# Tag Info

-1

Maybe relevant after nine years :-) How to sort for pitch similarity? The method described above rests on the assumption that two pitches with ratio $a/b$ sound consonant, if $a,b$ are small numbers. I used the function $k(a,b) = \frac{\gcd(a,b)^2}{ab}$ to measure the simplicity of the ratio, and hence the assumed consonance. If the function takes a value ...

1

To answer your main question first: no, to my knowledge there isn't a unique curriculum or approach with learning disabilities in mind. There is a vast spectrum of learning disabilities, and you probably know best what techniques and approaches work best for you. There's one piece of advice, though, that helps everyone when learning theory, and all the more ...

6

First arrow indicates a repeated B, second arrow indicates an interesting (and quite 'outside') interval of a diminished FIFTH (not fourth) between F♯ and C♮. I can't see what else the book might have been referring to. Is there any possibility of a misprint or error in translation? A diminished 5th is common. A diminished 4th is rarely encountered ...

2

There are 7 different notes in (most) scales. (The 8th is a repeat of the first.) C, D, E, F, G, A, B. The seven notes of C major scale. Or the 1st, 2nd etc. degrees of the scale. That is what 'degree' means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(music)

1

Supposing you know that music notes named cdefg or doremifasol are ascending like a scale (meaning a ladder or a stair) so a degrees is a single step of this scale. But the band leader might also have meant the triads of thirds that are built on each degree: e.g. domiso or ceg. (If you skip always one note you get thirds and fifths like 135. You can play the ...

-1

Learn as many songs as possible. It will develop your playing, you will learn technique by playing and you will begin to see how common musical ideas fit together. People will want to know that you can play Gemme three steps No one has ever asked me to play harmonic minor scale to get a gig. After learning how a song is built and the process ,you will begin ...

0

I think you're pretty much stuck with a unison G in the top two parts here. The leading note F♯ badly wants to rise. In a perfect cadence there's the 'fall to the 5th' exemption, in favour of a full final chord, but that's not an option in a V - VI progression. And while I LOVE the astringent quality of an E♭ - F♯ augmented 2nd in a melodic line (and ...

3

You have an augmented second between F♯ and E♭, and so that's the part-writing error that you have present. Moving this F♯ up to G will double the third of that VI chord, as you mentioned. I always teach my students the following in a deceptive/interrupted resolution: the bass and leading tone go up, but everything else goes down. This is the only way to ...

0

I think the idea is that it's not just moving among chords, but it's a fake-out on the V-I resolution, with all that implies. The leading tone-tonic resolution reinforces that. Don't deny the leading-tone it's destiny! :D

11

You are correct in your assumptions but here is a slight adjustment in your terminology: Eb minor (natural minor) is the relative minor of Gb major. They share the same exact notes. However they do not share the same tonal center so it is better to conceive of the song as being in Eb minor and use Eb as your tonal center. The melody to the A section of Take ...

4

This gets at the difference between a scale and a key. I feel like sometimes people focus on which "scale" a song is "in," meaning a collection of notes to draw from. In this sense, yes, a natural minor scale and its relative major scale share the same collection of notes. So what's the difference? Why not just say that "Take Five&...

6

Diminished scales A diminished scale is a pattern of alternating whole steps and half steps. For example, there are two diminished scales beginning on C: C D Eb F Gb Ab A B C and C C# Eb E Gb G A Bb C. The first of those is called a "whole-half" diminished scale, and the other is a "half-whole" diminished scale. The names comes from the ...

4

The so-called augmented scale uses intervals of m3 and semitone. So, for example, C aug. scale has C E♭ E♮ G, G♯ B, back to C. That means there are 4 different augmented scales, as using root notes rising a semitone each time, wheen you get to E♭, the notes involved are the same as those in the original C. Diminished scales are twofold. half-whole, and whole-...

3

Yes, ii can absolutely go to V43! The main trick will not be moving between those two chords, but rather moving from I to ii (both in root position) without any parallels. Similarly, I agree with Albrecht: I think IV–V42 is a bit more common. Note, however, that you can replace that IV with ii6 and move just as smoothly to V42. Quite frankly, any use of ...

1

This will be surely possible. Buit if a think just of 2 famous pieces where this could be tried out a) Largo (Handel): I'd prefer II vii6 or b) Bist du bei mir (Bach): ii-ii2-V56 is better. So I think ii-V34 is less common than IV-V2.

-7

a chord is kind of a logic, or a universal; it's an endless series because the chromatic nature of notes is 'regular' it will repeat ad infinum by doubling the frequencies of its parts whatever they are. i found CmM11b5b9 !! any unique chord combines only enough intervals from only 1 chromatic bass note & the notation used for a chord contains the bass ...

7

Chord is the broad category and triad is a specific kind of chord. The simultaneous sounding of multiple tones makes chords. Here is a quote from Elie Siegmeister's Harmony and Melody... Harmony had its roots in the chord - a group of tones sounded simultaneously. Even more importantly chords are conceptual, you need to analyze music to determine which ...

7

All triads are chords. Not all chords are triads. Triads are 3 note chords generally constructed by taking every other note of a scale, such as C,E,G or D,F,A. The notes in a triad do not have to be played in any particular order. For example from low to high it can be C,G,E. A chord can have as few as 2 or many more than 3 notes in it. There are many ...

6

The basic accepted definition of a chord is minimum three separate notes.Some would be happy saying two. Thus a triad is a chord. However, chords can have more than three separate (named) notes. So, triads are chords, but chords may not be triads. The most used triads are 1,3 and 5. Translating in key C to C, E, and G. There are four different types of ...

4

Your friend seems to be confusing 'suspend' and 'sustain'. Here's more than you probably want to know about suspensions. Consider an F major chord followed by a C major chord. Let's root them both on C. So we've got C, F, A followed by C, E, G. The F falls to E, the A falls to G. Now, suppose we hang on to the F a bit longer, delaying its move to E. ...

2

A suspended chord is one which loses its 3rd, and has a P4 played instead.(Sus 4). Often, that 3rd is lost in favour of a 2nd, which then re-names the chord 'suspended' (sus2). In reality, though, that chord should be named a retardation -(ret 2). The suspended note sometimes is what's left of the previous harmony, but doesn't necessarily have to be. There ...

3

"Suspended chord" means the same thing on piano that it means elsewhere: it is a chord whose components are derived from the common-practice harmony technique of suspension, in which a chord tone from the previous chord is held over for a while. For example, there might be three chords, F major, G major, C major. When the chord changes to G major,...

2

There are several books (I don't remember which, as many older books have different explanations) that do explain these as derived on the sharp fourth step. These explanations do emphasize the subdominant of the chords. The important that distinguishes Augmented Sixths from other chromatic chords is the outward resolution of the augmented sixth to an octave. ...

4

I wish I could say I learned about the augmented sixth chords originally from Piston, but I didn't. I learned the French/German/Italian names... probably from Kostka. So, what follows is from a double check of Piston's first edition harmony... And then the chart... Then he actually gives analysis examples using the IV and II roots... It's interesting that ...

3

Quick, general answer: Because chromatic notes and chords are a thing. A very commonly-used thing. You don't have to stay in the scale. Longer answer, more specific to this instance: You have fallen into the trap of assuming that the 'Natural minor' scale is the ONLY form of minor scale. Until quite recently, standard teaching was that the Harmonic minor ...

2

Your melody's inherrent harmony (the one you imagine when you hear it) is C F | G C | a d | E a (lowercase indicates minor chord) This is more natural than having e a in the end, which would not have nearly as strong of a gravity towards the final note. You can also try A d | E a (i.e. using c# in bar 3), it will get yet a different feel, and whoa, you'll ...

1

Leaving aside the specific piece that prompted the question, the core of what's being asked is: How does RNA label out-of-key chords? There are three primary ways 1. Just add a sharp or flat before the Roman numeral Suppose we're in A minor and encounter a Bb major chord. This can be labeled bII ("flat two"). Similarly, in A major, and F major ...

4

These names come from an author named William Zeitler, whose website, AllTheScales, is available here. In his introduction page, in a section titled "The Names of the Modes," he says: A curious feature of humans is that a thing seems to be less "real" until it has a name. One of the first things done in concentration camps to de-humanize ...

3

I'm a newbie at this stuff but I'll take a crack at explaining why it sounds good to me. I think we can simplify the melody by reducing the n,n+1,n+2,n eighth notes (like C D E C) patterns to the first note n and removing the trailing eighth notes; brief or unrepeated notes make less of an impression. So then we're left with C F|B E|A D|G# A. We can break ...

26

There's an article, "Pitch-Class Distribution and the Identification of Key", David Temperley and Elizabeth West Marvin, that give some information along this line. I got it on JSTOR but it was published in "Music Perception" which journal you might have access to. The distribution varies depending on the overall style (Baroque, ...

23

You started in key C major, and you've modulated into key Am, its relative minor. True, there's no G♯ note in key C major, but key A minor has three slightly different incarnations, when written in scalar form, two of which actually do have that G♯. Those notes just before the last note, A, all work with the chord E, which most times in music will lead to A. ...

39

I would argue that your melody may not be in C major at all. C major and A natural minor share the same pitches, and your melody is constructed precisely in such a way that it can exist both in C major and in A minor! You might think, "Well, the first measure emphasizes C and E, which are both members of the C-major tonic triad." But they're also ...

11

Although A minor does not natively include G#, it is common practice to use G#, because it is the leading tone in A minor (and major). That is, it "leads" the ear to A, just as you've described. This idea is also discussed in When to deviate from scale? Technically, what you've composed is called a sequence, a pattern of sounds that is repeated on ...

0

Now that we have the full sheet music, the 8th rest-quarter rest in the lower staff of that pickup measure tells you all you need to know - that's not a triplet, it's three 8th notes. You therefore swing that as short-long-short (how the rests are spelled out in that measure is an enormous cue). The triplet in Bar 10 is legitimately played as an 8th-note ...

0

Em7♭5 keeps us in the tonality of F major/D minor. A B♮ would take the music somewhere it doesn't want to go at that point. The add2 chords are just an artistic decision. You might consider them cheesy, Newman thinks the add to the emotion. Fine, you write your music, he writes his. And the printed chord names are fine. In Fadd2/C the A is as structural ...

2

Em7b5 vs. Em7 The song is temporarily in D minor here. Em7b5 is the ii7 chord in D minor; whereas Em7 is the ii7 chord in D major. D minor is the relative minor of F major, so the Bb has already been prominent in our ear throughout the piece. Fadd2/C vs. F/C The G in this chord is a carryover from the melody G that comes with "hap-py". I interpret ...

2

Why not Bb Major? This is the easier one to explain. The bass line with the given chords comprises a four-note descent: D-C-B-Bb. Using a Bb Major chord, would have two effects. First, the bass line would arrive at Bb "too early", making the overall line less effective. Second, all of the other chords are minor. Having such a starkly "bright&...

2

3.5 years later, I'm going to attempt to answer my own question and order dominant seventh chord extensions by dissonance using the results of some Python code I have written. I believe the following analysis is comprehensive given the assumptions I state upfront. Disclaimer: I'm not coming from an academic music theory background so I expect at least some ...

1

It's a darker, sadder variant of the same, basically F major harmony. The bass note is still a long F. The falling internal melody is given some chromatic decoration in the second version. It's an interesting song - I could probably get an entire theory class out of it! The variant harmony, with its potential to be construed as an F7 chord, could have been ...

2

The technique being used is called "modal mixture". The first two times through this part of the song, the notes stay strictly in major. The third time, the Eb and Db are "borrowed" from F minor. This borrowing momentarily changes the feel of the music, but the piece as a whole is still considered to be in F major. The basic idea ...

7

Both of the odd aspects of the tuning you've noted are caused by the same thing: Harmonicas are originally designed to play chords! It was basically built by 19'th century Germans to play polkas. And not necessarily just two or three notes at the time as you guessed, but possibly more! A harmonica in the key of C, as the one in your chart, was designed so ...

8

The figures show intervals relative to the given bass note. Unaltered figures generally mean the diatonic pitch at that interval. Therefore, for example, in a piece in A minor, whether the bass is G or G♯, the E is indicated with a 6. It is not particularly fruitful to try to understand figured bass in the context of inversions. Figured bass was developed ...

7

Since figured bass shows the intervals above the bass, it only shows chromatic alterations for intervals above the bass. As such, if the only chromatic pitch is itself the note in the bass, there's no need for any chromatic alterations in the figures, since the figures apply to notes above the bass, not the bass itself. The accidental in front of that bass ...

2

For the sake of simplicity, swing is based on a triplet feel - as written in the legend at the top of a lot of music, as you did. So in its basic form, two quavers would be long - short, and a written triplet would have three equally spaced notes. Swing is basically that, but often gets morphed into hard or soft swing, meaning the two notes aren't exactly 66/...

3

Triplets are just triplets. The confusion stems from thinking of triplets as being made up of "eighth notes". We speak of triplets that way, and use the eighth-note symbols, but triplets are their own entity with their own rhythm.

4

An 8th triplet among swung 8ths is played as a normal triplet. But now you've shown us the piece: The pick-up bar (and bars 6 & 8) are NOT triplets. The beaming in your example is very confusing. The 3-groups that are NOT triplets (i.e. most of them) should be beamed as a single note then a beamed pair. Otherwise they're far too easy to confuse with ...

1

In standard eighteenth-century voice-leading practice, inverted seventh chords must be complete. This changes in more modern practice, but when you're practicing voice leading in this specific style, keep those inverted seventh chords complete. As such, you're 100% correct. Since the inversion determines the bass note, that determines what three pitches need ...

0

Why must V7 (inverted or not) be complete? As with all major and minor triads, the 5th is dispensable. 4-part doesn't have to mean 4 voices ALL the time. In real music we often drop into 3, 2 or even just 1 voice. The 3rd and 7th are quite sufficient to imply a dom7 harmony.

1

Mozart often wrote sections that went through the entire (diatonic, 7 note) cycle of fifths. See Rudolph Rasch, "Circular Sequences in Mozart’s Piano Sonatas" in Dutch Journal of Music Theory, XI (2006), pp. 178-202.

4

You can create a circle of any number of steps mutually prime to the total number of pitches in the octave.

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