Most western music is separated into a measure. This is a musical unit that transcends all instruments. When written down, you see a fraction used to help tell you how to play the piece of music. The most common notation is 4/4, and it is called "common time signature". It is literally the most common found. From blues rock, to pop music, 4/4 is found all over the place. On paper it looks like this:
What the numbers mean is pretty easy, and this isn't really an educational post. The first or "top" number is the number of beats in the measure, and the bottom number is the length of the notes. This means 4/4 means 4 quarter notes used in each bar. Don't dwell on that too much. What we're looking at today is the C that is written there.
Well, 4/4 time is known as several things. The term "Common Time" is a more recent one that has come over time. Many people think that the "C" there is for common time, but the notation is older than this name. The "C" came many many years before the fact that 4/4 emerged as the most common. We need clues. Well 4/4 is also known as "Quadruple Meter". That one is simple... maybe not any help to us. It is also called "Imperfect Time". Oh, hey, there we go. Imperfect time. If 4/4 is imperfect, what is "Perfect". The time signature of 3/4 is "Perfect Time". But why? Well what changed. There's a 3 in there.
When all this notation was being created, much of it was for religious usage. The bulk of higher educational music was being done by the Church for their choirs. Is there any Christian religious significance to the number 3? The Holy Trinity. This is why it is considered perfect, it is a holy number. To Christians perhaps the holiest number. The problem is that there are so many numbers used in notation, it could be confusing, so they needed another symbol for "perfect".
That's where the "Perfect" circle comes from. A circle is a continuous line going on forever, unchanging, and perfect. So 4/4 timing is not so perfect, its "Imperfect", but its close. How do we show that something is "Imperfect". How about a broken circle? That's right! The C used to represent 4/4 timing is not a "C" at all, so it can not stand for Common Timing. It was originally a broken circle to stand for Imperfect Timing.
Day 56
Yesterday I had the epiphany that the Minor and Major Pentatonic overlapped in a way that certain shapes were the same on either side, and opened a huge amount of alternate ways I could play along in certain keys. Today I learned that you can take the shapes you like, and find them in the same key in both minor and major pentatonic. Because I am new, it is the first minor pentatonic shape(E at the 12th fret) that I know well and can call upon the easiest when I'm doing improv phrasing. Now I know that if I just shift my hand and keep the same shape, I hit the MAJOR E pentatonic at fret 9. That is super close and makes it very easy to have a kind of duality to my improv in a very simple way.
I really should just focus on learning the other shapes as well, and combining them.
I still have my same flaw, through all of this new playing and learning. I learn, and I can talk theory, but I'm not as good with the application. This is my same flaw in many hobbies and non-hobbies. I'm strong on the "book learnin'" and not so much on the application. I call it the "lazy supervisor gene" or some such. It seems to do nothing but piss people off haha, including myself.
Along with Knockin' on Heaven's Door, which I need to play more but the Pentatonic realization has had me practicing other things lately, I have been playing some other songs just to... I don't know, test the waters? or some other appropriate phrase. It feels really good to be watching and realizing what the favored scale of a song is. I'm not "there' yet, but I'm getting able to see what's underneath a song. That these songs aren't just magic that take place, but are methodical in approach. Actually, I am quite looking forward to finding a good song that defies my ability to classify and "see" the method.
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