Yes thinking in triads it may do so if e.g. triad consisting of tonic, fifth and octave only follows that of e.g. a minor chord. I would hear that hollow gap spoken above too, though I wish I didn’t because it makes me feel conventional.
4 part-writing exercise - need evaluation
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I like 'open' sonorities quite a lot. I like quartal stacks and planing; to double things at intervals and move it all in absolute parallel. I like a lot of things quite outside of harmonic writing. I don't usually do harmonic writing in the strict sense, I approach composition in streams which may line up and may even through the strong logic of a line insist on chordal support; here I may well rely on all that part-writing exercise. I'm really glad to have mastered that; it can sort me out where it applies. And the 4-part strict procedural 'box' can be stretched to where you're not worried about chords or names of things but you're aware.
My confidence, 'Oh, so I can write' came really from diatonic harmony at community college. Really my first exposure to formal knowledge.
I grew up under jazz so I wanted to hear all these cute extensions even in the early exercises. He would write a tune in the soprano or a bass line and give the roman numerals and figure the bass. It was real general, there wasn't any idea it should sound any certain way but the basic rules applied. So mine were lush and the lines were clean, I was actually taken aback a couple of times. "Publish it!" go the class.
But, you know I was fortunate to have this teacher at this stage, because he was open-minded and trying to give as much as possible to people of varying backgrounds. I remember he was illustrating the quality of intervals and he ran some perfect fourths and I went 'That's what I want.'
Then, Gallatin at CCM. We sang from Neumes, we banged out Messiaen isorhythms and his birdsong notations on the desk. We got an overview and we got exposure to ideas. But he made us part-write like the end of the world was nigh and this was the way through.
My confidence, 'Oh, so I can write' came really from diatonic harmony at community college. Really my first exposure to formal knowledge.
I grew up under jazz so I wanted to hear all these cute extensions even in the early exercises. He would write a tune in the soprano or a bass line and give the roman numerals and figure the bass. It was real general, there wasn't any idea it should sound any certain way but the basic rules applied. So mine were lush and the lines were clean, I was actually taken aback a couple of times. "Publish it!" go the class.
But, you know I was fortunate to have this teacher at this stage, because he was open-minded and trying to give as much as possible to people of varying backgrounds. I remember he was illustrating the quality of intervals and he ran some perfect fourths and I went 'That's what I want.'
Then, Gallatin at CCM. We sang from Neumes, we banged out Messiaen isorhythms and his birdsong notations on the desk. We got an overview and we got exposure to ideas. But he made us part-write like the end of the world was nigh and this was the way through.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Exercises had a tremendous effect on me too. When I began I was not really interested in music as an art, I was just an electro kid who wanted to make synth pop, Berlin style electronica and industrial. Extremely narrow musical scope.
Part writing simply expanded my perception. I did not pay attention to classical music at all before music school, simply because it had no drum beats and always seemed to fly naked above an inaudible beat. I had not learned to pay attention to the complexities of melodies, polyphony and harmony. Counterpoint changed that. Most of my fellow students liked choral harmonization most, simply because it was based on chords supporting one melody, which was closer to what they usually did than polyphonic writings. In contrast, I became much more fascinated with the level of intervals and interacting melodies. We used the Danish author Knud Jeppensen’s Counterpoint as basic textbook, which is more about Palestrina style vocal polyphony than Fux’s basics, and I was stunned. The idea of deemphazing chord functions and let the harmonies arise “bottom up” had been unthinkable to me who only knew about chords, so this was something new to me, though it was rather old. From that point, I learned to pay attention to the polyphonic interactions of melodies in classical music and my scope of musical taste expanded accordingly.
Most radical perceptual change was Jazz. Depending on style, It simply sounded somewhat dissonant to me by default. Then I realised why when we began to learn about jazz harmonization and tetrads. There it was, a tension so close to triads and yet so far away in my ears. However, when I understood the premises of Jazz, my brain suddenly accepted these “constant” tensions and apparently gave up its urge for tetrads to be dissolved into trivial triads. Afair, it happened within a month’s study. A copernican turn. Thus, I was suddenly able to speak with my parents about Jazz, which was the only musical thing we had in common; Elvis Presley was not exactly my cup of tea.
Part writing simply expanded my perception. I did not pay attention to classical music at all before music school, simply because it had no drum beats and always seemed to fly naked above an inaudible beat. I had not learned to pay attention to the complexities of melodies, polyphony and harmony. Counterpoint changed that. Most of my fellow students liked choral harmonization most, simply because it was based on chords supporting one melody, which was closer to what they usually did than polyphonic writings. In contrast, I became much more fascinated with the level of intervals and interacting melodies. We used the Danish author Knud Jeppensen’s Counterpoint as basic textbook, which is more about Palestrina style vocal polyphony than Fux’s basics, and I was stunned. The idea of deemphazing chord functions and let the harmonies arise “bottom up” had been unthinkable to me who only knew about chords, so this was something new to me, though it was rather old. From that point, I learned to pay attention to the polyphonic interactions of melodies in classical music and my scope of musical taste expanded accordingly.
Most radical perceptual change was Jazz. Depending on style, It simply sounded somewhat dissonant to me by default. Then I realised why when we began to learn about jazz harmonization and tetrads. There it was, a tension so close to triads and yet so far away in my ears. However, when I understood the premises of Jazz, my brain suddenly accepted these “constant” tensions and apparently gave up its urge for tetrads to be dissolved into trivial triads. Afair, it happened within a month’s study. A copernican turn. Thus, I was suddenly able to speak with my parents about Jazz, which was the only musical thing we had in common; Elvis Presley was not exactly my cup of tea.
Last edited by IncarnateX on Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
very coolIncarnateX wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:29 pmThe idea of deemphazing chord functions and let the harmonies arise “bottom up” had been unthinkable to me who only knew about chords, so this was something new to me,
I had this thing for JS Bach organ fugues. I had no idea how one would approach that level, which was really why I wanted legit sort of knowledge. I never took a counterpoint course which may seem strange, but at first when I looked into it I found you cannot take 'free' before you complete 'species'. I prefer not. But that seems to begin as childlike rebellion, 'wait, I have to be free.' "Free as the wind". Later a guy I become close with because of constant musical and intellectual contact was a composition major at SF, and Sheinfeld was a total stickler so he had to get through Species. I was happy to be free at this point.
I saw a bit of that homework. By this time I couldn't afford to continue in school anyway.It's funny how David Sheinfeld appears to be SO conservative but his music gets pretty out there. Morton Feldman had something to say about that, an anecdote about playing records with Takemitsu who wouldn't let him take some Sibeliius off the turntable. Kind of how someone steeped in the tradition being radical is the more authentically radical.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
jancivil wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:33 pmI never took a counterpoint course which may seem strange, but at first when I looked into it I found you cannot take 'free' before you complete 'species'. I prefer not. But that seems to begin as childlike rebellion, 'wait, I have to be free.' "Free as the wind".
Who can blame you, really? Then again you seem to have had much more musical luggage with you than me when entering schools and thus were probably more determined than me. I was blank, to put it mildy. A mediocre key player that could read chords and that was that.
Well, I’d say at any time that it is more important to get the spirit of polyphony in constrast to following species for the sake of following species. The species will refine your technical skills, but not necessarily make you understand their aim relative to their development and historical context. Thus, by understanding the spirit, I understood the techniques much deeper and it became clear to me how Bach could sound like a symphony using only two voices.
Though counterpoint made me attend to classical music in the beginning, there was not any feedback to my modern tastes yet. However, that happened in this scene when I revisited “Amadeus”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93g1l3nlon0
Confutatis Maledictis from Requiem (breath taking part btw.) where he makes the bass figure the drive and the upper voices relate to that not the other way around. “Wow
....this is techno” I thought. 
At that time, I was fascinated by the quest of (old school) goa and industrial to do exactly that, placing the main melody in the bass and add upper melodic figures to that. From this point I realised that counterpoint is not restricted to classical music but is everywhere where two or more melodies meet. Ever since I have not thought about counterpoint in strict species but simply in terms of ideals of polyphony. It is no longer important to me how this interaction of melodies is achieved as long as it stands out as such.
It has influenced my perception so much that my taste into any genre is fairly predictable now a days: The more melodies you get in play, the more I will attend to it and like it accordingly.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Dodecaphony?jancivil wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:33 pm I tell you what I thought was not very creative was the composition elective I took my second year there. It was strictly from write 12-tone for a grade. (.....)
Actually I cared a lot about learning serial dodecaphony and did for years afterwards. I got to where I could make it up on the spot without doing all that.
That is very brave of you. We had a one hour lesson dedicated to that discipline, in which we did not talk much but just listened to Schoenberg. I was so glad when it was over. That is one thing about counterpoint I appreciate; even free counterpoint is not more free than it obeys a general framework of modality and tonality, after all, even though the emphasis in polyphonic counterpoint usually would be modality. Fux applies to both to a larger extent. Even if 12 tone music has its own principles of counterpoint, I refuse to see it as related. I usually just reject it as a failed intellectual experiment -
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
You may get over that as you did believing jazz was too dissonant.
Schoenberg is not often performed all that well IME. I believed I just did not like Pierrot Lunaire until I heard this one performance of it.
It's so neurotic, German Expressionism in music. In general. I have two straight-up dodecaphony tracks, and they're pretty funny.
Remember how steeped in the tradition Arnold S was. Structural Functions in Harmony...
Schoenberg is not often performed all that well IME. I believed I just did not like Pierrot Lunaire until I heard this one performance of it.
It's so neurotic, German Expressionism in music. In general. I have two straight-up dodecaphony tracks, and they're pretty funny.
Remember how steeped in the tradition Arnold S was. Structural Functions in Harmony...
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I did not know that elective course was going to be like that, but it was not a big surprise.
I find Boulez' serialism more compelling. But he was a sensualist and rhythmically far more interesting than Schoenberg.
I find Boulez' serialism more compelling. But he was a sensualist and rhythmically far more interesting than Schoenberg.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
You are absolutely right....in theory, but this is the one thing I am not willing to get over
But of course, I rerognize that those who favor it must hear something else than me that has catched their attention.However, of couriosity: what was your luggage when entering schools/uni? Where you trained or autodidact from childhood?
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I did have drum lessons for a short time when I was 12 and the summer after I turned 13.
When I was 14, my mother thought it a good idea for me to take classical guitar lessons. So I tried that but I wasn't at all mature for my age and I wasn't real serious about woodshedding. And I would noodle blues shit during a lesson which pissed Fred off and he told me to get lost basically (my professor at CCM didn't go for my noodling when she was talking to me so much either, in fact she said it drove her nuts.).
Then I got my high school diploma at 18 and as 1) I had no other direction or interest in life and 2) I wanted to get out of my mother's apartment I figured, what's next. & I thought the only way I was going to get into much of a university was going to be music (I got the diploma not the usual way, from going to school but by taking tests). And a couple of characters in my naborhood were getting into classical and I thought, ok, I can go take lessons from Fred Nance again. So I woodshedded for a couple of years and passed a couple of auditions. I went to Cincinnati primarily because one of those guys was already there, and at that time Javier Calderon was teaching, and he was (and is) fantastic. Then he got fired in time for me to attend there.
I did a couple of demos with a guy (singer-songwriter) I was set up with as his father used to work for my father at the drugstore. He had talent and wrote Beatles-y things and I made a little more of it with some lead guitar and McCartney-esque bass so we recorded one or two things. This went nowhere of course. But he became interested in Yes, and Genesis and like that, so we formed a band, original music which he wrote (naively, biting off more than he could chew now) and I would arrange, and I was the person to translate his ideas into something to rehearse. And we got known a little in town for these tapes. We did that until I went off to school. But I sought people to jam with and I schmoozed a little. I was ambitious in some ways.
At 18 I took the community college theory, the 2 yrs but concurrently in the one year. And I was going through the Mickey Baker book on jazz guitar and interested in advancing my vocabulary - Persichetti 20th Century Harmony - and I found a booklet with the synthetic scales, and so forth.
By the time I had enough to audition on this instrument I was 20 and somewhat opinionated but half-baked. I'd written little pieces for classical guitar, modern vocabulary but I wasn't a composer for scholastic purposes. I felt I should have command of an instrument first. And I was frankly always desperate to catch up here.
When I was 14, my mother thought it a good idea for me to take classical guitar lessons. So I tried that but I wasn't at all mature for my age and I wasn't real serious about woodshedding. And I would noodle blues shit during a lesson which pissed Fred off and he told me to get lost basically (my professor at CCM didn't go for my noodling when she was talking to me so much either, in fact she said it drove her nuts.).
Then I got my high school diploma at 18 and as 1) I had no other direction or interest in life and 2) I wanted to get out of my mother's apartment I figured, what's next. & I thought the only way I was going to get into much of a university was going to be music (I got the diploma not the usual way, from going to school but by taking tests). And a couple of characters in my naborhood were getting into classical and I thought, ok, I can go take lessons from Fred Nance again. So I woodshedded for a couple of years and passed a couple of auditions. I went to Cincinnati primarily because one of those guys was already there, and at that time Javier Calderon was teaching, and he was (and is) fantastic. Then he got fired in time for me to attend there.
I did a couple of demos with a guy (singer-songwriter) I was set up with as his father used to work for my father at the drugstore. He had talent and wrote Beatles-y things and I made a little more of it with some lead guitar and McCartney-esque bass so we recorded one or two things. This went nowhere of course. But he became interested in Yes, and Genesis and like that, so we formed a band, original music which he wrote (naively, biting off more than he could chew now) and I would arrange, and I was the person to translate his ideas into something to rehearse. And we got known a little in town for these tapes. We did that until I went off to school. But I sought people to jam with and I schmoozed a little. I was ambitious in some ways.
At 18 I took the community college theory, the 2 yrs but concurrently in the one year. And I was going through the Mickey Baker book on jazz guitar and interested in advancing my vocabulary - Persichetti 20th Century Harmony - and I found a booklet with the synthetic scales, and so forth.
By the time I had enough to audition on this instrument I was 20 and somewhat opinionated but half-baked. I'd written little pieces for classical guitar, modern vocabulary but I wasn't a composer for scholastic purposes. I felt I should have command of an instrument first. And I was frankly always desperate to catch up here.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Rebel years started early
Compared to some of your stories from uni, it seems like you have not always been that easy to teach
I was not easy either, had always questions and objections but adobted of necessity. Seems like you were somewhat harder to tame. And I understand you have more quantitative evaulations system and precise demands in USA a la your 4 pts failure, so you have been a free soul in a middle of a highly restrictive machinery. Well, maybe I would have skipped the species too if I had been in your place; enough rules already.Thanks for the story. Seems like it have been about music from early days. More luggage than me, surely.
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
No, actually it was just I kind of knew I wasn't going anywhere academically and I treated it as take what it looks like I need and leave the rest. Actually the Music History prof called me up one morning when I hadn't made it to class - this was during the class time, 8 to 9 am - and said since I didn't want to be there we should mutually agree I just drop it. I wasn't very mature.
But 2/3rds of our one year and we were nowhere near Bach? All this Roman Church music sounded the same to me at this point in my development and most of it I still am not seeing. But trying to write essays on a test on why this composer sounded different than the other composer, only they f**king didn't.
I was made chief of the guitar ensemble, we went on tour promoting the school doing concerts in schools in southern and middle Ohio. I was asking about a scholarship! She said I would have to start getting my look together and basically 'grow up, you hippie'.
I was the better reader and I was someone who'd led a band. Then after the year of theory - and honestly I don't remember refusing counterpoint at this time (nor being offered it) except for my resistance to Gradus ad Parnassum - I asked my guitar prof 'So what's next, I don't have enough to do?' or like that and I got Form and Analysis, which is graduate level (no class, it was just *go write a paper*.); so I wrote it on the piece I was preparing for jury. A- which for the second paper I'd ever written in my life could be worse. J.S. Bach - Partita in E major, BWV 100, on the guitar and I was playing it for Henry Meyer of The La Salle Quartet. That's kind of just stupid, word was he didn't really think guitar was legit and this is a famous violin piece. The whole suite I did. But he gave me an A! I took that in stride although today that seems hard to believe.
But 2/3rds of our one year and we were nowhere near Bach? All this Roman Church music sounded the same to me at this point in my development and most of it I still am not seeing. But trying to write essays on a test on why this composer sounded different than the other composer, only they f**king didn't.
I was made chief of the guitar ensemble, we went on tour promoting the school doing concerts in schools in southern and middle Ohio. I was asking about a scholarship! She said I would have to start getting my look together and basically 'grow up, you hippie'.
I was the better reader and I was someone who'd led a band. Then after the year of theory - and honestly I don't remember refusing counterpoint at this time (nor being offered it) except for my resistance to Gradus ad Parnassum - I asked my guitar prof 'So what's next, I don't have enough to do?' or like that and I got Form and Analysis, which is graduate level (no class, it was just *go write a paper*.); so I wrote it on the piece I was preparing for jury. A- which for the second paper I'd ever written in my life could be worse. J.S. Bach - Partita in E major, BWV 100, on the guitar and I was playing it for Henry Meyer of The La Salle Quartet. That's kind of just stupid, word was he didn't really think guitar was legit and this is a famous violin piece. The whole suite I did. But he gave me an A! I took that in stride although today that seems hard to believe.
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
But that history class, that guy and fricken Donald Grout 'History of Western Music' radicalized me. I started moving away from the west with velocity, aesthetically speaking.
end of the day, Clare advised me I wasn't really the person to be a classical guitarist, that I should model myself after someone like Lee Ritenour. She must've had the idea I could play the guitar.
end of the day, Clare advised me I wasn't really the person to be a classical guitarist, that I should model myself after someone like Lee Ritenour. She must've had the idea I could play the guitar.
-
- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Found this beautiful example of Palestrina’s vocal polyphony, when he pushes it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZ_7dFbl1A
This is cointerpoint taken to its outmost potentials. Sic, Blessed be those who are just a thousand years from part writing like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZ_7dFbl1A
This is cointerpoint taken to its outmost potentials. Sic, Blessed be those who are just a thousand years from part writing like that.
-
- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
That is certainly a good example to illustrate a difference between linear part-writing and thinking in terms of block chords. Because you wouldn't be able to except for the cadences. The cadences point to later tonality but the practice here results in vertically-considered sonorities that aren't triadic and contain many 'open' sounds. it's rather drone-y in regards to that.
I wish I could have had a course other than the one I did, with that guy. We had to consider all of that music in such concentration - with probably little-to-no care as to the quality of the performances or the recording, old records on budget labels on cassette - and it all sounds the same before long, and in a day.
I wish I could have had a course other than the one I did, with that guy. We had to consider all of that music in such concentration - with probably little-to-no care as to the quality of the performances or the recording, old records on budget labels on cassette - and it all sounds the same before long, and in a day.
