musical thoughts

I usually wind up talking about tension and release. All music, every genre, any historical period, it all ultimately involves the creation and release of tension. If that ain’t there it’s not music.

What makes music wonderful is that it is rich with mechanisms to create and release tension. What makes listening to an accomplished musican exciting is their command of the various mechanisms to create and release tension. Right now, you are probably saying to yourself “OK smart guy, what mechanisms are you talking about?”

I bet there won’t be anything in the list that you haven’t already been taught about to some extent. So I don’t have to lay out any real new ideas–I’m just providing a sort of unifying concept for the different aspects of music that all of us learn. So this is stuff you already deal with, I just want to help you see it in the larger context.

Following is a partial list of of the ways music creates and resolves tension:
pitch: upward motion creates tension, downward motion resolves it
texture: density increases tension, sparsity resolves
interval: dissonance creates tension, consonance resolves tension
tempo: acceleration creates tension, slowing resolves it
intonation: bending away from the nominal pitch increases tension, returning resolves it
harmony: there’s a very sophisticated system of creating and resolving tension in western harmony (you can buy books and take college courses on it)
syncopation: playing off the beat creates tension, on the beat resolves it
beat division: more divisions per beat creates tension, fewer resolves tension
dynamics: louder creates tension, softer releases tension (this is debatable–you could make a decent case that moving away from the center increases tension, while moving toward decreases. Either way, change in dynamics can create and resolve tension)
articulation: shorter (stacatto) creates tension, longer (legato) releases
repetition: repetition builds tension, variation resolves it
ornamentation: ornaments increase tension, simplicity resolves it
modulation: upward modulation creates tension, downward releases (does this ever happen?)

…and I’m sure that there are more that I’m overlooking. The point is, all music uses these mechanisms, and jazz no less so. Composers are trained to manipulate these things to achieve their musical goals.

So I like to think about a sort of multi-dimensional “tension/release space” where motion along any of these independent axes creates and resolves tension. Far out, huh? Let’s return to earth for a second though. All the blowing and finger wiggling we do is ultimately in support of this manipulation of tension and release to achieve a musical goal. As improvisers, this is the measure of success–how effectively you convey to the audience your musical statement or goal.

Added 19 November 2007: This discussion continues. see the post more on tension and release.