Submitted by Gilbert Haisman, Jun 28, 2007 16:33

Many Maori kids in New Zealand play the guitar, learning from older folk and each other. Some years ago I came across an amazingly gifted teenaged guitarist who invented his own chords. These chords were, in fact, ones with names such as 'C diminished' and 'C major seventh' and so on, but he didn't know that. All he knew was that people used the letters A, B, C, D, E,.F and G.to name the chords he had learned from them. He needed names for his new chords so he continued up the alphabet: H, I, J. K and so on.

When I showed him that he was playing different TYPES of chord that you could play in any key, his Eureka moment was the most beautiful I have ever seen. He had been using the chords in that way, entirely intuitively, and knew that his names "didn't feel cool." Now, he was "stoked" to find "... neat names, in a pattern... you know?"

In this case, Dr Seuss was wrong: the old alphabet was not only 'enough' but also superior to a wonderfully creative alternative. But, cross fingers, perhaps the young chap will go on to create new sounds for which the old alphabet will not be good enough. Let us hope that the old naming system doesn't set up blinkers that will prevent that breakthrough.

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