I’ve been experimenting with Tik Tok. I’m definitely using it wrong as visually it’s all over the place: dog walking, comic book art, just static text—are you nuts?—but the through line is that I’ve composed the music for each video. Here’s one I did for the graphic novel Paper Girls. I couldn’t put this book down and was sad when I finished it. I wanted to continue to live in its world so I took some still images, animated movement over the images, documentary-style, and put my music to it.
John Williams, Jazz Man: Planing Triads
I’ve heard people mention a technique John Williams uses called planing. The excellent film music podcast, UnderScore, describes it as a fixed paintbrush with three brush heads, each representing the note of a triad. No matter where you place it you get the same quality chord and ignore the key. Start at D, you get D major, move up to F# you get F# major even though in the key of D it would normally be F# minor. I know Holst uses this technique in the Planets as well. Maybe that’s all there is to it but it leaves me unsatisfied. Whenever I’m studying music or doing an analysis my goal is to learn how to think like that composer. What shorthand do they have in their mind or how do they clump concepts together to help simplify things? When I’m writing music and I want that feeling I got when listening to Holst or John Williams do I just throw a bunch of planed chords around? Maybe. But maybe there’s a more detailed framework underlying the technique and if there is I want to know it because it might help me learn how to write like that.
I transcribed the following John Williams cue from the 1960s t.v. show “Time Tunnel” and I noticed something interesting about the bass movement.
The bass moves in a i-V progression, Eb to Bb. The harmony on top consists of minor triads, Bbm, Dbm, Ebm, Bm (aka Cbm), and Em (aka Fbm) and one major triad, Gb. Now John Williams is virtuosic jazz player, among other virtuosities. Some of his jazz albums from when he was in his 20s are on YouTube. Check them out. They’ll melt your face off. When he was in his teens, growing up in New York, Bird and Diz were changing the world on 52nd St. I wonder if he was sneaking into those clubs. Maybe that’s where he picked up his hep gotee!
Anyway, when voicing jazz piano chords there’s this concept of upper structures. These are triads you play in your right hand to bring out all the colorful extensions of the harmony that the bass is indicating. It’s a clumping technique. It helps you think faster. Instead of thinking I want a b9 and b13 over this Bb chord (ok, let’s see, where are those notes) you just tell your right hand, minor triad up a half step! That gives the sound of an altered dominant. Now look at the triads John is using in this Time Tunnel cue and look at where they line up with the bass and also where they land in the bar. In the first half of the bar he uses either Bbm, Ebm or Gb. These are all upper structure voicings of a Ebm chord. Bbm gives you a b7 sus2 sound with no 3rd. Ebm, well, we know that one. Gb gives you Eb7. Then in the second half of the bar where the Bb appears he uses Dbm, Cbm and Em. These all give you upper structure voicings of Bb7alt chord, which is jazz’s favorite V chord sound when you’re in a minor key. Dbm gives you a #11 #9 sound, Cbm gives you b13 b9 and Em is not exactly an alt chord because the 13 is not altered but you have a #11 and a b9, plenty altered. We can think of the first half of the bar as the tonic sound and the second half of the bar as the dominant sound. And if we do that it looks like he’s moving from a place of stasis to a place of tension, in other words, using the core axis of tonal harmony.
If you put all these chords into the frame work of Eb minor you have “tonic” minor triads built above scale degrees 1 and 5 (Ebm, Bbm) and “dominant” minor triads built above scale degrees b6, b7 and b9 (Cbm, Dbm, Em). Although he doesn’t use it here you could add scale degree 4 to the “tonic” group. This is because a minor triad built above scale degree 4 lives inside Eb minor.
There! Now we’re not just haphazardly throwing minor triads around. We have framework of tension and release just as we do with strictly diatonic tonal harmony. If you’re planing and you want to establish the home, build off scale degrees 1, 4, or 5. If you want to add tension or get the feeling of a cadence, build off b6, b7, or b9.
I made a short four bar composition using this framework in my thinking. The audio is from the notation software playback. Not great but it lets you hear the harmonies. Also, I just noticed that I’m not strictly planing in the first three bars because I’m changing the inversions. Well, I say cool! I just added a new wrinkle. True planing does happen at the end though where the “cadence” occurs.
Short Story Collective
This year I began collaborating with the fabulous and inspiring Short Story Collective. I had been a fan of their music both for their emotionally and dramatically evocative compositions and for their stunningly high production value so I was both thrilled and terrified to be invited to contribute to their latest offering, Pinnacle. My track, Never a Commonplace Thing, attempts to be gripping, thrilling and euphoric in perhaps a long ago setting. The album is available on Spotify and Apple Music.