These paragraphs are in the key of A major inconvenience
BY CAITLIN MOEHRLE
I’m scared that if I learn what a seventh chord is, then I won’t hear “[Insert Song Here]” but instead I’ll hear Cm7 or D#𐩑/A♭ and the sad thing is that I don’t even know if those are real chords—I’m sure they probably are, but I’m too busy listening to them to figure it out. Don’t those labels look so mechanical? What if I want to hear music instead of see it, what if I want to perform instead of dissect, the sounds dying as I write them on my pen, like a wheezing frog on a laboratory table, each little whole note stealing a whole breath, stacking one note on top of the other, compressing the auditory into the visual—suffocating sound.
I don’t particularly care for why the C# in the second measure does not fit the harmonic analysis, but I can tell you why it strikes me like a lightning bolt to land on it, to be in one world—one key, C natural—and then to break free, to see a glimpse of a parallel world where waterfalls flow upward and grass grows purple—another key, maybe B minor—oh god stop it’s killing me, the capital letters are imprinted in my eyes, now when I hear a note, I think of it in terms of relative pitch, I think of the potential non-chord tones in the melody and its possible harmonizations, when I hear a melody I don’t think ooh pretty I think yes, that is indeed a melody, the thought of a plagal cadence gives me the plague, everything I know now is already too much, I can’t imagine knowing anymore.
I learned the alphabet in kindergarten but now a is not for apples it’s for appoggiaturas and b is not for balloons but bitonality and c is not for cat but for can I be silent for five minutes, there’s always music in my head, and now that there’s a name assigned to every chord, I might go insane trying to recognize them all like acquaintances I have every intention of remembering but will ultimately forget in a week’s time. I rarely bump into fully diminished chords on the street so what if I mistake them for a minor? It will be very offended by the mislabeling, I should be ashamed of the attempt—why am I worthy of this knowledge in the first place? Music theory is something only Zeus or Shiva or the Buddha should have access to, manipulating sound waves in such a way, its mind control I tell you, every composer is a mind-controller, they should’ve called it Mozart’s Eine Kleine Mind Control and Beethoven’s Ode to Hypnosis, and me? As a performer, maybe I’m a mind controller too, but at least I don’t explain to you why I played a sharp instead of a flat. Like you, I don’t particularly care, I just want to hear the music, I want to feel things instead of figure things out. Playing an A major scale will not give you any kind of goosebumps, but I will play it anyway, before every practice session, rehearsal, concert, I will play scales, and, if they sound boring, if they sound tedious, blame music theory.