tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47131903355575170932023-11-15T10:17:30.855-05:00Khavall's Beginners guide to Music everythingCalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-31347324964763860752012-09-18T12:17:00.001-04:002012-09-18T12:17:47.180-04:00Paradigms: The useful version!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When we last left our Valiant Heroes they were learning of chord Paradigms, specific Progression templates, in a sense, that could be fiddled with.<br />
Now we talked about the most common in terms of overall music, but there are some progressions and paradigms that are just absolutely necessary to be known, and even have their own names(The I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V kind of bridges this gap a little, being the Pachabel's Cannon progression, as well as being in such songs as Green day's "Time of your life"). Today we're going to learn about two incredibly common Paradigms, with their variations.<br />
The first thing we're going to learn about is the <i style="font-weight: bold;">Twelve bar Blues</i>. The classic version of this is very simple, and amazingly famous. In it's most basic form, it is as follows:<br />
(I'm not sure I covered anything in this fashion before, so here's a brief breakdown on the new notation system I'll be using some of the time. Basically I use vertical dashes: |, to indicate a bar line. I use horizontal dashes: - to indicate beats, if there needs to be differentiation. For instance, if a bar only contains a V chord, it will be written thus: | V | If it contains a V chord on beat one and a IV chord on beat three, it will be written thus: | V IV |. If it contains a V chord on beat one and a IV chord on beat two, it will be written thus: | V IV - - | If there are no dashes, it is assumed that the chords are spaced evenly in the measure)<br />
<b><u>Twelve bar blues:</u></b><br />
I7 | I7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | V7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 :| <-(This last bar has a colon indicating a repeat)<br />
It's really as simple as that! It's a little repetitious, yes, but it works. Now, how would we add variations to this progression?<br />
Well the first possible variation is what's known as a <i style="font-weight: bold;">Tritone Substitution</i>. This is a huge, huge, huge, <i>huge</i> concept in jazz and related styles. It's also one that is barely ever actually used on the fly, but it's still a big concept. In order to understand the tritone substitution, let's first look at a typical dominant 7th chord. For an example, let's imagine a G7 chord. What are the notes in it? G - B - D - F. Now, between B and F, there's a tritone, which I believe we touched on before. A tritone is an augmented 4th, or a diminished 5th. It is also the interval at the beginning of "Maria" from West Side Story.<br />
Speaking of tritones, let's look at a C#7 chord, a chord with root one tritone away from a G7. In the C#7 chord we have notes: C# - E#(F) - G# - B. This chord, like all Dominant 7th chords, has a tritone in it as well. In fact, while notated differently, it has the same tritone in it as the G7 chord. It stands to reason if you think about it that this would happen. A tritone is exactly 6 half steps in size. An octave contains 12 half steps. Therefore, a tritone is the middle point of the octave. If there is a tritone in a chord, and you move by a tritone, the tritone in the chord will remain the same. So what a Tritone Substitution actually is is swapping out any Dominant 7th chord with the chord with root one tritone away. This gives us some opportunities for some fun with the substitutions.<br />
My next post is going to be a bit of a physics and math talk to explain what I'm about to say, but I want to take a moment to mention that for the most part, the 5th of chords without a modified 5th is the least important note of a chord. Especially with a major third, the 5th is implied through the other notes, and if it's not altered, especially if there's no inversion, the 5th doesn't really add anything to the chord. I mention this now because I'm going to be ignoring the 5th sometimes and I wanted to explain why it's ok.<br />
Now with this in mind, I'm going to demonstrate use of a Tritone substitution in between the I7 and the V7, in G. So we've had 4 measures of G7. Then C7 | C7 | G7 | Now let's say we want a substitution here to lead a little more into the D7 chord. The tritone from G is C#. We're going to throw out the 5th of the C#7 chord for now, so we're dealing with notes C#, F, B. Without the 5th in, we're only altering one note, the 5th of the G7 - D, to the root of the Substitution F#7 - C#. This gives us the same feel as a G7, but with a little more leading.<br />
This is just one example of the uses of Tritone substitution, however. They won't always work, but they can provide a nice sound when they're used right. This is also a really, really easy way to alter the 12-bar blues phrase.<br />
Another way to alter the Twelve bar blues is with passing chromatics. For instance, when going from the V to the IV, we can pass through, either syncopated or not, with a #IV7 chord.<br />
Another very, very simple way to alter the Twelve bar blues is to add a turnaround to the last measure, often ending on a V chord.<br />
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Anyways, there was an introduction to both the Twelve Bar Blues Paradigm and the Tritone Substitution. Since Tritone Substitutions are so complex and required such an explanation, I'm going to lightly brush on this next Paradigm relatively quickly.<br />
The next paradigm is a very simple base, that can be used in so, so, so many things.<br />
<b>I - vi - ii - V</b><br />
<b> </b>On its own it seems pretty innocuous. It's a cute little progression that is pretty happy. However, the variation, the very specific variation that builds off of it, is incredibly, incredibly great. You see, this paradigm is useful in a longer progression which extends it a little:<br />
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<b>I vi | ii V | I vi | ii V | I I7 | IV #IVdim | I V | I</b><br />
Still doesn't quite look like much, does it? Well there's a song you may have heard of:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/M-cej-5dkc0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Hey that's what that song that's super famous! In fact, that progression is used in, like, a million songs. The Flinstones theme even works over it. Now, there's also the bridge, which is just a Falling fifths paradigm starting on the III chord. So it's just:<br />
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III7 | VI7 | II7 | V7<br />
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Simple as that! The whole song together is AABA, so it's the I-vi-ii-V progression in entirety twice, then the bridge, then the I-vi-ii-V progression again.<br />
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Obviously that's just one variation on the I-vi-ii-V, sometimes you don't need any, and there are others. But that's definitely the most famous and useful progression based on the I-vi-ii-V. Also, if you play bass or guitar, Rhythm changes are <i>hilariously</i> easy to voice lead.<br />
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Anyways, that's all for our first post back, more to come!<br />
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Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-89460414650636121002012-09-17T12:29:00.001-04:002012-09-17T12:29:07.057-04:00What the back?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
And a very good morning/afternoon/evening to all of you! It's been a while, hasn't it?<br />
Well I've got some fantastic news: I'm back! That's right, I'm(for now) done cruising the high seas, and I certainly won't be gone for very long if I am again. I've grown a lot as a Musician over these last two years, and I've grown a lot as a person. I of course remembered all of you lovely people and decided to start up the blog again, and get some Theory all up ins.<br />
There are going to be a few changes in the writing of this blog as I return, mostly because after my time working on the ships, there is a lot more insight I can give on certain things. Also, I've received a much more practical education while working, so we're going to have some more practical posts in addition to the hoity-toity book theory that will, of course, continue.<br />
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Anyways, there may be a post up later today with some of the new stuff(I've got a great add-on to paradigms coming your way), but I just wanted to get the word out that I am in fact back, and the blog continues!</div>
Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-47168822175426491552010-10-18T15:06:00.000-04:002010-10-18T15:06:09.951-04:00Shutting down....kind ofHey everyone, I know it's been a super long time and I wanted to explain why and get ready for the future.<br />
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I've now got a full-time piano gig working on Cruise ships for a while, so my internet is intermittent at best, and while I do have time to write the posts, I don't have any of the references I use to check myself to make sure I'm still doing things right, nor do I have the programs and materials I normally use. If I can, I'll try to continue to update, but, for instance, audio files, pictures, anything like that I probably won't be able to put up as easily, and there will most likely be a big delay. Sorry for anyone missing the posts, but the gig just doesn't leave that much time to really work on the blog that much.<br />
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Thanks for reading.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-26055142799852314462010-07-01T00:48:00.004-04:002010-07-01T01:27:29.775-04:00Paradigm analysis<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Hey readers! It's been a super-long time since I've updated, I know, but with a combination of being ridiculously busy and changing my mind on how best to do this post(and the one after it) as well as now-resolved technical difficulties with my MIDI keyboard, which made putting examples into Finale an exercise in frustration. Anyways, I'm now back-ish. I have an audition in a couple of weeks which will be super-important, so I'll be in and out practicing for that many hours a day, but after that I should be able to keep at least something approaching a regular schedule.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now, last time I brought up the idea of Paradigms for chord progressions, which are interesting ways of thinking about progressions where you're not nailed down to a specific progression of chords, but rather you have a nice framework that you can play around with a little more. I've got today examples of the first two paradigms I mentioned, as well as a single variation on both. Without further delay, here's the first example, a very short piece for a string quartet.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/16451.pdf">I-vi-IV-V-I</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I'd like to apologize again for the PDF handling. If anyone can suggest a way to host PDFs, or any multi-page document, that'd be awesome, but for now we have to go through Wuala, which while not awful, I can't just have a hotlink or inline. Or at least don't know how.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyways, that score is great, but since that's sort of useless without the corresponding sound...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/isdv"><img border="0" src="http://tindeck.com/image/isdv/stats.png" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Wonderful. Ok, this is fairly straightforwards as a piece, so let's do a quick and dirty analysis. The first thing to do is figure out what key we're in. After that, see if you can get the general idea of what the chord progression is. In this example, all of the chords are in root position, so that makes that part super easy. Also, the title happens to be the Paradigm I'm using, so that makes it even easier.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So we're dealing with a piece in F major, and the progression is I-vi-IV-V-I-vi-IV-I. Now we can notice that it sounds like we have two phrases in here, the I-vi-IV-V, and the I-vi-IV-I. So the first phrase ends with a Half-cadence, and the second ends with a Plagal Cadence.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now, here we already are starting with playing around a bit. The Paradigm is I-vi-IV-V, right? But while the first phrase does that, the second one careens off the cliff at the end and doesn't go to V, instead opting for a Plagal Cadence. Well, we'd still call that the I-vi-IV-V Paradigm, probably, because the function of the chords is still about the same as though it were, and the first phrase does it exactly. The only difference is that to preserve having the phrases having equal lengths, we just chopped off the V and replaced it with a I.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ok, now let's look at a slightly changed piece.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/16451%20variation.pdf">Variation</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">And it sounds like...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/brzl"><img border="0" src="http://tindeck.com/image/brzl/stats.png" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Bam. Ok, almost the same, right? In fact, I don't know how many of you are using Foxit Reader, but I've got them both open and can quickly change between them in tabs to see very clearly the difference. All I've done is altered the Viola line in measures 2 and 6 from alternating between F and A to alternating between F and Bb. So what does that mean? Well, a vi chord in F Major is D-F-A, right? A d minor triad. And a Bb chord, Bb-D-F, is a IV chord. Well what I've done is taken out the vi chord and replaced it with a IV6 chord, or a IV chord in 1<sup>st</sup> inversion.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now let's think about that for a second. The vi chord is a minor chord, and was played in root position. This gives it that nice grounded sound of the root position, and it's the only minor chord in the progression, which gives that sort of more “sad” sound to it. Meanwhile, the IV6 chord is in first inversion and is a major chord. This means we have a much, what I would call softer texture to the whole thing. It gives us a nice “happier” sound, it makes the progression have less movement, since we're really now just going I-IV-IV-V in terms of the actual notes played... while we're only changing one note, it really gives a nice different feel to the progression.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, calling that a I-IV-V progression wouldn't really give us the whole picture, because of the way it's voiced. This is what makes thinking in Paradigms so great. The variation still sounds like I-vi-IV-V, for the most part, but just subtly different. The bass line has the same contour and the same notes, and we could use this progression as we use I-vi-IV-V much more than we could use it as we use something like I-IV-V.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is also great if we're listening to something, and we hear a I-vi-IV-V run in the bass, and when we play it it just sounds <i>wrong</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. There's always the chance that they're doing a IV6 or some other variation somewhere that makes it sound a little different.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">So, to expand on that, let's take a quick look at a second example, and then I have some tunes I cooked up in Reason that are a little more full, so we have the use of the paradigm in context and not just on paper in tiny examples.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/1245.pdf"><br />
</a></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/1245.pdf">I-ii-IV-V</a></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/yfje"><img border="0" src="http://tindeck.com/image/yfje/stats.png" /></a></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Great, so here's one for brass, if you couldn't tell. Let's do the quick look here. We have two sharps, which puts us in D major, and the progression.. uh oh. This one is a little busier than the last one, which makes this a bit harder. Well, luckily, again the title is the progression, but also, just take a look at the beginning of each measure. That first beat is a really nice way to figure out where things are, because barring a suspension, it's really common to have things line up there. Also, the first thing I do is just look at the bass line for major changes, which in this case is the Tuba. Sometimes, as we saw in the variation back there, there are inversions, but the bass notes will very, very often be at least in the chord, if not on the root or outlining it entirely. Anyways, the progression is I-ii-IV-V for the first and second phrase, and then the 2</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">nd</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> page just finishes the whole thing off with I-V-I.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">So this is pretty straightforwards again, it's the second paradigm I mentioned in the last post, and there are some more nonharmonic tones, but for the most part, there it is.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">So let's fuck with it a bit, because we can.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/1245%20Variation.pdf">Variation</a></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/vcon"><img border="0" src="http://tindeck.com/image/vcon/stats.png" /></a></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Now this one is slightly more changed than the last one, but again it's that second chord that I changed up a bit. This time instead of a ii chord, which in D major is E-G-B, an e minor triad, I substitute in a V in 2</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">nd</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> inversion, with the notes E-A-C#. Now here's a </span><i>huge</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> example of how thinking in Paradigms is really, really, really awesome. The progression, were we to ignore inversions, would be I-V-IV-V. I-V-IV-V is another paradigm all together from I-ii-IV-V, and has its own very distinct sound. Even if we just add in the inversion, and say it's a I-V6/4-IV-V, it still would be super-easy to think about a I-V-IV-V thing if that's all we saw. However, having the bass line rise to the second scale degree makes the piece have a very clear sound that is characteristic of the I-ii-IV-V progression. The sound is a little different than I-ii-IV-V, but it's much, much closer to that than I-V-IV-V. So this is a great example of how thinking in terms of these big broad umbrellas that I call Paradigms and then whittling down to specific variations and progressions gives this really nice immediate recognition and classification that just looking at a billion progressions doesn't. In fact, if someone were to talk to me about I-V-IV-V, the sound I would immediately go to would be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ht5RZpzPqw">Blink182s All the Small things</a></span>.(There may be an ad with that link, sorry about that). Now, that's not only a different sound from this Paradigm because of the style, but it just has a completely different harmonic sound in general. Again, this is why Paradigms are awesome. All the Small Things could be I-iii6-ii6-V and would probably sound a shitton of a lot closer to the original song than doing a variation of I-ii-IV-V. </div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">If I had to pick one reason that I'm spending so much time on this subject, that would probably be it. Being able to look at a piece and just sort of give a nice broad classification, and understand how those broad classifications fit together will make doing any sort of deep, particular analysis faster and easier, and being able to hear in those giant brush strokes and then pick out the finer detail is also incredibly useful if you're trying to play by ear. Note that I've always said “think about” in terms of Paradigms, and not “analyze”. That's because if we were to write down the paradigm instead of the progression in an analysis... yeah that would be wrong. But if we recognize and think in the paradigm, and then whittle down into the progression, we'll be adding a tool to help us easily understand the larger picture. I know personally if I'm sightreading, or improvising over a line, I think in terms of the paradigm a lot more than the progression. In general, thinking in Paradigms is the <em>practical</em> way to go about things. "Close enough" is, well, close enough 90% of the time.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyways, I know that we've basically just covered two pieces with variations, but I'm working on some more fun examples of the things we covered today, it'll be an enjoyable experience. Also, I have super-awesome news, which is that Tindeck seems to have added an embedded player, which I'll probably start switching over to soon.</div>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-20042760402754868402010-03-23T11:28:00.000-04:002010-03-23T11:28:03.967-04:00Lesson 13: ParadigmsHey everyone. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Updates may end up being a touch.... sporadic for a while, but I swear I haven't forgotten about this.<br />
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So way back when, when I last posted, we had talked about single chord on chord tendencies, which is, as you'll recall, less hot than it sounds. Now, that's great for songwriting and composition, and pretty ok for performance. But it's pretty small and self-contained too, unfortunately. When we start stringing them together a little more, before we get to, say, a whole song, we deal with <em>Chord Paradigms</em>. Paradigms are.... ok, this is a really patronizing metaphor and I apologize, but think of them like combos in a fighting game. You've got normal punches and kicks to be strung together, and that kind of works, but if you use certain combinations you launch a badass fireball at the audience. Ok, it's also not a perfect metaphor. Anyways, basically they're small, sort of self-contained, loose chord progressions.<br />
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I've only heard them referred to as Paradigms when I was at Oberlin, so this may be a very strange way of thinking about it, but I actually really like this way of doing it, because it gives a nice intermediate step that most people arrive at anyways formality and a name. For instance, if you talk to a Jazz musician, they'll know what "Rhythm changes" means without needing to say "Ok, we'll go I-vi-ii-V twice and then we'll do a I-V7/IV-IV-vii<sup>o</sup>/V-I-V-I. Awesome everyone remember that and let's jam" They'll be able to easily solo over that, they'll know good voicings, they'll understand how it sounds and how it feels just by saying "Rhythm changes". Paradigms give you that freedom but in a more structured classical setting. So for instance, if you learn what I-vi-IV-V sounds like and how to voice those chords, your workload is cut down from playing around with each chord in that line and its tendencies, and you can play around a little more with the specifics involved.<br />
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Now, unfortunately for me, a lot of this is not so much just learning from a book or blog like some of the other things I've gone over, but a lot of it depends on just listening to, noticing, and hearing all of these paradigms in use. To that end, my next post is going to be a bunch of examples written in a variety of styles that sort of goes over these ideas, so you all can get practice in reading and hearing these.<br />
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But for now, let's take a glance at the most common paradigms:<br />
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<strong>I-vi-IV-V</strong><br />
This is used <em>all the time</em>. All the fucking time. It's the "Heart and soul" paradigm. There are some common substitutions in here too, such as I-IV6-IV-V, which makes it a little more stagnant in my opinion, but also has a more uplifting sound to it. Sort of.<br />
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<strong>I-ii-IV-V</strong><br />
<strong>I-iii-IV-V</strong><br />
I group these together because they're relatively similar, they're both ascending bass motion to V. Again, some of these all I can do 'till I have examples is sort of list them, and you'll be able to hear them more when you actually see them in use.<br />
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<strong> I-V-vi-</strong><br />
You'll notice this one is only three chords and doesn't immediately lead back to I. That's because while this is a common opener, sometimes it completes the Pachabel paradigm and continues the general motion(iii-IV-I-IV-V), or sometimes it just goes IV-V after that.... it's a common opening paradigm that has a lot of variation, one major one is practically it's own paradigm:<br />
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<strong>I-V6-vi-V</strong><br />
Descending bass line paradigm. This happens everywhere, and again, is pretty much a variation on the I-V-vi<br />
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Now, as with the last one, some of these paradigms have common names. "Descending bass" will tell you a lot, and sometimes it's just to V, sometimes we take it all the way to ii, then V, then I, but it's still all under the "Descending bass" paradigm umbrella.<br />
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Some of these are "Falling" or "Rising" paradigms. For instance, Falling fourths would be I-V-ii-vi-iii-vii<sup>o</sup>-IV-and then we could break to V-I, or we could break after the vii<sup>o</sup><br />
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You can sort of do this with any falling or rising interval. Also you can go into or out of falling or rising intervalic paradigms, which is why I'm not just listing a few. So for instance, if you get to ii some how, and are looking to get out of it, just fall by fifths and you get ii-V-I, which is a super common way to cadence.<br />
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Anyways, I need to do a lot of preparation before I'm ready with examples, but I wanted to get the primer out of the way now instead of trying to combine the posts and having a giant massive post. Nest update we'll look more in depth at paradigms and how they interact with each other and how they sound and work in the real world.<br />
<strong> </strong><strong> </strong>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-78163383550447320952010-02-22T11:38:00.001-05:002010-02-22T11:38:53.824-05:00Lesson 12: Roman Numeral Theory 3: Chordal Tendencies 1: USC 23Hey everyone, sorry this took so long, but I actually wrote this post in entirety, saved it, closed the window, and when I went to edit it, to give it a last once-over and publish it, it had regressed to the save before I wrote it.<br />
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Ok, so finally let's talk about chordal tendencies.<br />
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We already learned about cadences, and that's a good starting point to think about this. You'll notice that all cadences with the exception of the Plagal, which is a lot weaker than the others, and is normally used as sort of an after-cadence flourish, they all involve V in some way. And while one ends in V(Half Cadence), we'll note that the V-anything other than I cadence is referred to as the <i>deceptive cadence</i>. That's because the V-I motion is so strong in tonal music that V-not I is all "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON", or rather, it used to be. Now we're sort of used to it and it's no big deal, but it used to be like, <i>whack as shit</i>.<br />
<br />
So the basics of this are actually really simple. Each diatonic chord has "natural" progressions from it(and therefore to it as well). They are as follows:<br />
<br />
I - goes to - Anywhere<br />
ii - goes to - iii, IV, V<br />
iii - goes to - IV, vi<br />
IV - goes to - ii, V<br />
V - goes to - I, vi<br />
vi - goes to - ii, IV, V<br />
vii<sup>o</sup> - goes to - I<br />
<br />
Ok, that's pretty simple, right? Now, it's also pretty damn restrictive, and in fact, you can go from really pretty much any diatonic chord to any diatonic chord without it sounding <i>too</i> jarring(The exception being V7 and vii<sup>o</sup>, because of the collapsing tritone(Yeah, I know, I'll get to it. Maybe not this lesson, but soon)), but these are the ones that work the best and pretty much will always work. <br />
<br />
For minor, we get the following:<br />
<br />
i - goes to - Anywhere<br />
ii<sup>o</sup> - goes to - III<br />
III - goes to - iv, V, VI<br />
iv - goes to - V, VI<br />
V - goes to - i<br />
VI - goes to - iv, III, V<br />
vii<sup>o</sup> - goes to - i<br />
<br />
I'm a little more shaky on those, and can't find my theory book that mentioned those, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Also, you'll notice, as I mentioned before, that V and vii<sup>o</sup> are altered in minor for voice leading purposes. We raise the leading tone(Harmonic minor scale) when playing these because we get the strong.... well we get the strong leading tone.<br />
<br />
Ok, so that's the basics, and not as big as I kept building it up.<br />
<br />
But hey.... like I said, it's pretty restrictive, right? For that matter.... hey wait, nothing leads to vii<sup>o</sup>. Well, it's time to learn about <i>substitutions</i>, which are the first level of added complexity to basics of tendencies.<br />
<br />
Let's look at a V7 chord in C major. It has the notes G-B-D-F. Now let's look at a vii<sup>o</sup> in C major. It has the notes B-D-F.<br />
<br />
What we can do is essentially use a vii<sup>o</sup> in place of a V7, or substitute the vii<sup>o</sup>. By doing this, we can treat the vii<sup>o</sup> entirely as though it were a V chord, so we can approach it from ii, IV, or vi, and it can go to I(and vii<sup>o</sup> is one of the few substitutions where leaving it is a little different than the V chord. The vii<sup>o</sup> really doesn't go well into the vi chord, which is why evne though nothing leads to it, it still has its own place in the list of tendencies) While in this case, the vii<sup>o</sup> simply omits a single note, there are other substitutions I want to look at that change things up a little, and can be used more fully.<br />
<br />
The first one I want to look at is the use of inversions as substitutions. As an example, instead of the strings I used for the last example, here's a brass band:<br />
<a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/ytmu" target="_blank">Click here to listen to <b>iii v I6.mp3</b></a><br />
Now, this basically is the exact same figure twice, right? Except that third chord sounds different. Just a little, and it still works, but it sounds happier and move conducive to upwards motion in the second time.<br />
<br />
Well, that's because we use an inversion of the I6 chord in the example. While the I chord can go anywhere it wants anyways, the ii chord does not lead to the I chord. However, since the I6 chord is only one note away from the iii chord(That is to say, they share the 3rd and 5th scale degree and only differ as the Tonic is in the I chord and the leading tone replaces it in the iii chord). Now, the first inversion of chords tends to have a very "pretty" sort of sound, they sound nice and open, and they tend a little upwards. Second inversions tend to sound a little unbalanced and unstable, and in certain cases can sound like a suspension of a different chord(for instance, in the cadential 6-4 from last lesson, even though it's a I6-4, it sounds like a V chord that just has the 6-4 above it that then resolves down) Personally, I love first inversions and sub-ing in first inversion chords, I just love the sound, and having them in open voicing I always think just sounds awesome and is a really useful tool.<br />
<br />
So with substitutions, we open up those restrictive tendencies a lot, because now, for instance, if instead of a iii chord we want to use a I6 chord? Well we can. So now anything that leads into iii can also lead into I6.<br />
<br />
Now, not all substitutions of inversions will work, and they won't work 100% of the time, but here are the most common substitutions:<br />
<br />
chord - substitution<br />
iii - I6<br />
vi - IV6<br />
V - vii<sup>o</sup><br />
<br />
<br />
Ok, pretty simple still.<br />
<br />
You'll all notice though, that we're still just dealing with groupings of two chords. x -> y is fine, but that's only a small part of progressions. Well, we can theoretically tie them together any way we want, but there are a few groupings of chords that are very common in music and have very recognizable sounds and uses. We're going to refer to these as <i>Chord Paradigms, </i>and they're going to be what the rest of this general unit is about, because they're pretty heavy. Essentially though, they're simple progressions that are fairly common.<br />
<br />
I'm going to end this lesson here, even though it's fairly short, and start on Paradigms next lesson, with the most common ones and their sounds. We might have a bit of a delay again between these as well, because I'm pretty busy, I'm going on tour the week after next, and I have a lot of examples to prepare sound files for.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-21807676271559430892010-02-07T13:06:00.001-05:002010-02-28T18:24:19.250-05:00Lesson 11: Roman Numeral Chordal Theory 2: Simple Analysis <i>Note: This lesson will use PDFs as examples, so you'll need to be able to read PDFs. I'd use JPGs like normal, but I have multi-page print-outs that I'm using, and PDF seemed the best for it. Sorry if this is an inconvenience to anyone. </i><i>Also, I'll be linking in both Wuala and Wikiupload. I haven't found a place to host that has direct linking without having the files expire. With Wuala, you can just download directly without getting the Wuala application, even though the page gives the Wuala application as the first big link at the top.</i><br />
<br />
Ok, I know I said I'd get to chordal tendencies this post, but I'm going to split off a bit to give us some practice in reading and recognizing Roman numeral theory. Also, I'm going to introduce a new concept known as <i>Tonicization, </i>which is essentially playing pretend in a new key. I know, this will feel <i>eerily</i> like homework, but getting practice in this is important, and it'll help cement these ideas. Also, I'll be referencing this example while talking about chord tendencies, since it was originally written just to reinforce that, and then I realized hey, why not get more use out of it.<br />
<br />
So, to start, I've written a nice simple, short piece for String Quartet in the key of C Major.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/uyqr"><img border="0" src="http://tindeck.com/image/uyqr/stats.png" /></a><br />
<br />
And there it is.<br />
<br />
Now, let's a take a look at this piece, since just hearing it doesn't give us too much information:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%201.pdf">PDF</a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=214908">(Alt Link) </a><br />
<br />
Ok.... eh. That's a little more useful, but that's a bunch of notes in there. If only we just had the chords laid out a little more simply.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%20Chords.pdf">PDF </a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=214910">(Alt Link) </a><br />
<br />
Ok, there we go. Now, for fun, see if you can figure out the Chords written as absolute notation there(e.g. C, C/E, etc)<br />
<br />
<i>Side note: Holy shit, I never taught you guys how to read Alto clef. Fuck, let's do(it live) that now</i>.<br />
<br />
So, those examples have that weird-as-fuck clef thing, don't they?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Alto_clef_with_note.svg/405px-Alto_clef_with_note.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Alto_clef_with_note.svg/405px-Alto_clef_with_note.svg.png" width="216" /></a></div> Yeah, that one.<br />
Well, as that image shows, C is right in the middle of the clef. It says C<sup>1</sup> but it's middle C in there. So that's the equivalent of the C one ledger line below the treble clef, and one ledger line above the Bass clef. Why do we use it? Well, you'll notice that the line in those examples pretty much stays in the staff the entire time with that clef. That wouldn't be the case if we were in treble or bass, so we use Alto to make it easier to read. I know, it's sort of a bitch to figure out at first, but if you get used to it, it becomes easier. One thing I like to do to make it easier is to remember that the top line is G, and the bottom line is F. That way, you only have to count from the nearest known note to get to the note, instead of always from C.<br />
<br />
Ok, <i>now</i> let's try to figure out the chords in that example. There are suspensions and whatnot, but let's not worry about those, and just focus on the main consonant chord.<br />
<br />
It should look something like this(Chords given above the staffs)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%20Chords%20w%20Absolute%20Chords.pdf">PDF </a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=214912">(Alt Link) </a><br />
<i>Note: So I fucked up one of the chords. Anyone spot it? Measure 18, the third measure of the second page. That's actually fucked up in two ways. The first is that I've called it an E chord, which would insinuate E Major, and it's clearly not EMaj. The second is that while in measure 2 we have the same general thing with a C/E chord, in 18 we've got that B in the top line. I wasn't going to give an intro to 7th chords in roman numerals just yet, but hell, looks like I did. So for now, let's say that's a CMaj7/E. Because that's pretty much what it is right now.</i><br />
<br />
Now, let's try to do some Roman numeral analysis shall we? This is pretty simple, right? Take the root of the chord and phrase the number as a roman numeral, so that C chord is a I chord, C/E is.... fuck. I? iii? I/iii? Eh, skip it for now, F is IV, C/G is.... fuck. I? V? I/V? Well goddamn, for writing such a simple example I sure fucked that one up, we can't analyze it! I suck at this music thing.<br />
<br />
<em>Note, before I go on, it's important to note that you will often see roman numerals with slashes, such as "I/V". It's very important to note that those are in fact </em>not<em> inversions, but rather a concept I'll get to called "Secondary Dominants"</em><br />
<br />
We introduce <i>two</i> new things here. The first is inversions, the second is a specific type of inversion known as the "Cadential 6-4". So, when we have different bass notes in roman numeral analysis, we phrase them by the intervals in the chord. Technically, a I chord in root position, for instance, is a I5-3 chord. We write them as a fraction(sot of) when we actually write them out, after the number. I can't really explain it better than that here, but you'll see in the example what I mean. This is pretty easy to understand for triads, and a little more confusing with 7th chords.<br />
<br />
Triads though, so root position is 5-3, because above the bottom note, we have a fifth and a third. When we go to first inversion(Third in the bass.... That lesson was a while back), then above the bottom note we have a 6th and a 3rd. So we technically would say it's a 6-3 chord. With both of these, though, we don't mention the thirds or the 5ths, because those are... well, they're assumed. Similar to how we don't have to write out "Major" after Major chords, we can just write out "I" and we assume it's in root, or 5-3 position. Now, for second inversion, we do write out everything, which makes it a 6-4 chord.<br />
<br />
So with what I've just said, the C/E is a I6, and C/G would theoretically be a I6-4 Chord, right? Well, almost. The C/E is a I6, which is nice and easy, but that C/G is wonky. First, let's cover 7th chords, then we'll go over why we don't in a very specific instance such as the one in the example, call that C/G a I6-4.<br />
<br />
So, 7th chord inversions are trickier, because we have three intervals, and three possible inversions. Root is still pretty easy, we just write it as the chord, though it's technically 7-5-3. Now... 1st inversion, let's look at that, 'cause this is where we get stupid. in 1st inversion, we have a 6th, a 5th, and a 3rd. Here, we do write the 5 out. Don't ask me why, but 1st inversion of a 7th chord is 6-5. 2nd Inversion, we have a 6th, 4th, and 3rd. But we just write out the 4th and the 3rd, so 2nd inversion of a 7th chord is 4-3. And finally, Third inversion, with the 7th as the bottom note, We have here a 6th, 4th, and 2nd. We just write out the 4th and 2nd, so it's a 4-2. I've seen something like I2 be written before, but I learned it as I4-2. <br />
<br />
For a nice example,<a href="http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/html/id47_en.html"> look at this site</a> It makes things nice and clear.<br />
<br />
Now, I know you're all curious about the C/G, but I know there are probably questions about what I'm going to talk about next, too. So. Look at that example on that site. It's written as I7. But it's a Major 7th chord. So.... what? Well, it's time for another "Fuck Theory" moment. In Roman numeral notation, we assume the <i>unaltered, diatonic</i> form of chords, instead of having different meanings for different 7 writings. So I7 is a Major 7th chord, but V7 is a dominant chord. Confusing? Kind of. Just assume no chromatic alterations unless clearly specified or specific instances in Roman numeral notation. The one obvious exception to this is V in minor, since... well, V has to be modified to be V instead of v in minor.<br />
<br />
Ok, and what about that fucking C/G that I've now delayed talking about for so long? Well... this is an example of a specific notation in roman numeral analysis, which we'll see some more of(for instance, It6 chords and the like. Those are assholes too). This is what's known as the <i>Cadential 6-4</i>. It's called that because it's used in a "Cadence"(did I talk about these? Looks like a no. Well shit. Get ready for a long ride)<br />
<br />
And what is a cadence, before we explain more the cadential 6-4? Basically, it's the period on the end of a musical sentence. Cadences typically come in 4 main forms, with a bit of sub-forms thown in.<br />
<br />
The first is an <i>Authentic Cadence</i>, which is any cadence with a V-I movement. These come in two main sub-forms.<br />
The <i>Perfect Authentic Cadence</i>, which is also the strongest, is V-I in <i>root position</i>, where the highest voice is also the tonic in the final chord.<br />
The <i>Imperfect Authentic Cadence </i>is basically all other Authentic Cadences, including those using a vii<sup>o</sup> or Tritone Substitution in place of a V chord(I know, I know... Tritone subs are waaaay off though, sorry)<br />
<br />
The second is the <i>Half Cadence</i>, which is any cadence that ends on V. It's called a half cadence because it's a cadence, but sounds unfinished. It's usually used as part of a repeated or semi-repeated section to indicate the end of the first part, and then replaced with an authentic cadence in the repetition. Mozart fucking <i>loved</i> doing that shit, by the way.<br />
<br />
The third is the <i>Plagal Cadence</i>, or <i>Amen Cadence</i>. It's any cadence with a IV-I motion, and it's called the Amen cadence because anytime anyone ever sings an "Amen" in choral music, it'll be a Plagal Cadence unless the composer is a douchebag.<br />
<br />
The final is a <i>Deceptive Cadence, </i>which is any cadence that goes from V to something not I. The most common is the V-vi deceptive cadence. Seriously, you see it everywhere.<br />
<br />
So. Those are cadences. Now, to the Cadential 6-4. This happens pretty much always over the V chord when it happens(in fact, I'm not sure it could be anything other than over a V chord), and it's a I6-4 chord resolving to a V chord. When writing this, we ignore the fact that technically the I chord is spelled out with notes, and write it as V6-4 going to V5-3. And yes, we write out the 5-3. Sometimes there's a 4-3 suspension in there, so we have to write the 4-3 resolution after the 6-5 resolution, though the 6-4 are written simultaneously. Also sometimes if the composer is feeling <i>super-</i>hamfisted they'll add a 7th after a 6-4 resolution with a 4-3 suspension, and we write that out too. Then we shake our heads and mutter "Hack" under our breath.<br />
<br />
Ok, so armed with that information, we can continue looking at the chords as roman numerals in the example, which gets us all the way up to measure 8 before we have another concept I have to introduce. It's almost like this example was written to introduce as many of these concepts as possible in a really clear way.<br />
<br />
Anyways, that gets us something that looks a bit like this(Chords above, Roman numerals below):<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%20Chords%20Roman%20Numeral%20Chords%201.pdf">PDF </a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=214923">(Alt-Link) </a><br />
<br />
And if we look past that.... well it starts getting weird. F makes sense, that's just a IV chord, and then... I6? then... ii...V(Major? there's no Bb or natural to tell)....I, well ok that makes sense, but then that leads back to IV? I doesn't feel compelled to go to IV normally. These chords <i>kind</i> of fit in C major, but let's ignore what happened before, and imagine for these 8 measures that we're in F. Now we've got I - V6 - vi - ii - V I - V6 - vi - ii.... II7? Ok, now it stops making sense.<br />
<br />
Well, this is a judgment call really. It does sort of make sense in C, but I think it makes more sense in F, because the Descending bass line is a fuck of a lot more common than a descending IV thing. And for this example, let's play pretend we're in F for a few measures.<br />
<br />
Well, what we have is basically a <i>tonicization</i>. A Tonicization is really pretending for a small amount of time that we're in a different key, sort of like a key change but without a full key change. The reason we do this is because while it works in both keys in this example, if that gm had a Bb like it should've if I was being smart, then this would've been reeeeeeeally confusing in C, and a lot of times there are chords that are just stupid as hell in the original key that if you think in terms of a different tonic work wonderfully.<br />
<br />
Now, when writing out tonicizations, we normally have a <i>pivot chord</i>, which is a chord that works in both keys. In this case, it's that I chord in measure 8, which is V in F. So we add a second line to the analysis that shows us in the new key and continue from there, 'till we get back to the first key. And to go back to the first key, we basically do the same thing, bring back the first line in C on the pivot.<br />
<br />
Basically, finishing up the analysis we get the following:<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%20Chords%20Roman%20Numerals%20full.pdf">PDF</a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=215105">(Alt-link) </a><br />
<br />
Also, you'll notice at the end there I've written "PAC". When we do analysis we like to identify the cadences when they happen, especially at the end. Were I being super-thorough I'd identify all cadences, which would put an HC in measure 4, IAC in 8, PAC in 12, PAC in 16, HC in 20, PAC in 25, and the PAC at the end. And if you're wondering what's with the letters, we basically just abbreviate the names of the cadences. PAC- Perfect Authentic Cadence. HC - Half Cadence, and so on(IAC - Imperfect Authentic Cadence.<br />
<br />
Also, were we being super strict about things, we would label all nonharmonics. To give an example, I've done a full-out analysis on the piece, to show what it looks like when you do <i>everything</i>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wuala.com/Khavall/Photos/Example%201%20full%20analysis.pdf">PDF</a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=215115">(Alt-link) </a><br />
<br />
<br />
You'll notice that that's <i>incredible amounts of overkill</i>. We rarely need to go that in depth, but technically we do for a full analysis. The reason we don't is because that's like, useless amounts of information. It's good practice, but that's about it. It's also good to embarass yourself when you write an example for a theory blog originally just for chord analysis and then realize that it's really shittily written in accordance with the rules of voice leading you supposedly know enough about to explain. There are a lot of awful Nonharmonics there that aren't resolved right so.... don't write like that.<br />
<br />
Anyways, I think that's enough for this post. Next post, unless I realize there's something else I need to cover before going on will be Chordal tendencies.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-60056916398882978662010-02-05T01:49:00.000-05:002010-02-05T01:49:54.331-05:00Lesson 10: Roman Numberal Chordal Theory I: FoundationOk, so. Finally, right?<br />
<br />
It took us long enough to get here, but now we're at roman numeral theory. Roman Numeral theory is great for about a billion reasons, and if you're conversant in it and understand it, it is easy mode for music in so many ways.<br />
<br />
You see, we talked before about how specifically to talk about chords, by talking about C<sup>o7</sup>/Eb or whatever, and that's great, and tells us a bunch, but it is also like, completely in a vacuum in terms of how it relates to anything around it as an intellectual object. While that's how you'll see specific things written, and you'll be using written out sheet music for, you know, reading sheet music, when discussing music in a theoretical way, we normally don't get that specific, because we're dealing with relationships, not specific things.<br />
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You know what, that's sort of a confusing thing to say without explaining first the basics of Roman Numeral theory.<br />
<br />
Ok, so we've all heard people saying things like "Yeah, it's just a I-vi-IV-V-I thing" or shit like that, I'm sure, and maybe we even have a basic idea of what all that means, but what does that all mean?<br />
<br />
Well, let's look at a basic major scale. We have 7 unique pitch classes in a line. To start, let's assign each of those pitch classes a number. We'll take C major for fun, and so we start saying C is the 1st one, D is the 2nd, etc. These are <i>scale degrees, </i>and are what we use to talk about notes in any <i>nonspecific scale</i>. That is to say, the 3rd scale degree in C major is E, but the 3rd scale degree in Gb major is Bb. So the advantage is that now when we talk about the 7th scale degree, we can know how that relates to the 1st scale degree in every scale we talk about, not just, for instance, how B relates to C<br />
<br />
We also have names for scale degrees, because apparently numbers were just a little too simple. Actually, the names are really useful, because they give us some terminology that is pretty descriptive of the job the notes do instead of remembering, for instance, that scale degree 7 naturally leads to scale degree 1.<br />
<br />
These names are:<br />
(<b>Scale degree - - Name)</b><br />
<b>1 - Tonic</b><br />
<b>2 - Supertonic</b><br />
<b>3 - Mediant</b><br />
<b>4 - Subdominant</b><br />
<b>5 - Dominant</b><br />
<b>6 - Submediant</b><br />
<b>7 - Leading tone/Subtonic</b><br />
<br />
Ok, so the most confusing one there is the Submediant being above the mediant. Other than that, the supertonic is above the tonic(and sounds awesome), and the subdominant is below the dominant. So what's the deal with it being the "submediant"? Well, measure a third up from the tonic and you get the mediant. Measure a third below and... submediant! The other way to think about it is that the Mediant is the middle note in a triad with the root of the tonic, and the submediant is the middle note of a triad with the root of the subdominant.<b> </b><br />
<br />
Now, I'm willing to bet that some of you also know the scale degrees by other names, which would be Do(or Ut), Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, and Si(or Ti). I will not be using these, for two reasons. One reason is that this has no advantage over knowing the scale degree numbers or names in terms of theroy, so it's really just another thing to learn. Another is that Solfege(the system where we call the notes those names) comes in two varieties. One is "Fixed do" and one is "Movable do". In fixed do, Do is always C, regardless of where it is in the scale. In moveable Do, Do is always the tonic, regardless of where it is absolutely. So essentially, solfege is either an absolute <i>or</i> relative measurement. There are reasons for using both, but really, I still don't think they really have any advantage over the other absolute or relative measurements we have for Theory. Now, I will probably be using the fixed do system while hoping to also phrase things in movable do if I cover sight-singing, because solfege is a <i>great</i> tool for that, for a variety of reasons. But for theoretical purposes? I really don't see a reason to use them.<br />
<br />
Anyways, those are the scale degrees. Now, let's not alter any notes from the key signature and build chords on each scale degree, and we get 7 chords. We refer to these by the scale degree they're built on in root position.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i47.tinypic.com/23hawwm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="38" src="http://i47.tinypic.com/23hawwm.jpg" width="320" /></a> </div> So basically that. We use roman numerals here.... well, because we do. This makes things easier than using normal numbers actually, since you'll notice that some of the roman numerals are capitol and some aren't. Well, look at the chord makeups and you might see why. You know how instead of writing "CMaj" or whatever, you can just write "C" and assume major? Well it's the same thing with the roman numerals. I is a Major chord based on the Tonic(Scale degree 1), and i is a minor chord based on the Tonic.<br />
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In Major, the chords are as we see in that image. I is naturally Major, ii is minor, iii - minor, IV - Major, V - Major, vi - minor, vii<sup>o</sup> - diminished.<br />
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In minor, things get a little wonky. In its natural position, also known as the natural minor scale, we have the following:<br />
<b>i </b>- minor<br />
<b>ii<sup>o</sup> </b>- diminished<br />
<b>III</b> - Major<br />
<b>iv </b>- minor<br />
<b>v</b> - minor<br />
<b>VI</b> - Major<br />
<b>VII</b> - Major<br />
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Now, the reason things get wonky is because as we'll learn, the V chord is a really, <i>really</i> strong move to I(or i). Like it is <i>the</i> way to lead back to I(or i). Even more so if we make it a Dominant 7 chord(I'm sure you've noticed that the Dominant tone of the scale is based on V. And the Dominant 7 chord is... well, it's called the Dominant 7 chord. These two are related. V leads to I, and Dom 7s have the V-I motion). There's a really nice explanation for this involving the tritone collapsing and all that, and I'll get to chord relations and voice leading with that, but basically all you need to know is that V goes to I(or i). A reasonable substitute for V or V7 is vii<sup>o</sup>, again, for a reason we'll go over(Actually, this one is a little simpler. Take a V7 chord in any key... for now let's say C Major to keep things simple, and then take a vii<sup>o</sup> chord. Look at the notes there. G7: G, B, D, F. b<sup>o</sup>B, D, F. Hey look). Anyways, so they lead super-well to the tonic chord. Well, in minor, you'll notice that v is naturally minor and VII is naturally Major. So to compensate for this, in minor it's <i>very</i> common in tonal practice to raise the leading tone to make V major and vii<sup>o</sup> diminished. Also, having the leading tone raised to give it only a half step away from the tonic makes it really... well, lead as a tone.<br />
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Now, this also brings up a slightly confusing thing. We will find we reuse terminology a lot in this section. For instance, the Dominant can refer to the scale degree, the Chord <em>built</em> on the scale degree, or the type of 7th chord. The only real way to figure out which is in context, unfortunately. It's safe to say that, for instance, if I say "x based on the subdominant", I'm probably talking about the note. If I say something like "The Dominant-Tonic motion", I'm probably talking about the chords, for reasons we'll get to, and if I say "Dom7" I'm talking about the type of the 7th chord. That one's easier.<br />
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Anyways, I know this is a super-short post, but I just came back from a long-as-fuck night, and I need to go to sleep. Also, the next thing I'm going to cover is chordal tendencies and <em>holy shit you guys</em> is that post going to be a doozy. I don't want to mix them up, so for now, just take these basics and make sure you understand them before we move on.<br />
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<b> </b>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-924745373893954882010-02-02T12:36:00.000-05:002010-02-02T12:36:38.674-05:00Lesson 9: Counterpoint II<i>Quick note:</i> I<i>n the last blog post I accidentally referred to P4s as consonances. While they are considered consonant intervals by any measure outside of counterpoint, and really are just inversions of P5s, in strict species counterpoint they are considered vertical dissonances. Sorry for the confusion</i><i>. Also then the no parallel 4ths thing is unnecessary because... well no 4ths in general is the rule. </i><br />
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Ok, so if First Species counterpoint is 1:1, and Second species is 2:1, third species is 3:1, right?<br />
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Unfortunately, no. While first and second are really nice and helpful with their names, third is stupid.<br />
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Third species is 4 notes in the added line per one note in the C.F.<br />
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Also, to bring back the whole historical aspect, I'd like to note the way this is fitting together. Remember how in early Organum duplum(which I brought up last post too), we just made harmony by copying and pasting the Chant, and then after that we started having more stuff over a pedal line? Well that pedal line was always the actual Chant. I think I forgot to mention that during the history, but the pedal line that gave us sort of rudimentary chords was the chant, and what went on above it wasn't based on the chant.<br />
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Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because the Cantus Firmus being the basis for the added lines in counterpoint is pretty close to the same idea, where the moving line is the added line, and the C.F. is slower and in something like third species, sounds almost like a bass line<br />
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So onto Third Species. For the pedagogical purposes of dealing with rhythms, similar to how we normally have first species as whole notes and second as half notes over whole notes, for third, think quarter notes over whole notes.<br />
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Similar to second species, we can either begin third species with a downbeat or have a rest on the downbeat and begin after that. In third, that rest can only be a quarter rest, and we start on beat 2. Also similar to second species, the first note in every measure is bound by the same rules as first species.<br />
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Now third gets some confusing rules too.<br />
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1: The first note of any measure must be consonant. The second and fourth may be dissonant, and the third.... well the third's tricky. The Third quarter can be dissonant under only two circumstances. The first is if the second and fourth(and obviously 1st) are consonant. The other is if it's in a "double passing" gesture. That is to say, both the second and third can be dissonant if the 1st and 4th are consonant and the motion between them is all passing motion.<br />
2: We can use unisons now! But not on the first quarter note of any measure. We can also now have dissonant neighbors. And we have a new nonharmonic figure: The double neighbor. In the double neighbor, we have both a lower and upper neighbor. Also, we must continue the motion from the second neighbor to exit the figure. So for instance, if we start on a G against a C, the double neighbor would be G-A(Upper neighbor)-F(Lower neighbor)-G-A(continuation). The continuation must also be consonant and work in all the other rules.<br />
3: P5/P8s are to be separated by at least 2 notes if they occur in different measures. If they are against the same C.F. note, there is no such restriction.<br />
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So those are really the new rules. There aren't too many, they're just super-fragmented and confusing. Also, Third species is really difficult to write in any way that doesn't suck. You'll all notice, I'm sure, that I haven't talked about writing counterpoint that doesn't, you know... suck. Part of that's because technically the rules of counterpoint, again, are really mainly used as a pedagogical tool that can sort of overlap with writing modern stuff. However, when we write music of any kind, even just as an exercise to follow some rules, in general we try to make it not terrible. All this stuff gets a lot harder when you're trying to make it feel like it has a purpose and isn't just a collection of random notes. And it becomes a billion times harder when you have to fill every measure with four notes. Third species is the hardest in terms of rules because they are very specific and just keep piling on each other, but it's even more so the hardest in terms of not sucking while writing, because keeping a line going with that many notes while still following the rules is really hard to do.<br />
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And now we go onto my favorite species of counterpoint, 4th species. 4th species is really easy to make sound not stupid, and we scale back a ton on the rules.<br />
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4th species counterpoint is basically 1st species, but with the added line offset by a half note. So the added line starts with a half rest, then is two half notes tied together over bar line breaks. This has the effect of making pretty much everything a suspension. Also, this gives us the magical ability to have dissonances on the strong part of measures(holy shit!), assuming we prepare and resolve it correctly. The way we do that is by having the suspension be consonant when the to-be-suspended note is hit, and have the resolution, which is usually a downwards resolution, be consonant. The only change to this is that the final note occurs with the C.F. Also, there's a specific rule for approaching it I'll get to.<br />
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In fact, in 4th species counterpoint, the only suspensions we're allowed to have are 4-3, 9-8, 5-6, 6-5, and 7-6 in the upper voice. In the lower voice, we just invert all of those(So for instance, 2-3 is the same in the lower voice as 7-6 in the upper). Note that those are given as "suspended note-resolved note". And preparation interval that's consonant will work.<br />
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If the held over note isn't a dissonance, then we don't have to worry about the suspension rules, and can leap out of it or really do whatever we want out of it as long as we obey the other species rules and we're not setting up an illegal suspension.<br />
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After that, 4th species is basically 1st, but with the second note in the measure of the added line against the first note in the measure of the C.F. So the measure can start with a P4, but then the second half must go to a Third, following both the rules of the suspensions and satisfying First species rules. We can't, however, have, for instance, more than three 4-3 suspensions in a row, as while the suspensions are all dealt with just fine, we have four parallel thirds which is forbidden by the 1st species rule.<br />
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Basically, for 4th species, you have to think both in terms of 1st species were the offset removed and both lines just played at the same time, as well as within the rules governing suspensions.<br />
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Also, in 4th species, we must end with a 7-6 suspension that then resolves at the beginning of the next measure to an appropriate first species final. So basically, a suspended C to B against a G in the C.F. resolving back to a C over a C is acceptable.<br />
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And finally, in extreme cases, we can do something special in 4th species and break species, returning to 2nd species if we're caught in an otherwise inescapable line of suspensions. This is only acceptable if it's the only way out of the suspension string though.<br />
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Anyways, why is 4th species my favorite? Because it always is super easy to make sound really pretty with all the suspensions, and it's just sort of a douchebag way of writing counterpoint, because it's like applying a liberal amount of hamfistery to the entire exercise. In almost any other circumstance, chaining together a ton of suspensions would(in a perfect world) be punishable by death. Like, it's really awful writing. Except in 4th species you get to do it the entire way through. It's like doing standup and only telling one joke over and over again, but you're allowed to now.<br />
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And finally, Florid counterpoint, a.k.a. 5th species.<br />
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Florid is a giant mess of stuff, because it's pretty much... every other species combined. Plus eighth notes. Kind of. I'll be using links from http://www.listeningarts.com/music/ to show examples here, their examples are nice and clear and clean. They also have a big thing on counterpoint which is pretty spot on, if a little confusing to read.<br />
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First consideration for 5th species is that we try to start and end basically with 4th species, with a suspension to the tonic to end, and starting with a slower suspension figure too.<br />
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Also, eighth notes. We can use them under very specific circumstances. We can use eighth notes in a <a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex1b.mov">double passing tone figure</a>, or as a<a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex1a.mov"> single neighbor</a>, resolved with the second eighth note. Also, we can only use them <em>max</em> once in a measure, on either beat 2 or 4, and we try to avoid overusing them. The reason is that technically counterpoint is still considered a vocal technique writing instead of an instrumental technique, since originally it really was vocal stuff, with chants and counterpoint over. In vocal lines, slower lines are easier to sing, so we still go by that convention.<br />
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Now, another thing we see in fifth is a change to the way we can handle suspensions. While we still need to approach them correctly, we can play with the resolution a bit, <a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex2a.mov">by using a quarter note on beat 2 to anticipate the resolution</a>(<em>note: This is different than the nonharmonic anticipation, since we're going to a harmonic tone. I know, it's a little confusing)</em> or by using an <a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex2b.mov">eighth note figure with a neighbor to do the same thing as the quarter note resolution but... well, with the added neighbor</a>. We can also use an escape tone from it, or a figure that's pretty close to a double neighbor thing, all by using a quarter note on beat 2. <a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex2c.mov"> Escape tone </a>we handle just like the normal escape tone nonharmonic, and the<a href="http://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/5thex2d.mov"> double-neighbor-like figure</a> we leap from the suspension <em>by</em> a consonant interval, <em>to </em>a consonant interval, before going to the expected resolution.<br />
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Also, as you'll notice in all those linked examples, you'll notice that we still obey the rules of 4th species in terms of the third beat <em>always</em> being consonant. Even though we're breaking species in regards to 4th for these embellishments, we still obey the rules in the strong beats.<br />
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Other than that, basically we just combine all other forms of counterpoint in fifth. On the one hand, this makes things a little easier on us, since, for instance, we don't have to deal with the incredible ease of writing really meandering parts in 3rd species or really boring, drawn out parts in 1st. On the other hand, with more freedom comes more choices, and that means we have to think more about how we want to do rhythms. In early species of counterpoint we really don't have to think about rhythm, it's there. Now we have a whole dimension added.<br />
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Anyways, that's counterpoint. Next we'll start on Roman numeral theory, which was the initial impetus for this blog, I just had to get all of this out there so we made sure we were on the same page in terms of these basics.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-21239105978086029492010-01-22T10:34:00.003-05:002010-01-25T16:13:44.377-05:00Lesson 8: Counterpoint 1Ok, so Counterpoint. Counterpoint is one of the most annoying, boring things to learn. At its core, Counterpoint is simply the relationship between 2+ parts. However, what we'll be dealing with is "Species Counterpoint", which is basically a tutorial on how to write Common Practice Tonal music.<br />
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Now, I'll be basically phrasing these like rules, and in a pedagogical sense, they should basically be thought of as rules. You'll notice, if you look at historical examples, that pretty much no one ever followed these rules to the letter. Bach is pretty much credited with writing the rulebook as a study on Counterpoint, and I'm not entirely sure that he ever wrote a piece that followed them completely.<br />
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It's important during this lesson to understand exactly what counterpoint is. Counterpoint is a set of, essentially, statistics. They're phrased as rules, but essentially when we say "No parallel fifths" we mean "Common practice music doesn't use parallel fifths". If parallel fifths sound good, then by all means, use them. However, they're likely to sound modal and a little off from normal tonal music. So if you're writing harmonies and don't want the sound of parallel fifths, then you'll know to avoid them without first writing them, hearing how they sound, and changing them.<br />
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Basically, if writing music is like taking an essay test, counterpoint is like having a cheat sheet sitting there right in front of your face, with all the relevant information. Just because you have the information doesn't mean you just copy it word for word into the answer, and hell, if you really want you can ignore it all and draw a smiley face instead of the essay. Sure, you'll fail the essay, but why are you taking that class then?<br />
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Ok, it's not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea(I hope)<br />
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Before we get to the rules, let's go over some terminology:<br />
m3, M3, P5, m6, M6 are "Consonances"<br />
m2, M2, P4, 4<sup>+</sup>, 5<sup>o</sup>, m7, M7 are "Dissonances"<br />
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"Harmonic tones" are tones which occur as part of the harmonic structure(For instance, in a I chord in G Major, G, B, and D are harmonic tones)<br />
<div align="left">"Nonharmonic tones" are tones which occur outside of the harmonic structure(In a I chord in G Major, A, C, E, and F# are nonharmonic tones)(Also, the chromatic alterations for more nonharmonics, but these are the ones in the key)<br />
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Now, with nonharmonic tones, there are two main distinctions, which are "Accented" and "Unaccented". This doesn't refer to the articulation of the accent, but rather whether it falls on a strong beat(1 and 3 in 4/4, for instance) or weak beat(2 and 4 in 4/4)<br />
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Also, we have a few different types of nonharmonic tones. Basically, we divide motions into steps and skips, and have a name for each type.<br />
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A <b>neighboring tone</b> is a tone that we approach by step that then returns by step to the original note. These are divided into <b>upper neighbors</b> and <b>lower neighbors</b>. As an example:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c7/Upper_neighbor_note_example_1.PNG/550px-Upper_neighbor_note_example_1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="62" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c7/Upper_neighbor_note_example_1.PNG/550px-Upper_neighbor_note_example_1.PNG" width="320" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The starred note is an <b>upper neighbor</b><br />
</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>A <b>passing tone</b> is a tone that we approach by step and that we leave by step to a different note. ex:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/Passing_tone_example_1.PNG/550px-Passing_tone_example_1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="61" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/Passing_tone_example_1.PNG/550px-Passing_tone_example_1.PNG" width="320" /></a><br />
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Now, we also have nonharmonics where the nonharmonic <i>becomes</i> a harmonic tone, due to a change in the surrounding harmonies.<br />
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An <b>anticipation</b> is a nonharmonic tone where we approach a note in a later chord <i>before</i> the chord happens. Ex:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Anticipation_example_1.PNG/550px-Anticipation_example_1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="62" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Anticipation_example_1.PNG/550px-Anticipation_example_1.PNG" width="320" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>And a <b>suspension</b> is the opposite, where we hold a note from a previous chord through a second chord.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Suspension.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Suspension.gif" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>And now for the super-confusing ones. These are combinations of steps and skips.<br />
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An <b>escape tone </b>is a tone that is <i>approached</i> by step, which <i>resolves</i> by skip.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Escape_tone.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Escape_tone.gif" /></a><br />
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And an <b>appogiatura</b> is a tone that is <i>approached</i> by skip, and <i>resolves</i> by step(I don't have a picture for this one<br />
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So essentially:<br />
<b>Step-Step</b>(with same harmonic tone) = <b>Neighbor</b><br />
<b>Step-Step</b>(with different harmonic tones = <b>Passing Tone</b><br />
<b>Step-Skip = </b><b> </b><b>Escape Tone</b><br />
<b>Skip-Step = Appogiatura</b><br />
<b>Hold-Step</b> = <b>Suspension</b><br />
<b>Step-Hold = Anticipation</b><b> </b><b> </b><br />
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Also, let's review the types of motion:<br />
<b>Parallel motion</b> is motion where both parts are moving in the same direction by the same intervals.<br />
<b>Similar motion</b> is motion where both parts are moving in the same direction by different intervals.<br />
<b>Oblique motion</b> is motion where one part is moving while the other is not<br />
<b>Contrary motion</b> is motion where the parts are moving in different directions.<br />
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So, let's start talking about the rules now:<br />
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For all species, we have the following rules:<br />
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1: The tonic at the cadence is to be approached by step. If approached by below, the leading tone must be raised so as to make the final interval a semitone.<br />
2: The melody cannot have sevenths of any kind, nor can it have intervals of an octave or larger. Also, if the melody uses an ascending minor sixth, the next move must be downwards.<br />
3: If the melody has two skips in a row, the bordering interval must be consonant, and the second skip must be smaller than the first.<br />
4: In <i>any</i> combination of three notes, the bordering interval must not be a tritone or a seventh<br />
5: All parts must begin and end on a consonance.<br />
6: Unless necessary, avoid intervals larger than a major tenth<br />
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Now, if you look up "counterpoint" on wiki, you'll see those as well as some other rules. Some of these are covered by other rules, and some of these aren't actually rules, just suggestions to make the rest easier. I just mention this in case anyone is wondering why mine differ... it's not that it's an incomplete list so much as things like "Use contrary motion" isn't <i>really</i> a rule of counterpoint, it just makes obeying the other rules of counterpoint super-easy to follow.<br />
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Also, in general, outside of nonharmonic tones, parts should remain in consonance.<br />
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Now, We'll start with First Species Counterpoint. First Species is two voices, at one note per one note. We go back to early music terminology here, since that's where the roots are. The main melody is referred to henceforth as the "Cantus Firmus" or "C.F." The other parts are the "voices" or "lines".<br />
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1: As a bit of a refinement to the "consonant beginning/end", in First species you can only end on fifths, unisons, or octaves. If the added line is below the C.F., it cannot be on a fifth.<br />
2: No unisons, except at beginning+cadence<br />
3: No parallel fifths, or octaves<br />
4: No "Hidden" fifths or octaves(I know, I'll explain it)<br />
5: No more than three consecutive parallel sixths or thirds<br />
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So the most flexible and most confusing of those is the "No hidden fifths" thing. What is a hidden fifth(Or octave)? A hidden interval is one that is approached by <i>similar motion</i>. So if the C.F. goes E-G-A ascending then the added line going G-C-F ascending, for instance, would have a hidden fifth, as both approach the C/G fifth from below. The main reason not to do this is that it's pretty damn striking(By this I mean it's unexpected. Say you're walking down the street and some random guy decks you. Pretty unexpected, right? Unless you live in New York City), and is sort of like a lesser version of the parallel fifth.<br />
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Now, for the parallel interval rules, also known as like, half of the remaining rules, the main reason we avoid them is because it sounds <i>super</i> modal with fourths(but no fourths anyways... same reason) and fifths, and gets pretty boring with thirds/sixths. Remember the whole Organum Duplum thing, where we just copied melodies offset by a fifth or fourth, and that was an early form of harmony? And now remember how a few refinements after that, the "Sweet British Sound" was the application of thirds? Yeah, so we try to avoid going back to Organum Duplum when writing in tonal music.<br />
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Now, wiki says that one rule is to use contrary motion when possible. This isn't a rule, but it is a pretty good suggestion. Notice that with the parallel and hidden interval rules, we have rules governing similar and parallel motion. Also, one of the rules is only the beginning/ending harmony, so we have only one species-specific rule after that that deals with a possibility that occur with Oblique or Contrary motion, which is the "no unisons" rule, and one general rule, which is the "no intervals larger than a tenth" rule. Essentially, as long as you avoid having the parts be too far apart and you avoid unisons, as well as trying to stick to consonances, you will find it almost impossible to break the rules while using oblique and contrary motion. Contrary/oblique motion are counterpoint Jesus.<br />
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And that's.... that's pretty much it for first species. So on to second species. Second species starts to get a little more complicated, and it's <i>two</i> notes against every one in the C.F. We divide these into "accented" and "unaccented", again, like nonharmonic tones, the accented one is the one on the beat, the unaccented is the one off the beat. In pure second species counterpoint, this is divided equally. So against whole notes, second species has two half notes.<br />
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Second species starts getting a little more complicated here, too, because while the rules of first species pretty much carry over for the accented notes, we also have rules governing the unaccented note and the relationships between them. So for instance, we can't have parallel fifths in consecutive accented beats.<br />
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So first off, in second species, we can either start with an accented or unaccented beat in the added line, meaning we can start with a rest, but after that we have to have both notes in the added line played, we can't for instance decide to have a rest mid-counterpoint.<br />
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Now for the added rules<br />
1: The accented beats must be consonances. The unaccented beats may only be dissonances in passing tones.<br />
2: Unisons are allowed on unaccented beats, but not on accented ones.<br />
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Seems pretty simple, right? The important thing to note with all these additions is that everything just keeps piling on, and we get a lot of situational rules, like the "No unisons" rule that only applies to accented notes in second species but all in first. Also, we get interesting things like oblique motion being possible between accented notes using a consonant neighbor in the added line on the unaccented beats.<br />
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Next post we'll go on to 3rd and 4th, then touch a bit on florid(5th species). After that, we can get to some voice leading stuff, and then we'll do the roman numeral chordal theory stuff for a bit.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-58272900095511865782010-01-19T12:31:00.000-05:002010-01-19T12:31:10.228-05:00Lesson 8: Romantic PeriodOk, this is our last history lesson(for now, at least), where we'll be talking about the romantic period. The reason I'm stopping here is that music sort of goes a little crazy after this, and it doesn't really have any relevance to the theory we'll be looking at for a while.<br />
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So we left of, so long ago, in the Classical period(Beethoven was sort of in between, but he's still historically speaking in the Classical period)<br />
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Now, romanticism was, as with all other periods we've looked at, not just in music. Everyone everywhere was a "romantic" around these times.<br />
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A lot of times Beethoven's 3rd, the "Eroica" symphony, is cited as the beginning of the romantic period in music, 'cause shit was crazy. The easiest way to think about it though is that basically it was the 19th century. 1815-1915 is closer to the dates, but basically just think 19th century and you'll be fine.<br />
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The romantic period takes the repression and structure of the classical period and kind of shits all over it. There was still structure and all that in the romantic period, but it was extended and played with a lot. If I had to ascribe one aspect to Romantic composers, it would be "Personal expression". While it's certainly possible and with enough listening relatively easy to tell, say, the difference between Haydn and Mozart, or Perotin and Leonin(This is about a billion times harder than Mozart/Haydn, too), almost anyone after a cursory listen could probably tell Wagner and Chopin apart.<br />
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Other than that, Romantic music was a lot heavier than classical, a lot denser, and in general bigger(There are exceptions, but Romantic music was not in general about a fine brush, it was taking the goddamn biggest brush you could find and painting in giant strokes).<br />
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So let's look at the general historical layout before some examples.<br />
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As I mentioned, Beethoven was pretty instrumental(instantrimshot.com) in the development(instantrimshot.com) of the romantic period. However, Schubert was also a leader(instantrimshot.com)(I'll stop now) in the field.(Those last two make more sense if you know that in Sonata-Allegro form, the sections are "Exposition", "Development", and "Recapitulation", and that Schubert was famous for composing Lieder) Many people would argue that in fact Schubert was the first truly romantic composer, and there's certainly merit to that. During the early 19th century, concert music was really expanding out of the "court musician" and much more into "People actually go and see this stuff" realm. History buffs will note that this is also pretty much coinciding with the end of the whole Napoleonic thing, and the cultural changes that went along with that. In fact, Beethoven was one of the first freelance composers, instead of being employed full-time by some rich snob. This era also saw a big foray into modern folk music(I know, it's a weird idea), where folk poems and songs were set for, say, piano and voice, which were becoming more common in houses.<br />
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Slightly later into the Romantic period, we see composers like Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Berlioz. If you don't know those names, you should. Chopin and Liszt are pretty famous for fucking pianists in the fingers, both of them have maddeningly difficult piano works. Liszt also pretty much invented the recital, which at the time was basically just a small, virtuoso concert. Now, by this point we're about mid-19th century, and a pretty important dude, called Richard Wagner came along. Before I go into more depth with him though, I want to bring up another name that I just like because of the name: Giuseppe Verdi. The reason I like this name is that it translates to "Joe Green", which makes it a lot less impressive.<br />
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Anyways, Wagner. Wagner was German, and, you know how Germans do it. Wagner was BIG AND HEAVY. Also, he started really working with the idea of Program music, which is essentially the beginnings of multimedia composition. Wagner also worked with leitmotifs, which are essentially themes attached to a character or situation. A later and pretty well-known user of leitmotivic composition is one John Williams. You may have heard of him. So for a leitmotif, think the Imperial March. The music evokes the ideas of the Empire and that goes along with it. As as small aside, letimotifs don't even have to really play the whole idea and program music can use little tiny cues. There's one point in Episode III where Anakin is about to do something bad and evil(Spoiler alert), and the brass have a single note sting. In that one note, with the specific orchestration, instantly everyone in the audience knows that it's a Darth Vader-y thing that he's about to do, and we've already got the idea of EMPIRE going through our heads.<br />
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Anyways, all that was kind of pioneered for real heavy use by Wagner. His most famous is "Der Ring des Nibelungen", or "The Ring Cycle"(not a direct translation, just what it's known as). This has a few pieces that you may have heard in it.<br />
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For instance:<br />
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And right there we feel very specific things from the music.<br />
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In 1850, Europe... well it exploded a bit in a few ways. Communication and travel got easier, cheaper, and faster. One would think that this would sort of make music sort of amalgamate during this time, but as we know, Europe wasn't really all getting along all super-nice and agreeing with each other about everything. Really, music was already pretty nationalistic during this point in time, and it got crazy more so, as music sort of became political expression in a lot of ways.<br />
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Wagner is, for instance, pretty clearly "German" music, and we have some very famous composers who are also known for nationalistic music. I'm betting many of you have heard of, say, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff. These guys were super-russian, and were writing super-russian music.<br />
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Stuff like this, for instance:<br />
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We've also got Saint-Saenes, who is about the most French composer there is,<br />
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Sibelius is crazy British,<br />
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And so on.<br />
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Now, for one that many of us might know as well, we're also talking about one John Phillip Sousa. He's <em>pretty American</em> as a composer.<br />
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This is basically the sort of stuff we're talking about. I mean, sure, it's all consistently Romantic(Except for the American music. DIRTY SMELLY EUROPEAN COMMUNISTS! WE WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT!)<br />
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Anyways, the romantic period was pretty much this way until a dude called Arnold Schoenburg comes along. I won't talk about him too much now, but basically he looked at Music and figured that we were pretty much done with the whole tonality thing. There's a common misconception that Schoenburg was a reactionary against music, but really he was going for an advancement of music, not a drastic departure. Anyways, if we have time, I'll go into modernism, but for now, we'll just stick with going to about the 20th century where we are now and stop there.<br />
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And that's really romanticism. Nationalist, personal, emotional, big, heavy. And that's really history basically. We'll go ahead and start counterpoint next. And if you thought this was boring, just wait.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-1632969023347252482009-12-31T23:24:00.000-05:002009-12-31T23:24:53.660-05:00Lesson 7.5: BeethovenBeethoven.<br />
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Ludwig van Beethoven.<br />
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It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that Beethoven single-handedly shaped the modern world of music composition.<br />
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Note here: Obviously, as a lot of this is a reading and analysis of historical documents. This is what I was taught, and this is what a lot of available documentation seems to show. However, I obviously can't really say definitively that this is exactly how things were going down, and there are probably readings of history that have other things to say than this. However, I personally haven't seen any reason to doubt this reading, and I've seen a reasonable amount supporting it.<br />
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We've talked about the way music was put together in history, but we haven't touched at all on how it was <i>put together</i>. That is to say, what was the compositional process? How did these dudes write this shit? Well, it changes a bit through history, but it's pretty close in general observable in two major eras: Pre and post Beethoven. You see, in early music, there was this whole "Inspiration from god" thing going on, which really is just mind to paper. In the Baroque period we're talking about a lot of formulaic composition, and in the Classical era we're pretty much mind to paper again.... That is to say, writing music wasn't really planned out in advance and edited and sketched out, it was pretty much written in a nice clean sweep. The way we know, as much as we know anything, this is looking at the manuscripts. Most musical manuscripts early on, including notes and originals from the composers, tend to be complete, pristine scores. We don't really see sketchbooks or heavy editing in manuscripts in pre-Beethoven music, we just see finishes scores. There are theories that sketchbooks were destroyed or some such... but I guess that would leave the same evidence as if they never existed, and sketchbooks are really great to keep around and are good teaching tools.<br />
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Beethoven scores tend to be horrible messes. There are giant scribbles and entire passages moved and notes scrawled across sections and they're just impossible to read. It's clear to see that Beethoven was composing in a large process, always changing and editing and sketching things out, really making music a wrought out process. This is huge, because it's how we do it today. The advancement of music from an improvisational process to a compositional process was incredibly useful, though it did have its drawbacks.<br />
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Anyways, since this technically is a history lesson and not a "Khavall rants" lesson, let's look at Beethoven historically, because he also is an interesting historical figure.<br />
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Beethoven was, we believe, born on December 16, 1770. He was baptized on December 17, 1770, and normally back then, baptism happened the day after birth. So we can assume Dec 16, but we don't really have any documentation supporting that in the specific case of Beethoven. He was born in Bonn, Germany, which is a funny sounding name for a town. Bonn. His father was his first music teacher, but his most influential teacher before he moved to Vienna: Christian Gottlob Neefe. Gottlob Neefe of Bonn. 18th century was the coolest time to have a name. Anyways, Neefe taught Beethoven composition. Also Neefe was a member of the Illuminati, because why the fuck not. In 1787, Beethoven moved to Vienna. 2 weeks later he moved back because his mother fell ill. Then his father became an alcoholic and he stayed in Bonn for 5 years to take care of his brothers. And because Vienna has a stupid name compared to Bonn. Anyways, finally in 1792 Beethoven moved back to Vienna to study with Haydn. You may remember Haydn from pretty much inventing the string quartet and further codifying the symphony. Anyways, Beethoven was all "This guy knows nothing!" and works with some other people while studying with Haydn. During this time, Beethoven wasn't really trying to be a composer, but was really more of a pianist. He was really well-known for being able to play The Well-tempered Clavier. Which was like super-awesome to be able to do back then.<br />
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Now, I believe I touched on this idea during the baroque period, but Bethoven was 21-22ish by this time, when he was notorious for being able to play well-tempered Clavier. Today it's a pretty common high-school pianist piece. In fact, I believe I started learning parts of it in 10th or 11th grade, so I was... what 15? 16? This by the way was when I would not have ever considered in a million years that I would ever be a serious pianist because I wasn't good enough. Performers have come a loooong way.<br />
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Anyways, he started touring europe being all "I can play piano", and finally decided to write some more shit.<br />
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This is where Beethoven really starts to split from the previous composers. We're not <i>too</i> sure, again, this is my and a few other much smarter people than I's thoughts, but there are people smarter than me who are also in disagreement about this.<br />
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In rock, this is a little different, but I still have several sketchbooks and about 4-5 pieces to test out ideas for every piece I've written. Similar to how before writing a paper it's suggested to make an outline, and how if I was smart I would be outlining these posts instead of just ranting, which would probably, for instance, not have me splitting this rant between the beginning of the post and now, in composition, we basically outline our pieces first. The result of this is that we can really plan out and work on awesome pieces. While an improviser has an advantage that they can temper their work to the audience, in a way that the composer cannot, the composer has the advantage that they can spend infinity time to work on a part of music that may only take 5 seconds when played. That infinity time can make that 5 seconds pretty damn awesome, if used well. The reason we do this in music is pretty much Beethoven. Rather, he was the first one who we see doing this, and we know that now this is an awesome way to do things.<br />
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Anyways, there's more history stuff that was going on, but you can look up Beethoven on wiki if you care about it, so I'm just going to cover the important stuff from here on out.<br />
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In 1798ish Beethoven started working on the "pinnacles", as he saw them, of Composition. He worked on a bunch of String Quartets and some Symphonies by 1802.<br />
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Also, in 1799, Beethoven started pimping. Technically he just "taught" "piano lessons" to hot chicks who were about his age. And "entertaining" at "parties" at her estate. Of course, specific hot chick(I assume... I mean, he's <i>Beethoven</i>) was Countess Anna Brunsvik. More important than her was her sister. Her sister was all "Married", but marriage was of no concern for Beethoven, man of men.<br />
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He also taught some other people, like the dude who taught Liszt, but who cares, it was all about the countesses and their sisters.<br />
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OH HEY BY THE WAY<br />
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Maybe I should've mentioned this earlier, but all this pimping and composing is more impressive when you remember that in about 1796 Beethoven <i>started to lose his hearing.</i> So once he was deaf he was all "Well, fuck, <i>now</i> I'll write me some string quartets and some symphonies, and I'll have me a countess on the side". <i>Beethoven</i>.<br />
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Anyways, from then on his life is really interesting in terms of what he composed, but not so interesting in terms of things happening. His brother died and he fought his brothers wife about custody of their kid, won, and then pretty much just went on to make sure everyone in Europe knew that his sister-in-law was a dirty, dirty whore. Because he could. Because he was Beethoven.<br />
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Oh and that story isn't over. Karl(Beethoven's nephew) was pretty much Beethoven's pet project. But since Beethoven was pretty much a crazy person, he was so overbearing and intrusive in Karl's life, Karl shot himself in the head. But, since he had the Beethoven line blood in him, it didn't work, and he was just a little more angry after that. Later he joined the army, and Beethoven never saw him after that, so he might as well not exist.<br />
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Then Beethoven got sick and died. There was a <i>shitton</i> of composition that went on during this, including ill-known works like his 5th and 9th symphony, but historically it was pretty much "compose music" for his life.<br />
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If you look at his Wiki, it says that Beethoven was "irascible". I have no clue what that means, but it also says he was possibly bipolar and often irritable. Probably because he had to spend so much of his time dealing with people who <em>weren't Beethoven.</em><br />
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Anyways, this was waaaay too much time that I devoted to one fucking person. However, Beethoven was basically music Jesus, and I really feel that everyone should know more than "SOMETHING ABOUT ODE TO JOY" about the dude. Next update will be Romantic, and then I'm afraid I'm going to have to call it a day on the history lessons to go onto Counterpoint and Theory, since 19th and 20th century Music history is... well, it's pretty much a shitstorm to end all shitstorms. I'd love to cover it, but I have to keep in mind that I only have a few more months before(If they ever schedule my damn audition) I am out of contact with the world for 8 months, so I'd like to get a basic outline of theory and history all out before then, and if I were to cover 19th cent-present it would take all the time I have.<br />
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Anyways, since I'm posting this at 11:30 on Jan 31, 2009, Happy New Years everyone. I hope to god you're all reading this well after the beginning of 2010, and I'll see you all in the next decade.<em> </em>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-28481609061222517352009-12-21T09:46:00.001-05:002009-12-21T09:47:07.278-05:00Lesson 7: Classical PeriodOk, let's move on to my least favorite period of music: The Classical period.<br />
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The Classical period happened in all art forms, and is basically an attempt to emulate and go back to Classical Greek architecture, arts, and culture. This is absolutely hilarious too, since Early music and Renaissance music both were attempts to emulate Classical antiquity, and the way the Classical Period went about it was to simplify everything and basically find giant sticks to keep in their bums.<br />
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Now we've heard Baroque music. Baroque music was not what today any of us would call outrageously decadent or overly flowery. However, the Classical period artists were the ones who named the Baroque period, and "Baroque", roughly speaking, means "Rough/Imperfect Pearl". Naming the older style Baroque was intended to be derogatory, essentially calling Baroque music out for being overly elaborate.<br />
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So we're around the 18th century here, and I'm often a bit... disingenuous to the classical period. Part of the reason they simplified things was to seek more of an emotional impact and to have more striking melodic structures, as opposed to sort of the jumbled mess that could happen with baroque music. Really, considering what was going on in the Renaissance and Baroque period with emotional stuff a lot of this is like, super-emotional. It's just compared to todays stuff it's a little... less so.<br />
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Probably the best transitional figure is Scarlatti, who wrote stuff kind of like this<br />
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There's still a lot of baroque-isms there, and Scarlatti was still pretty obviously Baroque, but he's clearly starting to lean more classical.<br />
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I often like to compare Classical-period music with rock music of today, and in a lot of ways they're very similar. Classical music has a lot of melody over chords structure to it, and while the better musicians of the time would expand on the simple basic I-IV-V style chords, and even the compositional method was a lot closer to rock music today than romantic and post-romantic art music is. <br />
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The biggest changes we find happen not 'till around 1760ish, with two major developments. The first is the creation of the Symphony. We're not entirely sure about what happened, but C.P.E. Bach(different Bach than we're used to... they're related) is often attributed with essentially inventing the symphony and the style. The first big name of the style though is Joseph Haydn. Dude is like, the quintessential classicist.<br />
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Now, Haydn also worked for a prince for a while, so he pretty much could afford to sit on his ass all day, living in relative luxury and writing music for a bunch of people in frilly clothes to play for bunches of people in frilly clothes. He basically refined the symphony and almost entirely created the string quartet as a standard thing. He was pretty awesomely famous and like a super-cool dude for classicists, and basically living easy.<br />
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Then some stupid kid arrives on scene, thinking he's <i>so cool</i> because he's all "I wrote symphonies when I was 5" and shit. Mozart was pretty much what every 14 year old with a guitar thinks they are. Basically, he shopped at super-trendy stores to get all the fancy clothes, made poop jokes, and every once in a while would sit down and say "Man, let's just <i>jam</i> man, let's just <i>make some music</i>", except instead of that resulting in him totally getting some side-boob from Melissa after homeroom 'cause he was <i>so emotional</i>, he actually did get signed by a major label and spent all his time touring Europe with legions of fans throwing their panties at him. Also hundreds of years later everyone still talks about how awesome he was, to the point where people make retarded claims about how he had magical music powers. I have heard people say "if the legends are true" when talking about him. Yeah, makes your childhood seem a little uneventful doesn't it? Of course also I saw the program to a recital recently where the girl spelled his name as "Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart", so really, <i>who was he</i>.<br />
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Now the reason he was so famous is because the dude is maddeningly good at music, especially when you consider that this really was him basically just sitting down, jamming, and writing that shit down. Examples you say?<br />
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Yeah, <i>I guess</i> the dude had chops. One fun game to play though is considering what he would've been like today. You see, when I mention that Mozart's compositional process was pretty much sitting down and jamming, I'm not kidding. It's fairly obvious from the manuscripts during all music pre-Beethoven that the compositional process changed <i>drastically</i> with Beethoven. Mozart was not what today we would call a composer. He was today what would be called a great Improviser. His music was made up as he was composing, as opposed to the current art music way of composing which is a long drawn out process of editing and sketching and hard-wrought work. So would Mozart today still be an art music genius? Or would he super-refine and write crazy awesome pop music? Or would he be on crappy early morning TV shows with the headline of shit like "PIANO PRODIGY AT AGE 6!" and then not really do too much else? It's pretty hard to say. Anyways, while that's a fun game, it's not really part of history, so let's move on.<br />
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Of course getting back to history we notice something.... Music eras are shrinking like crazy. It's really hard to say much else as a general overview of Classical music. It was a period of less than 100 years, and we're still talking about an era where we didn't exactly have instant communication. The classical period was simpler and more emotional than the Baroque period, and had some pretty big names and general style... and then Beethoven comes along. Next post will be pretty much <i>all</i> about Beethoven before moving on to the romantic proper, simply because Beethoven is pretty much the father of the way music works today.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-8363083146174053872009-12-16T16:26:00.001-05:002009-12-17T11:58:18.594-05:00Aside: Tuning and Temperament.<i>Note: This post is a branch off of the <a href="http://khavallmusic.blogspot.com/2009/12/lesson-6-baroque-as-well-as-explanation.html">Baroque period lesson</a><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></i><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">WARNING: MATH CONTENT AHEAD</span></b></i><br />
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Super-brief-maybe-I'll-go-more-in-depth-with-this-later-physics-of-sound-lesson:<br />
So I hope we all understand the basics of what a pitch is, and what music is. A sound wave is simply a pressure differential, basically, in whatever medium it's going through. It takes the form of a longitudinal wave. Basically, the air particles don't move that much to make sound happen, but there's a wave of pressure that does. If it's just a single disturbance, or any <u>non-periodic</u> pressure change, it's noise. However, when we have a series of waves at a specific frequency, that is to say, <u>quasi-periodic</u> or the theoretical <u>periodic</u> changes, we get a pitch. An example is if the air is changing pressure at 440Hz, or cycles per second, we hear an A. And a specific A. We refer to it as A440. Guess why.<br />
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Now, onto the music part:<br />
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Intervals are definable as ratios of frequencies. If you play A440 and another note at 880Hz, you will get a perfect octave. If you play A440 and another note at 660Hz, you will get a perfect fifth. A440 and 586.66...? Perfect Fourth. Ok, so that's simple enough, right? Each interval is a ratio, and since this is all based on relatively simple math I'm sure it ends up lining up all prim and proper, especially since the Greeks were all "These intervals are perfect due to their fitting in with math correctly", right?<br />
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Let's try something. Let's take A220, an octave below A440, and let's go a fifth up from that, which is the ratio 3:2. 330, which is an E. Cool. A fifth up from that? 495, a B. Now, for the purpose of this example, every time we go above A440, let's adjust for octave, so that we're between 220 and 440. So we divide by 2 and get: 247.5(B). Now let's keep doing this to see where we end up: 371.25(F#), 278.4375(C#), 417.65625(G#). Ok. We're starting to get some serious decimal shit all up ins. I'm no math expert, but I'm pretty sure it'd take some awesome to bring us to the nice clean 440 going at a ratio of 3:2 all the time. Let's see though. 313.2421875(Eb), 234.931640625(Bb), 352.3974609375(F), 264.298095703125(C), 396.4471435546875(G), 297.335357666015625(D), and finally: 446.0030364990234375(A).<br />
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Again, no math expert, but I'm fairly sure that 446.0030364990234375 is in fact a different number than 440. So we end up with a different frequency than expected if we just loop fifths around. Uh oh. How different of a pitch? Well, the Bb one half step above A440 is approximately 465Hz. So we're sharp by a little under a quarter of a half step when we loop fifths. We've got a frequency for every pitch there too, so what's going on?<br />
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Well, it turns out that we get a little fudged here, simply on account of the math(There's some Pythagorean therum thing that explains this, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was). In order to make all the intervals work and fit in an octave, we have to have <i>something</i> be out of tune. The trick is figuring out <i>what</i> should be out of tune. For non-fixed-pitch instruments, this isn't actually a problem. Vocalists for instance, can fudge their pitches a little bit so that every interval is always in tune with itself, regardless of the intervals or where it lies in the tuning system. But on a keyboard, you can't really fudge any notes, since every time you hit the key the exact same frequency is going to come out. Unless there's something wrong with your keyboard. Well, the way that tuning was accomplished historically was dependent on what exactly they needed to do with the music.<br />
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The first tuning here is a form of <b>Just intonation</b>, where ratios are defined by whole numbers, and traditionally by small prime whole numbers. It contrasts to the <b>Equal Temperment </b>we'll see later. Just intonation is how we often express intervals, such as a fifth being 3:2, but as we've seen it doesn't <i>really</i> line up too well, so we have to throw a few things out of whack. Just intonation is also what we contrast other tuning with, but we use its theoretical form, where it actually works out.<br />
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<b>Pythagorean tuning</b> is the first tuning system we see in the western tradition. In Pythagorean, we tune the fifths. Well... that means the octave isn't right, so the Pythagorean tuning way of handling this is the beautifully simple way of "Call the out of tune one a different note". That's right, in Pythagorean tuning, let's say based off of D, where we go both ways to get the tuning, so that fifths and fourths are the most in tune(So D is the middle based pitch, we then tune G below and A above, then C below and E above, etc), G#/Ab are two different pitches, separated by what we call the "Pythagorean comma". This is fine-ish if we're playing in D major or any key that doesn't have G# or Ab anywhere in it ever, but that means that we'd have to retune our instrument to play in other keys. This also means that any fifth from C# to Ab or G# to Eb will be outrageously wide, and is referred to as a "wolf interval", which is essentially a noticeable out of tune interval due to a tuning system. This tuning sounds super-great when dealing with fifths and fourths, because that's what we tune to, and we have a nice simple interval of 3:2 for fifths that makes them sound all nice and consonant. But it makes thirds really complex intervals like 81:64(Major) or 32:27(minor). This makes thirds sound not as cool and a little out of tune. This is part of the reason that in early music the third was considered a dissonance, because they were dissonances in Pythagorean tuning.<br />
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Now, to get to the next system, it's important to note the difference between "tuning" and "Temperament" Tuning is accomplished by tuning just intervals, where Temperament attempts to correct the single super-out-of-tune interval by adjusting an interval by a small amount off of its just interval to get it to fit better.<br />
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<b>Meantone Temperament </b>comes next. In meantone, we, basically, tune the thirds. The most common Meantone Temperament, and the one we're dealing with around this era, is <b>Quarter-comma meantone. </b>In Quarter-comma, we technically tune the fifths, but then we shrink the fifths by one-quarter of a <b>Syntonic comma</b>. What is a Syntonic comma? A syntonic comma is the ratio of 81:80, and is a tiny bit more than 1/5th of a semitone. It's <i>barely</i> off from the Pythagorean comma. It's much simpler to think about how we derive it though. A syntonic comma is the difference between a Major third in Pythagorean tuning(referred to as a "Ditone") and a Major third of the interval 4:3. And now Meantone starts to make sense. Stack four Perfect fifths on top of one another: C-G, G-D, D-A, A-E. C-E is a major third. So we shrink each fifth there by a quarter of a syntonic comma, which is the difference between the E derived from stacking fifths and the E derived just as a major third. Oh look, now the Major third is in tune. Awesome. Well, we'll notice a problem here too. Try stacking major thirds like we did with fifths and see if this time we loop back into a perfect octave. <b>FUCK! </b>Basically, we've just replaced one wolf interval with another. Now the good news is we can play more in a single key while still sounding in tune, since the fifths are shrunk by a very small amount(about One quarter of one fifth of a half-step. essentially cutting the out-of-tune sound of thirds from Pythagorean tuning into 4), they don't sound too bad, and now thirds sound awesome. But we still have wolf intervals. Luckily, they're between really awkward intervals that probably won't show up like the #1 and 4s M3, or the #5 and b3 P5(this one was the worst, the true wolf fifth). Unfortunately, if we meantone tune to C this means that the P5 between root and fifth in Ab would be a wolf interval. And thus anything in the key of Ab would sound like shit. So you couldn't play a suite or a group of pieces that covered certain key relations on a single keyboard without having to take a break to retune. You'll notice we don't retune our pianos between each piece of music now a days, so what gives?<br />
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Well, next up is <b>Well-temperament</b>. Well-temperament is an attempt to make intervals a closed circle. That is to say, if you stack all the fifth intervals, they'll get you a perfect octave. Well-temperament is slightly irregular though, which differentiates it from tuning we use today. The good part about Well-temperament though is that since each interval was slightly off, most or all keys could be played without needing to re-tune. Technically, Well-temperament isn't a set tuning structure like quater-comma meantone, but a range of temperaments with irregular intervals. The great thing about Well-temperament was that there was no wolf interval, because it was so distributed around the different notes. Keys excessively away from the base would still often sound a little wonky due to their thirds... since the distribution wasn't entirely regular, but for the most part, it opened up all keys on a single, 12-tone keyboard.<br />
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<b>Equal Temperament</b> is next, and is what we use today. Specifically 12-tone Equal Temperament, but mostly we just say Equal Temperament, because the others are rare outside of the western tradition(24-tone Equal temperament is in use in very contemporary music, but the 12 tones of 12-tone equal temperament are the same in 24-tone). Equal Temperament divides the octave into 12 equal intervals, basically distributing the comma over all notes and intervals, so it can't be heard, and allowing the most ability to move around keys, since there is literally no difference in keys.Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-23506645592232358072009-12-16T16:17:00.002-05:002009-12-21T08:38:20.217-05:00Lesson 6: Baroque, as well as an explanation of tuning systems.Hey everyone. I want to start off by apologizing for the lack of update recently. I'm trying to keep somewhat regular with this and trying to clip along at a reasonable pace since unless something goes horribly wrong, I'm going to be unable to really have any contact with the outside world starting mid-May for like 8 months, and I'd like to give at least a pretty good outline before then even if I don't get to the more advanced stuff before then. I have a studio recital later today and I was playing for a bunch of Juries and had some concerts, which were keeping me pretty busy, plus I've got a pretty big audition coming up in a few weeks, and I'm recording an album next week, so all together I just didn't have time to update.<br />
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Also, I'd like to apologize in advance for a probable lack of updates in the next 2 weeks and possibly the next month or so. I'll be out of town starting this Friday and that'll possibly extend straight through to January, and then I'm not entirely sure exactly how much but I'll have a very limited time to practice for my audition again so will probably be locked in a room with a piano for most of the day.<br />
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Ok, so we're ending the renaissance period today and moving towards the music that most people start knowing, and that probably sounds a lot closer to stuff you've heard of now. The biggest difference into the Baroque period is the rise of functional tonality instead of relying on modes. Also, in the mid-late Baroque we get the "rules" of counterpoint, which are essentially guidelines for writing parts in a way that doesn't suck. We'll cover counterpoint when we're done with history.<br />
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This is also a period that I have much less familiarity with than the early music, and it'll probably show. Also, as a brief note, while most of this is coming from my head, I'm fact checking with Norton Anthology of Western Music, and wiki for some specific subjects. While earlier music I knew more about personally, with Baroque and on I'm leaning a lot more on my sources. I'm obviously rewording like, everything to make it less stuffy and boring, also since it'd be super lame and pointless to have this blog if I was just plagiarizing everything. And illegal, but I did want to cite that my biggest sources are the Norton Anthology and Wiki.<br />
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I'm kicking myself a little because one thing I meant to mention before was <i>formes fixes. </i>Luckily for me, it doesn't really matter too much until now, so I might as well talk about it now. <i>Formes fixes</i> was a form of poetry for songs, originating in France in about the 14th century. So we're stepping back a century or two from where we ended last update, but basically there were three <i>formes fixes: </i>The ballade, rondeau, and virelai. Basically, this was used for songs around the post-Notre Dame School, or <i>ars nova </i>period. And they were specific in the form of the way the poem was put together. Essentially they were like tablets. Fill in the words in the right places and you have a song.<br />
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Ok, now that that's out of the way, let's jump back forwards to 1600 or so. We often place the beginning of the Baroque period around 1650, where Purcell and Scarlatti start entering the ring, and often times this period of 50-100 years right before the Baroque starts all proper like is referred to as the "bridge period", since it's really pretty obvious that music kind of morphs from what is clearly Renaissance to what is clearly Baroque.<br />
The Baroque period's beginnings are often cited as a council of Florence meeting, where they discussed arts, among other things. They specifically looked back at the Grecian texts for inspiration, deciding to resurrect the musical drama, where text reigned supreme. You may have noticed that in the renaissance stuff, sometimes text was impossible to understand, because there was so much going on over itself and words were so elongated that it took an hour or to to get to the second goddamn syllable. The wiki article on Baroque music even says that this is the "conventional dividing line" for the Baroque period, but I take a bit of issue with that. While it was a designed meeting that set specific ideas down, since there was still a pretty damn big delay in communication ability, and since if you do things like listen to the late 16th century stuff, you still find many things that the Baroque period had. Either way, it's a nice dividing line if you're looking for one, just keep in mind that it wasn't all prim and proper with one style suddenly no longer happening and another taking over immediately.<br />
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What we're going to see over this period of time is a movement towards more structure in music, and the emergence of what today is a refrain in art music. Madrigals, which we looked at, often had a repeating chorus and sort of song structure approximating todays song structures, except again, those were for a bunch of people to get together and sing for fun and to be all dirty and talk about sex. Since the Ars Antiqua stuff started using secular music though, the secular and sacred parts of music sort of started to come a little closer together. In the Baroque period, we have an emergence of much more commonplace concert music. A lot of this is due to economic sorts of factors, with the Age of absolutism roughly overlapping. We had rich, powerful people who wanted entertainment, and could now hire musicians to write an opera for them on the holophoner. In fact, my first example of bridge period music is from Claudio Monteverdi, at the beginning of the 17th century, and was one of the first Operas.<br />
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So we hear that returning refrain in the orchestra between verses... it's quite a change compared to the flow-y, melt-y lines of the renaissance... it's a lot closer to standard song forms today.<br />
We also see the arrival of Opera. As I mentioned, Music was always linked to drama in some way, such as the early greek texts that note that their works of drama would have musicians, to heighten the emotion, as music can do. The modes often are associated with different feelings that they evoke as well. Opera was pretty much an advancement of this, melding the two. In opera, we see basically two types of song. First, we have the recitative, often shortened to recit. This is the exposition song style. Often there are a bunch of words over a chord, maybe on one note. It's the equivalent of speech, pretty much. Just sung. The aria, on the other hand is the long florid song. It's really the fuller song, and most people think of the aria when they're thinking of any specific work from any song.<br />
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We also see multi-movement works coming on scene more. Similar to masses, but as concert/public music and not just sacred music. Rather than list and talk about each style here,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music#Styles_and_forms"> I'm going to link to wiki, which has a list of the parts of the suite as well as a few other style listings</a>. I'll talk about some of the more important ones in terms of theory and specific style.<br />
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First I want to talk about something called "Basso continuo". Basso continuo was a type of figured bass, sort of an early way to give a bass note and a chord over it without writing all of the notes out. The continuo was semi-improvised, and even the group of instruments playing it wasn't specified most of the time. Think today if you went to a rock concert and instead of playing guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums instead they decided to pull out violins and brass and play the songs on those instead. And that was completely normal and par for the course. In terms of the notation, it was pretty similar to the way a jazz chart is written now, mixed with theory analysis of today.<br />
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We also see using "Ground bass", which is essentially a bass ostinato. For those of you who don't know, an ostinato is a constant, repeated figure over changing music. So ground bass is a bass ostinato... it's a bass line as we think of it today, essentially. I'm skipping a few years for this example, and I'll go back to cover temperment and general style, but this is the example that is used in every theory class for Ground bass:<br />
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skip to about 0:45 ish to get to the end of the recit and into the aria, and you'll hear that descending chromatic bass line, which then repeats like a billion times while the aria is going on.<br />
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What we hear here too is a movement towards vertical thinking. While lines in the renaissance tradition would construct what could be analyzed as chords today when they were overlapping, the thinking was all about the horizontal nature of the lines on the page. The idea of "vertical" and "horizontal" here makes a lot of sense if you look at a multi-part score... the vertical nature is how the parts interact with each other, the horizontal aspect is how a single line behaves in time. <br />
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While this was going on we also find that now music is taught as a specific art. Pedagogy emerges, things are structured, and there are now musicians instead of either people getting together to sing, or monks singing. This means two things basically. First, all of a sudden we have musicians that are musicians all the time. People can now devote pretty much their entire lives to composition, performance, and study of music. And the second thing, which grows off the first, is that musicians in general are a lot better at their jobs. Now, what this means is that with the emergence of more ability, we have an emergence of showing off that ability, which is why we have the Baroque style emerging. And what is the Baroque style? Simple:<br />
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Baroque music is <b>technical, virtuosic, </b>and <b>structured</b>. Baroque music is very much show-off music. Baroque music uses heavy ornamentation and is very flowery sounding. It's also very technical about it. In many examples of Baroque music, you're basically just talking about playing chords. But fast. This makes Baroque music <i>super-awesome</i> for teaching. There's a reason a lot of kids learning instruments learn Baroque music, because it was either about teaching good technique, or showing off that the performer had good technique. Also, it's important to keep in mind here that pedagogy has improved over the past few centuries. While today 12-year-olds can play Bach pieces, back then this was the height of performance ability. There's a story with I believe Aaron Copeland, who was getting a piece of his performed by a modern orchestra, and the violinist played a certain lick he had written as written, and he said that it was all wrong, because even in the short time of a single composers lifetime, when he wrote the piece, violinists couldn't play that lick together and correctly, so the end result was a lot mushier than what was played with the more modern orchestra. Consider with that sort of improvement over a relatively short period of time, how difficult this music must have been at the time.<br />
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Anyways, let's listen to some good examples that show off... well, showing off.<br />
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Oh my, that last one.<br />
You may notice the last piece is from "The Well-tempered Clavier" Allright, so other than an awesome band name, what does "Well-tempered" mean? For this, we unfortunately have to use <i>math</i>. I know, I'm as angry as you are. <i>Math?!</i> in <i>Music?!</i><br />
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<i><b>NOTE:</b></i><i> </i>My attempted "simple" explanation of tuning and temperament ended up being... well, super awesomely long and full of really boring math shit, so I'm going to post it separately, and just summarize here.<i> </i><br />
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<i> </i><span style="font-size: small;">Essentially, before the mid-Baroque, we were using tuning systems that gave "Wolf intervals", which were wildly out of tune, and certain intervals just didn't sound right, because of some math stuff. Also, we would be tuned to a specific key, and moving around to other keys required retuning any fixed-pitch instrument like a harpsichord, or, much harder to retune, an organ. In the mid-Baroque a system of tuning started to arise called "Well-Temperament", which was a great advancement that allowed every key to be played(though some still sounded a touch off)</span><br />
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This was what Bach was using in that last example, he was so excited that he could do shit in every key that he wrote a suite, <i>Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, </i>or <i>The Well-tempered Clavier, </i>which contains a piece in every one of the 24 major and minor keys. The original suite, what is now "book 1", was composed in 1722. Later, in 1742, he wrote "24 preludes and fuges", which is basically the same idea, and is now considered "book 2" of the full Well-tempered Clavier.<br />
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A final style thing I want to talk about in the Baroque period is the "fugue", or "Fuga". The fugue is a texture of music that is the closest thing to the direct following of the tradition of prima practica Renaissance music. Technically, I believe "fuga" comes from Latin related to both the terms "to chase" and "to flee". Basically, in a fugue, a musical idea gets passed around parts and played with a bit.<br />
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The traditional fugue opens with the entire ensemble playing a single theme, and then a single voice starts playing that theme, which is referred to as the "subject". Then, a second voice enters with the subject but transposed, often to the dominant. Once the subject is restated, the first voice takes up counterpoint to it. If the counterpoint is used later and is a constant companion to the subjects restatement, it is referred to as the "countersubject", otherwise, it's just called "free counterpoint". Pretty simple, right? Well, when this gets super-layered it can be pretty intense. Bach is probably the most famous for these, but then again he's probably the most famous Baroque composer so.<br />
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This stuff sounds like this:<br />
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One final thing to mention, though I'll go into more detail after the history series, is counterpoint. Bach measured statistics and wrote, in texts like "The art of fugue", "rules" for counterpoint, which is essentially the means to write moving voices. This is another part of the structured nature of the music.<br />
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And that's all for Baroque styles and characteristics for now. Next update will be Classical, though again, there might be a bit of a delay here since I'll be out of town for the next two weeks.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">As always, any questions? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you.</span>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-11603419787975488682009-12-07T22:58:00.000-05:002009-12-08T00:16:56.921-05:00Lesson 5: Late Medieval into Renaissance.<p>Before I start, I'd like to mention that while these posts are separated into Medieval and Renaissance, it's important to note that through all of music history, music periods sort of bleed into each other. While we like to say, for instance, that the Baroque period started in 1650 or so, and we like to look at Bach and say "BAROQUE", but we see Baroque tendencies for a hundred years or so previous emerging.</p><p><br /></p><p>So anyways, we left off with the totally insane, completely out of left field style of just throwing a billion things together and just letting musicians go at it, but as always, eventually the Crack wore off, and music started to simplify. It also started to resemble much more closely todays music in terms of phraseology. You'll notice while listening to Isorhythmic stuff that you basically just have a constant flow of notes until everyone just sort of decides to stop. Well, what we see happening is that this music starts to move forwards to very specific points. Also, people finally discovered how to sing together in ways other than parallel or completely unrelated lines.</p><p><br /></p><p>For an example, this is one of the earliest pieces that's easily definable as in the Renaissance:</p><p><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GlnmcgCVlLo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GlnmcgCVlLo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></p><p>Yeah, so. You can probably hear the difference pretty well there. There's still line independence throughout the piece, and there are those rhythms you hear a lot in the Medieval, but it's much simpler and more consonant than something like Rose, Lis, Printemps, Verdue, which is pretty much directly before this historically.</p><p>Another good example is something like Dufay</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2DBtiTVaJZ0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2DBtiTVaJZ0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Another thing to note here is that you're probably noticing that this stuff is really full of just gorgeous flowing harmonies.</p><p>Now, something magical happened in around 1470. For those of you who are history buffs will recognize that this is relatively close to around 1440, where something magical happened to literature. The printing press wasn't really adapted to work with music until around 1470, and after that it meant that suddenly we have an <em>explosion</em> of manuscripts, knowledge of composers, and a spread of musical ideas. We see as early as the end of the 15th century basically the precursor to the rock star. Also, what's really interesting, is that even though at the beginning of the renaissance started to simplify, now we see a rediscovery of rhythmic complexity, but in a much different way. Now when there were overlapping canonical structures instead of isorhythm. So the end result was a much more controlled and consonant combined sound instead of the just mass of sound we had before. You'll notice this a lot in stuff like Ockeghem:</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SaxKP3OyfpA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SaxKP3OyfpA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>So basically, the Renaissance started out saying "Holy shit what the fuck, other dudes", and went away from the batshit, but then they still liked the overlapping sounds and moving lines more than homophony, they just decided to go about it in a much different way, one that goes away from complete independence in lines and instead deal with interlocking lines. But this is only half the story. We missed late medieval secular music last post.</p><p>Secular music near the end of the Medieval period we had the Troubadours. Troubadour music was essentially closer to plainchant in that it was pretty much a single line.</p><p>In the Renaissance, we have a very, very famous sort of secular music known as the Madrigal, which was really an interesting thing to look at. First off, let's look at the early versions. As I mentioned, after the printing press started being used with music which made the proliferation of scores much, much easier. This meant that instead of the Church and the obscenely wealthy being able to have music, everyone could have music and sing it and maybe get like an awesome song book and have the equivalent of people gathering around the piano at a party and drunkenly singing shit. I also mentioned the Renaissance rock star. I was talking about Josquin. You may notice the lack of a last name there. Technically, he is "Josquin des prez", except no one called him that. He was like Cher. Or Prince. He did not need a last name, he was Josquin. Dude basically spent all his time doing lines of crack off ye olde peasante wenches asse(Or "ye olde peafante wenchef affe") while playing a game of whofe mouth ameth I inneth nowe?</p><p><br /></p><p>Why was Josquin so awesome?</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hKJgwLPjmlw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hKJgwLPjmlw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>BAM</p><p>This may be my very favoritest piece of music ever composed.</p><p>Oh, and Josquin didn't just do secular music, no he did sacred music too. Keep in mind that this is by the same <em>genius mind</em> that gave us <em>El fucking Grillo</em></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Uj8GPdKttGw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Uj8GPdKttGw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>From the same Mass:</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/x5h1sCYxopY&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/x5h1sCYxopY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Now, this sort of continued to evolve into the Madrigal, which was basically what happened when the peasantry would get together and sing these songs about either sex or sex. Or sex. Sometimes they were really subtle about how they were singing about sex, but really it was all about sex.</p><p>Some of you may have heard this stuff before</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fXBPeiTPH5I&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fXBPeiTPH5I&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Yeah, that one's pretty famous. Basically it's all "Spring is coming! Time for sex!"</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyways, that was all happening alongside the sacred stuff going on, so back to sacred.</p><p>So the music is getting more advanced an polyphonic(again) after a brief time of simplifying a little. This really comes to fruition with stuff like Palestrina. I fucking love Palestrina, he's just pretty much dripping pretty with everything.</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BsJ79yz8g0Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BsJ79yz8g0Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>This is one of his more famous works.</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7Pp0XUU6Rmk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7Pp0XUU6Rmk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Here's some more</p><p>And while this was going on, we started having a bit of a split. While a lot of this was happening and everyone loved it, there started being another style, closer to the madrigals, of having homophony, that is to say, all voices singing the same rhythm just in chords. What we see is that the polyphonic and antiphonal(Sung with two or more groups, often across the church isle, singing two choral parts that fit together) stuff started to be referred to as <em>prima practica</em>, while the homophonic stuff was <em>seconda practica. Seconda practica</em> starts to sound very much closer to more modern choral work.</p><p>An example of Seconda practica can be found with some Tallis, sung by the Kings singers</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TJoGYjU4Kn0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TJoGYjU4Kn0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>It would be irresponsible of me not to also mention somewhere in here William Byrd, who's an exceptionally famous composer of this time as well.</p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/30UfjAucDsA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/30UfjAucDsA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p><br /></p><p>And now we're pretty much ending the Renaissance period, but something very interesting happens. While the medieval period got like, super advanced with isorhythm and the Renaissance started by cutting down on that shit, then sort of killed off a lot of the polyphonic stuff near the end in favor of the Seconda practica, the Renaissance period stuff then started getting really advanced with chromatics, especially the Madrigals. Secular music just started getting weird when they started using chromatic alterations. </p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MG4GOqSqRZk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MG4GOqSqRZk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>I don't know if you can hear in that clearly, but there is some chromatic shit going on. Sudden shifts into minor, modally borrowed chords... it kind of starts to stray off to crazy time.</p><p>Well, next update, we'll see that the Baroque period begins by cutting a lot of that out, basically, and focuses on its little thing, before that gets out of hand and the update after next we'll see Classical cut out the shit that Baroque runs away with. But that's pretty much it for Renaissance. I know it seems like just not that much happened, basically the music simplified, got really consonant and rhythmically similar, then simplified even more to homophony, but really with manuscripts being so widespread and just the huge culture change, with the incredibly push forwards in communication with the printing press, we see that now general eras last for shorter and shorter amounts of time, and less happens within a specific time. The Medieval period could probably be separated into about 5-6(Plainchant, Organum purum, Organum duplum/Free Organum, Ars Antiqua, Ars nova) different eras based on the general characteristics, and Renaissance could basically be divided into two, maybe three(Early renaissance(?), Prima practica, Seconda practica). </p><p><br /></p><p>While I finish history stuff, we'll probably see more posts like this where I explain the general characteristics and just have a shitton of stuff to listen to to illustrate the point more than a super-long lecture like the Medieval. </p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-18544669306879618922009-12-05T00:11:00.000-05:002009-12-06T14:44:20.450-05:00Lesson 4: A breif overview of Midieval music<p>Ok, so we've now covered the basics of what makes music music. Once we're done with this series of posts, we'll move on to counterpoint, something that is incredibly boring and doesn't seem useful, but I'll explain why we learn it in the post.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyways, now we're moving on to history. Some of you may be wondering what exactly is the point of learning Music History, since a lot of it has very little to do with music today, and in fact, as we'll learn in this series, the very basics of what we think of today as composing didn't exist until about the 19th century. I mean, sure, it's great a parties(you have no idea how great at parties. You whip out the knowledge of Palestrina mass structure and the ladies just can't get enough of you), and for some academic smart person reason it's important, but really on any practical level why?</p><p>Well... in a way a lot of it isn't important. But there's a reason music sounds the way it does. There's a reason that the rules of counterpoint exist in the way they do. There's a reason we think of everything in the way we do. There's a reason dominant chords go to Tonic chords, and there's a reason 4 measure phrases happen. And knowing why things are the way they are today is still useful.</p><p>Also, I spend <em>quite a bit of time</em> in a room with boring professors being told how to read goddamn <em>neumes</em>, which haven't been used in notation since 1100 or so and dammit now you all have to deal with that shit because I'm writing this blog so neener neener neener.</p><p><br /></p><p>So we start our overview of history in the times of the Ancient greeks. We don't really know, unfortunately, really anything about Grecian music. We know, for instance that the philosophers talked about the emotional and dramatic impact of music, and we know that they had the same general pitch relations as us, at least to a point(More correctly, we based our pitch relations on what they discovered). In fact, I'll add a little PS for the people interested in the physics and psychology interaction we can draw from history, starting with the Greeks, because I think it's fascinating, once I'm done with the history series. Anyways, we know, for instance that they knew of the relations in string length for different notes, such as cutting in half to get an octave, cutting to 1/3 to get a fifth, etc. This is the basis of why we call unaltered fifths, fourths, and octaves "Perfect". They are the simplest mathematical intervals, and so the Greeks, according to our reading of what they thought, referred to them as "perfect" since the greeks had such a hard-on for math.</p><p>And that's... well that's pretty much all we know about Grecian, and really any "Classical era" (We'll see a different classical period later, totally different classical era) music. You see, when there was the whole rampaging barbarian <em>problem</em> in Europe and all those fancy civilizations with all their Aqueducts had all their cities burned and pillaged. So we don't have any manuscripts of their music, nor did any of the oral tradition, assuming there was one, survive. Whoops.</p><p>Anyways, then there were the dark ages. Unless "People being impaled on pikes" counts as a musical work then we don't really have any music from there either.</p><p>But starting around 500 C.E. we start seeing manuscripts again. According to tapestries and legend, as it were, right around the end of the 6th century, Angels or the Holy spirit or some sort of heavenly herald came down to Pope Gregory I and gave him music, or gave him divine inspiration to create music, or something like that. Now, maybe God's just a crappy musician, or maybe Gregory I was a shitty student and after the first day of class started making paper airplanes out of his divine inspiration parchment, but in Gregorian chant, there is max two notes, one of which can move, there are no key signatures or clefs(well, there's close to a clef), and instead of writing notes, they just scribbled on a paper and told people to sing it.</p><p>It looked something like this</p><p><a href="http://i49.tinypic.com/10h24g4.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/10h24g4.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>This is what is known as <em>Neumatic notation</em>. Instead of notes, we have Neumes. That picture is an example of unheightened neumatic notation, which was the earlier form. You may be able to see that each of those little scribbles has a direction and is separated from others. For the first word, you would sing the first pitch on "Au", then a short, 2-note descending run on "bu", followed by a three note ascending run on "la", then a two note ascending run on "re". As you can see, there's no absolute pitch, so there's no indication of what note to start on, nor exactly how much we descend or ascend in the runs. So we can't really easily transcribe this into modern notation because while this does give us the contour of the music, there still obviously had to be an oral tradition part to it. That is to say, it would be impossible with unheightened neumes to perform music that you haven't heard before.</p><p>Now, what we're pretty sure actually happened with Gregory, and the story outside of the tapestries and stories, is that he called for the codification and organization of music. And for the time period, when we say "music", we really mean "Church music", though I'll talk a little bit about secular music. So basically, before Gregory came along, this was pretty much <em>all</em> oral tradition, with perhaps something like unheightened neumes as a reminder, but there was no standard, and Gregory changed that. Since it's the first codification, he got the chant style named after him, hence Gregorian chant.</p><p>So we have music that we can read assuming we know the song already, but that's not so useful, right? I mean, we still have that, just look up any songs chords and it'll be in a notation where you need to know the piece, but you're pretty limited in what you can do with that. You can't really hand a chord chart to an orchestra and have them play a piece, now can you? Even if they have heard the piece it probably won't be too great of a performance.</p><p>So let's look at heightened neumes, which look something like this:</p><p><a href="http://i50.tinypic.com/2h3vudx.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/2h3vudx.jpg" border="0" alt="Heightened neumes" /></a></p><p>I know it looks still kind of like scribbles and random dots, but holy shit so much clearer. So first off here, we're moving to a staff with lines. This is awesome, because now we have distance between notes instead of just general movement. Now, also, we have a clef. Do you see it? If you look at the very beginning, while it looks just sort of like other notes, you'll find a unique neume that looks almost like the letter C. Well, that's the clef, and it is around where C is. So C is the 4th line of the staff. After that, we have what's known as a "podatus" neume, which means we'd sing two notes ascending, followed by a "Climacus", though an interesting one, since normally you'd see that with a single starting note, so it's more a compound neume. It means we have three notes descending, though I believe since it's in a compound neume we'd count the last note of the previous neume. <br /></p><p>Anyways, so we have all of this, and I was about halfway through typing up the different types when I realized that wiki probably has an article on this, and it turns out it does. And apparently is where those scores were from. Good to know, GIS. Thanks. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neume#Illustrations">Anyways, here's the full version of what these mean, as far as we know</a></p><p>So interpreting this score, it looks like we're based on G, which puts us in Mixolydian mode(I'll explain that), and put into modern notation, the notes would be: B G G F G C B A B A A G</p><p>for that first little snippet before the words and giant letter M come in. We're still unsure of how rhythms work out in heightened neume notation. There's debate as to whether certain neume types do indicate a rhythm or lengthening of note length, or doubling, but we really are unsure. It's also possible, I guess, that the rhythm would still be something that the singer would have to know, or would be implied by something else. But the common interpretation is that all notes are equal in length. So if we want to have different length notes, we still really can't exactly write it, we just don't have the capability to notate rhythm yet.</p><p>So before I talk about how we do get to modern notation, let's look at what I posted up there about being in Mixolydian mode. The fuck?</p><p>Well, as I mentioned, we don't have key signatures. We only have one accidental, and that's, interestingly enough, the flat, which can only be placed on B, and does exactly what it does in modern notation. What's fun is that the meaning actually changes slightly in later early music before coming back to what it is now. </p><p>So with no key signatures, we only had the "white notes"(Think like on a piano). But we could still base music on different tonics. So for instance, imagine a scale starting and ending on D, but F and C aren't sharp as in D major, and B isn't flat as in D minor. We could do that, theoretically, based on any white note. Well, these scales are referred to as "Modes". Modes exist today, though they're now just different scales. They're the same note relations as the original modes, but they can be moved anywhere.</p><p>So anyways, what this gives us are the 8 original "Church modes", as we call them. We have 4 "Authentic" modes and 4 "Plagal" modes. and here's a chart of authentic modes from what note it's based on:</p><p>D: Dorian</p><p>E: Phrygian</p><p>F: Lydian(Note: This mode has Bb naturally in it)</p><p>G: Mixolydian</p><p>Ok, now here's where it gets a little confusing. Each church mode has a "Final", which is about the equivalent of the tonic in todays music, it's the "resting note" as it were, a place to end and move around. For the authentic modes, the Final is the note that the scale is based on. So dorians final is D. For Plagal modes, the final is the same as a corresponding authentic mode, but the scale starts and ends a fourth below the corresponding authentic mode. So the plagal modes, in the same order as the authentic modes up there are: Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian, and hypomixolydian(This one's my favorite. It's fun to say).<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, so that's modes. And neumes. You know, for a history lesson, I'm really not covering much of the time line. This is more Ancient music theory.</p><p>Anyways. Whoo boy. So that's how music is put together back then... so what about how it sounded?</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5p_U8J0iRQ&feature=PlayList&p=B21508032B8FA368&index=0&playnext=1">Here's an example of basic Gregorian chant</a>. You'll note that while they extend the last note of each phrase, mostly the notes are all the same length. Also, there's only one note.</p><p>I want to note that during this period there was also Secular music, specifically from the precursors to the Troubadours. Basically, traveling minstrels. Their music was pretty much completely of an oral tradition, because printing at the time was incredibly expensive, so only the church could afford it. The result of their oral tradition is that we don't really know all that much about their music. What we do know is that they would often sing with instruments, and that much of their music was in what is known as "Strophic" form, which is basically A-A-A-A-A-etc. Again, I'd love to go into more depth with this, but unfortunately there are just so few records and I can't for the life of me find any recordings without delving into my anthologies, and I'm not sure where they are.</p><p>Now music pretty much continued along this way for about 500 years. Single line, monorhythm, all that. Around the beginning of the 11th century or so, we started to see something rise called "Organum". Organum was essentially music that involved <em>two</em> notes. At the <em>same time! </em>That's right, it took <em>500 years</em> of singing one note before anyone thought "HEY! WHAT ABOUT TWO?!" I imagine the early adopters were burned for their witchcraft, but eventually people realized <em>holy shit two notes</em>. Now, this took a few forms. The earliest form was "Organum Purum", which involved a single drone note over which a melody was sung/played. An example of this is in <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irxG-GCV5Es&feature=related">Ordo Virtutum</a></em>, by a very well known early composer who we'll get to soon. As you can hear, we're still dealing with the idea of a single melodic line, but we do have emergent harmonies between that line and the drone.</p><p>Later, we started to see something known as "Free Organum", which involved two voices moving together, or sometimes in Oblique motion(One part stays on a note while the other moves), but not in the same fashion as the drone of Organum purum. An example of this is in, once again, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbO8NXbgdbE&feature=PlayList&p=4CBD62ACE85A2123&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=18">Ordo Virtutum</a>, elsewhere in the work.</p><p>The reason I used Ordo Virtutum is because it's by one of the most famous and influential people in every field in the middle ages: Hildegard Von Bingen. Hildegard did everything, there are a ton of fields in which she's pretty famous for. She's so famous that we actually know the stuff she did. At the time, most of this chant stuff was written by monks and nuns who wouldn't sign their works, so 90% of early music will be by Anonymous.</p><p>Around this time as well, Guido d'Arrezo basically decided that it was probably a good idea to be able to write music down. One of his semi-famous ideas was the Guidonian hand.</p><p><a href="http://i48.tinypic.com/2sb1pit.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2sb1pit.jpg" border="0" alt="Guidonian hand" /></a> </p><p>Basically, Guido D'Arezzo could point to parts of his hand and it would serve as a mnemonic device to aid in sightsinging. There's a reason we don't use it today, though, while we do use the other forms of notation. Basically, the hand required memorizing locations on the hand and couldn't be used outside of the performance, basically. You can't really go home and practice when you need to see someone pointing at their hand. It was essentially less a basic form of notation and more a basic form of conducting.</p><p>The big thing we see from him though was Guidonian notation. Guidonian notation is also known as "What we do today" Guido D'Arezzo was around the 11th century, and we've been using, though it's changed a little, his notation system since. It's wonderful, because it allows someone who has never heard a piece to play it correctly. Essentially, it's the final movement away from the oral tradition into a written one. It wasn't quite the same as today, we'll see "Mensural" notation, which doesn't quite look like things to today, but it is much more clearly closer to modern notation than neumatic notation.</p><p>But back to music. With these advancements, we started to see something called "Organum duplum", another form of two-voice singing. We enter a period known as <em>Ars Antiqua, </em>and we'll get to why it's called that soon. Essentially we see a movement towards more going on in the pedal voice, and this is where see see what almost sounds like a rudimentary system of chords, where there is a changing bass note at certain points in the melody. This stuff sounds something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq5B3M4jRtQ">this</a>. It's also known as the "Notre Dame school", because that's where it was practiced often. Leonin and Perotin are famous composers of this style, and pretty much always mentioned together because their names are similar. This went on 'till about the early 14th century. We also start seeing composers with hilarious names like "Adam de la halle", or "Adam of the hall". Love it.</p><p>It's important to understand the philosophy that's going on here for a second, to make the next period make sense. While today we hear the interaction as almost a vocal line - Bass line relationship, they didn't really see it that way. Their interpretation was that they were two simultaneous lines of Organum. Well, with Guidonian notation, we can start to have that second line do a lot more than just sit on one note until the other line has sung a few notes, and the lines don't have to move together or even be all that related. In fact, if you look at manuscripts from around this time, you'll sometimes see that each part has its own bar line placement... there isn't just one bar line for everyone like there is today.</p><p>So music slowly was becoming more filled with advanced rhythm and individual parts, and then Phillipe de Vitry came along and said "Fuck it, <strike>we'll do it live!</strike>I'm going to move us forwards myself!" And he started the <em>Ars Nova</em> period. What's funny here is that he decided that his stuff was "New Art" and <em>everything else</em> was "Antique art". I'm sure he was awesome at parties. Anyways, this was like a super-explosion in music. It's actually not too wacky to suggest that his stuff really did make everything else look, well, <em>antiqua</em>. In fact, there are developments in music during this period of time and immediately following that we don't see again until the music of the 20th and 21st century. It's <em>whack as shit</em>. Essentially, this school ascribes to the Voltron theory of music. The more lines you add, the more stuff going on, the better. So you would have just a billion things going on at once. Specifically, <em>Ars Nova</em> as a period is known for its <em>Isorhythmic motets</em>. The motet was a song form we saw arriving around this time, and Isorhythm, which translates from Greek as "The same rhythm", is... well it's wacky assed shit, so let's see if I can explain it.</p><p>Isorhythm consists of two parts, the <em>talea</em> and the <em>color</em>. The <em>talea</em> is a specific rhythm, and the <em>color</em> is a specific melody line. What's important to note is that the <em>talea</em> and the <em>color</em> have different amounts of notes. They are repeated over each other however, in each line. So imagine that you have 4 pitches with a rhythm of Quarter-Eighth-Eighth. When you get to the end of the <em>talea</em>, the Q-E-E rhythm structure, just repeat it, starting on the last pitch. Since you're now done with the <em>color, </em>repeat it over the remainder of the rhythm. Just keep doing that. That's the basic line of an Isorhyhmic motet. Now do that with 7 other voices. It'll sound something like<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y0IJTWLf78&feature=related"> this</a>, which is a Mass by Guillaume de Machaut, one of the two more famous Isorhyhmic composers. The <em>color</em>, by the way, was taken from a Plainchant. So we're still pretty much just dealing with chants at this point, just cut up and messed up and remixed until they're not really recognizable anymore.</p><p>Oh by the way, during this period there was also something I find absolutely hilarious and completely off the wall happening. Sometimes, in order to get more tenor lines(The "tenor" in this period, refers to the melody, not the voice part), composers would just sort of... borrow from other works. Which is sort of weird but ok, like a mashup. Except that they would also start to borrow from <em>secular</em> works. For their sacred works. So it was entirely possible in this period to see a love song about a rose(which, in case you didn't know, is during pretty much all of music, code for a vagina) being sung alongside a sacred chant. Basically, they were doing mashups of <em>Ave Maria</em> and <em>Baby got back</em>. In churches. This was still <em>sacred music</em>. It is a tradition I think we should <em>totally bring back</em>. Because it's <em>awesome</em>.</p><p>Also, while listening to this sort of stuff, it's important to hear that we're starting to hear the emergence of thirds. This wasn't really a big thing that suddenly happened, but originally Fifths and fourths were considered consonant sounds, and thirds and sixths dissonant. You can still clearly hear a ton of use of fifths and fourths during this stuff, because fifths and fourths are like, super-easy to tune, and as I mentioned, their ratios make easy mathematical sense. Once singers starting singing thirds and sixths correctly though, they found that it had a sweet warm sound to it. This slowly crept across Europe, and was known as the "Sweet British sound". Guess where it originated.</p><p>I'm going to end this post for now, next update we'll look at Renaissance music. Once we get past that and into the 17th century I'm sure we'll be able to cover more eras per post, but there is a <em>lot</em> of development that goes on in what I covered, and it's like, 1,000 years of music history. Keep in mind that between Bach and today there are about 350 years.</p><p>Before I go though, here are some more examples of <em>Ars Nova</em> stuff, because holy shit it's so goddamn pretty to listen to. I love this stuff so much.</p><p><br /></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RPQjqZm6q0Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RPQjqZm6q0Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>As a note, Rose, Lis, Printemps, Verdue there is one of my favorite pieces of the era, because it's like, as textbook Ars nova as you can possibly get.</p><p><br /></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4U7mPwGx7Ls&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4U7mPwGx7Ls&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JtoYzKX-e2A&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JtoYzKX-e2A&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p><br /></p><p>Oh yeah, sometimes they used instruments.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, that was super-long. As always, questions in the comments and I'll try to answer them.</p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-74997021346462691182009-12-03T13:02:00.000-05:002009-12-04T15:41:59.406-05:00Lesson 3: Chord construction<p>Ok, so we know how to read music, we know about keys and scales, and we know about intervals. So what about chords? Most people, especially if they play guitar, are going to know <em>about</em> chords, probably that there are minor, major, 7, and power chords. But that doesn't really tell us too much. I mean, that tells you all you need to play maybe 90% of rock music, but it doesn't tell you the <em>why</em> to anything.</p><p>Now, since we know that certain intervals can be major and minor, and chords can be major and minor, they're obviously related, right? They are, but not quite as obviously as you'd think.</p><p>Also, before I go on I should mention that I'll start using some shorthand to refer to intervals, so I'll quickly go over them:</p><p>The number is the interval, so a 3 would be a third. A 5 would be a fifth. Etc.</p><p>The letter/symbol is a little specific:</p><p>M = Major</p><p>m = minor</p><p>aug = Augmented</p><p>dim = diminished</p><p>So, what <em>are</em> chords? Chords are combinations of 3 or more different pitch classes. With those, you have two or more stacked intervals. Also you can measure an interval between the lower and upper note. To make this a little clearer, let's look at one.</p><p><a href="http://i49.tinypic.com/dxk3dz.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/dxk3dz.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>So between C and E there, we have a Major third. Between E and G there's a minor third, and we can measure a Perfect Fifth between C and G. Also, this particular type of chord is called a "Triad". A triad is any chord of two stacked thirds, and is probably what you'll see most often for a lot of music, unless you play jazz or grunge that has its own sets of standard chord construction.</p><p>Now you'll notice that the chord I posted has both a Major and minor third. So which is it? Major or minor? Major-minor(This is also technically correct, but no one would say it)? And what would happen if we had two Major or two minor thirds? Would it be super-Major? What if it had a fourth? Or a fifth? Holy crap!</p><p>Well, it turns out this is our intro to one of the annoying things about theory. For a grand unified system that catalogs and explains like, everything in music ever, there isn't always a standard rule. A lot of things with theory everything behaves in some standard fashion, and sometimes we just have nomenclature that you have to pretty much just learn. There are still patterns and some ways to go about thinking about the whole thing that make it a little easier, but not so much a hard fast rule that everything obeys. I'll try to give as many ways to think about this as possible, so hopefully at least one will click.</p><p>So we know of 4 different interval types, Major, minor, Augmented, and diminished. To start off, let's look at the relations between thirds in different triads.</p><p>Let's for now only deal with Major and minor thirds, as, as I'll get to when talking about inversions, pretty much any triad can be boiled down to combinations of thirds. In order, let's say we start stacking minor thirds. A minor third on top of a minor third is a "Diminished" chord. I know, there aren't diminished thirds in a diminished chord, but the chord is diminished. Building from the root(The root is the bottom note of a chord when in the form of stacked thirds, it's also the note that we use to name the chord) up, if we have a minor third and then a major third, it's a minor triad. Building from the root up if we have a Major third and then a minor third, it's a Major triad(Such as the example up there), and if we stack major chords it's an Augmented triad. Ok, that's simple enough, though it doesn't really explain why diminished or augmented chords are called that. However, it does lay the groundwork for looking at chords with more notes than triads, like 7ths. </p><p>So let's look at the intervals from root to third and from root to fifth(In general, when talking about notes in a chord, we go by the scale degree if we were in the key of the root. That sounds confusing, but essentially think that in C Major, with a d minor chord, f would be the third of the chord. It's hard to explain but it does make sense and work out). If we have a minor third and a diminished fifth, the chord is diminished. If we have a minor third and a Perfect fifth, the chord is minor. If we have a Major third and a Perfect fifth, the chord is Major, and if we have a Major third and an Augmented fifth, the chord is augmented. This way makes a lot more sense, but part of that's because we're just ignoring half of the internal intervals, and when we add 7ths to chords this method falls apart a little bit.</p><p>Another way to think about it that sort of bridges the two, is if the fifth is unaltered, kind of pretend it doesn't exist, because it's not really giving the chord any value. A perfect fifth is like, the quintessential "Open" sound, without any specific sonority. So if you have a major third, it's a major triad, and a minor third makes it a minor triad. The difference between it just being a third or a triad is the existence of the fifth, but the fifth doesn't do anything to the chord. If the fifth is altered to make the chord smaller, it's diminished, and if the fifth is altered to make the chord bigger, it's Augmented.</p><p>And finally, we have the scale degrees above root with modifiers. So 1 - b3 - b5 is diminished. 1 - b3 - 5 is minor. 1 - 3 - 5 is Major. 1 - 3 - #5 is Augmented.</p><p>Ok, hopefully one or all of those ways to think about this stuck, so we can move on to inversions, and then 7ths.</p><p>So what if there's a P4(Perfect 4th), in there? There's nothing in any of those guides that accounts for a P4. Well, let's take a look at something:</p><p><a href="http://i46.tinypic.com/2yke2qd.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2yke2qd.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>Ok so. What is this? It's got a minor third and... a perfect fourth. The interval between the... root? and.. fifth? is a minor sixth. What?</p><p>Well what are those notes? E, G, C? Where have we seen those notes before? What if we take that top note and throw it on the bottom? Hey we know that chord! Yeah, so that picture is a C major chord, just rearranged a little. This is what's known as an inversion. Inversions give a different sound due to their different bass note, and once we get to voice leading, can make bass lines move more smoothly than just always being on the root.</p><p>If the bottom note of the chord is the root, so C-E-G for our example, then it's in "Root position". Pretty simple. If the bottom note is the third, then we're in "First inversion", and if the bottom note is the fifth, we're in "Second inversion". We haven't talked about roman numerals for chords yet(and it'll be a few updates yet), so for now we'll deal with probably how you've seen inversions and different bass notes, with a slash. So C/E for instance indicates a C major triad with an E in the bass, or first inversion. Now, some of you may notice that they're not exactly the same thing... sometimes you play the chord in root position in the right hand or on the guitar, for instance, and then like two octaves below that the bass player is sitting on their open 4th string and is that really the same as a stacked m3(minor third) and P4? Well, as far as sound is concerned, not really, but as far as we're concerned with analysis pretty much, yeah. Sometimes the bass note doesn't fit in the chord either, but that's a whole different bucket o' worms.</p><p>For those of you who haven't seen "C/E" or have any idea what that is, we'll cover that really soon, but first let's talk about 7ths.</p><p>So, triads we've got, they pretty much only come in 4 varieties. What if you add another note?</p><p><a href="http://i50.tinypic.com/8xrl2c.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/8xrl2c.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>I apologize for that example, it was the only Major 7 chord I could find without having to search around too much or go through more shit than I want to for a single chord to come from Finale. But let's look at the notes there. G-B-D-F#. Allright well that's four notes. And what are the intervals? Stacked we've got M3-m3-M3. Above the root it's an M3, P5, M7. Now, with an extra interval in there over triads, we have more combinations of minor and major thirds we can combine. I'll just give you guys a list here of what the different 7th chords are, starting with the most diminished going to the most augmented:</p><p>Stacked thirds | Intervals above root | scale degrees with modifier : Designation</p><p>m3-m3-m3 | m3, dim5, dim7 | 1, b3, b5, bb7* : Fully-diminished 7</p><p>m3-m3-M3 | m3, dim5, m7 | 1, b3, b5, b7 : Half-diminished 7</p><p>m3-M3-m3 | m3, P5, m7 | 1, b3, 5, b7 : Minor 7</p><p>m3-M3-M3 | m3, P5, M7 | 1, b3, 5, 7 : minor-Major 7</p><p>M3-m3-m3 | M3, P5, m7 | 1, 3, 5, b7 : Dominant 7</p><p>M3-m3-M3 | M3, P5, M7 | 1, 3, 5, 7 : Major 7</p><p>M3-M3-m3 | M3, Aug5, M7 | 1, 3, #5, 7 : Augmented Major 7</p><p>M3-M3-dim3 | M3, Aug5, m7 | 1, 3, #5, b7 : Augmented 7 (This one's really hard to remember and stupid)</p><p>*No that wasn't a typo, that's a double-flat. Double-flats behave pretty much like you'd expect them to... they're two semitones down. So essentially they're a whole step down. For double-flats, you just have two flat signs in a row, and for double sharps you have sort of an x. In fact, an x will work in text.</p><p>To hear these, check out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_chord#Types_of_seventh_chords">wiki,</a> it has them all. Also it has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(music)">Triads</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, I've got go meet a vocalist to go over part of a studio recital, so we're going to end the lesson now, but I want to as a last thing go over the ways of writing the modifiers for chords, in case you see these symbols and don't know what the hell they mean:</p><p><br /></p><p>Major Triad: M, Maj, Nothing(For instance, C would just be C Major)</p><p>minor triad: m, -, min</p><p>Augmented triad: Aug, +</p><p>Diminished triad: dim, <sup>o</sup></p><p>Major 7: M7, Maj7, <sup>Δ</sup>(In my life, I have never seen that one used.)</p><p>minor 7: m7, min7, -7</p><p>Fully Diminished 7: <sup>o</sup>7</p><p>Half Diminished 7: <sup>ø</sup>7, m7b5, -7b5</p><p>Minor-Major 7: mM7, mMaj7, mΔ7, -Δ7(Again, those last two... I've only seen them in books, never on a score)</p><p>Augmented Major 7: Maj+7, Maj7#5, M7#5, Δ+7</p><p>Augmented 7: +7</p><p><br /></p><p>Those triangle ones.... maybe as I think back I've seen them on one Jazz chart, but it's very rare. Mostly if you remember that + is augmented, <sup>o</sup> is diminished, m is minor, M is major, you're pretty good. </p><p>Also, finally, alt bass notes... I said I'd explain that. When dealing with absolute chord notation like I have been so far, that is to say, not measuring with roman numerals, just the notes of the chords, if we have something like dm/F the F is the bass note, and we read that as "D minor over F", or "D minor, F bass" or "D minor, 1st inversion".</p><p><br /></p><p>So if we see "D", we play a D major chord. If we see "F<sup>+7</sup>" we play an F Augmented 7 chord. If we see "A<sup>oaddb6</sup>", we play an A diminished chord and add in a flat 6(F, in the example). For anything not covered by the symbols, you'll often see something like "b5" in the chord designator, which really just means whatever else you're doing, flat the 5.</p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-44152612290498890942009-12-01T23:19:00.001-05:002009-12-03T00:35:40.845-05:00Lesson 2: Pitch relationsAllright, so now that we have the basic vocabulary down, it's time to start dealing with the nuts and bolts of what makes music music.<br /><br />If you ask a theory professor, someone who will probably have glasses, a sweater vest, and lots of tweed, what a scale is, they'll probably give an answer like "A scale is a collection of unique pitch classes". Awesome. Of course, this tells us absolutely nothing. That could describe, like, everything in music.<br /><br />What we're mostly concerned about, what you'll deal with most often, are "Diatonic scales" Wiki says a Diatonic scale "is a seven note musical scale comprising five whole steps and two half steps, in which the half steps are maximally separated" Awesome. Well that's correct, but what the fuck? What does that even mean? Maximally separated? Allright, so what it means is that there are 2 or 3 whole steps between each half step, depending on which diatonic scale you're using as well as when you ascend through octaves. Basically, a major scale is (W=Whole step, H=Half Step) W-W-H-W-W-W-H, and a natural minor scale is W-H-W-W-H-W-W.<br />This is a little easier when seeing and hearing it, so here's a C major scale<br /><a href="http://i49.tinypic.com/308w6dw.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/308w6dw.jpg" border="0" alt="C Major" /></a><br />To make it a natural minor scale, we would flat the third, sixth, and seventh scale degrees, or E, A, and B for C minor.<br /><br />Here's a C major scale being played, both ascending and descending. You'll notice it sounds "Happy" <br /><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/jycm"><img src="http://tindeck.com/image/jycm/stats.png" border="0" /></a><br /><p>And here's a c natural minor scale ascending and descending. It's "Sad"<br /><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/suur"><img src="http://tindeck.com/image/suur/stats.png" border="0" /></a><br /></p><p>There are two other scales commonly used in common practice tonal theory, both of which are variations on the minor scale.</p><p>The first is the harmonic minor scale, which raises the 7th scale degree(from minor. So it is in fact the normal, unaltered scale degree in major), both ascending and descending. It sounds something like this:</p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/hmil"><img src="http://tindeck.com/image/hmil/stats.png" border="0" /></a></p><p>The reason this is known as a harmonic minor comes a little later, when we start talking about the basic chords in a key.</p><p>And then finally we have the "Melodic minor", which is confusing because it changes depending on whether you're going up or down. If you're ascending, you raise the Sixth and Seventh, so that the only note that is different from the major scale is the lowered third. However, descending, the melodic minor is exactly the same as the natural minor. It sounds like this.</p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/mzku"><img src="http://tindeck.com/image/mzku/stats.png" border="0" /></a></p><p>Now, when we talk about "Scale degrees", we count in ascending order, and while in chord theory later on we'll be talking about 9ths and 11ths and 13ths, for the most part, after the 7th scale degree, we loop back to the 1st scale degree, but in a different octave. So the third scale degree Now, n C Major is E. The fifth is G, the seventh is B. <br /></p><br />And speaking of octaves, I've used that term a lot, what exactly is that? In order to lay the groundwork for some later theory stuff, each specific frequency, as well as any frequency which is derived by x^2/f or f/(x^2), where x is any whole number, is a "pitch class". That is to say, a pitch class is any frequency as well as its double, its quadruple, eight times it, its half, its quarter, it over eight, and so on(Any math people, feel free to correct me if that formula doesn't say that). in other words, all "C"s are of the same pitch class. But they are not all the same note, because there are really high and really low Cs. What an octave is is the interval between two neighboring notes of the same pitch class. It looks something like this<br /><a href="http://i46.tinypic.com/33kxait.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/33kxait.png" border="0" alt="P8" /></a><br /><p>Both of those notes are C, and the interval between them is an Octave(So names because they are the 8th scale degree apart from each other). Since an octave has the same pitch class for both notes, it's also an easy to discuss boundary for ranges of notes. So when I say that something is "In a different octave" or "crossing octaves", I'm normally referring to it being between a different octave of the 1st scale degree.<br /></p><p> So, for example, the scales I posted are all within the same octave, in that none of the notes extends above the 3rd space C or below Middle C the ledger line below the staff, with C being the reference because we're in the key of C</p><p><br /></p><p>Which gives me a nice segue into keys. When we're talking about key signatures and what key something is in, we're essentially talking about what notes are modified to fit into a specific diatonic scale. So if we're in the key of A Major, as we looked at last update, we see that F, C, and G are sharp. That's because in order to build a major scale based on A(meaning that A is the first scale degree, also known as the "Tonic"), we need to have those notes be sharp. If we had no key signature, we would be in a minor, as the a natural minor scale needs no modified notes. We name the keys based of the the Tonic, or the first scale degree. So the key with modifications to build a major scale with the tonic of D is D Major. The key with modifications to build a minor scale with the tonic of B is b minor.</p><p>For reference, here's the key signature for D major:</p><p><a href="http://i47.tinypic.com/uaexi.png"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/uaexi.png" border="0" alt="D Major" /></a> </p><p>And here's b minor:</p><p><a href="http://i47.tinypic.com/uaexi.png"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/uaexi.png" border="0" alt="b minor" /></a> </p><p>HEY WAIT! I messed up and posted the same key signature for both! D Major and b minor are examples of "Relative" keys. Relative keys are keys that share the same key signature, but a different tonic. The relative minor of any major key is based on the 6th scale degree, and the relative major of any minor key is based on the 3rd scale degree. So C and a are relatives, D and b, E and c#, etc. The other common relationship you'll see is what is referred to as "Parallel" keys. A parallel key is one with the same tonic, but a different key signature. So the parallel minor of C Major is c minor.</p><p>There's a trick here to telling what key you're in, too. If the key has sharps, you go one step above the last(right-most) sharp in the key signature, and that's your major tonic. So the last sharp in D Major/b minor's key signature up there is the C#. One step above? D. The sixth scale degree? B, so the relative minor is b minor. Specifically you go one half step above the last sharp, but you only go there when in really awkwardly written keys like B# or E#.</p><p>If the key has flats, then the second to last flat is the Major tonic. So if you have two flats, Bb and Eb in the key signature, then you're in Bb Major/g minor. If you have Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, you're in Db major/bb minor.</p><p>Also, there is a strict order to how you add sharps and flats that makes that work out correctly. With sharps the order is: F C G D A E B. With flats it's B E A D G C F. There's a trick to this that won't make sense until the next part, which is that Sharps you add by going up by perfect fifths, and flats you add by going up by perfect fourths. Which is also how the keys loop around. The keys in order of increasing number of sharps are C(no sharps) G(one) D A E B F# C# G# D# E# B#. With flats it's C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb Fb. Again, that's a little more advanced, so I'll return to it later.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In fact, let's look at intervals now, so that makes a little more sense.</p><p>Intervals are the distance between notes. They're also the term used for the notes when played together or sequentially. So a "Third" is a combination of notes a third apart.</p><p>Lableing them is pretty easy, we name them based on how far apart they are. If the notes are one step apart, they are a "Second". If the notes are three scale degrees apart, they're a third. Here are... well all the natural major intervals. For the audio, they're all in C major, and they'll play the notes C - interval above C - notes together.</p><p>Major second</p><p><a href="http://i50.tinypic.com/34dodao.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/34dodao.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/qhdh" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Major second.mp3</b></a></p><p>Major Third</p><p><a href="http://i50.tinypic.com/k1atrc.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/k1atrc.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/rmhu" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Major third.mp3</b></a></p><p>Perfect Fourth</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/2qjj11v.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/2qjj11v.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/lnwf" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Perfect fourth.mp3</b></a></p><p>Perfect Fifth</p><p><a href="http://i47.tinypic.com/8xpw81.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/8xpw81.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/loep" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Perfect fifth.mp3</b></a></p><p>Major Sixth</p><p><a href="http://i49.tinypic.com/2vsj4nq.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/2vsj4nq.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/vbbo" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Major Sixth.mp3</b></a></p><p>Major Seventh</p><p><a href="http://i47.tinypic.com/2af0p6b.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/2af0p6b.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://tindeck.com/listen/spzn" target="_blank">Click here to download <b>Major 7th.mp3</b></a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, so quick thing, why are some intervals "Major", and some "Perfect"? And for that matter, you may noticed I didn't mention "Minor", "Augmented", or "Diminished" yet. Well, there's a historical explanation for the specific term "Perfect", but ultimately, There are 3-4 ways of defining any specific interval. The interval remains the same in terms of diatonic scalar distance, but the pitch class distance isn't necessarily the same. So a minor third is between, for instance C and Eb, while a Major third is between C and E. They're both between a C and an E of some sort, but the chromatic modifier is different. For fourths and fifths, there is no such thing as a "Major" or "Minor" interval. If you look at Major v. minor scales this will start to make some sense, in that the fourth and fifth scale degree aren't modified. Now I know what you're saying "But Khavall! The second scale degree also isn't modified!" That's true, but again, that's specifically the historical and mathematical reason.</p><p>For intervals with Major and Minor sonorities, the Major is the one that would occur in a scale based on the lower note in major. It's a little confusing with that saying, but for instance, a C Major Third is C and E, and a c minor third is C and Eb. An A major third is A and C#, an a minor third is A and C. For diminished intervals, you shrink the interval one step chromatically from the minor, so a diminished third would be, for instance, D and Fb(Yeah, I know), where D and F is a minor third. For augmented intervals, you expand the interval one step chromatically from Major, so C and E#(Yeah, I know), while C and E are the Major interval. For perfect intervals, Diminished is one chromatic step smaller than Perfect, and Augmented is one Chromatic step larger than perfect.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, so... some of you may have noticed something here. Like, if you play a diminished triad on your instrument of choice it sounds exactly the same as a major second. For a visual version of this idea, take a look at these two intervals:</p><p><a href="http://i48.tinypic.com/11i0g8n.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/11i0g8n.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p><a href="http://i48.tinypic.com/302mibl.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/302mibl.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>They look different. They sound the same. If you go one half step up from G, or one half step down from A, you arrive on the same key/fret. So are they different? Are they the same? Why do we have both?</p><p>Well here's an important concept in theory: Behavior, and context. You'll notice that I've been trying to separate the concepts of "Pitch class" and "note". G# and Ab are the same pitch class, but they are different notes. The difference between them are one of two things. One is purely notation, the other is function. </p><p> An Augmented fifth is probably going to be followed by the interval expanding, where a minor sixth is probably going to be followed by the interval collapsing. Even without the interval, a G# will probably be followed by ascension, where an Ab will probably be followed by descent, if they aren't simply functions of the key signature. They sound the same, but the specific note used is an indication of behavior.</p><p>Now, I mentioned key signature there... that's the other function of different notes for a specific pitch class. In keys with flats in the key signature, a flat or even a double-flat is simply easier to read than a sharp, because if a performers mind is thinking in flats, suddenly reversing that to add a sharp in can be very confusing. Sometimes a double-flat or double-sharp are even easier to read than Natural signs. Essentially, if certain notes are in a chord are modified in one way, modifying other notes in a similar way means that the thought process is only "Down by X or Y" instead of "X is down by Y but Z is up by A and B is up by C from being down by D". </p><p>Either reason can be why a certain pitch class is portrayed with a certain note, and like many things in theory, there isn't really a hard and fast rule to a lot of it. Note that, for instance, I mentioned that Augmented fifths <em>normally</em> expand. I'm sure with even cursory searching someone could find an Augmented fifth that collapsed, but the general use of an Augmented fifth is that it will expand.</p><p>And now that we know intervals, let's briefly return to key relations. Once again, the order of keys with sharps is: C G D A E B F# C# G# D# A# E#, and flats is C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb Fb. So what's the relation between them? Sharp keys are what are known as the "Circle of fifths", while Flat keys are the "Circle of fourths". That's because to get from one sharp key to the next, you ascend by a perfect fifth. To get from one flat key to the next, you ascend by a perfect fourth. <br /></p><p>So today we've covered Scales, Keys, and Intervals. Next update we'll cover chord construction, and then we pretty much will have covered the basics of construction of music, and can move on to what to do with all of it.</p><p>As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you.</p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-73898223012112542472009-12-01T20:34:00.000-05:002009-12-02T09:16:10.770-05:00Lesson 1: The most basic of basics<p> I'm going to start this off with a quick note(ba-dum tschhhh): I have not taught music at the absolute beginner level like this post is, and I cannot remember a time before I knew it. Therefore, I may miss mentioning some things that are now natural for me to do or think about, and this will probably be my weakest explanatory post. Hopefully I'll cover everything, however if you have any questions about anything I cover, please feel free to leave a comment with it and I'll do my best to answer any and all questions. For that matter, the question thing will go for all the blog. <br /></p> If I don't get this post out of the way now, I'm never going to remember to talk about a lot of these things, and there's a good chance there will be a lot of very confused people later on when I try to build on these concepts. Many of you will already know all of this, but it's probably a good idea to make sure everyone's on the same page.<p> So music. Chords and shit. And notes maybe. Awesome. What are those? Why is there a squiggly line at the beginning of the lines? And why are there fractions? No one said anything about math.</p><p><a href="http://i50.tinypic.com/2uj4fu9.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/2uj4fu9.gif" border="0" alt="Staff" /></a></p><p>This is a staff. 5 lines. 4 spaces.(I realize with this color it looks like only 3 lines... do a right click-> view image and you'll see it's 5) It's been that way for somewhere around the last half-century, and 90% of notation will be on a staff. But the staff is only the most base part. It's like a sheet of graph paper for graphs. Without any sort of axis it doesn't really mean anything, since while we'd know the relationship between notes on the staff, we wouldn't know any specifics. So we need clefs!</p><p><a href="http://i46.tinypic.com/2hq9zdf.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2hq9zdf.gif" border="0" alt="Treble" /></a></p><p><a href="http://i48.tinypic.com/9a6d7t.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/9a6d7t.gif" border="0" alt="Bass" /></a></p><p>Oh look, those images already have the notes for each staff written in. How convenient. So yeah, those little squiggles are the clefs. Basically, they give you the baseline for where at least one pitch is, and that allows us to figure out where every pitch is. The top one is called the "Treble" clef, and the bottom is the "Bass" clef. On the treble clef, that little circle around the diagonal line(The second line from the bottom) is a G. On the bass clef, the two dots to the right of the main clef part are on either side of F(The 4th line from the top). Each one of those notes written after the staff are in one-step increments. So the space above the G line in the treble clef is an A, the line above that is B, next space C.... you get the idea. Another way people think about it is this:</p><p><strong>Treble Clef</strong></p><p>Spaces: F A C E</p><p>Lines: E G B D F</p><p><strong>Bass Clef</strong></p><p>Spaces: A C E G</p><p>Lines: G B D F A</p><p>There are a lot of acronyms to learn these. Those are for pussies. LEARN IT, LOSER!</p><p>Ok, we've got to touch on one thing here too. I'll be using note names when talking about notes in absolute fashion, as opposed to solfege. I'll cover solfege to notes at the end, because if this is a complete beginning then it'll just be confusing. Also, if you're interested in solfege I'll cover a little of that in a later post. Some things solfege is really useful for. I'll cover it more during the ear training stuff, because that's where it's best for.</p><p>Anyways, that doesn't give us many notes does it? I mean, that's like 9 notes per staff, right? So, welp, guess we need to write all music in slightly over an octave(The fuck is an octave? We'll get to that). So we need a way to go beyond the staff</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/212sif4.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/212sif4.gif" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p> So these notes go outside of the staff. Once you are more than one step outside of the staff, you need to draw a smaller staff line(Or a few smaller staff lines) to give us some sort of reference points for just how far outside the staff we are. Having all of these all the time would be really confusing. The same basic rules apply for these, just pretend they're permanent lines. So the first space above the treble clef staff is G, the first line is A, the space above the temporary line is B, etc. These are called "Ledger lines". Now we can also give another reference point for staffs to tell us which octave we're in. Middle C, which on a piano is pretty much the C in the middle of the piano, is the first ledger line below the treble clef, and above the bass clef.</p><p> There are other clefs, specifically all forms of "Movable C" clefs(Alto, Tenor are the most common). We'll get to those a little later, but they're pretty rare unless you play Viola, Cello, or Bassoon.</p><p> Ok, so that gives us note relations in terms of where they are, how about how long they are?</p><p><a href="http://i49.tinypic.com/2lagabo.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/2lagabo.gif" border="0" alt="Note values" /></a></p><p>The wide open one without any sort of stick(referred to as "Stems") are Whole notes(Upper left). In 4/4 time(I'll get to that), they get 4 "beats", and take up a whole measure. The open circles with stems are Half notes(Lower left). They're half as long as whole notes. The closed ones are Quarter notes(Upper right). Who can tell me how long they are in relation to whole notes? The one with a little flag on its end is an eighth note(Lower right). The one with 2 flags is a sixteenth note(Middle far right). With any of these, if they have a dot after them, they add half their value to the end. So a dotted half note is 3 beats in 4/4. A dotted quarter is one and a half beats in 4/4.</p><p> Ok, we've covered what notes are what in the staff, and how long they are. I've been referring to "4/4" time, what the hell is that shit?</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/f1gs8y.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/f1gs8y.gif" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>4/4 Were you to speak it it would be "Four-four". But they look like fractions there kind of right? That's exactly what they are! So that means... "One", right? Well not really. The top number is the number of beats per measure, and the bottom note is what note gets the beat. So in 4/4 there are 4 beats per measure, and the 1/4 note gets the beat. So a whole note takes 4 beats and takes the full measure. A dotted half gets three and takes 3 quarters of the measure. A half note takes up half the measure and gets 2 beats. Etc, etc, etc. In 3/4, a whole note wouldn't fit in the measure. A dotted half takes up the whole measure, taking 3 beats. Which is how many are in the measure.</p><p>Now, if you're confused about what a "measure" is, a measure is an organizational tool. So in 4/4, every chunk of 4 beats is a "measure" On the staff, a vertical line is drawn between measures. Basically, they allow you to tell where you are in small chunks of time, and make music readable. Also, in a lot of tonal stuff, gives a strong beat, for instance, 1 and 3 in 4/4 are strong. 1 is strong in 3. Stuff like that.</p><p>For simple examples of this, a simple 4/4 piece would be something like, since I'm watching Scrubs while writing this, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTSBvXRwMI">Scrubs theme song</a>. You can count along with this "ONE two three four ONE two three four" pretty easily.</p><p>And a nice 3/4 piece would be, well, any Waltz. To use an example I'm sure many of us are familiar with, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDzHhu-iI10&feature=related">Waltz for the moon, from Final Fantasy VIII</a>. Here you can clearly hear the "ONE two three ONE two three" sound.</p><p>Some time signatures are a little different though. 6/8 is a common one, that has six beats per measure, but instead of the quarter note getting the beat, the eighth note does. So a dotted half note, which is 3 quarter notes, or 6 eighth notes still would take up the whole measure. 6/8 is also a fun time signature because it's a "Compound meter", as opposed to a "Simple meter" like 4/4. 6/8 is normally felt in 2 beats, each one three eighth notes. Technically, when 6/8 is thought of in 2, the "beats" are referred to as "Meta-beats". No one <em>ever says this</em> unless they need to be super incredibly clear.</p><p>The easiest way to understand this is listening to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G515foBXRoM&feature=related">"America"</a>, from West Side story. You can clearly hear how the strong beats shift from "ONE two three FOUR five six" to "ONE two THREE four FIVE six" So we would count the 6/8 part as "ONE two three FOUR five six" with the feeling in 2, and the 3/4 part as "ONE and TWO and THREE and". </p><p>Speaking of which, we should deal with how to count things, since I just talked about that like it was a given. Basically, you count the beats as numbers. So on beat one, you say "One". Beat two is two. Three is three, four is four. Awesome. Note the "and" for America up there though. When counting notes shorter than the beats, we need a way to keep the beats separate from the faster notes. So we tend to use "and" to do eighth notes, so "One and two and", as well as "y"(pronounced "eee") and "a"(pronounced "uh") for sixteenths/triple notes. So another way to count the 6/8, just keeping the meta beats in mind, would be "ONE and a TWO and a" And if we had sixteenths in 2/4(Two quarter notes per measure) we would count "One-y-and-a Two-y-and-a" Also, sometimes you'll hear someone say "The and of two" or something similar to talk about a notes rhythmic position. What that would mean is that the note happens when you would say "and" after "two" So it would be "one and two <strong>AND</strong>"</p><p>I know that's all a little confusing on paper 'till it clicks, but it does all make sense in the end. One good tool for playing around with this is something like http://advanced.bestmetronome.com/ where you can see it has preset for 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 with a different sound on beat one, so that you can hear the differences.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now one final subject for today is chromatic modifiers. What we've been looking at so far has been only the white notes on a piano, the notes that are in what is known as "Natural" position. We would also call this the "Diatonic" form, in C major. What that means is that the relations between the notes are unaltered by what are known as "Accidentals". What accidentals are is they are chromatic modifiers, or modifiers of only a half step(The same distance between E and F. Roughly a frequency ratio of 16:15. Also, a single fret on guitar), also known as a semitone.</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/2qthkyd.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/2qthkyd.gif" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>These are the three types of accidentals. The first is a "Sharp", which raises the pitch by one half step, the second a "Flat", which lowers the pitch by one half step, and the third a "Natural", which restores a pitch to its natural position(Some of you may note that there are also double sharps and double flats. We'll get into those... quite some time in the future). Essentially, if you see a C#(when written in notation, the accidental is written <em>before</em> the note, but when speaking or writing chord symbols, the accidental is <em>after</em> the note. So we would say "C Sharp" instead of "Sharp C"(There are times when "Sharp C" is appropriate, but that's a whole grammar thing we don't need to get into)), then you take what a C and make it one half step higher. On a piano, for instance, you would go to the black note right above the C. On a guitar, you would go one fret higher. Also, accidentals last to the end of the measure. Once you see a "Bar line"(The line denotating the end of the measure), the accidental no longer is in effect.</p><p>In different keys though, writing every modified note would be a giant pain. So we have what are known as "Key signatures", which we can put at the beginning of a piece or a section to basically say, for instance, in the key of G, that every F will be an F#</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/2n8bu9w.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/2n8bu9w.png" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic" /></a></p><p>Here's an example. This is A Major, and we can figure out what notes are sharp, because the accidentals are over where the note would be. So that first sharp sign is right on the top line of the treble clef staff, so it's an F. Then we also have a C and a G sharp. So until we see another key signature or the piece is over, every time we see a C, it's a C#.</p><p>Now there's a big chart I have here, that has every key signature and what key it is.</p><p><a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/210ioue.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/210ioue.png" border="0" alt="Circle of Fifths." /></a></p><p>holy crap. That's a lot of fucking stuff. Again, do a "view image" to see the whole thing. If you want to practice reading key signatures though, that's a good thing to look at. Try to figure out which notes in which key are changed.</p><p>Next lesson when dealing with pitch relations I'll talk more about exactly what makes a Key a key, and how to figure out what key you're in from the key signature. But for now, just know that if you see accidentals at the beginning of a piece right before the first measure, it's the key signature, and it means alllll the notes are changed in the way the signature says.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyways, that's the very bare bones of reading music. I'll be going pretty fast with this sort of stuff from now on, so if you were sketchy on any of this stuff, hopefully this helped clear it up. Next article I'll write will be on simple note relations.</p><p><br /></p><p>And as a P.S. I'll touch on solfege to notes. If you were using "Fixed do" solfege, that is to say, the first ledger line below the treble clef is Do regardless of what key you're in, then this is pretty easy, basically you're just learning new names. Do is C, Re is D, Mi is E, Fa is F, Sol is G, La is A, Si(or Ti) is B. If you've learned movable Do solfege, or solfege where whatever key you're in, the tonic note, or the first scale degree, is Do, then basically you can just follow along and keep solfege as a completely different thing, because solfege is then just a measure of relations, while this is a measure of absolutes.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>so again, any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to clear it up, and I'll see you all again next post.</p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713190335557517093.post-17870015969840941622009-12-01T20:02:00.001-05:002009-12-01T20:33:48.003-05:00Intro to Intro to Music Everything: What are you doing here?<p> This is a blog about music. Specifically, this is a blog about the History and building blocks of music. There are many textbooks around that explain history and theory and everything I'll be covering in much greater and more detailed fashion. Many subjects I'll write a single blog post, or maybe two, and one could easily spend an entire lifetime studying the same thing. So why start the blog? If there are so many resources out there, and there's so much to study, why a dinky little blog in the nowhere corner of the internet?</p><p> Put simply, this is meant to be an overview that hopefully is less painful to read than the Norton Anthology of Western Music, 7th edition. And less time consuming than spending a year at a music conservatory to learn why <em>exactly</em> an Aug6 chord functions as a Predominant and what forms of Aug6 chords there are and why and how they got their names and how were they used.</p><p> And that's why <em>I'm</em> here, but why are <em>you</em> here? Maybe you're asking yourself that now.</p><p> Knowledge of the building blocks and history of music is important to every musician, be you rock, classical, jazz, whatever. Because that knowledge gives you two things. It gives you a broad toolset, and it gives you context. Why does Wheezer's "Say it ain't so" go to a G# Major chord in c# minor? And why does it have the b natural thrown in there with the B#? And what the hell even <em>is</em> B#, and why didn't I just write C? Why does Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question" have two distinct groups playing completely different things? What the fuck <em>is</em> Dorian and why do I use it over m7 chords?</p><p> And the answer to each one of those questions is important to everyone, not just one person. Music is a set of signs. Some are idexes, ideas given meaning by past context, such as a perfect fourth played in a specific way evoking the idea of a wedding, because it's how "Here comes the bride" starts. Some are iconic, an attempt to model a thought exactly in sound, such as Messiaen's use of tritones to mimic bird sounds. Unlike language, which also contains Symbols, or signs arbitrarily agreed upon as standard, such as the word "Tree", which while it has nothing to do with a tree in form or function, and is not simply a personal association, is imbued meaning, music has very few if any symbolic signs. Learning all these signs, learning how they often are used, learning, how they interact with each other and why, it allows a composer and a performer to have far greater control over their medium.</p><p> This is not going to be a set of rules or laws to go by to create or perform music. This is not going to be an exhaustive list of things to learn to be able to do music. I'm not trying to stifle anyones creativity, or stop any one method. What this blog will do is provide an expanded toolset to performers, composers, singer-songwriters, whoever stumbles upon it.</p><p> Because knowing is half the battle.</p><p><br /></p><p> Go Joe.</p>Calehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614086842976620532noreply@blogger.com0