New answers tagged composition
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How to argue that it might be a good idea for a composition to follow music theory more closely?
IMO you don't. If you think that is what music theory is about, the burden is on you to make that case.
lacked any key...without any sense of direction...The melodies were slightly ambiguous...chord that didn't even contain a third or fifth of the "chord&...
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You'll notice many people here have a kneejerk reaction: "there are no rules in music!"
Which is true of course.
"If it sounds good it's allowed!"
That's true too of course.
Oddly, with literature very few people question the use or necessity of grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. Sure, you're allowed to break those rules in literature ...
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Looked at from the widest possible perspective, as mentioned in the many comments, music theory doesn't give you any rules on what you should or shouldn't do, nor can it tell you if a certain musical idea is good or bad. What it can do is give you a framework to describe patterns and structures in music.
Enjoyment of music is subjective, which means that ...
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You need to be more clear about what you mean by "follow music theory". Some of your statements are materially false, like;
"Music theory has been in place for the course of human history..."
Human history is millions or years old (if you include our primitive ancestors), and the oldest known instruments found by archeologists are 10's ...
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Music and its reception is always opinion based. Music styles and music theories are and have always time-bound and temporary 1*).
But there are some acoustic phenomenons that are objective and seem to be accepted in western music theory as implicit logical: the ratios and frequencies of overtones.
Maybe this natural appearances and and physical laws have ...
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I'd use Flex Pitch, if you are determined to transpose regions then I'd make sure you turn on flex and follow, it will keep everything the same except for pitch.
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Again, it needs consonance and in order to create a fugue, you have to make the different voicings interlace with each other so that they can all state the subject without clashing.
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Having good piano skills is probably going to be the most important to you as a composer. The piano - whilst not a full orchestra - is the next best thing. Melody and harmony are both possible, not so on many other instruments.
So, while it's impossible for any of us to say this is the proportion to use on x, your expertise on piano will greatly enhance yur ...
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First it is admirable that you are dedicated to improving both your composing and musicianship skills, especially while working a full time job. There is no formula to how to divide up your practice. This question is fairly subjective and you will probably get different opinions on it BUT there is no doubt that it is beneficial to be somewhat proficient on ...
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Samuel Barber's "Nocturne" (op. 33) has a strictly 12-tone melodic construction but with "tonal" accompaniment. It's the only "serial" piece he wrote.
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The bass has the following rhythmic elements
the START of a note
the END of a note
CHANGE of pitch
Whenever a bass note starts, end, or changes pitch, it is an important rhythmic transient, like a drum hit. So pay attention to those. If the bass sound has a fast release envelope, such as when playing muted notes, you can do bass notes that don't have a ...
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In addition to the answers so far, which seem to focus on melodies, don't forget the rhythmic aspect of the instrument. Sometimes you get more out of playing a groovy rhythm on just one of two notes than trying to sew together an intricate counterpoint melody. The bass can be percussive, slapped, tapped, hammered. Not only in the Pfunk sense but think of ...
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The important thing about the bass is that it's the bridge between the drums and the other instruments. How it fills that role is massively dependent on the musical style, the conventions of that style, and the song itself.
The most basic bassline of course is playing a low root note of the current chord on the "one". And honestly, sometimes that's ...
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The main idea should be to make the bass an independent melody but still support both the harmony and the melody. The (at least I think so) easiest bass line is the "oom-pah-pah" or "boom-chick" bass. The simplest indication is (in 4/4) to play the root of the underlying harmony on 1 and the fifth on 3. (Similarly for 3/4 but often the ...
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Do note that your question is really vague (and too close to the "opinion based" flag).
As many rules, the first rule is that there is no absolute rule.
Bass lines are fundamental (yes, implied joke): they give a reference to the listener, and that reference is usually a foundation to what the listener perceives. There's a reason for which they ...
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Below are a couple of live performances from YouTube. In the first, the performer remains silent, but occasionally shifts his hand positions and mimics intense concentration. In the second, the performer taps out a rhythm and gives clear "reactions" according to the notations in the score. Were I to perform this, I would clown it up, using the ...
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One (tortured) way to do it:
X: 1
T: Happy New Year
C: Aaron
K: none
L: 1/4
M: 3/4
B !pp!A x/8 e | ^d3 | =d e "RH"a ||
s: H A(PP) "E"=ipa:i | "NU" | Y E A(RH)
H = B (from German, as in B-A-C-H)
APP = A played pp
Y = E (pronounced "EE")
Nu = D#/Eb (in the Sottorio solfege system)
Y = D "French" encipherment
E
...
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I think you are hearing the sequence musical device where a short segment of music is repeated but transposed up or down usually by step. Sometimes the transposition is diatonic other times it is chromatic.
You can refer to either harmonic sequence or melodic sequence. Often a sequence is both harmonic and melodic which is what these Bach examples sound like....
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Even though Logic has flex pitch and flex time which can both be very useful I prefer actually transposing entire sections of audio files rather than use the transients that the program analyzes for something like what you want to do.
First make a duplicate of the audio file for safety because whatever you do can usually be undone but it is destructive. ...
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Some methods that might help:
Pick a melody and try to write accompaniment part using different patterns/styles, e.g. Alberti Bass, wide arpeggios, repeated chords, leaps, gallops, walking bass, ... When you hear a piece/song, try to imitate what the pianist is playing for the accompaniment (you don't need to know the exact chords, just the pattern). If it'...
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Caveat: I have not used TuxGuitar, I use Guitar Pro and think it's well worth the money. That said:
The TuxGuitar Documentation page on sound has a couple points that may or may not help with your issue:
First, and more likely to be the issue:
Sequencer:
Beside MIDI Port sound options in the Tools→Settings→Sound tab is also MIDI Sequencer options. In ...
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it's called transpose, of course it have a difference in detail.
let say your first note in C4 then goes to D4 (Frequency Difference from C4 to D4 is 32 Hz),
then you want to transpose it into D4 then goes to E4 (Frequency Difference from D4 to E4 is 36 Hz)
although both of note interval difference is same (2 Semitones)
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I'm currently playing bass in a band that is doing 60-70s covers. Key changes have become an issue. The most popular shift seems to be to the 5th below, depending on who is doing the lead singing. For even just my bass, it spoils the lines that I have heard and have possibly worked out.
For me, dropping a cover by 5 semitones makes it too different a song.
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These musical jokes are sometimes called "musical puns" - inserting fragments of other works whose spirit or title relates to the action on screen. This Animaniacs clip in particular reminds me of the music Carl Stalling wrote for the old Looney Tunes cartoons. These quotations are actually rather simple to include - you just put it in. The ...
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Different (but connected) meanings of the word 'arrangement'.
The original way a song is put together - the instrumentation, the verse/chorus structure can be called 'the arrangement'. Maybe a songwriter came up with just a melody and lyrics then handed it over to an 'arranger' to flesh it out. Maybe the performers worked out this aspect of 'the ...
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Short answer - you just do it! You write some notes that are recognisable as one tune, then you write some that are recognisable as another. If you're feeling clever you can sometimes even intertwine them!
The whole song's a parody of Rossini's 'William Tell' overture. The last two notes of of 'William Tell' are the same as the first two notes of '...
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Applied chord = secondary dominant. I had to look that up!
Secondary dominants do not have to lead to the chord they're dominant to. The D7 seems like it's heading towards G - after all, we have the classic 2-5-1-prior, so when the G doesn't figure, but D♯o comes instead, it's working as an interruped - or deceptive - cadence.
The diminished chord, ...
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You state that the piece is in E minor. Well, OK. But this feels very like a deceptive cadence in G major. Further complicated by the addition of the dim7 acting as the dominant of E minor.
And that's all fine. Ambiguity rules! Is that D chord the â™VII7 of E minor or V7 of its relative major? A (barely) chromatic chord or a brief modulation? We don't ...
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Other answers call this a deceptive cadence and I agree. I’d like to add one thing. D7 has a very similar type of resolution of the 3rd and 7th to Em as it does to G, the F# goes up to G and the C goes down to B. It only lacks the 5th movement of the chord roots which in turn makes it sound like a resolution but... deceptive. The D#o7 has a very similar ...
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Is it a V7/III that simply doesn't resolve to it's secondary tonic of G major?
Yes.
Imagine you're listening to this tune for the first time ever on your computer, and right at the end of the D7 chord, the computer crashes and you don't get to hear what would have come after it. But you did not know the playback was going to end. Does this change what ...
answered Dec 18 '20 at 19:42
piiperi Reinstate Monica
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If you analyze this passage in G major, this is known a deceptive cadence, which is a dominant chord resolving to the vi. In this case, the D7 is resolving to Em, which is the relative minor of G.
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I think it is still an applied dominant to G, but instead of resolving to that temporary tonic of G, it just resolves deceptively to vi of G, which is your original tonic of E minor!
This is relatively common, and something I label with some bracket notation:
Em: i iv V viio7/vi vi
\_________________/
III
...
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...what chords I should choose beneath it...
...What principles are there for harmonizing a chromatic melody...
Certainly you can start with a melodic idea and then harmonize it, and that is a common exercise in harmony/counterpoint studies. But, at a certain point a more integrated approach what you learn, where you work with the whole tonality and ...
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This answer requires a brief premise:
I have been developing training software for musicians for many years, and one project I worked on for some time (years ago, never released) included a function that generated random melodies (both diatonic and randomly chromatic) and then selected some chords to go with them.
When it came to writing the algorithm for ...
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My interpretation of your question leads me to think that you are attempting to extend homophonic harmony principles to more "textured" melodic themes. This may not be the way to go. The basic rules of classical homophonic harmony, as you have correctly stated, are choose from the set (I, IV, V, or V7) based on the melody note.
When you have ...
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I would say, to best understand harmonization of all music, it would help you to move beyond this concept:
When choosing chords in a tonal, diatonic concept, the formula is somewhat clear to me. If it's a note in the scale, choose I, IV or V if in doubt.
I suspect that most songwriters and composers are not at all thinking like that. It's not like they ...
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You really have two questions in one: how to learn chromatic harmony, how to revise this example.
Obviously, explaining chromatic harmony can't fit into a Q&A answer, but perhaps at least a topic list would be helpful:
chromatic embellishment of diatonic melody, not really harmony, but it could help with blending in chromaticism
secondary dominants, ...
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There are (at least) two methods of using chromatic harmony in a piece. The two do blend into each other and can be used in varying ways themselves. First: essential chromaticism uses chromatic notes in a functional way. Second: nonessential chromaticism inserts chromatic tones in a mainly diatonic context. More at my answer here: What are the uses of ...
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Try out playing around with a motive
in the mediant key: C->Ab or Eb,
transpose a motive a minor third up, going through all 4 keys of a dim 7 chord (Bruckner)
write counterpoints in intervals of minor 3rds and dim. 5ths
transpose a semi tone up or down, you can harmonize with triads of the root or a tritone,
look up and study the augmented 6th chords (...
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It sounds like you're off to a good start, but I agree that it sounds a bit random. This exercise you have written falls clearly in the Western tonal system, and in that system each pitch has a function - what I mean is that certain pitches have pull toward other pitches.
But in your piece, you just go to the new chord, then right back to where you were. ...
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I am not sure about being "quirky". At the end of the day you have to like what you've done and since music is an art form no one can say it's "wrong".
However, there are some classic patterns in western music that serve a purpose or function and this determines how chords follow each other in succession. I am not sure where you learned ...
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