h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm probably fairly odd (well, i'm odd in most other stuff, so i have nothing to lose) but i know absolutely sod all about the technical stuff, despite having had the advantage of attending a Music school at a young age & being given a violin, which i abused horribly.

I've pretty much forgotten all about music theory 40 years on, but can finaly play bass harmony, sing 3rd part harmony & dink dink nicely on a mandolin. Just by ear.No clue as to notes & chord names etc. It's often difficult to co-ordinate the fingers being fast enough to hunt & peck the note you want, but if you can't do it at first, you slow it to half time & practise until you can "If ya can't play it slow, ain't no way ya can play it fast, unless it's already there"

I'm sure there are as many ways of learning music as there are ways of playing it..which is what it's all about really, as with most art forms.

Useful technical references here & if anyone can tell me what a "suspended ninth" is & give me an example of why i react emotionally to it; i would be Grateful (but not Dead)

zdt

Well, a ninth is a where you play a note, and also another note which is one octave and one note above it. For example, if you play a low G and a high A. On a mandolin, that would be the G string and the A string at the same time. There may be other notes in the chord. If you finger the third fret on the 1st / thinnest string on the mandolin and strum all four strings, you've got a ninth.

It's called suspended because it sounds as if it is incomplete, and wants you to play another chord after it to finish it off. It's left hanging waiting for the other chord.

Suspended chords, because they produce this feeling of incompleteness, add excitement to the music. If you could stop a piece of music at any point because it sounded as if it was complete, then you probably would. Such music would be boring.