Some Chord Progression Stuff

[Toxikator]

I think open voicing means that there's more than an octave and a half between the bass and soprano.

as for the orchestration, that's true, though depending on the style of orchestration you might find that, say, the strings (split into SATB) voice the chord, while the brass (split into SATB) also voices it; or perhaps contrapuntally the two instrument families play two diff. melodies which make the chord... Depending on form, you might also find that the strings or piano plays the full harmony while another instrument plays a melody over top of it...

[Km7]

Open voicings are those where a note of the chord could be placed between two of the other chord tones, i.e. they are not as close as possible and we miss a note in the voicing. Cmaj voiced as C-G-E is an open voicing. C-E-G is a closed voicing.

[Sascha Franck]

Good description, Varadin.

[Toxikator]

Indeed, that is a good way of putting it

[No name]

I see, thanks a lot. So much terminology, so little time.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Also, i've been interested in something, but really haven't got a concise answer on it. In, let's say, a choir or orchestra, is it common for more than one instrument to play a different interval of a chord at the same time? Such as the maybe the bass playing a C, while maybe the tenor sings E or G? Or maybe strings playing C, while brass section plays E? Something to that effect.

Yes. Every instrument wouldn't all be playing C's, some would be playing E's, some would be playing G's (in a C major chord). Some instruments might even be playing other notes (depending on a lot of factors). This is part of 'orchestration', and is one of those topics that looks easy from the outside, but when you really get into it, it becomes very difficult. (Trying to transpose horn parts on the fly for example is a nightmare!)

An internationally renowned orchestrator once told me that orchestrating is one of the hardest things anyone can do, because it uses both the left and right sides of the brain. (Or something like that, I can't remember his exact words).

There is no rule that specifies what notes any instrument should play. - It depends on many things, and changes all the time. For example, on one chord, the oboes and violas might be playing the third and the horns and cellos might be playing the fifth. Then, on the next chord, the oboes and horns might be playing the root, and the the cellos and clarinets might play the third.

I'm not tryna jump ahead here, but i'm just curious as I do hope to get into a little film scoring eventually. I think I could actually do it now, but my problem is thatI do need the theory to keep track of everything thats going on, and mainly to keep it all organized and harmonious.

I don't want to discourage you, but I would really concentrate on learning things first. You don't just need to know basic theory, you also need to know harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, scoring, arranging, and many other things. I speak from experience here; it can be a lot of fun, but it's not easy, and often you don't get to be as creative as you want to be. - Producers/directors will expect you to work (usually for free, or certainly for peanuts) incredibly quickly, getting everything to a professional standard in no time at all, whilst throughout the process they keep changing their minds and altering the scenes. Decent work is also very hard to get, and you end up working on crappy stuff that just bores you silly.

But, keep learning and you might get there one day!

[No name]

Actually, I didn't have any intentions of getting into film scoring as a means of making money or such. I simply would like to do it when I go back to college this year (I'm sure the musicians and the film students collaborate). What I meant by being able to do it now is that if I took my time and did small sections for each instrument at a time (which would probably take a long time) that I think I could pull it off, but not without frustration and some confusion as well. This is why I do need to learn the theory, and I understand what you mean, trust me, I'll stick to pop and all those genres for now. My main goal is to do film scoring, hell, as contradicting as it sounds, I would like to do music for films...even if there is no film involved (which I suppose doesn't make it film music, now does it? ) Something orchestral though, orchestral is just so powerful, it evokes emotion in me that no other music ever could...choirs especially get me, maybe because they are so dynamic.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Something orchestral though, orchestral is just so powerful, it evokes emotion in me that no other music ever could...choirs especially get me, maybe because they are so dynamic.

I entirely agree. Some of the best music made nowadays is for films.
Being able to compose large-scale orchestral pieces is definitely a worthwhile goal to strive for.
(Having done such, my goal now is to stand in-front of a real 80+ piece orchestra and conduct such a piece, but that doesn't seem likely in the near future)

[Toxikator]

for film scoring, I HEAVILY recommend you read up on Fux's 5 species of counterpoint. it's not going to represent the entirety of the world of film scoring by a longshot (and in fact much of scoring is based on tetrachords and planar voicing, just look at Danny Elfman) but it's one of those things that you should just know if you plan on writing for an orchestra. Species 3 (writing for 4 voices and above) is the most important one to consider.

[No name]

for film scoring, I HEAVILY recommend you read up on Fux's 5 species of counterpoint. it's not going to represent the entirety of the world of film scoring by a longshot (and in fact much of scoring is based on tetrachords and planar voicing, just look at Danny Elfman) but it's one of those things that you should just know if you plan on writing for an orchestra. Species 3 (writing for 4 voices and above) is the most important one to consider.

The score to the Batman movie.

I'm about to look this look it up to see what the description is. Thanks.

[Km7]

When dealing with film music, good knowledge and skills in orchestration are also needed.

[dxc5114]

oh my, thanks sascha! It makes perfect sense and I for the first time I think I'm starting to understand some music theory.

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, I am just preparing some further posts. But it'll take until tomorrow as I had to change things a bit (I actually should've started a bit different, but I wasn't aware it'd become that much).

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, I'd like to continue our travel through popular chord movements and progressions with one further movement before I'd like to go on with some further reading.

Basically, when dealing with chord progressions, there's three important functional chords:
1) Tonic (the I chord)
2) Subdominant (the IV chord)
3) Dominant (the V chord)

In the last two examples I've shown a bit about the I-V-I movement and how it sounds as a very "plausible" movement to our ears, due to various reasons.

Similar things hold true for the I-IV movement. After all, the move from I to IV is a really similar move as the one from V to I (root goes a fourth up).
In case we stick to a major scale and triads only, it's indeed literally the same move (one major chord with the root moving up a fourth to the next major chord).
Fwiw, in such a simple context, this *could* even lead to confusion regarding the tonic chord. The movement could either be I-IV or V-I - and as nobody is telling us to always play the tonic or dominant first, we simply wouldn't happen to know which movement it is.
Usually that's not much a problem, though, because most often there's some melody involved or some additional chord tones (especially on the V chord the 7th is present a lot).
I thought I should mention it nonetheless. Also, the similarity between those movements is often used for modulation or "inbetween/temporary" modulation. More on that later on.

For now, I'd like to focus on the I-IV movement and it's integration into something which has got to be one of the most famous chord progressions of all the times, the I-IV-V one.

In order to not cause any confusion (see above), I will "enhance" most I and IV chords with 7ths.
As you can see from the "scale/chord list" in my first post, both of them feature major 7ths - and I-IV is the only possible interpretation as long as we stay inside a major key.

A little sidenote: These things can be immensely helpful in analysis. Once you spot a major 7th in a chord and it's moving up a fourth to another major chord, it can only be a I-IV movement (ok, there might be a very few exceptions, but usually this approach is working fine).
And just another sidenote on the same issue: Whenever you try to find out about possible keys, try to find a dominant 7th chord. In major keys, they only exist once, so whenever you spot one of them, chances are that the tonic chord will be the one a fourth up. Ok, this is a VERY rough generalization, because there's tons of tunes with inbetween modulations and whatever, but it's often working nonetheless.

Ok, let's proceed to some Imaj7-IVmaj7 pattern in D:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/chordprog ... aj7_01.mp3
I cheated a tiny little bit as there's a 13th in the IV chord for the second repeat, but I'll get into that later on anyways...

And another one, this time not exactly using major 7ths, but the epiano establishes them. It's in E:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/chordprog ... -IV_02.mp3

And finally, the I-IV movement applied to the first ("country-carribean") example in F:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/chordprog ... -IV_03.mp3

Sorry for the particularly lousy execution on some of the samples.

Anyways, you may as well see a bit what I'm on about, posting these quick, random mockups. It's defenitely not all that much about the chords only. It's just as much about the musical style, different playing and different sounds. Nothing new, sure - but certainly always worth considering. If you learn all that chord-theory stuff, try to apply it to as many genres and playing styles as possible.

However, next post will now combine the three chords. Hopefully tomorrow.

[tee boy]

Open voicings are those where a note of the chord could be placed between two of the other chord tones, i.e. they are not as close as possible and we miss a note in the voicing. Cmaj voiced as C-G-E is an open voicing. C-E-G is a closed voicing.

Absolutely.

Open voicing is when the third is transposed up an octave. So your root position chord is 1, 5, 10.

This type of voicing is the bane of many a small handed pianist!

TB