Couple questions about counterpoint theory & arpeggios
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
I was gazing yesterday quickly over counterpoint theory as I've been suggested to get familiar with it by a couple of friends now. I knew the very trivial basic principle of it before obviously, but I checked it out in bit more detail to get a better understanding what it would entail. So basically you have to learn a set of rules regarding melodic & harmonic intervals and their interaction between different voices(?)
To me, however, the most important part of it is whenever it's gonna be useful for composition. The resources that I have access to teach counterpoint through scores that are written for piano. That's fine, but... how applicable it is once we go into the problematic world of electronic music? Can I treat vocal melody as "one voice" and then use counterpoint for a synth pad and/or arpeggiated pluck that would accompany the vocal melody? Or is counterpoint useful when you go later in more depth about voice leading, harmonization of melodies etc that you can use outside of counterpoint context? (this is also fine, but I want to know where counterpoint is actually applicable for me!)
Now, likely unrelated question that doesn't warrant another thread IMHO: whenever arpeggiaturas are mentioned in any resources that I've seen and that are more music-theory centric (rather than production), they basically tend to talk about how you can just arpeggiate chords as if there wasn't that much more to it. Now I get that you can spice up your arpeggios just like you could with chords by, say, using fancy chords like bVII7. Yet, at the same time you often encounter phrases like "arpeggiated pattern" even when in the context the arpeggiated patterns seem to function more like melodies. The reason I'm asking: it's easy to arpeggiate chords but obviously very often that yields a boring pattern. So should I think of such "arpeggiated patterns" more like melodies rather than actual arpeggios?
For instance, Nightmarket by Burial is mostly just arpeggiated patterns from start to end. Yet, aside from the third part, it would be quite problematic to talk about these patterns in terms of functional harmony. I know that the first and second parts are sampled from someone who was demonstrating Roland synth and that person just jammed with it to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMR7ZA9NHG4
To me, however, the most important part of it is whenever it's gonna be useful for composition. The resources that I have access to teach counterpoint through scores that are written for piano. That's fine, but... how applicable it is once we go into the problematic world of electronic music? Can I treat vocal melody as "one voice" and then use counterpoint for a synth pad and/or arpeggiated pluck that would accompany the vocal melody? Or is counterpoint useful when you go later in more depth about voice leading, harmonization of melodies etc that you can use outside of counterpoint context? (this is also fine, but I want to know where counterpoint is actually applicable for me!)
Now, likely unrelated question that doesn't warrant another thread IMHO: whenever arpeggiaturas are mentioned in any resources that I've seen and that are more music-theory centric (rather than production), they basically tend to talk about how you can just arpeggiate chords as if there wasn't that much more to it. Now I get that you can spice up your arpeggios just like you could with chords by, say, using fancy chords like bVII7. Yet, at the same time you often encounter phrases like "arpeggiated pattern" even when in the context the arpeggiated patterns seem to function more like melodies. The reason I'm asking: it's easy to arpeggiate chords but obviously very often that yields a boring pattern. So should I think of such "arpeggiated patterns" more like melodies rather than actual arpeggios?
For instance, Nightmarket by Burial is mostly just arpeggiated patterns from start to end. Yet, aside from the third part, it would be quite problematic to talk about these patterns in terms of functional harmony. I know that the first and second parts are sampled from someone who was demonstrating Roland synth and that person just jammed with it to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMR7ZA9NHG4
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
And quick clarification: when I say problematic to talk from functional harmony POV, I don't mean it's impossible. The second part certainly seems like it's at least partially andalusian cadence. Just that I don't think it explains that much about the pattern itself aside from why it has that sort of "building up" feeling to it in terms of progression
- KVRAF
- 25052 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
You want counterpoint if you want a bass line to be its own line as opposed to derived from the main melody, or the tune. By definition. You want lines to have some identity or their own 'reality' instead of being just a happenstance slot whereby a chord note is 'filled in'.
And then you find that freedom is afforded you rhythmically speaking; or at least once you are thinking outside that box, you don't actually have to have all of a tertial construct happen in the same slot of time. Then you may even find chords less of an absolute requirement every time.
"So basically you have to learn a set of rules regarding melodic & harmonic intervals and their interaction between different voices?" - I suppose this is the approach in academia, which is why we still have people concerned with Fux Gradus ad Parnassum.
I never did it and I never will. Life is too short. I wonder if people even know why they're teaching it today. Here's an example, seen recently here a question as to why one particular move was proscribed: a rising fourth in the line where a falling fifth was not. The reason given was 'It takes you out of the mode'. So I would suppose that a rising fourth may make one feel like the arrival note is a new 'tonic', ie., B to E means 'Mode of E' to a person suddenly. If that isn't it, I don't actually care.
I tend to abstract principles from such and think for myself.
If you want to think of an arpeggio as melodic, WHY NOT? You have a sort of dichotomy with 'actual arpeggio' which probably means 'just some chord tones'. Analyze more music and see what was done rather than thinking rules are going to settle any matters for you.
And then you find that freedom is afforded you rhythmically speaking; or at least once you are thinking outside that box, you don't actually have to have all of a tertial construct happen in the same slot of time. Then you may even find chords less of an absolute requirement every time.
"So basically you have to learn a set of rules regarding melodic & harmonic intervals and their interaction between different voices?" - I suppose this is the approach in academia, which is why we still have people concerned with Fux Gradus ad Parnassum.
I never did it and I never will. Life is too short. I wonder if people even know why they're teaching it today. Here's an example, seen recently here a question as to why one particular move was proscribed: a rising fourth in the line where a falling fifth was not. The reason given was 'It takes you out of the mode'. So I would suppose that a rising fourth may make one feel like the arrival note is a new 'tonic', ie., B to E means 'Mode of E' to a person suddenly. If that isn't it, I don't actually care.
I tend to abstract principles from such and think for myself.
If you want to think of an arpeggio as melodic, WHY NOT? You have a sort of dichotomy with 'actual arpeggio' which probably means 'just some chord tones'. Analyze more music and see what was done rather than thinking rules are going to settle any matters for you.
-
- KVRist
- 489 posts since 24 Nov, 2008
A pattern generator might use a probability function to determine pitch direction changes, and maybe interval changes also, given a set of notes, and can produce some elegant counterpoint with just some mouse finagling to change the set and/or operations in the function (ChordwarePA for example). I'm a self-taught musician, so I can't speak on how to solve the problem.
-
- KVRAF
- 5717 posts since 8 Jun, 2009
Counterpart as taught by Fux has very little to do with functional harmony. It's based on Palestrina's approach to counterpoint, which is derived from the modal music composed for use in the church. It's also a snapshot of what Palestrina considered to be good practice at the time. Only about a century separates Palestrina from predecessors like Guillaume DuFay and John Dunstable, but they had a much more relaxed view of how three or four-part harmony should work - though they had more restricted rhythm choices.
Fux wrote this stuff down another century later, largely because he disliked the move towards tonal harmony despite it beginning to become a thing in Dunstable's and DuFay's time, and so wanted to teach the proper stuff and not the new-fangled kids' music. Ironically, because you can count the number of "theory" textbooks from these times on one hand, Fux wound up with a bestseller and became the underpinning for motifs used by Mozart and the rest.
That's the history bit. If you want to understand Fux's approach to counterpoint, Burial isn't where you start. You need to go listen to some Palestrina and DuFay. And understand that counterpoint is designed to stress melodic independence – all of the rules are about that aspect. The counterpoint used today is much more relaxed because sometimes it's independent, most of the time it isn't – it's just one or more lines that are complementary to the main melody. So parallel fifths work out just fine half the time. It just happens that a lot of classical music up to the late 19th Century happened to use the same motifs because young composers got taught Fux.
Now we're kinda back to the beginning as functional harmony just isn't that important now either. Though there's a tonal heritage, it's not functional in the Common Practice sense. The upshot? Neither functional harmony nor counterpoint make sense in interpreting Burial, though they might be handy for suggesting ways to attack your own music. Why not have independent melodic lines in one song? OK, you might not want to do that if you want a big hit, but it's a possibility.
Fux wrote this stuff down another century later, largely because he disliked the move towards tonal harmony despite it beginning to become a thing in Dunstable's and DuFay's time, and so wanted to teach the proper stuff and not the new-fangled kids' music. Ironically, because you can count the number of "theory" textbooks from these times on one hand, Fux wound up with a bestseller and became the underpinning for motifs used by Mozart and the rest.
That's the history bit. If you want to understand Fux's approach to counterpoint, Burial isn't where you start. You need to go listen to some Palestrina and DuFay. And understand that counterpoint is designed to stress melodic independence – all of the rules are about that aspect. The counterpoint used today is much more relaxed because sometimes it's independent, most of the time it isn't – it's just one or more lines that are complementary to the main melody. So parallel fifths work out just fine half the time. It just happens that a lot of classical music up to the late 19th Century happened to use the same motifs because young composers got taught Fux.
Now we're kinda back to the beginning as functional harmony just isn't that important now either. Though there's a tonal heritage, it's not functional in the Common Practice sense. The upshot? Neither functional harmony nor counterpoint make sense in interpreting Burial, though they might be handy for suggesting ways to attack your own music. Why not have independent melodic lines in one song? OK, you might not want to do that if you want a big hit, but it's a possibility.
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
Oh I didn't mean that counterpoint would have much to do with functional harmony (doesn't seem like it, aside from maybe functional harmony could inform counterpoint to some degree if you wanted it to). Still interesting info on the history of it though.
As for Burial, that bit only concerned examples of the "arpeggiated patterns" but jan kind of answered that part and I doubt there's much more to it, it just always bothered me when people use the term "arpeggiated pattern" (or something like that) about things that don't really make sense if you think about them purely in arpeggio terms but guess I should lax the view on those
@jancivil
You're probably right, should just start analyzing music more, given that finally I can actually do that to some degree and make sense of things without others having to _constantly_ explain things to me (not that there's anything wrong with someone doing that, but constantly probably gets tiring)
Thanks for the input
As for Burial, that bit only concerned examples of the "arpeggiated patterns" but jan kind of answered that part and I doubt there's much more to it, it just always bothered me when people use the term "arpeggiated pattern" (or something like that) about things that don't really make sense if you think about them purely in arpeggio terms but guess I should lax the view on those
@jancivil
You're probably right, should just start analyzing music more, given that finally I can actually do that to some degree and make sense of things without others having to _constantly_ explain things to me (not that there's anything wrong with someone doing that, but constantly probably gets tiring)
Thanks for the input