How Music really Works Wayne Chase

How Music Really Works_

This book is not often available on Amazon so there is no picture link. I will give details of how to get a copy later.
It’s a big book  (890 Pages) and covers a huge range of subjects. It is also pretty quirky as the author uses wild west stories to make some of his points, but there are some great insights that I haven’t found elsewhere so I recommend checking it out. The first 6 chapters are available free on-line so you have nothing to lose. Read them here 

The book ranges very widely so I will focus on just one area here so that you can decide if you want to explore further. One of the most interesting  topics for song writers is the Chase chart. This is a diagram showing the harmonic movement of a song. The chords of the harmonic scale are written in a circle and arrows show the movement between them. The arrangement of the chords is rather clever, as you move round the circle clock wise each chord moves down a fifth (with the exception of the bottom chord.) The major chords are on the right and the minor chords are generally on the left. Any chords that are not in the harmonic scale are outside the circle.  Here is an example from the book, the Star Spangled Banner,I chose this example because most people will know it. .  In just a glance you can see what the song is about harmonically.

Ch_6_Fig_91a

If you want a paper copy then the best option is to buy a copy from the publishers website . If you live outside USA/Canada then shipping puts up the price a lot. Another option is to download a PDF, this is what I did as I live in the UK, the only snag with this is that the PDF is protected so you need a special program to open it.

Best bit: The chase chart in chapter 6.

I found it really hard to give this a star rating, some parts are very innovative and really helped my song  writing and worthy of 5 stars.. It does vary widely in usefulness so I decided to give it 4 stars, but since you can check out the first half for free I recommend that you see what you think.

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