The Random Extension Generator is a work that has been shaped by many hands for quite a while now. I was first introduced to the idea of knowing the sound, or identifying the feeling, of how certain notes sit against a harmonic background by Bruce Arnold, who had been turned on to the concept by the famed Boston area musical guru Charlie Banacos. After toying with my own practice tapes for a few years, I generated some tracks that played the notes and a triad at the same time for use in my improvisation classes at UNO. One of my students, a very gifted musician and extremely bright fellow, Adam Bellard, came up with the initial version of the application you will find here. In 2008, Bill Malchow and I added a bunch of features to Adam’s app, which brings us to where it is now.

In Charlie’s exercise, the harmonic background was set up separately from the note. The Random Extension Generator plays the harmonic background and the note simultaneously. You can have it use different triads or seventh chord shells in different inversions as the harmonic background. You can have it change keys for each example, or keep the root the same, or the bass note. You also have control over which types of sounds you will be listening to, which I think is fundamentally one of the most important ways to use this application. There are great benefits to be had be focusing ones attention on distinguishing between two or three similar sounds, as opposed to always working on a whole pile of sounds at the same time.

What most people will notice as a curiosity the first time they use this, is that there is no built in way to “test” yourself with this tool. The reasoning behind that would require a few more pages of typing to fully explain - I suggest if you really want to know what I think about that, you can talk to one of my current or former students, or come to one of my classes some day. The short explanation is that the development of the ear shouldn’t be test driven, as that tends to lead people to figure out the ways to get the right answer, rather than leading them to just knowing the right answer, much like you know your own name, or that there’s food (or maybe beer if you’re a typical college student) inside the refrigerator. You don’t have to think about those things, you just kind of own that information somehow.

If you use this tool properly, by carefully observing your impressions of various combinations of notes and harmonic backgrounds, you will eventually get to the point where these sounds are completely apparent to you, beyond any cognitive process.

Enjoy!