Math & guitars

Don't miss Jamie Gumbrecht's fantastic story in today's paper about how Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider has written a new musical scale for the band's latest album, New Magnetic Wonder (cover art, below), which drops on Tuesday. Seems Mr. Schneider is a  bit of a math enthusiast, which  really isn't surprising.

You may have surprised me with that a decade-or-so ago. I thought of the arts as exclusively right brained and math as exclusively left brained. It helped, at the time, that my music experience had been limited to singing in junior high and high school choirs, and playing a little bass guitar by ear (badly). It was enough to understand four-beats per measure, and a few things like that, but neither activity necessitated learning the intricate math problems that can be contained in a bar of music, or the little mathematical constructions of chords and progressions of scales. It didn't help that I had an oil-and-water relationship with math. One of my favorite Far Side cartoons was of a physicist with a complex problem on the black board. Right between the equation and the answer were the words, "a miracle happens." For me, Gary Larson had summed up how I thought anything above basic arithmetic must function. I still have nightmares about being back in incomprehensible math courses.

But I am also learning to play an instrument now, the guitar, and looking at music, trying to decipher how all those notes and rests fit together, learning the theory behind things like pentatonic scales. I also have some very left-brained friends with deep appreciations of music -- a few are even skilled musicians -- and it makes sense that they would love both math and music. My son, not being a chip off the old block in this respect, is quite proficient at math, and also likes noodling around with melodies on his keyboard. I don't think he's considering notes on a scale or anything of that sort, yet. But I can't help but think the two are related.

And despite more than three decades of contempt for math, I can't help but reading about Schneider and his new scale and thinking it's pretty darned cool.

Guitar note: I've been remiss in writing about the guitar lessons, maybe because I didn't want to admit I've been working on something that has been kicking my butt, lately. I think I mentioned that my teacher had surmised I'd become good at strumming in 4/4 time, and so I was trying to stretch myself by learning the lead on an Audio Adrenaline song, Big House. Good to stretch. Bad to pick something that's really fast and incorporates a bunch of slides, bends, hammer-ons and other stuff people who just strum in 4/4 time don't mess with much. Note to self: When you re-embark on this plan, select something a slight bit more realistic.

Anyway, it prompted me to institute a Copley practice rule: Always end with something you can play well. It was actually inspired by golf. You know, even if you shoot 150, you'll walk away feeling great if you shoot well on the 18th hole, or do something really cool toward the end like chipping in. It makes you want to come back.

So, I decided to make it a personal rule that I will alway end quality time with my guitar playing something that reminds me I can actually play the thing, no matter how much the previous 55 minutes, or whatever I have devoted to practicing, have made me feel like I can't.