Had a piece of mine played at a new music concert yesterday, funnily enough featuring a Feldman piece. He was the only dead composer on the programme which was cool. My piece was a viola partita that I think I had posted a recording of here a while ago.
So in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word-long novel over the course of November.
I'm thinking the musical equivalent of this would be something as long as a classical symphony, ~27 minutes or so. (I know measuring it by minutes is a lot more fuzzy than by measures, but since you can virtually double the length of your piece in measures by writing 2/4 instead of 4/4, minutes seems slightly more accurate.) So if that's 27 minutes in a month, that would be 54 seconds of music per day.
It's a bit different with music, though, isn't it? There's no harmonies or contrapuntal motion between two simultaneous lines of text, after all. So I dunno how you'd work out the difference between a piano sonata that long and a piano concerto that long, but then it's probably not really in the spirit of the thing to do so. I mean writers don't think "Yes, I've written my daily 1,667 words, time to stop mid-sentence and resume tomorrow". The point is the increase in productivity, not the specifics of it.
Anyways, I wonder if anyone's ever tried something like this.
Aiden Kelly
Seems cool, have a more recent recording? This is the one I found: clyp.it/lukrbezx
I hope he cut down on the vibrato somewhat, too much/too wide vibrato can get kind of obnoxious-sounding.
Chase Jackson
we're going to re record it next week. The recording of the concert failed, but he didn't nail it, so its alright
discuss music we're working on. share scores. critique scores. talk music theory.
Samuel Reed
So, I've recently learned all five species of counterpoint through Fux's Counterpoint, but I already had some knowledge on chord inversions, progressions and a lot of basic stuff.
Since I finished the species of counterpoint, I've been analyzing some Bach chorales, but I want to learn more.
Where should I go next?
Tyler Walker
Since I know very little about theory, you guys seem to be the best place to ask. What's the most dissonant, eerie, melancholic scale you can think of?
Here's a jazz piano improvisation on Polka Dots and Moonbeams, and I Remember Clifford..
Don't be mean pls ;_;
Aaron Gutierrez
Lovely, but that doesn't really answer my question. Something in minor is preferable.
Oliver Roberts
Alright, so Phrygian #7
Zachary Nelson
Yeah it's pretty jolly, well done
Joshua Morales
thank you, this is perfect
Jacob Watson
Where can i get sheets of Sup Forumscore bands? I know it sounds pleb as fuck, but it may be easier to learn if i read music from more conventional ((artists))
In 12TET, well, the chromatic scale I guess. Really I just leave the question of scale to "what notes do I care to use right now?" But there's some really eerie shit you can do with only the white keys.
Charles Reed
>those score notes >that gay kagel-ish le performer is part of the music shit How does one become as gay as you poly?
Also, I hope you get cancer and die.
Chase Lee
if the best criticism of the score is the performance notes, I'm doing pretty well.
Noah Carter
imagine being the guy who gets this upset over music
Justin Sanders
That's because it's pretty much the most bland and uninteresting post-minimalist crap I've ever seen, there is nothing to say about it.
Mason Stewart
No just poly, who happens to be one of the worst posters of all time.
Caleb Jackson
Oh, so that's Poly. I was wondering why his soundcloud was covered in fugues.
>>that gay kagel-ish le performer is part of the music shit I don't really see what you mean. What are you taking offense from, "with emotion"?
Isaiah Smith
The fact that he notated breathing noises and shit like that, I should have rephrased it as "le perfomer is the instrument xD", very reminiscent of Kagel.
Also, how could you not see that was poly just from looking at the score? The smugness and homosexuality was palpable.
Brayden Howard
if you ever become a composer, you will understand performance notes and extra musical elements.
It was for an experimental / new music concert, so I felt obliged to do some non-traditional stuff, even if my piece was still the most traditional in the programme. At least it had melodies and baroque-esque harmonies.
Jackson Ross
Perhaps he needed to know when he'd run out of breath
Jayden Phillips
>if you ever become a composer, you will understand performance notes and extra musical elements. I already compose, I do not do any of these things, as I am neither a homosexual nor a kike. I'm not sure if this is a good joke or not.
James Scott
it is
Jack Johnson
I mean, I chuckled. But it feels a bit reddit.
Andrew Morales
it's time
Jordan Jackson
you must be pretty out of the loop if you think extramusical notes are unusual, or that Kagel is the only guy who does them. I take more from Lachenmann or Ferneyhough or Kurtag than Kagel.
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Anything goes provided you have an imagination.
Isaiah Miller
god damn this is a gay post
Kevin Russell
I know everyone does them now, I just think it's bullshit for kikes and homosexuals, hence I picked a homosexual kike to represent it.
You're right in that I've been out of the "scene" for a while now, but I can't imagine it's actually managed to move on from the ugly circle jerk it was stuck in back then.
Easton Bailey
To be fair the unnecessary Latin did add a degree of smugness to it
I know absolutely nothing about Kagel, so this is from Wikipedia. >Many of his later pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on None of these make sound, or at least necessarily make sound, whereas >flick instrument with fingernail >vocalise: exhale both of these do.
I mean, I haven't heard it so I can't say whether it's a meme or actually has a good reason to be there (and yeah, I'd probably be more compelled to say it did if it happened anywhere other than that isolated moment). But it's not something outright amusical like facial expression.
Nolan Davis
This is a vapid, smug and extremely homosexual piece with extramusical homosexual tropes thrown in just to fit in. In other words; classic poly.
Hunter Martinez
They're not extramusical, though, that's the point.
Jordan Edwards
were you raped by a gay jewish man or something? what's with all the hate for jews and homos?
religion and sexuality aren't exactly high tier music analysis
Adrian Johnson
maybe not to you
Nolan Jones
That's debatable, it is definitely theatrical. I see you clearly did not post in /classical/ during the golden age.
Adam Myers
>/classical/ during the golden age. no such thing. /classical/ has always been teenagers spouting memes
Tyler Walker
>teenagers spouting memes so....Sup Forums?
Owen Barnes
Incorrect, now its full of fags that unironically think Tchaikovsky or Mahler are worth listening to.
This is also poly's fault, as he was an early champion of shitty homosexual music and kikes.
Jeremiah Long
pretty sure those people have always been there. The firetruck meme relies on late romantic posting to work
Jackson Robinson
Thanks man, I have been meaning to set up a proper way to mic up my piano but it's not a grand and uh.. it's hard to get the standard jazz piano sound out of my upright.
Eli Sanders
What form are second movements usually in? How should I approach writing one?
I'm continuing my sonatina from before. It's kind of a long sonatina (but would be a short sonata), and much more traditional than I'm used to writing. So of the three movements of course it's fast-slow-fast.
Most pertinently, should I write an intro section to it? I was thinking of having it start as if it were in C minor, and then have it turn out to be in Eb Major. But now I'm thinking there might not be room for such a thing when the movement as a whole should only be 5 minutes at most.
Ayden Nelson
46 posts in and no one's posted "bump" yet.
Samuel Barnes
Bump
Gavin Morgan
When writing a piece for orchestra is it better to start from scratch with an empty orchestral score or should most of it be written on a smaller scale and then orchestrated?
Robert Walker
What's the basis behind the "descending tritones" that Jazz pianists always use in a dominant context?
For example listen to this one played by Monk right after the first chord changes to the V.
Matthew Rodriguez
Can anybody help?
Justin Perez
Well, first off, it doesn't have to be descending; tritones are the half-way point of the octave, and an inverted tritone is just another tritone.
As for why they work, well: the functional strength of a V7 chord comes from the tritone formed between it's third and seventh degrees (eg: the B and F of a G7 chord) resolving to a third or sixth it's relative I or i chord (eg: the C and E of a Cmaj chord).
When you replace a V7 chord with the chord a tritone away (eg: replacing G7 with Db7), the new chord still contains the same tritone (Db7 also contains a B and F, spelled enharmonically as Cb and F), and thus, it can have the same harmonic function.
We call this replacement of the V7 chord with the bII7 chord a 'Tritone Substitution', and the resultant bII7 chord is usually labelled as SubV7.
Cooper Morris
>she holds the flute wrong
triggered
Alexander Miller
BUMP
just got accepted into a composition program lads, feels good desu
Ehh I'm not talking about tritone subs, I think I worded it wrongly, I'm talking about moving in 'tritones' as in, think of a diminished chord without the middle note so it almost functions like a V7 chord, with the 3rd and the 5th.
I notice that a lot of Jazz pianist like to do those descending movements across a V7 chord with that diminished chord that I mentioned, for example pic related, the chord is on a A7, but Art is playing 'descending' chords on this one.. I'm not sure what to call this.
Austin Myers
It'd be very hard to sustain the lower voice in the piano's right-hand part on bars 49-53. Some of your textures transition really suddenly too, and it's a bit jarring; you might want to consider dovetailing some of the sections a little more. The ending is similarly awkward and abrupt, and it also might pay to limit your doubling to moments when it's actually serving the music, rather than just doing it because it's easier that more interesting voice-leading.
Well, assuming I'm reading that correctly, that just looks to me like a passing secondary dominant: D, F#, A, C, and E makes D9, the V of the following G.
I'm not sure I see the tritone you're talking about. In fact, I'm not seeing any melodic tritones in that snippet.
Justin Kelly
The Db on the right hand and the G on the left hand is quickly followed by a C on the right hand and F# on the left hand, yeah that's the descending tritone thing I'm talking about.
So passing dominants? I was reading the Mark LeVine book and on the Upper Structures chapter, I think it mentioned some descending upper structures which sounded really jazzy in my opinion.. So I wanted to know more about this device.
Logan Butler
Oh, well if that's what you're talking about, having strings of consecutive harmonic tritones is going to be a natural result of having strings of consecutive dominant chords.
Since jazzers love their dominant chords (they open up a lot of room for alteration), they tend to stick as many into a song as they can - think only of how often you hear a ii - V - I leading to every structural chord, and how often that ii is replaced by a V/V).
You take a normal progression like I - IV - bVI - bVII, and you lead into some of those chords with their relative dominants or a ii - V - I:
Hey presto! Tritones fucking everywhere! Whether you choose to voice those in a particular ascending or descending pattern is up to you.
If you're really obsessed with tritones, you can stick in even more using diminished subs: Every time you go to play a V7 chord, add the b9 and remove the root. That gives you a dim7 chord, and the fun thing about those is that they're invertible into other dim7 chords, so from a simple progression like I - vi - ii - V, you could get:
Obviously, that's way over-the-top, and nobody abuses dim subs so heavily, especially since they're so striking and really stand out, but yeah, those are all the common ways to get that sound.
Kevin Campbell
Thanks for this huge write up man, it's really helpful and is gonna take a while to read in.
Another cliche I often hear in jazz is this particular device whereby they would do a ii-V-I, and afterwards straight away turn that I into a ii of a new key, and using that original I as a ii of the new key, do a ii-V-I again. For example, the chord progression could be
Yup that's a pretty common one. They do the same thing with keys that are a semitone, a tone, a fourth, and a fifth away as well fairly often.
Other jazz tropes? God, there's hundreds.
Uhh, line-cliche's are pretty common. That's where you have static harmony, but have a single note of the chord ascend or descend either chromatically or diatonically over the top. A common example is to have a minor chord like Amin, and have the root doubled up the top [A C E A], then you descend it chromatically to make:
Am [A C E A] - AmM7 [A C E G#] - Am7 [A C E G] - Am6 [A C E F#], and then sometimes people will take it even further to get Fmaj7/A [A C E F] and back to Am [A C E].
What else do you see a lot of? You'll often see pieces with fairly conventional harmony end unconventionally (often with a mM7 chord on a minor tonic, or a Maj7#5 chord on a major tonic).
Eg: ||: I - - - | vi - - - | ii - - - | V7 - - - :|| Imaj7#5
What else? Uhhh, you'll often see the iii (or bIII in minor) chord being used as a tonic substitute without implying a change in key centre.
Uhhh... You'll see a lot of chordal planning or side-slipping which is basically just moving a single chord shape around to different roots (often the roots outline a particular scale or mode, even though the resultant chords won't all be diatonic to that scale or mode).
Eg: often over simple harmony like ||: F7 - | - - | - - | - - | Bb7... you might see something like | F7 - | Gb7 - | F7 - | E7 B7 | Bb7...
Gavin Thomas
There are also a whole bunch of voicings that are really iconic to jazz musicians. The 'So What' chord comes immediately to mind: That's a way of weakening the function of a minor chord (often the tonic) to more of a decorative one by playing it quartally - because of it's destabilising effect, it's often used in modal tunes, or to instil a modal sound to otherwise tonal tunes.
The 'So What voicing goes: [1, 4, b7, b3, 5]
Other popular voicings include rootless voicings (where you leave the root of the chord out, so that it can be filled in by the bassist; eg: a rootless Am6/9 chord would be spelled the same as a Cmaj7b5), the Kenny Barron voicing [1, 5, 9, b3, b7, 11], the Thelonious Monk voicing (playing [7, 1, 3] on the tonic, and [3, 4, 6] of the scale for every other chord in the key), and upper-structure dominants (voicing altered V7 chords as a triad over the tritone formed by the chordal 3rd and 7th).
I'm going to enroll on a piano performance and composition major 9 months from now.
So far I've only played baroque, classical, romantic and serialist music. i've tried to listen to some famous modern composers and now I'm somewhat unsure about enrolling. Do I have to do complex, unlistenable music to win academia's favour? Is tonality really dead?
Andrew Foster
I don't think so. I think a lot of academic music tends to challenging on some level, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna sound bad. It's also gonna really depend on your school and the environment there. The type of music you might feel encouraged or pressured to write will depend on your professors, the types of musicians at your school and the culture of your school.
At the very least academic institutions do need new music to play and many of the classical musicians do enjoy more tonal music. There's still plenty of new music that is tonal.
Jaxon Diaz
The more you look at tunes the more you'll see cliches appear. Bebop harmony especially uses a lot of the same kind of "tricks" to create as much harmonic motion as they can.
Blues tunes and bebop tunes tend to have a lot of cliches in them.
Some I can think of off the top of my head. Are the descending turn around so maybe something like this
Gm7 Gb7 Fm7 E7 Am7b5 D7 Gm7
it's a series of ii V i's with the the V being tritone subbed. You can really keep going down with it. This one happens to resolve back to the ii of the actual key and then end on the key's ii V i
I mean, if you're fine with serialism, I can only assume you were listening to some New Complexity stuff
Colton Murphy
>Rautavaara
John Powell
bump
Brayden Murphy
>tfw poor and have to use freeware vstis I've found a list of high quality ones on a japanese website but they take so long to download because the files are huge :(
Josiah Miller
I should really post this to /classical/ instead, but isn't this just the best recording of the Moonlight Sonata you've ever heard? It's just the first movement in this video but all of them are great. youtube.com/watch?v=O6txOvK-mAk
Brandon Anderson
Thanks for the write up man.
And also one more thing, I find that the choice of notes that I use when improvising, is based on the give chord at that time, like I would shape a scale entirely based on the current chord. And overtime, especially with dominant chords I kinda realised that I'm almost using every single note in the chromatic scale except the maj7.. the way I look at it is the 3 alterations, b5 and #5 all form a scale and I would play from this scale, of course taking into account that the alterations don't clash..
Is this an okay way to approach?
Xavier Wright
>tfw torrented all the high quality sample packs and DAWs for $0 get gud. use rutracker. and of course the files are huge. Thats what makes them so good, millions of different dynamics and techniques for a single note, all in high quality, multiply that by all the different notes on an instrument, and then multiply that by all the various instruments in the library, and 20GB is about standard.
Joseph Peterson
I'm so glad /comp/ is back, I really enjoyed lurking here and learning stuff. Sadly I started composing after /comp/ died, so I wasn't able to get much critique. Anyway, after writing a load of shit tier minuets and learning more about composition, I've been writing a waltz, there are a few things I need to fix up like adding in more instruments in the first part. It's certainly not yet completed, but I would love it if you guys could give any kind of feedback.
It's in F# minor The chord progression for the main theme is: i / VI / iv / VII / III / VI / dim. ii / V / Repeat.
Last one, sorry for spam friends. Also, are there any good resources on writing waltzes?
Brayden Bell
Don't know many resources off the top of my head, but try simply score reading your favorite waltzi and doing analysis on them to learn.
Also, you have a lot of empty lines and instruments kind of doing nothing. Try maybe spicing it up a bit?
Nathaniel King
Yeah I know there are empty lines, I'm working on having more, just difficulty deciding what to put there.
Juan Morris
>start my piece with a motif of straight sixteenth notes >it's impossible to get it to pause for a second This is what happens with every single one of my piano compositions.
Jacob Nguyen
Playing chord tones is always a good way to approach. You don't want to exclusively use chord tones, because it limits your note choice, but you can get a ton a ton of mileage off of just chord tones.
As for dominant chords it's tricky. I can't tell from without hearing you, but yes V7 chords have a lot of available tensions you can use on them and sound good. What you don't want to do is get too chromatic on them, because then it will sound like you don't know what you're doing and you're playing chromatic stuff to cover it up.
Like most things this just boils down to use good taste and think about what people you enjoy listening to would do.
Jason Perez
I posted my playing here.. Obviously I'm still kind of new to this but at the moment I'm still kind of trying to figure the whole voicings thing out.
Joseph Powell
You again! Haven't you been doing classical mostly until now?
Carter Ward
>Me again
D-do you know me user..
Parker Nguyen
Yeah dude I've seen this clyp three times already I'm pretty sure.
Jason Clark
But that was the first time I posted that specific clyps.. even though I have posted my clyps plenty of times in /comp/ threads
Wyatt Evans
Got any good resources for learning music theory? I need to learn to walk before I can run. Want to try learning the piano or something.
