The Skill of Harmony

Music revolves around melodies. A melody is the memory of a piece, it's the story the music is telling, its soul or spirit. This spirit has a gravity to it, drawing the listener through time to deliver its message. Harmony is something that is in service to the melody. It enhances or empowers a melody by bringing something different and distinct to the music that the melody cannot provide. It gives the melody color and context. The same melody can communicate something completely different when paired with alternative harmonies.

Harmonies can have endless variation because there is no such thing as a wrong note. This is something I have learned from studying the musicality and philosophy of jazz musician Jacob Collier. He works from the perspective that something sounds “bad” or “wrong” only if it lacks confidence or has not found its consequence. He has shown that every note can work in every chord, it's simply a matter of playing it with conviction and finding a reason for that note. A two minute demonstration of this way of thinking about harmony can be found at the following link: http://tinyurl.com/NoWrongNotes

Building the skill of Harmony is really about learning how to calmly and confidently sit in the uncomfortable, center yourself, and search for opportunities to create connection. I have found that the most powerful and impactful harmonies are those that take the most obscure, dissonant, disconnected things and make a path to bring those things back into alignment with the greater purpose. To do this effectively requires the ability to be able to hold two things in our mind at the same time. We must be able to hear both where we are at and how that is relating to the melody we are seeking to harmonize with. If we can do this mental skill, we can experience a very specific physical feeling. When it clicks in, you physically feel it and it is unmistakable.

The skill of harmony grants its practitioners a more robust sense of personal integrity and general bullshit detection. When you develop deep trust in that keen physical sense, you are much more difficult to manipulate and much better at recognizing when opportunity knocks on your door. Knowing when the vibe is right is an invaluable skill in the world we live within. Knowledge is power.