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Play the melody, not the chords!
By Peter Roderick on Fri 19th Aug 2011
I was brought up with a terrible affliction, you see; it’s called being a classical musician.
Great for Mozart and Prokofiev, not so good for ‘Autumn Leaves’ or ‘Birdland’.
My fingers just don’t go where my head wants them to.
My brain says swing, groove and beat. My hands play straight, precise, and formulaic.
My head says tune and song, my fingers play chords and neat little phrases.
(For the music geeks out there: my head says suspended 9ths and lots of quartiles, my fingers just keep playing IIb-V-I).
20 years of discipline has made me good at one thing, but bad at another. But recently, slowly – very slowly – I’m learning how to adjust to another style. Gradually, I’m starting to get it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a few years off taking any of it out of my (sound-proofed) living room and exposing anyone but my wife to the sound. But I’m learning perhaps the most important thing I need to know:
play the melody, not the chords.
Years of training have taught me to think of music as a vertical thing, filled with blocks of notes on a page. Yet there’s a whole swathe of music that doesn’t function in that way; its horizontal, its determined by the tune, and the chords follow on behind. And at the risk of trying to pull off a (horrendously clichéd) ‘isn’t life a bit like that?’ moment: well, isn’t life a bit like that?
We long to control the chords of life, its underlying elements, the situations we find ourselves in, the people we’ll spend time around, the places we go, the jobs we do. Yet so often they are out of our control, and just when we’re expecting a flat five, a major seventh turns up. Instead of trying to control our chords down to the last detail, the Jesus way has always been much more organic and subtle. In fact, Jesus’ own brother was heavy with irony when he talked about the ‘chords’ approach to life:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? (James 4 v. 13-14)
Just when you think profit and gain are around the corner, it turns out that – shock horror – God wants something better for you than your material comforts. If you wait around for the chords to change, for all the pins to line up and all the cogs to click into place, you’ll be waiting a while. Its much better to riff on the tunes of love, justice and goodness all the days of your life. Its much better to play the sweet melodies of grace, peace and mercy until your days are done.About the author / Peter Roderick
Peter joined the eldership team of City Church in 2009. He loosely follows Newcastle United and is passionate about Jesus, post-war Italian music, his wife, good friends and good food!
Play the melody, not the chords!I was brought up with a terrible affliction, you see; it’s called being a classical musician.
Great for Mozart and Prokofiev, not so good for ‘Autumn Leaves’ or ‘Birdland’.
My fingers just don’t go where my head wants them to.
My brain says swing, groove and beat. My hands play straight, precise, and formulaic.
My head says tune and song, my fingers play chords and neat little phrases.
(For the music geeks out there: my head says suspended 9ths and lots of quartiles, my fingers just keep playing IIb-V-I).
20 years of discipline has made me good at one thing, but bad at another. But recently, slowly – very slowly – I’m learning how to adjust to another style. Gradually, I’m starting to get it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a few years off taking any of it out of my (sound-proofed) living room and exposing anyone but my wife to the sound. But I’m learning perhaps the most important thing I need to know:
play the melody, not the chords.
Years of training have taught me to think of music as a vertical thing, filled with blocks of notes on a page. Yet there’s a whole swathe of music that doesn’t function in that way; its horizontal, its determined by the tune, and the chords follow on behind. And at the risk of trying to pull off a (horrendously clichéd) ‘isn’t life a bit like that?’ moment: well, isn’t life a bit like that?
We long to control the chords of life, its underlying elements, the situations we find ourselves in, the people we’ll spend time around, the places we go, the jobs we do. Yet so often they are out of our control, and just when we’re expecting a flat five, a major seventh turns up. Instead of trying to control our chords down to the last detail, the Jesus way has always been much more organic and subtle. In fact, Jesus’ own brother was heavy with irony when he talked about the ‘chords’ approach to life:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? (James 4 v. 13-14)
Just when you think profit and gain are around the corner, it turns out that – shock horror – God wants something better for you than your material comforts. If you wait around for the chords to change, for all the pins to line up and all the cogs to click into place, you’ll be waiting a while. Its much better to riff on the tunes of love, justice and goodness all the days of your life. Its much better to play the sweet melodies of grace, peace and mercy until your days are done.
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