New answers tagged composition
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It is very difficult to generalize, and you surely can find many counter examples. Advanced musicians often go beyond the basics of their primary style. I will try to answer anyway, based on my experience in classical guitar education and performing classical repertoire.
Training in classical music puts large emphasis on continuity of the melody, or even ...
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Lots of Latin music uses the parallel mode change here. It's fairly striking (at least in a short dance tune.) The point is that D major and D minor share the same dominant. You might vary the approach to the change, perhaps something like ii06-i64-V7-I going one way and ii-bII6(N6)-i going back (or any other variation on a cadence). I'd suggest abrupt as ...
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Of course you could jump from any chord to any other chord - the piece would still be classical or (neo-classical) because of the motifs and their treatment.
But I would prefer among your propositions the circle of fifths. It sounds quite funny and would make it scherzo-like (not referring to the classical scherzo term ... but somehow witty!)
another idea ...
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It was very much the thinking in your last paragraph, @fioritura, which led me in 1993 to use non-standard key signatures in a book of Swedish fiddle tunes I was putting together. I also had a bit of an ideological point, I think — conventional notation evolved in response to the needs of certain musicians and musics, and doesn't necessarily meet the needs ...
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Use whatever technique produces the sound you want. Regularity is good. Irregularity is also good.
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You can obviously do exactly as you wish. However, when trying to put it all together, it won't just be a matter of going from, maybe, 4/4 to 3/4 or whatever. You'll have fractions of bars to join, which will make the whole sound pretty amateur. Imagine a track where you start tapping a foot, and suddenly it's out of time. That will be going on all through.
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As the question has been fully answered I’d like to add a picture of a table resuming all:
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It's certainly simpler to "conform to whole measures," but this can also result in songs that sound repetitive, predictable, or "blocky." I'd also point out that the concept of a "measure" can vary dramatically in orchestral scores. A lot of classical music switches time signatures frequently. A song might start in 5/4 and switch to 3/2 or 2/2 or 4/4.
I ...
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I agree with @Legorhin a hymnal is a good source for study.
I recently learned that the John Calvin wanted the Geneva Psalter tunes to be written primarily in half notes. Some other hymnals - like the Havergal's Psalmody - seem to follow that rhythmic style. I think that style of harmonization is particularly useful for studying relative motion which is a ...
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There are similarities but they are clearly different. Aside from the general Tool-ish vibe, I think the strongest similarity is rhythmic. They both use groups of 3 interspersed with the occasional group(s) of 2. Furthermore, in both cases the groups of 3 are further divided as 2+1. But how these groupings are organized differs. Schism is 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+...
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You can speed this up to prestissimo - ma non troppo (joke) but it won't be faster.
The answer is "harmonic rhythm" is only half the truth.
The point is, you are driving on the highway with pulled hand brake and on the wrong side:
The harmonization is unjust and not according to a classical piece like this one will be. Probably even 1625 D-Bm-Em-A7 ...
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In addition to @guest's excellent suggestion of having a faster harmonic rhythm, I want to touch on a second suggestion which may seem counter-intuitive.
Paradoxically, increasing the number of 16th notes doesn't necessarily make music feel faster, and sometimes it can have the opposite effect of slowing the music down. For the music to feel fast, the ...
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The answer is "harmonic rhythm".
Your piece has one chord change per bar throughout (except for bar 16).
That makes it sound like it's really an adagio at 48 BPM, except there are a lot of fast notes not going anywhere in particular.
In the Mozart, the longest chord changes are every half note, and in many places the harmony is changing every quarter or ...
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It's not "classical", but it illustrates the concept. Below is Reflections of Earth, by Gavin Greenaway, which was used as the fireworks music for Epcot between 2000 and 2019.
The piece takes you through a wide range of styles over its 9-ish minute duration. The first and last thirds are highly rhythmic, and you'll notice ...
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So the bass instruments (double bass, cello, etc) provide the rhythmic component to the song?
In most classical music with a tune and a harmonic accompaniment the bass instruments play the root notes and change of 4th on-beat, while the the middle voices are playing the off-beat rhythm to the melody played by the smaller instruments.
So it is correct to ...
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Every instrument provides rhythm. Every sound you make has a rhythm, unless it has an extremely slow attack. Even chord changes have a rhythmic impact, and the timing of harmonic changes is felt in relation to everything else that's happening in the music. It seems to be a common misconception that a drummer makes the groove and all other players are free to ...
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Tango music typically does not use drums. (Older Argentine orchestras for example.) Lots of European and American orchestras do use lots of percussion with a tango. Here's a typical Argentine dance orchestra.
And here's a German (I think) dance orchestra playing the same piece.
Note that ...
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In general "classical" music usually has less of a "strict time" feeling than music that typically uses percussion heavily. That's one reason that a conductor is there - to define the time feel, cue sections and so on.
But when a composer wants to make the listener aware of strict time, they can and do use percussion - something like Ravel's Bolero being an ...
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The relative dearth of percussion in classical music versus rock is part of what makes those genres sound different. Nothing takes on the role of a drum kit in the classical orchestra. That role remains empty and that’s part of the sound.
When a more percussive sound is desired in the classical orchestra, then percussion instruments are used. These include ...
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As JimM said in a comment, this piece is not in F♯ but in G♭. The A is thus the scale degree A♭, chromatically raised. It wants to resolve upwards to B♭.
If you want more motivation: the last harmony under the A is a chord with pitches (from lowest to highest) C♭E♭F A. Rearranging these to make a stack of thirds: F A C♭E♭. The A is, as I said, just A♭, ...
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Another example is Tchaikovsky - one of the greatest composers for sure, but apparently not much of a musician or singer.
By and large though it is just more likely that a talent for playing an instrument and improvisation will be a part of a talent for composing, and performing. It all goes together, though of course not universally.
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Some composers were also great conductors though not, AFAIK, famous as performers. Berlioz (as Killian Foth mentioned); Mahler; Boulez.
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This is likely to be true in general because of the way people learn music. Composition is rarely taught at a young age, but it's quite common for children to be taught to play. Many of the great classical composers come from musical families (and you have dynasties like the Bachs), and the children are introduced to playing at a young age.
Once they've ...
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Ok lets see if we can find a counter example - a great composer who is not a great performer.
I would like to nominate William Walton, the British composer who wrote many great pieces of music, among them Façade, a viola concerto, Belshazzar's Feast and a violin concerto commissioned by Jascha Heifetz.
As a child he was quite a good singer and he had ...
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How many composition types are there?
855, by counting the entries in a contemporary list.
Less jokingly, a list of composition types will teach someone no more about western music than a list of, say, the names of Chinese herbs would teach me about Chinese cuisine.
More useful is to read an introductory textbook about Western classical music, or study a "...
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Instead of "composition types" I would call these forms, or styles or even (in more modern terminology) genres. Since these are really just classifications or categories, there are literally infinite possibilities, so it's impossible to put an exact number on it.
Here are the most common ones that I can think of:
Auria
Ballade
Canon
Caprice
Concerto
Etude
...
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The point is well made: percussion instruments are either “definite” pitch (tympani, marimba, glockenspiel, etc), or “indefinite” pitch (bass drum, cymbals, concert toms). The indefinite pitch instruments, of course, have a pitch, but not a true defined pitch as related to the ensemble tuning. This is reflected in the notation for indefinite pitch percussion ...
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