take five or ten shots, not just one, particularly of groups. Someone is always closing their eyes. Try to preview the images before losing the shot, so that you can see whether you need to try again before everyone moves away. Expect that maybe one in every twenty photos you take will actually be any good, so shoot a lot. And throw most of them away.

7. Boss around your photographer. Get a variety of images, from more staid to more crazy than you think is appropriate, and let them evolve, hopefully to become something new. Get your money’s worth. Even if they are doing it for free.

8. Don’t plan to fix it in Photoshop. It’s like, don’t expect to fix a bad performance “in the mix.” While digital editing tools can sometimes bring fiascos back from the brink of utter failure, you get better results when the original starts out good in the first place. Most of all, don’t rely on Photoshop to fix bad lighting or poor focus. There are limits to what it can do. Maybe it can help, a bit, and bring something from “good” to “great.” But it generally can’t bring something “bad” up past “mediocre.”

9. Learn to use Photoshop. It can improve most photos, and you don’t want to have to rely on others to do easy fixes. Use it to get rid of extraneous garbage and gently improve lighting and contrast. Or, use it to create crazy effects. Go as deep as you like/can.

10. Give the photographer credit in the publication, if you can. It might be in their contract, and it’s an opportunity to repay a friend for a photo done as a favor. Write “Photo by Craig Reed,” for example.

Good photos are likable by strangers who never heard of you and have no investment in your feelings. Biased perspectives let bad photos get much farther into the public view then they really should. As an exercise, scour your favorite social media site for photos of people you don’t know. Which could you use on an album cover, and why? Are people using good photos on their avatar images?

Periodically, ask: Do you have enough recent, great photos of yourself? If not, try to get some before you need them urgently, on a deadline. Always, always be scheming how to get great photos of yourself making music.

Here are couple links to Berklee Press books that have good author photos on them. Neither were taken especially for the product. They were just in the author’s available arsenal. Good job! Sorry about presenting links here, not photos, but I’m not sure about the copyright issues for them.

http://berkleepress.com/catalog/product?product_id=18504359&category_id=4

http://berkleepress.com/catalog/product?product_id=12268268&category_id=4

The best way to render rhythm names in text is generally to use words, not numbers, though it’s not always possible to be consistent and clear. But try to use “eighth note,” not “1/8 note” or “8th note.”

Setting the stage for this preference is “whole notes.” A general principle of style is to use similar word forms for similar words. Since there just isn’t a numeric equivalent of “whole note,” you’ve got to use the word.

Then, you’ll surely be discussing whole notes and other rhythms within the same sentences.

“A whole note lasts as long as two tied half notes.”

If you were to use “1/2” instead of “half,” you’d be mixing two types of logical constructions, which is awkward to read.

“A whole note lasts as long as two tied ½ notes.”

And someone reading aloud might be tempted to say, “Whole notes last as long as two tied one-half notes,” which would sound pretty weird. So, avoid fractions, for rhythmic values.

Words for rhythmic values works pretty well and nicely and cleanly up through sixteenth notes. Then, it starts getting a little awkward. Look at this sentence:

“Play staccato on the first thirty-second note, but then the remaining thirty-second notes and the sixty-fourth note run can be played more legato, leading up to the eighth note.”

Blah blah blah, that’s a lot of words to keep straight. This rendition using ordinals is easier to follow, though it follows the opposite of my initial advice:

“Play staccato on the first 32nd note, but then the remaining 32nd notes and the 64th note run can be played more legato, leading up to the 8th note.”

You’re comparing a bunch of rhythms close together, and it’s just easier to spot if you use numerals (ordinals) instead of all those hyphenated words/compound adjectives. I’d also put the “eighth” in the ordinal form there, just to keep things logically consistent. Again, it’s a basic principle of good writing style: Use the same style for elements that are logically the same.

So, the preference for word forms isn’t an absolute. There might be times when ordinals make more sense, though I’d say, it’s pretty rare. Fractions should be avoided for rhythms, though they are okay for time signatures: 4/4, 3/4, 12/8, and so on.

This past week, I hogged the spotlight in MakeMusic’s Finale blog, talking about my history with that software. One thing I didn’t mention there was that I still sketch initial ideas the old fashioned way, by hand, with pencil and paper, often at my piano, but sometimes, any odd place I end up.

While music software is part of my every day, deep down, I’m as much Luddite as technophile. A great recent breakthrough in my personal music work was to give up on being a MIDI programmer, and figure out how to have live musicians play on my CD instead. That return to humanity was hugely liberating, for me. My project still entailed a lot of technology, between being Melodyned (i.e., chewed up and spit out), mic’d, mixed, and mastered. But the core sounds were created by fingers and horse hair, resonators made of wood and brass, things being struck with sticks, and a human voice. The computers’ jobs were to feature and support the human musicians, which is how I like it best.

This tenuous love/hate relationship with technology has always been the musician’s lot, whether it be finding a natural-sounding reverb plug-in, tuning a lute, or perhaps originally, adding the banging together of sticks to accompany rhythmic vocal utterances, which were likely denounced as either unmusical, blasphemous, or simply unnecessarily fussy.

Today, even more so than usual, I straddle this great canyon between my ideas and the tools necessary for bringing them to fruition. It’s currently at the fore of my attention because of an upcoming vacation. I’m about to leave cold, dreary, Decembery Massachusetts for a week on a tropical island, with strict instructions to shut off and relax, without driving everyone else crazy.

Shutting off requires unplugging, and I have made the unprecedented decision to leave my laptop behind. This is major for me, as I obsessively check e-mail, Facebook, the weather, the news, tend to various projects, write/read/moderate various blogs, and so on, but this time, I’m quitting technology cold turkey. Hiding from those people who send me communications that can make me mad for days at a stretch, or who set me off to do that one last, thing, before I can leave my desk, even though it will only take two minutes. My goals for the week involve snorkeling with my children, tanning without burning, sipping umbrella drinks out of coconuts, and songwriting on the beach.

When miraculously unplugged at home, I sketch my bilingual (text and music) ideas, such as for songs, on paper held together with a clipboard, so that I can use both blank paper for lyrics and form diagrams, and manuscript paper for notation. But when traveling, I want to keep things a bit tidier and not deal with loose papers and an unwieldy clipboard. And so, I’ve been working on creating a customized songwriting journal, which would suit any type of music/text project. The bigger idea here is to create customized manuscript paper for whatever type of project you’re doing.

So, just in time for the holidays, I shall release my inner Martha Stewart, and share with you my process and my file.

There are two aspects to making a songwriting journal suitable for beach use. First, make customized pages, and then make the actual book.

I used Finale to prepare the pages. (Use the Staff tool to hide things like clefs, time signature, and default rests in empty measures, and the Page Layout tool to set margins, etc.)

Here’s a PDF of that file, so that you can use it too, as a special free gift. Happy holidays! Though, you’ll probably prefer to create something to your own specifications.

BlankSongwritingNotebook

For my journal this time, half of each page is blank and half has manuscript paper, so that I can work on either lyrics (including drawing diagrams) or music simultaneously, on facing pages. The PDF is designed so that you can print (or photocopy) it two-sided. Print, say, thirty of them. Then, placing the pages together and folding them in half will give you my intended layout. (You might want to make “signatures” of six to eight page sections, and then bind those together, so that the book will lie flatter and be generally easier to deal with than a huge thick stack folded just once.)

As a binding, you could simply staple this, down the middle. Or, you could get fancy, and stitch it together, and then glue on a sturdy cover. I set four dots along the middle where holes can go, for this purpose.

This excellent Web site shows how you can create a nicely bound journal, step by step. Michael Shannon is the real Martha in this story. It’s actually a bit easier than it looks, and you have some latitude to mess things up and it will still turn out fine.

Here is my improvised bookbinding press: a couple scraps of plywood squeezed together with some wooden clamps. Perhaps, more Caractacus Potts than Martha Stewart, but hopefully effective. And the goal here is a useful journal, not a neat workshop!

Happy holidays!

My friend Sue just finished her CD, and was wondering in her blog about this predictable yet also surprising period of post-project depression that so many of us feel, when we complete something major. Even if it turns out well, it’s common for artists to become depressed afterward.

I’ve been feeling this too, after my own recent recording, and I see it very often with authors of the books we publish. Here are my thoughts about why we feel these post-project blues, and a suggestion about how to avoid them.

So, why so blue, you creative mastermind, you?

1. Creating a major project means articulating part of your life’s work, and you hope that the current one will be the best thing you’ve ever done. It might be your soul’s fingerprint. At a point, though, you have to call it “the best you can do,” and accept its limitations. This is also an acknowledgment of your own limitations, and then there it is, public and unchangeable. Everyone will know your limitations, when you publish. So when it’s released, there it is: you in your permanent imperfect form. Everyone will hear that stupid line that you should have changed, but never got around to it.

2. The post-release silence is always deafening. People who love it will write a couple sentences to let you know. They might actually be spending hours and hours of their lives reading it or listening to it over and over. But your actual communication to receive their feedback takes about thirty seconds. And you don’t believe them anyway, because of (1) above, but also because nobody will ever understand or appreciate your work as well as you do. Then, there are the reviews. Shel Silverstein once said, “Reviews are sometimes bad and sometimes good, but they are always asinine.” And a few weeks after the fact, even this trickle dries up.

3. There’s the fear that this is your last chance to do something this good. You’ll never find the time or energy for another project like this. You’ve exhausted all the favors you can call upon, and nobody wants to help you again. You’ll never get another contract. This was it. Too bad it wasn’t better. Fortunately, in reality, once you’ve done one, it’s easier to do another.

4. Marketing your own work is a loathsome task, and that’s what needs to happen when the creative work is done, or else you won’t sell a single copy. You need to pretend that you like it more than you do. You have to stop being your usual modest and tasteful self and hawk your deeply personal wares—literally, sell your soul. This is a really odious task.

5. When you’re working on a major project, you’re at the center of some attention, from everyone else involved: editor, engineer, duplicator, etc. When you stop the project, you return to the rabble. And it’s also the loss of a unique kind of social interaction, with lots of visiting, meaningful conversation, and general fun interactions and learning from like-minded people. You all get better at what you enjoy most. What’s more fun then that? And then it ends.

I get the feeling that many creators never want their project to end, because of these reasons and more. I’ve seen projects drag on for years and years. And they are almost never ever completed ahead of schedule.

My advice is to begin work on the next major project immediately, even while the current one is finishing up, gently segueing into the next project full throttle. The next one is secretly a second volume of the first one, even if the content has nothing really to do with it. Even if it’s a different creative form. Nobody need know about the relationship between works but you.

The key is to always be working on a major project. It’s a way to keep working and avoid this depressing intermediate phase, which so many of us struggle with, and continue being productive.

For a proper checklist, when you’re trying to approve your CD project, really, you should consult your local mastering engineer. They are the people who have the info on the complete, definitive word on such issues—engineers such as Berklee’s own Jonathan Wyner of M-Works, in Cambridge, MA, who is one of my gurus.

Me, I’m just a hack survivalist, but lately, I’ve found the need to develop my own little checklist. It’s meant to complement what your mastering engineer is doing, not replace it. Mastering engineers are better at this than I am.

So, here’s my own checklist for CD masters—specifically for CDs that accompany books about music. Many of these items have a horrific war story attached to them. If you are the unfortunate recipient of a CD that I had something to do with that doesn’t work due to one of these issues, or something else, please contact me privately about this at jfeist@berklee.edu.

Anyhow, here’s my current list. Let me know if you have other suggestions.

CD Master Checklist

Starting point: CDs should conform to Red Book standard.

Among the things to confirm:

CD:

74 minutes maximum; less is better
99 tracks maximum
1 second or more space between tracks (unless there’s a really good reason not to)
files are WAV or AIFF and not MP3 (iTunes likes to sneak in MP3s)
Works in audio-only CD player; don’t test it only on a computer
CD is labeled with project name and date of CD, what type of CD it is (audio, data, CD-plus, etc.), and whether it is a master or a draft

Content:

Notes on CD match notation in book
Examples are repeated in accordance with book’s notation
Tracks are in the correct order, matching CD Tracks page in the book
Countoffs/clicks are used consistently
No distortion
No pops
No random talking or other extraneous noise, particularly at beginning and end
No long spaces of silence at beginning or end of tracks
Track names are correctly spelled, and rendered just like CD tracks list, if there is one
Volume levels consistent from track to track

An important check to do is to use the >> button on an audio CD player to begin each track. It is possible for the start points to be out of sync, which you’d only notice by doing this, or otherwise starting each track fresh. (The track would not start at the beginning.)

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The term “available tensions” is sometimes tossed around relatively loosely, in jazz parlance. The concept, though, is greatly clarified and made more useful by contextualizing it in terms of functional harmony.

Joe Mulholland, chair of Berklee’s harmony department, was kind enough to sit down with me to discuss the formal definition of available tensions.

Jonathan Feist: What is an available tension?

Joe Mulholland: An available tension is a diatonic note added to a chord, reinforcing that chord’s function while sounding “good” with it.

JF: So you make a distinction between “tensions” and “available tensions.” Not all diatonic 9, 11, and 13 notes are “available?”

Joe: Right. Like, you don’t normally have an 11 on a V chord. Though it is diatonic, it sounds poorly with that chord and interferes with the chord’s function.

For example, if you put the tonic of the key against the V chord, you will get something that is functionally at war with itself. The function of a dominant chord is to provide harmonic tension that is resolved by the sounding of the tonic chord. The dominant chord has the leading tone of the key as well as the 4th degree (11 of the V chord), both of which are unstable notes in the parent scale by virtue of their half-step relationship to the note below or above. If you mix the tonic of the key with that chord, you’ve got the most stable note of the key mixed into this highly unstable chord, and it sounds like you just don’t know where you’re going with it.

Fig. 1. G7 Chord with C (V7 with 11)

JF: The V stops functioning like a dominant chord.

JM: Yes, that tonic note C interferes with the dominant function of the chord, G7. Adding the C gives the feeling that you’ve peaked too early—that you’ve confused the target with the means of getting there.

There’s also a mechanical/acoustical reason why it’s not considered available. If you play the tonic of the key against the dominant chord, such as C against a G7, that minor 9th (C against B) sounds very dissonant.

This is really most evident in the V chord, as I mentioned. But it’s also an issue with the III chord. You might think that on an E minor chord in C major, the note C would work fine, because the E and C are both tonic chords. But that minor 9th relationship comes into play here as well, between the B and the C. Best-case scenario, instead of sounding like an E minor chord with a tension, it sounds instead like an inverted C major 7 chord. It won’t sound like a III chord any more. And if you’re not careful with how you voice it, that dissonant minor 9th will pop out.

Fig. 2. E–7 Chord with C (III–7 with 13)

JF: So, does the word “available” just mean that you can use it?

Joe: It means you can use it freely, with no constraints. On our G7 chord, the 9 and the 13 will let you thicken the sound of your chord easily and effectively. They will sound great with the other notes, while reinforcing that chord’s harmonic function.

Fig. 3. G7 (V7) with 9 and 13

Now, one can imagine a C played against a G7 chord, but just not on a rhythmically strong beat, not in a sustained manner, not in a repeated way. It could be used as part of a melodic line, or a passing line. But it shouldn’t be used as a harmonic addition to the chord.

Fig. 4. Modal use of 11 (C) on V (G7)

The term “available tension” primarily refers to harmonic, vertical processes. If you’re doing something melodic, or horizontal, like passing tones between one chord and the next, as long you don’t accent, sustain, or repeat that note, it will be just subsumed into the flow of the line; but if you add it to the chord as an extension, it will sound very wrong. So, they are not harmonically available.

JF: What would you call a tension that isn’t available?

Joe: It might be an “altered tension.” Or, it might make more sense to analyze it as a melodic note: a passing tone, or a neighbor, or an approach tone, depending on where it exists in the line and what its rhythmic nature is.

JF: So, to be “available” implies a simple diatonic context. If you’re the key of C major, on a C7 chord, b9 wouldn’t be an “available tension.”

Joe: Correct, because Db is not in the key. You might call it an “optional” or “creative” tension, but not “available.” As soon as you do something chromatic like that, other implications occur.

The underlying assumption in the diatonic world is that you’re working within a closed system. That’s the baseline—the default position. Now, of course, a lot of music is not that simple, but that’s the baseline that we come from and return to, when discussing harmony in technical terms.

When you introduce chromaticism, you introduce the possibility that other, non-diatonic outcomes might occur. So, if you put b9 on the V7 of IV chord, the implication to the listener is that a IV minor chord is coming instead. It’s because that tension, the b9 on the dominant chord, mimics the sound of V7(b9) in the minor key.

JF: Exactly what does the word “available” refer to? What makes a note “available?”

Joe: The key signature; these notes that are in the key. Your chromatic alteration to my V chord is not coming from the key. You’ve brought another sonic realm into play. The available notes are those available in the key signature’s parent scale. While you might be able to use a chromatic alteration effectively, it’s not called “available,” even if it sounds good. Again, the note has to be contained in the key signature’s parent scale.

JF: Isn’t it subjective to say that a note sounds “good?”

Joe: Not really, not to Western ears. I mean, you can play the melody in figure 4, but that’s really a modal phrase. In that kind of harmonic context, the G chord isn’t really functioning as a dominant. That style is not about functional harmony, it’s about the sound of the G Mixolydian mode. So, in that melody, the note works because it reinforces the sound of the mode.

But if we take as our framework that we’re in a traditional harmonic context, where V7 creates a strong expectation to resolve to I, then a C in a G7 chord would be working contrary to the chord’s dominant sound. If you violate the rules of available tensions, you will be interfering with the rules of functional harmony. We’re talking about functional, diatonic harmony.

Once you make a creative choice to go outside that system, then you have a lot more wiggle room. At that point, reasonable people can disagree about what sounds good and what doesn’t. But within a functional harmonic context, while violating the rules like that might not make you run screaming, most people would agree that it sounds kind of odd. There’s just something kind of whacky about it. The note is just not congruent with what we’re used to hearing.

JF: So, to try to narrow your definition, an available tension can’t be a semi-tone away from a chord tone?

Joe: That’s a good starting point. Be careful to say minor 9th, rather than semi-tone. If you play just a semi-tone above, it’s not as terrible sounding. It’s not as dissonant to the ear. If it’s a minor 9 away, the dissonance is much more evident, because it doesn’t sound like a cluster. Once it sounds like a cluster, pretty much anything sounds okay. GBCD is a cluster and has its own character. But take that C an octave up, and it really jumps out as being much more dissonant, and more like a wrong note.

Fig. 5. Cluster vs. Open Voicing

The exception to the rule you’re suggesting is that some minor 9ths actually sound okay: on dominant chords, for example. It’s safe to say that on a diatonic major chord (I, IV or V), the minor 9 above the third of the chord doesn’t sound good; C against B in a G7 chord sounds terrible in context. But on a dominant chord, if you go chromatic—go outside the key and add a b9 or b13 to a dominant chord—that will sound okay. Just remember that those notes are not called “available” because they are not in the key. The key doesn’t give you those chords. The tensions are chromatic alterations, not available tensions.

Fig. 6. G7 with b9 and b13

JF: Are people surprised by this definition of available tensions?

Joe: Many people haven’t thought about available tensions in this systematically defined way, but when they do, it seems to help clarify things; they have a better framework for defining the musical situation and making informed choices about what to change or accept.

JF: Without this approach, how do people typically learn what would or would not be an available tension?

Joe: Many people learn this intuitively. And in trying to make their chords sound richer, they might commonly reach for altered tensions right away, and then call those “available tensions” because they sound good. But again, I would call them “altered tensions” instead, to acknowledge that they are taken from outside the diatonic system. And someone narrowly trained might think, that’s not fair! They’re not playing by “the rules,” and yet it sounds so cool, and so fresh. They might go, “Oh man, I didn’t know I was allowed to paint outside the lines! Or jump across the fence for a minute!”

The difficulty with this sort of thing is that it is overly simplistic, and ultimately limiting. If the only thing you know how to do is add a 9th to everything, you’ll get pleasant enough results, but you will never discover the creative challenges you face when having to work around “difficult” notes. Sort of like the pearl in the oyster, right? It’s the irritant that results in the beauty! Within a seven-chord major key system, everyone agrees that if you put an 11 on a V chord, or a b9 on a III chord, it just sounds like it doesn’t work, as well as being acoustically unpleasing. The question is, how will you find a way to circumvent those issues and still make music that has a natural flow.

Thinking about available tensions in this way—that they are diatonic notes that reinforce the functional harmony and sound good—makes them easier to use, and helps us to make more effective and deliberate note choices.

Page turns are so annoying. This goes for books as well as scores and lead sheets. Especially in concert, scores should be structured to minimize the need to turn pages as best we can.

If you’re notating music, you need to plan where page turns will be, and make them as unobtrusive as possible. An ill-conceived page turn can cause notes to be missed or a blip in the tempo: both unforgivable and horrible, in a concert setting. It can kill the music.

Here are some thoughts about facilitating page breaks (one page ends and another begins) and page turns (when you have to physically turn pages).

The ubiquitous black, industrial/school grade music stands are about 20 inches wide. You can squeeze three pages on it, if they are taped together and hanging a bit off the sides. Some piano desks are wider—good for, say, four pages. But a huge ribbon of pages can’t be turned with one hand, if you’re playing. Generally in concert, if pages are to be turned, you’ll likely just have just two pages open at once. Ideally, they should be attached (taped) together so that nothing gets misplaced or rearranged, and be sure to always number pages.

(If you look at my profile picture, you can see my own piano desk, which is obnoxiously tiny. It’s good for only two pages. Actually, it’s not good even for one page! I hope yours has a better design!)

For lead sheets, one page is ideal, two is okay, and three is the maximum you’ll usually see. It’s often helpful to have a full set of lyrics at the end. This can also be a way to make the notation take up less space. Do you really need six verses written into the staff, particularly for a chart used by an instrumentalist? It might be enough to just have the first verse, keep the systems relatively close, and then have the full lyrics at the end.

In a book, if you have music that spans two pages, begin it on a left-hand page, so that you can avoid a page turn. This would seem obvious, but in book design generally, layout artists are used to beginning chapters on right-hand pages, so there is an open door to some confusion here. It’s more important to avoid a page turn during music, so consider adding some text before it (technical insights, composer biography, historical notes, or whatever) or a photo to make this look intentional.

Manipulating measure/system layout is an important part of facilitating page turns. While you should try to keep the number of notes and rests per system about even, forget the rule about having four bars per system. Real life just doesn’t make that possible all the time. It’s more important that notes of the same duration be roughly the space throughout the piece, and that the page count and thus page turns be minimized. An eighth note on one system shouldn’t have a quarter inch of space on one system and an inch of space on another. It’s most intuitive to read if it’s consistent.

It is sometimes possible to arrange measures and pages so that sections (chorus, new movement, coda) begin in conspicuous places, easy to spot. That’s much easier to read than beginning a new section in the middle of a system.

Break pages at points where it’s easiest for the player to be distracted, or forced to put down their instrument and fuss with the paper. Opportunity points for page breaks include ending pages at:

• Empty measures
• Rests on the last beat
• Sustained notes
• One hand free (piano)
• End of a phrase
• Otherwise simple measures that the musician can glance at, without actually having to read

Note that it’s best to end a page at a point of simplicity, rather than begin a new page simply, as in the previous page, the musician has some advance notice that there is a a chance to relax. Otherwise, they’d do a mad scramble only to learn after the page turn that there was actually nothing to worry about.

More pages mean more page breaks, so generally, look for opportunities to reduce the number of pages. One page is easiest to manage; there’s less danger of losing something. Two pages is okay. Three pages is okay, and the maximum that will fit on most music stands. Four pages or more requires deliberate strategy in facilitating page turns.

So, try to keep the number of pages low. You wouldn’t believe how many scores I receive that are two pages long, and page 2 has a single measure of a whole note and a fermata, stretched across the whole page. That’s software talking, not a thinking musician. A single system (called an “orphan”) should be omitted by rearranging the measure layout.

Figure that a standard 8.5 x 11 page can fit up to twelve staves. That’s six systems of piano music, or four systems of piano/vocal score, three systems of SATB choir, or two systems of choir with keyboard. An ensemble score with seven or eight systems might be best oriented sideways (landscape) on the page, rather than the usual vertical orientation (portrait). When you hit nine staves, it’s probably better to keep things vertical.

If you are using notation software, some of the elements you can control to fit more staves and systems on the page include:

• Overall notation size (Resize or Page Layout tools in Finale). You can set this to 85% or so, and it should still be easily readable. But consider the eyesight of your reader.

• Margins around systems, and space between systems. These can each be set independently in Finale. Generally, three staff’s distance is about right between systems. So, if your staff is a quarter inch high, figure 1.5 inches between systems.

• Space between staffs. Two staff’s distance between staffs is about right. If your staff is a quarter inch high, try for half an inch between staves. This may vary depending on your notation; chord symbols, guitar chord diagrams, and lyrics will make your music require more space.

Here’s a quote from perhaps the most startling book proposal cover letter I’ve ever received:

“Dear Managing Editor,

Music is a creative process, so why can’t a book on learning music be as creative. [sic] The books currently out there have no imagination, no passion, so serious, so boring….”

Well, thanks a lot, pal. I’ll try not to take it personally!

He has a point, though. And modesty aside, I think that this applies to other publishers more than it does Berklee Press. So many authors learned their craft from older music theory textbooks that were more formal and teaching in a more didactic style than much of what we’re seeing now, and there is still a sense among some that this is the way textbooks “should” read.

Personally, I think it’s a preference that hinders learning. Something I love about Berklee is that its trappings of academia are generally relatively loose and real, so that we can get down the real business of learning to create music. First groove, than dictionary. Rock ’n’ roll! I hope that spirit is evident in our books.

One of the best courses I ever took was a comparison of counterpoint and harmony textbooks, at New England Conservatory. We gathered up a half dozen or so leading books on each to topic, and compared them, side by side, in terms of how they presented the exact same material.

The differences between them were vast—to the point of being comical. Some authors used convoluted sentences and words a zillion syllables long to present the concepts. Others used much simpler language. Some wrote endless paragraphs, others kept the language short and showed practical examples.

Some were clear and useful, and therefore inspiring. Others were so intimidating that they made one want to give up music entirely. It was easy to like some more than others.

I’ve found, as an editor, that such clarity often comes through revision, and the ability to revise and accept edits comes from a place of humility, security, and a genuine desire to write something useful, rather than to create what is essentially a vanity piece. It’s often counter-intuitive, but even big concepts are generally best expressed with small sentences and common words. This isn’t often how things come out, in first drafts, but it should be the aspiration of all writers, and especially all technical writers. Leave the more arcane words to fiction writers and poets, whose job is to paint pictures, rather than to those of us who are trying to explain the difference between, say, a mode and a scale.

Striving towards clarity doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your authentic voice. In fact, clarity helps to reveal it. It can be helpful to consider the differences between the characteristics you actually want to preserve and those that are really a distraction. If I’m a New Yorker writing about, say, upper-structure triads, it would be pretty silly for me to think that it would be critically important to my style that I use the colorful swear words that come so naturally to me in my harmony text. Better than I aspire towards revealing my subject as clearly as possible, and just have faith that the essence of my soul creeps in somehow, through the lines. It will. It’s more difficult to conceal it than to reveal it.

Humor in writing can be tricky. Some people are naturally funny and entertaining, but when they try to tell a structured joke, it falls flat. Some people are naturally quiet, but then when they write, their inner Robin Williams becomes mysteriously unleashed. And some funny people sit down to write and the opposite happens: they clam up and become dry. I’ve found good luck interviewing such people, and then transcribing their natural way of communicating into the written word. Often, they’ll say, “Now don’t put this in the book, but….” I seldom listen to such advice, and what they say next (often edited!) may give a book its distinctive voice.

Some writers can pull off humor better than others. A number of Berklee Press writers are really funny: Jon Damian (The Guitarist’s Guide to Composing and Improvising, The Chord Factory), Mr. Bonzai (Music Smarts), Michael Farquharson (Writer, Producer, Engineer), and others. Their entertaining-yet-informative books are held dear by many. That said, there seems not to be much evidence that sales are any different for such books compared to other books of similar pedagogical quality in the same genres that are more straight ahead.

Humor can also break things up, in any circumstance, drawing people away from the depth of the material so that they can then return to it refreshed. That said, most of our best-selling books won’t make you giggle even once. What they have going for them, though, is clarity and depth and a genuine desire to present material in a way that’s easy for the reader to absorb.

Often, this means showing rather than telling, as I’m sure your high school writing teacher told you. Or, as Frank Zappa said, “Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar.” Even better than a joke, an example similarly serves to give your reader’s brains a rest from one form of communication and shift to another. This aids reading comprehension and learning generally.

In that spirit, here’s an example from my former life as a software interface consultant (mercifully, a brief digression). In 1996, while consulting to a U.S. government agency, I found a window in a software product with this text as its title:

“Create a dump of searchable criteria for purposes of isolating geographical regions that contain specific elements within their core samples.”

It was followed by a list of chemicals. My suggested edit to replace the above sentence? One word:

“Find.”

The project manager, also the writer of the original sentence, was annoyed at me for taking what he perceived as the character out of his writing, and claimed that the scientists who used the database were used to thinking in a certain way—that their culture as intellectuals was such that they really preferred more detailed descriptions of things. I countered that they probably just wanted to find their @!!$& Magnesium.

We field-tested it, though, and he found the results alarming. There were scientists who had been using his database for more than ten years who actually never knew that the page’s functionality existed—didn’t know that such searches were possible, because the language on the screen was so confusing. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent creating the initial version of that aspect of the tool, but it went unused because of bad writing. Most alarming: the project manger ultimately decided not to change it, because he still wanted the look and feel to be culturally compatible with his user base, and he thought that this was priority. Our tax dollars hard at work….

The sentiment is common, though, among some writers. They are experts in their fields. They want to be formal and exacting in their presentation, and the result is the kind of book our would-be author is complaining about: books that people keep on their shelves in order to feel smug, or buy because they make them safe around an obviously superior intellect, or assign to their students in order to be intimidating, but such books tend to remain only reluctantly read, and unloved, and aren’t really well understood. On the flip side, it’s why The Elements of Style is so beloved, despite some of its wacky preferences: the book is a delightful read, which especially at the time it was published, was rare in a book about grammar.

Personality in writing is generally a subtle thing. It generally has more to do with big-picture ideas and very subtle use of language, more than mechanical issues such as length of sentences or chapter structure. A good editor can help alleviate some of the distractions from writing while preserving the writer’s distinct voice.

Forcing personality into writing can become clumsy and distracting pretty fast, and I recommend that it not be a conscious priority. It’s the topic that really matters most. When writers try to be genuine and clear, their personalities generally shine through—or at least, the aspects of their personalities that our readers find most helpful.

What should you do if your project stinks?

Say to it, “Thank you,” chuck it, and then try again.

It’s okay. Probably, objectively speaking, your first few projects in any genre are going to stink. Maybe, they will have an appealing naïve energy, and maybe your newcomer’s exuberance will give it that certain something. But really, master works are created by people with experience. People with experience have generally created a lot of mediocre work in the process of evolving.

So, expect that your first draft of your first book is almost certainly going to stink. It’s hard to write a book. It’s even hard to write a mediocre book. You learn to improve at writing books by doing it and then getting high quality feedback. It would be perfectly natural to work hard for months or even years on a first draft, and then totally scrap it—even reimagining it afterward, chucking out dozens or even hundreds of hours of work, and then creating something totally different instead.

Hooray for you, if your trash can is full! It means you care more about the end result than about hanging onto every precious word or note that you write. You care more about communication than about profit per minute. We arrive at better drafts by taking hard looks at our worse drafts, and then cheerfully moving forward and rewriting.

The first few songs you write will probably really, really suck. Really, they will, even if you like them. Even if your friends say they are awesome. You probably need to write a whole bunch of sucky songs before a good one will show up. So, get them out of the way now, if you haven’t already. Hurry up and write. Maybe, keep your first few songs or poems or book chapters or paintings secret. Acknowledge that they are in service of the better work you’re going to do in the future.

Improvement is a matter of getting your craft together and making technical decisions that will make your works better, rather than holding onto flawed ideas for personal and sentimental reasons. It’s the difference between articulating universal truth, which captivates everyone, and anecdotal truth, which might be what really happened, but which nobody really cares about. You, dear reader, don’t care that, say, my specific pet kitten died. You only care about how I talk about death and loss generally, so that you can relate it to your own life. In art, it is often better to change “kitten” to “goose,” if the technical requirements (e.g., rhyme scheme) of song or poem or story or blog post demand it, rather than to insist on calling it a kitten, just because it was one. The old gray goose just might have to be dead.

(By the way, an “old” goose is technically one that is older than twelve weeks. Before that age, it is called a “green” goose, even if it is gray. But, I digress.)

The first time you write a song, the inspiration for writing might have come from the loss of your kitten, so you’ll want to keep it in. After song number 20 or so, you’ll be more inclined to call it a goose, to suit the melody. Then, you’ll be getting somewhere. So, if you’re still writing your kitten song, acknowledge that it’s part of the learning curve. Only show it to people whose feedback can help you grow. That might not be the random drunks in your neighborhood bar.

Even though it might have involved a lot of work and money, your first album will stink, too. Maybe your third album or book or exhibition will be your first good one. Maybe your eighth. Almost certainly, not your first. For your sake, I hope that your first one is the worst one you ever do. I hope that your current project is worse than all your future projects. If not, you’re probably doing something wrong in your creative journey. Or, maybe you’re just temporarily derailed. Sometimes when you’re learning something new or exploring a new direction, you’ve got to regress and create some stinkers, even if you’ve done good work in the past. It’s the same thing though, in service to your better work to come.

I hope you find this encouraging, not discouraging. I’m currently working on my first CD of songs, and am trying so hard not to make it stink. But I have to assume that it’s going to be the work of a beginning album-maker, and give myself a break. The fear of it stinking has probably kept me from working on it for a few years. That’s bad. I’m now a few years older, but still have the same number of CDs to my credit (i.e., zero). But one of the revelations I’ve had recently is that it’s much more likely that my third album will be my first good one, so I have to get the first two awful ones out of the way first. C’est la guerre.

So, perhaps a good New Year’s resolution would be to get some stinky work out of the way, so that we can get over the hump and get closer to the better work that’s in our futures. If you’re working on a project that stinks and it is almost certainly a lost cause, try to wrap it up and call it done, so that you can start the better one. Maybe you’ve got ten songs recorded and three of them really stink. Just chuck the worst ones, and release the CD with just the seven best songs. Or, maybe the current draft of your book just isn’t right and you can’t put your finger on why. Try throwing away the current draft and redoing it from scratch. Yes, ouch, but do it. It will almost certainly be better in the future. Maybe the stinky draft helped you get your head in the right place to write the version that will actually be useful to someone. Only publish the good one.

Remember, you are not your work. You’re just a person—an evolving human spirit. Your work is something separate, on a hard drive, or in a file cabinet, or in a pile somewhere. It is your footprints, not your feet. Most drafts stink and should never be made public. But stinky drafts are necessary to the process of creating good work, even if the fabulous final product doesn’t much resemble the horrendous early drafts.

Hopefully, after a point, you’ll arrive at something that the rest of us will find a positive addition to the world. We’ll thank you, when you do. On behalf of your audience, let me say what a pleasure it is to read/hear/see something that’s had all the stinkiness removed from it, so that we can enjoy it. We’ve got enough crap to wade through, so as much as you can save us from having to get through more of it, we thank you.

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