Voice Leading: Control Through Counterpoint (Part 4: Adding More Voices)
Going beyond two voices in counterpoint has some footguns to watch out for, but the overall complexity doesn't change that much. The biggest consideration involves spacing between voices. If voicings get too wide the overall sound becomes weak, but if the voicings become too tight the sound can either become muddy in the lower range with inner voices suffering from a lack of movement. All the same guidelines apply when it comes to movement between voices and controlling for dissonant intervals.
Voice Leading: Control Through Counterpoint (Part 3, Second Species: Two Against One)
In part one we looked briefly at the first species of counterpoint where the provided and written voice move together one note at a time. Today we'll look at the second species which is a two against one type of writing where the provided voice will still only move on bar at a time, but the part we're writing will now include two notes. This allows us to start introducing dissonant intervals into our writing, and to establish some principles that will later be useful when we get to four part harmony
Voice Leading: Control Through Counterpoint (Part 2: Voice Independence)
Last week we covered the basics of controlling dissonance between voices, but there's a lot more to (good) void leading. Today we'll be looking at voice independence which is what really gives older styles of music their distinct sound and complexity. The concept of voice leading is simple enough. Keep voices sounding distinct from one another in their own range, or occasionally crossing each other. However, in practice it's a topic that can cause a lot of heart ache for theory students because, at least in the beginning, there are a lot of rules that must be followed. A lot of these rules become guidelines later on, especially in the cases such as doubling, hocket, octave displacement, etc. That being said, the goal here isn't necessarily to follow strict voice leading rules, but to work towards some best practices.
Voice Leading: Control Through Counterpoint (Part 1: Consonance vs. Dissonance)
So far we have only been working with concepts as they apply to individual voices. This doesn't make for very interesting musical ideas, but it removes a lot of the complications that come with having multiple voices. Starting now we will begin looking at how two voices can interact, and our first topic will be how to deal with consonance vs dissonance. We'll continue to avoid topics such as harmony and scales and we will still be using our established modes.
Intervals: Diatonic Expression, Part 2
I don't want to leave the topic of intervals without clarifying a couple concepts. It's worth a reminder that we're still only dealing with a singular voice at this point so distance between voices and chords aren't a concern just yet. We've already covered some guidelines for writing melodies/motifs so for now we'll focus on things like considerations for stepping and leaping and inversions.
Intervals: Diatonic Expression
Most music theory training centers around intervals to some degree. We use it to describe the pattern of sequences (scales, motifs, melodies), the distance between stacked notes between voices or in a chord, to describe the consonance/dissonance of a given set, and the relationships between different sections in different keys. The reason for this importance being that when we experience music it's not just notes in isolation, but within the context of other notes. The way we discuss this experience is via intervals. Even if not being done explicitly, a listener may describe a feeling from a particular part of a song that was the result of how notes interacted (the interval content).
Modality: Same Place, New Beginning
Last week I covered the topic of motifs and melodies, and for the next few weeks we'll be working through the components that make up their anatomy. However, we'll be breaking from the convention of typical theory texts in that we won't be discussing scales and chords just yet. Instead, the initial focus will be on modality, intervals, and voice leading. The main reason for this is that modality existed long before chords, functional harmony, and other Common Practice techniques; a lot of these concepts simply do not apply or translate well to modes anyway. Rather than expecting the reader to forget everything they've read, or risk the misapplication and over generalization of concepts we'll start from the actual beginning.
Motifs and Melodies: The Power of a Single Voice
I'll generally try to write these blogs in a way that they are continuations from each other, but some (last week's for example) are strictly for clarifying terms or concepts that will be used quite often. Eventually I may write a linked glossary, but that's for another time. This week we'll be looking at motifs and melodies, and ways to approach them as both a writer and listener. We'll start by establishing some definitions.
Frequency, Pitch, and Notes: The Building Blocks of Building Blocks
Similar to the relationship between video games and programming the experience of listening to, and even to some degree writing music is built on layers of abstraction from 'lower level' type concepts. Part of being a competent composer and musician is to understand the lower level concepts, and be able to work at various levels of abstraction. At the highest level of just listening you're not immediately concerned with things like form. Moving one layer down you may be focused on overall form, but not be focused on specific chord progressions. From there layers move down from chord progressions->chord voicings(inversion)->voice leading->counter point(voice independence)->intervals->motifs/melodies->notes->pitch->frequency->silence.
Modern Philosophy of Classical Traditions: Theory, History, and Musicianship
The goal here is to boil down hundreds of years of theory and tradition, and try to restructure it for the post-modern mindset. A significant amount of music history is made up of numerous pendulums where attitudes and practices move in and out of common use. It's sufficient in this context to simply acknowledge that the practice existed, give a description, and then move on to the next thing without trying to be persuasive about why the practice is good or not.
Why Start a Blog
Most of the topics I'd like to cover are audio related with most of those topics being related to music theory (concepts and practice), production (design, mixing and mastering), and sometimes venturing into video game programming (game engines, audio engines, and coding). The goal is to have a progression to each topic starting with an overall philosophy, and then moving on to basic concepts that will be the basis for future posts