If You Feel Tension...

What piano lessons, hamburgers, and the great Shawn Mendes say about reclaiming peace.

4 minute read. Audio also included for those who prefer to listen.

Mrs. Mills and Miss Katie

When I was 7 or 8 years old I took piano lessons with Mrs. Mills. To be honest, I didn’t like it much. She herself was a great teacher, but I was kind of slow, and the classical style didn’t come easy to me. I hated scales. I struggled to read sheet music. And eventually mom let me quit. Happy day!

A few years later mom brought in another teacher. Miss Katie. Miss Katie took a new approach to music. A much more approachable approach. She helped me feel like music was art, not science. Instead of notes and scales, music with Miss Katie was about colors and feelings. Practice became exciting. And my favorite practice exercise was the Story Game.

The Story Game

Here’s how it works:

1. Roll a big, green foam die three times.

2. See the 3 corresponding words on the Story Paper. Say, a clown in a castle during a thunderstorm.

3. Play the piano, with no rules, until you make something that feels like a clown in a castle during a thunderstorm.

For you type-A folks, this may sound chaotic and weird. It is. But I found it wonderfully freeing.

Playing unhinged eventually taught me to hear specific feelings attached to each chord. As a basic example, major chords tend to sound and feel happy (aka, Peter Rabbit in his favorite sweater during a birthday party), while minor chords tend to sound and feel sad (aka, captain hook in a funeral home during a tornado watch).

But it wasn’t until much later, after Miss Katie got married and moved away, that I discovered the nuance of chords. Welcome to the wonderful world of chord extensions, and how they help us deal with tension.

Hamburgers, and How They Work

Let’s use hamburgers to explain chord extensions.

A major chord is a hamburger.

A major 7 chord is a hamburger with cheese.

A major 9 chord is a hamburger with cheese and 2 slices of bacon.

A major 13b9 chord is a hamburger with cheese, 2 slices of bacon, and an onion ring pinned with a toothpick into a sweet, toasted brioche bun. Then the whole thing floated off the table gently like a swan into a shallow plate of BBQ sauce, but you were okay with that because you like BBQ sauce a lot.

Toppings are what add flavor and dimension to a basic hamburger.

Chord extensions are what add flavor and dimension to a basic chord.

What’s the Point of All This?

“Ok bro, what’s this all about? All I’ve learned today is that you failed at piano as a child and that you’re craving a burger.” Fair point.

To quote the great Shawn Mendes (in a slightly different context), “I could feel the tension, we could cut it with a knife.”

What is this tension? It is the dominant five chord.

The Dominant Five Chord (& Why You Should Care)

Everyone knows a dominant five chord when they hear it. Why? Because our ears CRAVE IT TO STOP BEING A DOMINANT FIVE CHORD. The dominant five chord is the definition of TENSION. It leaves us craving a release, kind of like a few hours after a really big Taco Bell meal (yup, I went there).

Here’s a dominant five chord in action:

But, against all our wishes, sometimes a song ENDS ON A DOMINANT FIVE CHORD. It feels incomplete. Its a cruel artistic choice from the musician, but it is effective. Tension draws us forward. Tension does something inside of us.

This happens in life, too. Sometimes stuff ends in suspense. “What comes next?” we ask, as we fall asleep, unsettled, waiting for the tension to drop.

David felt this way in Psalm 80, which ends by saying,

“Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.” (Psalm 80:19)

Does David sound complete to you?

Does his situation sound resolved?

Do you feel like this today?

(P.S., if you’re looking for the resolution to this post, there is none.)

Toby DeMoss