Music theory/Obscure techniques

Started by greg, August 15, 2019, 07:30:23 AM

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greg

Anyone wanna discuss music theory?  ;D

Does anyone know if this technique has been used in any other genre of music before? Any composers use it? Examples?

Guitar tab:

https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/meshuggah-pineal-gland-optics-tab-s43193t2


They are repeating the same 6 notes but with a separate repeated rhythmic figure that is asyncronous to it.

Put together:
(Notes): 5 2 4 1 5 2 6 3
(Rhythm): 16th 8th 8th 8th 16th 8th 16th 8th 8th 16th 8th dotted 8th 16th 8th

(It might be different on the first iteration and then continue with the real pattern on the 2nd, i forget if they do that with this song but they do it often).


The idea is that you have 6 note units but not 6 rhythm units (or 12, etc.) so each time you hear the note repeated it might get a different rhythmic unit. The effect itself is kaleidoscopic.


As much as i used to study the various obscure techniques that composers have done, i haven't seen it yet. But... I wouldn't be surprised if Thomas Ades did that before. Still trying to understand his crazy time signatures.  :P
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greg

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greg

Ok, motherf'ers, if anyone is even going to read this thread, does anyone know of this technique?

Making a musical phrase or melody by repeating, but deleting a single note each time it's repeated? (you could do this by adding as well).

Ex: (imagine everything is just 8th notes, though the point in actual composition would be to make it more melodic):
A B C D E
A B C D
A B C
A B
A
(optionally repeat)

I use this in my own music just as something i thought of to do, but can't think of any clear examples and does anyone know if there is a name for it? I think there is a technique in counterpoint which is the same concept but usually used differently?
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Cato

Quote from: greg on September 10, 2019, 10:25:56 AM

... if anyone is even going to read this thread, does anyone know of this technique?


Patience, cowboy!  And watch your manners!  Scrape your boots before you saunter in here  ;)    The site has not been conducive to fast responses!

You should investigate Alexander Tcherepnin's Interpoint, if you are interested in different techniques of counterpoint.

http://www.tcherepnin.com/alex/basic_elem2.htm

Scriabin's style is always of interest:

e.g.

Quote

Chapter One approaches the formal structure of these preludes by examining the regular phrasing that is common in Scriabin's two- and three-part forms. In both the middle and late periods, the combination and interaction of exact and transposed repetition is a prominent compositional procedure. The same transpositional levels are found in both periods, but the frequency with which they are used distinguishes the periods from one another. The second chapter focuses on Scriabin's harmonic language. Initially, the discussion examines contrasting harmonic features of the final cadences in the middle and late period. Commonly-used sets are points of confluence in both periods, but their usage in diverse harmonic contexts results in clear differences. The final portion of this chapter discusses the cyclic and symmetrical properties of sets used in both periods, as well as the relationship between their subsets and supersets.

My emphasis above.  See:

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1204677896&disposition=inline

Hie thee to a bookery for:

Tibor Serly's Modus Lascivus :

Quote

From the 1930s on, Serly engaged in serious theoretical studies, developing a post-Schoenbergian enharmonic system called "Modus Lascivus," which divides the twelve-tone scale into two segments to create a multimodal chromatic scale system. Serly published two advanced theoretical texts, "A Second Look at Harmony" (1964) and "Modus Lascivus: The Road to Enharmonicism" (1976), and had just completed a third, "The Rhetoric of Melody", at the time of his death.


The idea is to create music with, e.g. a 5-tone scale and only a 5-tone scale, while the next section uses the missing notes in a 7-tone scale, and only those notes.  (Or 6 + 6, 4+8, etc.)  Serly thought that both sections could then be combined - depending on the nature of the work - for a quasi 3-D effect.

Check out his Concertino 3x3:

https://www.youtube.com/v/unOii2sz9oM

This morning I mentioned Avenir de Monfred, a Russian-French composer, who came up with The New Diatonic Modal Principle of Relative Music, which (he hoped very much) would counterbalance The New Vienna School.  No, it did not happen.  The book is available used: larger university libraries might still have a copy.

Basically it was a way to use 7-note scales (e.g. C# D E F G A B) interchangeably.






"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

greg

Quote from: Cato on September 11, 2019, 02:01:40 PM
Patience, cowboy!  And watch your manners!  Scrape your boots before you saunter in here  ;)    The site has not been conducive to fast responses!
I like to poopoo and peepee on my own thread! Without wiping my cowboy boots! Because I can! Hmph!

But yeah, true, not so easy to respond lately.



Quote from: Cato on September 11, 2019, 02:01:40 PM
Patience, cowboy!  And watch your manners!  Scrape your boots before you saunter in here  ;)    The site has not been conducive to fast responses!

You should investigate Alexander Tcherepnin's Interpoint, if you are interested in different techniques of counterpoint.

http://www.tcherepnin.com/alex/basic_elem2.htm

Scriabin's style is always of interest:

e.g.

My emphasis above.  See:

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1204677896&disposition=inline

Hie thee to a bookery for:

Tibor Serly's Modus Lascivus :

The idea is to create music with, e.g. a 5-tone scale and only a 5-tone scale, while the next section uses the missing notes in a 7-tone scale, and only those notes.  (Or 6 + 6, 4+8, etc.)  Serly thought that both sections could then be combined - depending on the nature of the work - for a quasi 3-D effect.

Check out his Concertino 3x3:

https://www.youtube.com/v/unOii2sz9oM

This morning I mentioned Avenir de Monfred, a Russian-French composer, who came up with The New Diatonic Modal Principle of Relative Music, which (he hoped very much) would counterbalance The New Vienna School.  No, it did not happen.  The book is available used: larger university libraries might still have a copy.

Basically it was a way to use 7-note scales (e.g. C# D E F G A B) interchangeably.
Tcherepnin is someone I forgot about (but looks like a good resource), and the other two I'm not familiar with.

The Serly technique sounds like it would be best if one part was played on an instrument, then the other played on another instrument, then brought together... anything to improve clarity. Otherwise, it wouldn't sound like anything special. And still, at best, I guess it would just sound like Stravinsky-an polytonality, maybe.

For Monfred, kinda wondering what you mean by interchangeably (surely there's a quick explanation of this)...
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Cato

Quote from: greg on September 11, 2019, 07:51:58 PM


The Serly technique sounds like it would be best if one part was played on an instrument, then the other played on another instrument, then brought together... anything to improve clarity. Otherwise, it wouldn't sound like anything special. And still, at best, I guess it would just sound like Stravinsky-an polytonality, maybe.

For Monfred, kinda wondering what you mean by interchangeably (surely there's a quick explanation of this)...


If you listened to the Concertino 3x3 of Serly, you can hear how he handles the technique.

Concerning the "New Diatonic Modal Principle of Relative Music," (as I recall it), the idea was simply a variation of sending music into a different "key," except that the "key" would be an atypical scale e.g. the music using C# D E F G A B  would be repeated on a scale of B C D Eb F G A#, or one could keep the original scale, but use a different starting note, e.g. G A B C# D E F.  Hence one understands the use of "relative music" in the name. The composer could also combine the sections in a "polymodality."

As always, the composer must follow his/her ear: the technique is only a catalyst for the expression of that inchoate desire to create a universe, where the original "Lux fiat!" is echoed by "Sonus fiat!"  0:)
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

greg

A simpler example of what I was talking about earlier:


Can't seem to embed the image, but a shareable link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSpP5x9k7tY4HQ7easyKCqD8ED73tFj7/view?usp=sharing


A line with:
1) a rhythm that repeats every two bars.
2) this rhythm has a sequence 19 values
3) in that rhythm, a sequence of 9 pitches
4) since 19 cannot be divided evenly by 9, during the repeat, it will start on the second note of the pitch sequence, then the third, etc.


I don't think the technique has a name, so I might as well refer to it as a 3D effect for now, because it's like it's adding an extra dimension to music itself.
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BasilValentine

#7
Quote from: greg on September 14, 2019, 05:10:37 PM
A simpler example of what I was talking about earlier:


Can't seem to embed the image, but a shareable link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSpP5x9k7tY4HQ7easyKCqD8ED73tFj7/view?usp=sharing


A line with:
1) a rhythm that repeats every two bars.
2) this rhythm has a sequence 19 values
3) in that rhythm, a sequence of 9 pitches
4) since 19 cannot be divided evenly by 9, during the repeat, it will start on the second note of the pitch sequence, then the third, etc.


I don't think the technique has a name, so I might as well refer to it as a 3D effect for now, because it's like it's adding an extra dimension to music itself.

The technique was popular in the 14thc. The name for it, coined by 20thc musicologists, is isorhythm. Guillaume de Machaut, And Guillaume Dufay, among many others, used it. The rhythmic pattern was called the talea, the sequence of pitches was called the color, and they were out of sync. Usually this technique was used to organize the tenor voice of an isorhythmic motet.

greg

Quote from: BasilValentine on September 14, 2019, 05:24:11 PM
The technique was popular in the 14thc. The name for it, coined by 20thc musicologists, is isorhythm. Guillaume de Machaut, And Guillaume Dufay, among many others, used it. The rhythmic pattern was called the talea, the sequence of pitches was called the color, and they were out of sync. Usually this technique was used to organize the tenor voice of an isorhythmic motet.
Nice, thanks!  :)

I just wonder why it fell out of popularity since it has a lot of possibilities to it... even Baroque style counterpoint was used enough by Romantic-era composers to be noticeable. But for some reason the most famous composers have neglected it enough so that it's probably not very well-known.
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