Thoughts

I’ve often thought of the relationship between harmony and dissonance, not only in our music but in our lives. I believe harmony is meaningless without dissonance, just as dissonance is meaningless without harmony. This philosophy is an extension of something taught by people in many faiths. For the far east, the most easily recognized symbol is the yinyang. For Latter-day Saints like myself, it boils down to a scripture in the Book of Mormon that states, "there must needs be opposition in all things."

It is impossible to know the sweet without the sour, not just in contrast, but in combination. Jeff Sermon, a local musician, church leader and president of Utah Community Credit Union (a pretty large outfit here in Utah) tells a story I really like about lemon juice and strawberry jam. When he was a child he would help his mum harvest strawberries, then wash and mash them for strawberry jam (along with his siblings). When his mum pulled out the lemon juice, something he equated with Draino (toxic stuff), he and his siblings protested adding it to those wonderful strawberries. His mum, being wise, didn’t just go ahead, she told them to taste the strawberries first and they were good, of course. Then she asked them to trust her and added the lemon juice. She asked them to try it again. Of course, the mixture was even better, "More like strawberries than strawberries." The point being that the dissonance (lemon juice) enhanced the harmony (the strawberries), not detracting from it, but making it an even better all-around experience.

If our lives were all harmony, we could never really appreciate it. Still a steady dose of dissonance with no resolution is pretty much unbearable. There has to be a balance in life as well as in music. Few like their lemon juice straight up.

I once took a family science class that showed research that in order for a marriage to survive, you have to have five good experiences for every bad one. If you reached a 1/1 ratio, the couple was already long since divorced. I think, in general, that’s a pretty good measure for how much dissonance the average person can handle in their lives, and, in the broadest sense, the most amount of dissonance that same person is willing to take in a piece of music. Of course, one piece might be more dissonant and another more consonant, but when it all averages out, there you have it: 5/1 in favor of consonance/harmony.

I know there are other composers with different opinions on dissonance, but that’s mine and a pretty good rule to follow if you hope anyone will want a second dose of your music.