Scales - do you change or can you change the scale midsong?

[shawshawraw]

Beautiful writeup!

Bars 0-8 (0:00-0:14) : the bassline

First four bars are all D. Based on that, one might think of D as tonic or "the home pitch". Second four bars have mostly Bb, but also A and B. So at this point, there are pitches D, A, Bb and B to guess the scale from.

I'll want to exclude the note A and B out of the scale analysis - don't consider them as "must haves" in the scale but treat them as "melodic embellishments". Generally, a semitone moving up to a scale tone is a valid move and almost always sounds great (for example: playing B D# to C E over a C chord; another example, F# A to G Bb over Gm7). But a semitone downwards sounds weird if it starts on a non-scale tone. However in this case, I think the music really wants to develop this wobbling feel.

Bars 41-44 (1:13-1:21) : second part of second melody section

[...]

This would be in D Natural Minor except for Ab, which is a tritone to D.
If I had to name a scale to fit those pitches into, I'd go for "Aeolian sharp 4" or somesuch.

I think it as a borrowed blues b5 - a characteristic bad ass vibe

[vurt]

there are times, i dont even change a single note, for the whole 22 minutes .
repetition

do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

[N__K]

Beautiful writeup!

Thanks!

Bars 0-8 (0:00-0:14) : the bassline

First four bars are all D. Based on that, one might think of D as tonic or "the home pitch". Second four bars have mostly Bb, but also A and B. So at this point, there are pitches D, A, Bb and B to guess the scale from.

I'll want to exclude the note A and B out of the scale analysis - don't consider them as "must haves" in the scale but treat them as "melodic embellishments".

This brings up an interesting question - in which cases, and to what extent, it is useful to exclude information from analysis.

Sometimes one may want to list all pitches in a given segment for sake of comparison, completeness, ability to write very similar passages etc.

At other times - especially if method of analysis depends on thinking in terms of pre-existing scales, harmonic functions etc. - some pitches may need to be classified as less significant and omitted for sake of clarity, which usually results in losing some detail in exchange for getting a clearer picture in a larger scope.

Not an easy question, I think.

[shawshawraw]

This brings up an interesting question - in which cases, and to what extent, it is useful to exclude information from analysis.

Sometimes one may want to list all pitches in a given segment for sake of comparison, completeness, ability to write very similar passages etc.

At other times - especially if method of analysis depends on thinking in terms of pre-existing scales, harmonic functions etc. - some pitches may need to be classified as less significant and omitted for sake of clarity, which usually results in losing some detail in exchange for getting a clearer picture in a larger scope.

Not an easy question, I think.

I think the formal name of what you describe is "harmonic reduction". In a classical context, it looks like:



(source: http://openmusictheory.com/harmonicSyntax1.html)

Embellishing tones (http://openmusictheory.com/embellishingTones.html) are identified and ignored. Then a rhythmic reduction is performed and outlines the harmonic changes for analysis.

[jancivil]

Learning from actual music is much much faster with ears in place

I completely agree with the emphasized fact - but speaking from personal experience, attempting to train the wetware does not guarantee success (at least not in full) even if considerable amounts of one's lifetime are spent on the effort

Get your ear together or the rest of this is just jargon. There is music few of us will suss by ear alone but we aren't anywhere in the vicinity here.

[jancivil]

When I started, I didn't have any ear. I didn't have any training like sight-singing or any particular guideposts. I wanted to know what was on the record so I worked at it. Some people are not going to do that, and some are not going to be able to.

There are things which defy or bely the conditioning to tonality and resolutions one has in their environment. These, absent the techniques used, are going to be difficult for those with just a relative ear (I'm one of them), so knowledge that is more abstract should go hand-in-hand with working by ear (when one wants to know from those things, anyway).
Look, I am not one of those with tons of innate talent or Mozart's ear at 6 or anything. If I can suss the things I did knowing almost nothing, I think it's safe to say that normal chords and melody (or a Clapton solo) can be sorted by ear without Roman numerals or anything from a book. W. less than my native capacity, idk, one may be SOL.

Composing music is about the ear. One wants the ear to know things the intellect doesn't have to sort, ideally.

[Boone777]

I'm particularly fond of changing a natural minor scale's 4 Minor chord into a 4 Major chord. I don't care why it works, or what scale it comes from [...]

Unless I'm misreading, that'd be Dorian. I like it too.

I use this little reminder for playing around with moods chord change. If anybody has similar cheat sheets I'm interested tx !

[jancivil]

pointing out the character tones is the best way to recall modes IME. Know it by ear, though.
Those "vibes", might work for you but that reduces things to a level that's kinda goofy.

IONIAN: https://y2u.be/u6NlBYEEgo8

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

On the "faster learned by ear", I am quite sure that e.g. Mozart, Bach and Haydn would highly disagree about the extent to which species counterpoint and part writing can be learned by ear alone. At the time you can rely on ear alone, it would be due to theory being emboddied and working mainly by intuition the same way that many of us do not need to recall the formula by which we learned to tie our shoelaces. Seems like myth-making to me. Like the idea that Mozart never corrected his drafts in Schaffer's Amadeus despite evidence to the contrary.

[jancivil]

Well, we're not dealing with that here. Me with a poor natural ear, I worked out a lot of things by ear alone. I am just saying ear first, cf., you don't learn to swim from a book.
I wanted to understand what Bach was doing and I had no idea, so there's a point. However I was fantastic at part-writing when it came to that and that's because my intellect was comporting well with my ear. Diatonic harmony is not rocket science anyway.
I'm not writing mythology, that's my experience. I would guess that Mozart had more ear than the competition, his masters aside.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Oh, I was not addressing this at yours comments, Jan, but the statement some pages ago. I am a little behind the thread and have not cathed up on all of it yet. Sorry if it seemed like that. However, it is a fact that none of the three mentioned learned by ear alone, but certainly by excercises. Haydn is known for doing Fux’ excercises over and over to refine them.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Diatonic harmony is not rocket science anyway.

Well, not aimed at you, but this forum could have fooled me on several occasions

Overcomplicating things instead of sticking to the KISS sentence: Keep It Simple, Stupid! That’s what has been most effective for applying heuristics in practice all through my own training. In the end, you were not judged by the complexity of your knowlegde (or imagination), but your related actions.

[donkey tugger]

. Haydn is known for doing Fux’ excercises over and over to refine them.

The wanker.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I do not think we are dealing with that kind of engagement after all, DT. They had naughty litterature and poetry for those purposes.

http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Erotic_literature

[vurt]

he coded some of the lego games for the gameboy (spells it with an x btw haydxn)