S&S Counterpoint study group. Anyone?

[Z1202]

you didnt answer my question:

Z, which sequencer do you normally use?

I'll answer it later, after we have worked out a data exchange solution. That is if you still will be interested

BTW, arturito, do you sing these cantus firmi to find out the problems? In my experience, this way it's really easier to spot the problems and also to get a feeling how bad are they in the given context (will be very important once we proceed to the 1st species). Because I've got an impression that maybe you don't. Of course in the end it's up to you.

you're begin' to sound like my grandmother.
If you want me to study with you for a few years..

No problem, I won't tell you anymore. Who knows, maybe you have much better ears than mine anyway, then it's completely stupid of me to give you such advice

Regards,
{Z}

[arturito]

I'll answer it later, after we have worked out a data exchange solution. That is if you still will be interested

if its a good sequencer we wouldnt have to bother about any data exchange solution. I dont think the exchange is the problem:
through this site we send a link ('private message' above 'latest posts') Where you can download the excercises. Or we just send it through our privat (hotmail) accounts. Lots of space. The objective (!) critics we post on this forum.

But are u familiar with MIDI?
I'm askin this cause later on in the book, you have to sing one line and play the other. To get a more indepent view of 'the voice leading' its good to tape one voice in MIDI. Sing the other voice without playing the piano(let the midi tape play the piano). Vice verca with the other voice. And than go back to singing and playing the two voices at the same time. So meanwhile u got the voices in MIDI. U r now 3 (!!) mouseclicks away from good old conventional music paper.
That's way faster than Lilypond ver will be!! With all the other excersises u will save tons of time! comin' years. Next to this advantage i'll hear your excersises, so i dont have to spend so much time singin and playing them.
On this site the majority of the people are more 'Musical Instrument Digital Interface '- minded. I presume there are not a lot of fast notereaders. So if you want to have more people on this thread..
A.

[Z1202]

Hi arturito

There are some good points in what you're saying. Still:

- the time to enter the solution in Lilypond is about 1 minute. This is about the same time if not less than it will take you to upload a midi file somewhere and then post a link here
- I don't have a web/ftp-site where I can upload my solutions in midi
- my sequencer is not free
- your statement about midi-heads agains note-readers doesn't seem valid to me. I doubt you can get through the book if you have problem with score notation anyway
- exchange via email is maybe not a very good idea, since newer group members (and spectators) won't have access to older solutions (although this solves the copyright problem, but so does Lilypond). Besides the time you need to compose an additional mail is again about the same as you need to put the solution into the Lilypond. Add here the time you need to invest to keep correct cross referencing between the mails and forum posts

Just FYI, I didn't know Lilypond before Victor mentioned it.

Regards,
{Z}

[arturito]

- the time to enter the solution in Lilypond is about 1 minute. This is about the same time if not less than it will take you to upload a midi file somewhere and then post a link here
- I don't have a web/ftp-site where I can upload my solutions in midi
- my sequencer is not free

R u familiar with MIDI?
Do you use Cubase or Logic or..?
I have nothin against Lilypond, I'm Dutch. It's just a more narrow way to communicate than MID(I nterface), in our context. Anyway its gettin' a bit dull. Do whatever you want.

your statement about midi-heads agains note-readers doesn't seem valid to me. I doubt you can get through the book if you have problem with score notation anyway

for the record; i didnt make a statement; I presumed. But that was not the point
I dont see a copyright problem in any sense; we post excersises, no compositions.

[VicDiesel]

Z, Vic,
I began with the book this week. It feels very promising!
Here are my answers to exercise 1 on page 12:
1a
- there is an excessive upwards motion

Maybe. The upwards motion goes in steps, while the downward goes in jumps, so that means there will be more intervals going up.

The main problem I see is a tritone jump between notes 2 and 3.

1b
- the climax (f) is being repeated.
- the repetition of the three notes f e d is disturbing

Agree.

1c
- there is an excessive downwards motion

In this case I agree with you. It's also pretty boring, because the motion keeps going in the same direction by semitones. There is only one jump.

1d
- cantus should at least be 8 notes

And the repetition of the F# at relatively close distance.

1e
- there are to many leaps

and one of the jumps is by an seventh.

(Maybe Z sounded a bit condescending, but he has a point: this example and example a/ are very hard to sing. You may not catch that if you only look at the notes.)

1f
- the frequent recurrence of the note d creates an imbalance

Y'know, I don't have much of a problem with this one.

1g
- the two big leaps are too big intervals

Entirely.

1h
- the climax shouldnt be a dissonant (septiem)

Seventh, is the word you're looking for. (I'm dutch too.)

Next I will write some canti firmi myself. I'm kind of in favour of Lilypond. But I need to figure out how to export midi from Lilypond. That's should be no problem.

Victor.

[Z1202]

Hi arturito and Victor

Here are my solutions to the first excercise. As I wrote, I think it's important to do the correction part of the exercise as well, so I included my corrections. The corrections for the most part are made by note replacement (closest to what needs to be done in species exercises). My solutions sound acceptable to me, still they are not perfect, so improvement suggestions are welcome. I'd also appreciate any critical comments on them. I'm using English Lilypond notation to denote the notes (s is sharp, f is flat, c' is middle c).

a) The worst is the tritone skip. The triton skip is immediately following a skip of a 4th (two skips too close) and another skip of a 5th for a 10-note melody, feels a little too many. Proposed fix: change the first b to e' or to d'.

b) f' e' d' repeated (including climax), outline of a tritone (f'-b). Fix: change first d' to g'.

c) excessive downwards motion, only one large skip in the middle. Fix: group (g f) in the beginning changed to (c' bf), bf at the end changed to e'.

d) too short. Fix: add (fs g) at the end. The repetition is still sounding ok to me here.

e) too many large skips, also close to each other. A skip of minor 7th. Repeated e' sounds almost like secondary climax on the leading tone. Fix: (a g)->(c' bf), (d' e' e)->(c' d' g)

f) 2 notes d' in the middle sound too accented to me. Fix: (d' g' d')->(af' g' ef')

g) leaps greater than octave, also in series. Fix: in the beginning (cs'' b')->(e' d'), (fs' a' fs)->(e' fs' b)

f) melody has no shape (outlining a 7th is secondary problem). Fix: f'->c', c'->d'.

Regards,
{Z}

[Z1202]

I have also a suggestion how to simplify things out for lilypond. First we need to create three files. One called "sscsgin.ly" with following contents:

Code: Select all

\include"english.ly"
\include"cfss.ly"
\score {

another "sscsgout.ly" with contents:

Code: Select all

\layout {}
\midi { \context { \Score
  tempoWholesPerMinute = #(ly:make-moment 60 1) } }
}

, the "csff.ly" file will be initially empty (SSSCG standing for S&S counterpoint study group). All files should be put into the same folder where you are going to put your other lilypond files. An example cantus firmus file (e.g. "myfirstcf.ly") then will look like:

Code: Select all

\include "sscsgin.ly"
   \new Staff { \clef "C" c'1 d' e' d' c' }
\include "sscsgout.ly"

. If you try to compile such file, it'll create PDF and MIDI output files at the same time.

The "sscsgout.ly" file also sets MIDI tempo to 60 whole notes per minute (60 standing for 60 and 1 for whole notes)

The "cfss.ly" file is reserved for the future to contain cantus firmi from S&S book. So we a) don't need to type them in each time b) don't post them in the forum, avoiding the copyright violation problems.

Regards,
{Z}

[Z1202]

(Maybe Z sounded a bit condescending

Being a self-studying person just at the beginning of counterpoint studies, I of course have no right to sound condescending. In fact I just tried to be helpful, maybe just too much, and didn't realize it might sound otherwise. So, arturito, please accept my apologies if it sounded wrong to you.

Regards,
{Z}

[arturito]

Being a self-studying person just at the beginning of counterpoint studies, I of course have no right to sound condescending. In fact I just tried to be helpful, maybe just too much, and didn't realize it might sound otherwise. So, arturito, please accept my apologies if it sounded wrong to you.

Ok, apologies accepted.
A.

[arturito]

Hi Guys,
yep I misses that tritone, allthough I sung it several times. Maybe because i'm quite used to the interval. Have to get used to all the rules. Z, your answers seems all fine for me, maybe because we discussed this excersise extensively. Any reason why you didnt put 1h?
Its quite hard for me to make the cantus longer than sixteen notes. It doesnt have anything to do with the quality of the cantus ofcourse, but anyways, I like making long melodys.
A.

[Z1202]

Hi Guys,
yep I misses that tritone, allthough I sung it several times. Maybe because i'm quite used to the interval. Have to get used to all the rules.

Hi arturito.
From the book, I get the impression that the melodies should be as smooth and contain as little tension as possible, the only way of producing and releasing the tension being the melodic shape, but not any kind of dissonant or unstable intervals. One posisible way to think of the tritone rule is that usually the tritone would imply the leading tone or dominant seventh chord, therefore producing harmonic tension in the melody, which should be avoided at this stage (we try to restrict ourselves to melodic shape-based tension).

Z, your answers seems all fine for me, maybe because we discussed this excersise extensively.

I think that at least my corrections can be improved. Therefore I was hoping for the improvement suggestions or alternative solutions before we proceed to the next exercise. I think discussing each other's corrections can be quite valuable. Besides, it doesn't feel right to me that we just started the book and are already skipping some exercises

Any reason why you didnt put 1h?

That's a mistype. The second f) is of course h)

Its quite hard for me to make the cantus longer than sixteen notes. It doesnt have anything to do with the quality of the cantus ofcourse, but anyways, I like making long melodys.
A.

IMHO, as written somewhere in the book, the cantus is an oversimplified melody. But I think, it's also encountered in real music. Imagine yourself an intro to the song, consisting just of several chords, each a whole bar long. Then 8-12 chords would be quite appropriate, don't you think? You can think of cantus as e.g. of the upper or the lower voice (or even the middle one) of those chords.

Regards,
{Z}

[Rune]

Just wanted to pitch in a quick "thank you" for the heads-up on Lilypond. Seemed like a nice program to quickly get some scores written. (I'm a sucker for WYSIWYM, what-you-see-is-what-you-mean, writing á la LaTeX.) Hope your counterpoint studies will be fruitful

[arturito]

Who is gonna post some first cantus firmus?

[Z1202]

Who is gonna post some first cantus firmus?

Hi everyone. Here are some.

Code: Select all

\include"english.ly"
\score {
  { \clef "C" \key g \major g1 c' b a b d' c' e' d' b a g }
  \header { piece = "Major 1" }
}
\score {
  { \clef "G" \key d \minor d'1 e' f' a' g' a' bf' f' g' e' f' e' d' }
  \header { piece = "Minor 1" }
}
\score {
  { \clef "C" \key b \minor e' d' cs' d' fs' e' a' g' e' fs' e' }
  \header { piece = "Dorian 1" }
}
\score {
  { \clef "C" \key f \major c' bf a d' c' e' f' e' d' c' }
  \header { piece = "Mixolydian 1" }
}
\score {
  { \clef "C" \key d \minor a bf c' bf d' c' d' e' a c' bf a }
  \header { piece = "Phrygian 1" }
}

Critics, comments, improvements and alternative suggestions are more than welcome.

I'm also thinking that we could try Lydian and Locrian modes. It's interesting to see if it would make sense in the context of our exercises without actually converting Lydian to major. The similar question about Locrian mode.

To arturito: the code above should be compiled as is, as a single file, without sscsgin and sscsgout. This was done to have all cf on a single page. If you want midi files, just copy/paste the notation parts only, without score and header blocks and use sscsgin and sscsgout.

Regards,
{Z}

[arturito]

Z, can u tell me where exactly do i have to place the sscsgin and sscsgout to get a midifile?