I’ve known many self-taught musicians who’ve shown real musical ability, but they almost always struggle with two important aspects of music: handling what are called “key changes”, and mastering rhythm so they can play alongside other musicians.
The theme from the television show Hawaii Five-O is an example of song that will be essentially impossible to play well if musicians haven’t mastered both key changes and rhythm. Most people are surprised to learn that this rather pop-sounding song is played by an orchestra (along with a couple of guitars and an extensive set of drums), but it illustrates the importance of mastering these two foundations of music.
At a really basic level, rhythm means playing the right note at the right time. Rhythm is linked to tempo, or how fast the music is played.
Here’s a little experiment that illustrates the challenge of mastering rhythm and tempo: Tap your hand on the table in patterns of four beats, emphasizing every first note, like this: 1–2-3-4–1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4. See how fast you can do it without messing up.
Now try the same thing with a three-beat pattern: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3.
The four-beat and three-beat patterns are rhythm, and how fast you can do them are tempo.
Most people can do the four-beat pattern much faster than they can the three-beat pattern, and the three-beat pattern takes a lot more concentration. Only with a lot of practice can most people do both equally fast.
Now consider this challenge: Imagine getting a bunch of people around a table at home, at school, or at work, and having them tap out even the easier four-beat measure at a very fast tempo (Hawaii Five-O runs at three beats per second), do it all simultaneously, and keep it up for two or three or four minutes without anybody missing a beat. That’s the challenge of training musicians to be able to play together.
Another thing that makes this song so challenging it that we can’t just play the song slowly. The composer, Morton Stevens, wrote it in a minor key, the same sort of key in which funeral music is written. Played slowly, Hawaii Five-O sounds dreadful.
The very fast tempo and driving beat hide this minor key from the listener, so the fast tempo is essential to playing the song well. It is so fast that, if a musician misses a beat by just a few milliseconds, it’s very difficult to get back in sync, and the whole performance will quickly begin to fall apart.
Mastering rhythm and tempo are primary challenges for music students, whether self-taught or professionally trained. This is why music teachers have students practice with little timing devices called metronomes. It helps students master both rhythm and tempo. Metronomes aren’t just for students, either; in an orchestra, part of the conductor’s job is to be a human metronome.
Now, at a very basic level, key changes are pretty easy to understand. There are different ways that key changes work in a song, but a common one is the one we see in Hawaii Five-0, where we continue to play essentially the same melody as before, but doing it a note or two higher or lower.
There is a key change right in the middle of Hawaii Five-O where the trombones take over the famous melody, in this case a half step higher than in the first part of the song (it switches from the key of C minor — denoted “Cm” — to D flat minor — denoted “D♭m”).
On some instruments key changes aren’t all that hard to do, but on many, it’s a challenge. On a piano, for example, a key change could mean switching from playing all white keys to playing all black keys. It’s extremely rare, but to do it takes a lot of practice. One reason music teachers have students practice playing scales is so they learn to handle key changes smoothly.
Key changes are also a reason I often start students with classical music. There are far fewer key changes in classical music than in modern music. While the great melodies of classical music are generally less familiar, they are easier for newer students to play.
That said, it’s important to master key changes, even if a song is written without key changes.
I say this because a skill related to key changes is “transposition,” that is, being able to play a song in a key different from the one in which it was originally written.
One reason for transposing songs is that they have often been written for a particular singer. It can be very difficult for another performer to sing that song in that key. This is especially true if the song was written for a male voice and a woman wishes to sing it, or vice versa.
In either case, we change the key of the song, playing it several notes higher or lower, to put it into the best voice range for a particular singer.
Some musicians can learn to master rhythm and key changes on their own (the exceptionally talented composer and musician Paul McCartney, for example, is largely self-taught), but a well-trained teacher certainly makes it much easier and speeds the learning process.
Copyright 2018 by Toni Pfau. All rights reserved.
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