Today, we’re looking at the bluesy static section that is commonly found in traditional gospel songs.
Due to the fact that the term “static section” is not familiar to a vast majority of people reading this, let’s take a look at the concept of static section in music and how it works before anything else.
“What Is A Static Section?”
The goal of every musician is to create motion. No matter how many times a note is played repeatedly, it may not just make music. It is the movement of pitches from one note to another that makes music.
A musician is someone who is experienced, skilled, or trained in the art of creating and controlling these motions. Let’s use chord progressions as an example, which entails the movement of chords from one degree of a scale to another.
In the key of C:
…the movement from the second degree of the scale using chord two (Dmin9 chord):
…to the fifth degree of the scale using the Gdom9 chord:
…and then to the first degree of the scale using the Cmaj9 chord:
…creates a 2-5-1 chord progression.
We can’t play the 2-5-1 chord progression by repeating one chord over and over right? To a large extent, the everyday average music is basically made up of the movement of chords, intervals, and scale tones.
“What Is A Static Section?”
Despite the several layers of motion in music, there are harmonic situations where you might want to stay on a particular chord.
In that situation, it’s still possible to create the impression that you are moving when you are REALLY NOT.
For example, if you’re going to stay on the C major triad:
…for a longer duration (let’s say for one bar [or more]), then creating the impression that you’re making a lot of chord movements (chord progressions) becomes necessary.
Let’s proceed into learning a long-established static section that is characteristically bluesy but is associated with traditional gospel harmony.
Here’s The Bluesy Static Section You’ve Probably Heard
The bluesy static section you’re about to learn consists of four chords. We’ll be using the creating the static section over the C major triad:
Here are the chords:
The C dominant seventh chord:
The C diminished seventh chord:
The D half-diminished seventh chord:
The C major triad:
Throughout the entire static section, notice that C is played on the bass:
…as pedal point.
I’ll go ahead and show you other approaches to this bluesy static section.
Approach #1
In this first approach, here is the left hand movement:
#1:
#2:
#3:
#4:
…and here’s the right hand movement:
#1:
#2:
#3:
#4:
Altogether, we have:
The C dominant seventh chord:
The C diminished seventh chord:
The D half-diminished seventh chord:
The C major triad:
Approach #2
This second approach uses right hand diminished triads:
E diminished triad:
D# diminished triad:
D diminished triad:
…with each triad descending in half-steps then the C major triad:
Check it out:
The C dominant seventh chord:
The C diminished seventh chord:
The D half-diminished seventh chord:
The C major triad:
Final Words
This static section can be transposed and learned on every other major triad on the keyboard. In traditional gospel harmony where major triads are used extensively, the use of static sections like this cannot be over emphasized.
Great job and see you in another lesson.
Chuku Onyemachi
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