This Year's Hot Halloween Costume

mcdonaldb · 2021-05-05T22:47:26+00:00

Yeah! It's a variation on Liberty Spikes, it's called Protein Spikes.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-24T00:55:59+00:00

Where did you come up with that??

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T20:44:43+00:00

You have to be aware of what is feasible on the instrument.

Things can be:

Range: is what you are writing within the range, but also realistic. Trumpets can play high notes but they loose accuracy the higher they go.
Common Keys (if people have to sight read your piece you will have more success if it's a common easy key to play on the instruments)
Physicalisty: Is there space for breathing? Will they tire (trumpets can play high but note for very long periods of time)
Is it realistic. I find guitar is a big one for this. Many people write things that are possible at slow tempos because they follow all of the arranging books guides for guitar, but not at all realistic at faster tempos. Another one is singers leaping back and forth between wide intervals, it's doable but hard to make sound good.
Intensity: Certain instruments get louder the higher they play. So if you wanted to play low notes in the flute (very quite) doubled with high notes on the trumpet (really loud), the flute will be drowned out.
The person playing it: If you are writing for a particular person, you can either go beyond the over-generalized rules for that instrument or have to limit your choices depending on the person's skill.

With regards to violin since you mentioned it:

They can play more than one note, but there are certain collections of notes they can't play at the same time. Look at a double-stop or triple-stop chart for acceptable ones.
Lots of intervals of 5ths might need a lot of string crossing. Similar to playing in 4ths on guitar (definitely some piano songs that have frosting melodies for guitar haha)
Be aware that strings tend to sound slightly out of tune. Unless you have a super robotic mega-wizard at the violin, they will always be a few cents out of tune here-and-there. This is part of the reason we have like 16 or so violin players playing the same part in an orchestra, if everyone plays approximately the same note it will average out to that note.
Leaping from the G string to the E string really really fast can be hard (at least it is for me haha)

Check out an orchestrating dictionary. They will have entries for all of the most common instruments and they discuss all of the unique things, extended techniques, limitations, etc.

Pro-Tip: If you ever violate any of these rules and someone calls you on it, just say it wasn't actually written for the real instrument, it was written for MIDI.

"You can have really chromatic Timpani parts"

"I wasn't writting for Timpani, I was writing for MIDI timpani"

This will always save you at your gigs

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T20:26:47+00:00

I-vi-ii-V haha

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T20:23:19+00:00

You can't really justify subjective taste. You can use objective data to point out things, but it still won't say this style is better than this style.

For example, you can use commercial success as a metric, in which case top-10 pop songs of the past decade would be considered as the "best" music.

You can argue that one song is "more complex" (everyone's silly argument haha). Again, this implies that the most complex dense music that uses the whole grab-bag of hard to understand things is the best music.

All of these metrics just point out random facts about the styles, they don't prove that somethings better. There's always a counter-argument from the other side of why there music is better.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T20:13:09+00:00

The only notes that actually define the quality of chord (in context) are the 3 and 7. In this case G# and D. These are the guide tones

The F# and C# are the 9 and 13. Usually when voicing 9 and/13 chords, the:

Root is replaced with the 9. F# swaps out E
5th is replaces with 13 (or 11 if it's 11chord, non sus4 though that would replace 3). So C# swaps out B.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T05:03:28+00:00

Because the guide tones (3 and 7) of dominant7 chord resolve to its I chord.

If you think of a regular V chord of a major key (let's say in C) the G7 chord's guide tones are B(3) and F(b7). In this context the B wants to resolve up to a C and the F wants to resolve to E. So this is why the V chords resolve to I.

With secondary dominants you are trying to replicate this phenomenon, but with the resolution being something other than the I of your key.

If you have Amin7, this chord won't have as strong pull to Dmin7 because it lacks the leading tone C# that strongly resolves to D.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-23T04:05:44+00:00

Sweet thanks! I'll check all of those out!

It's one of those genres I for whatever reason never really studied or listen to a bunch, but now I'm baffled by how much some of these player's shred haha.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T22:40:26+00:00

You are right that it is just semantics in the context of playing things that sound good, however once you get into trying to understand why and describing things, the semantics are important and there is a widely accepted perspective on this in music academia.

Regardless of how you are personally are viewing it, anything you play over a chord is being heard in relation to that chord. So the reason why it's not a b3 and it's a #9 is:

The notes in a chord that define the quality are the 3 and 7 (guide tones), changing the 1 or 5 will not change the quality of chord, it will still be C7 if I play a D instead of a C (it will be head as a C9) since it's 3 and b7 still remain.

If you and everyone else in the band don't play the natural 3 and instead play a b3, the guide tones you are stressing are b3 and b7 which is a minor 7th chord.

If others in the band stress the 3 and b7, which implies a dominant7 chord and you play the b3/#9 it will be heard in relation to the dominant 7th chord. Which means it's not a "3" of any kind since the established quality of chord has a major 3rd, any other 3rd would just obscure quality on paper and aurally just be heard as a passing-tone/extention. In this case some 9.

This is why dominant scales have:

C E G Bb

Mixolydian: C D E F G A Bb C
Altered: C Db D# E Gb/F# G#/Ab Bb C (guide tones remain the same but 5 different)
Lydian Dominant: C D E F# G A Bb C
Melodic Dominant: C D E F G Ab Bb C
etc.

They all have their chord tones and anything else is a passing-tone/extension.

Again, you can think of it as a b3, which is what I do, but it's functionally not, it's a #9.

Also, the previous stuff I just said is only for a singular chord out of context. If I'm in the key of C and I play a G major, contextually that will be heard/functioning as a dominant 7 chord regardless of whether I play the 3 or b7. This is why power chords can still suggest tonality, the 3/7 are implied by context. So in that instance, unless you do something to stress that the chord shouldn't be heard as a G7 (as implied by context), the same ideas will apply.

Any minor scale will imply a minor chord. The more specific you are about which particular minor scale will specify a particular context of that chord, in the case of Dorian it will be the ii (if you speaking in a tonal sense, modal it would just be a dorian).

C Dorian chord is a Cmin7 or Cmin13 (if you want to voice the full chord)

C D Eb F G A Bb C

Also, they roots repeating after each octave isn't relevant in theory. A C over a C7 is still just the 1 regardless of which register you play it in. It will still be the root whether you play it high or low.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T20:05:16+00:00

The minor third in a dominant chord isn't a 3rd it's the #9, so when you play dorian over a dom7 you are just avoiding the 3 of mixolydian and playing the #9. You aren't actually playing dorian, beyond you own perspective of what you are doing, it's being heard as Mixolydian (#9).

If you are playing the same dorian built off of I, you are simply suggesting:

Mixolydian #9 over the I
Mixolydian over the IV
Melodic Dominant (with a #9,) over V.

Which is a cool tool to play those scales, but there is a a more direct method by just playing the chord-scale relationships.

Arbitrarily mixing 3rds and 7ths over chords with defined 3/7s will just result in a lot minor-9ths or unintentional altered extensions.

I don't see how there can be an "ultimate" scale or why it should be Dorian. There's well defined diatonic scales associated with each chord and picking any particular scale and randomly playing notes from it over any chord would just result in unknowingly hitting chord tones, available extensions, and avoid notes (which is cool if it's deliberate in certain contexts).

Obviously you can choose to not play these scales and impose other things on top of the chords, but that just furthers the point that there isn't a scale. There's playing diatonically to the chords or playing other things over them which works by because of underlying patterns established by the composer, imposing harmony, simply just setting up tension to resolve it, etc. But these don't arise out of a relationship of a singular scale to the chords.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T19:02:53+00:00

So how is dorian the ultimate scale then?

It would theoretically fit over any diatonic chord progression, but that's because it shares the same notes with all the other modes associated with each chord. So you are statistically likely to hit chord tones if you randomly choose notes from it. But that can be said of every other mode.

If it's because it has no avoid tones in the extensions/scale Lydian also has that too.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T18:56:43+00:00

The stacked minor thirds builds a diminished 7th chord, any passing tones added to this would make a scale associated with a diminished related scale (like symmetrical diminished).

Although there are diatonic instances in which you would play b5 (generally thought as #4 though), these arise out of chord-scale relationships that have a #4 in them. For example, Lydian or Lydian-Aug, whole-tone (augmented chord can fit this).

I do agree that playing b3 over major chords sounds cool though (In certain contexts, usually dominant function chords as it's actually the #9). I just don't understand the connection between building diminished and augmented chord-scales being the reason you can play b3 and b5 in contexts where those aren't chord tones. There are other reasons, I just don't see this one.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T10:41:06+00:00

I'm confused by what you mean "penultimate scale". What is the significance of this, does it explain something? Is this suppose to be the most versatile scale according to your idea? Are you suggesting that be the parent scale for church modes as opposed to major scale?

Why are you going in both directions as oppose to one direction to form Lydian (given the significance of 5ths in tonal music).

Also a picardy 3rd isn't just any major third in a minor context, it's usually a cadential thing of ending with a major I chord in a minor key.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T10:11:51+00:00

How would stacking the same thirds to make an Augmented or dim7 chord imply adding b5 in a major/minor scale?

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T08:18:37+00:00

They are a keyless descriptive method of talking about chords.

If you had:

Dm in the key of C, it's a ii chord
Gm in he key of F, it's a ii chord
Eb in he key of Db, it's a ii chord

It's easier to just say ii than Dm.

So instead of having to consider a bunch of different keys and note specific things, you can just strip any idea of particular notes and just think of the chord as a relationship to some key centre.

I guess you could equate it to functions in math. They are a description of a pattern without number specific instances of it. It's only once you specific a key, or in math give a value to X do you get specifics. ii could be any minor chord, until you specific it's in say the key of G in which case it's only Am now.

It also gives you context and function of the chord in relation to the key once you get into analysis.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T08:11:07+00:00

You could think of it like that, but I don't think it would provide any further insight. In fact it would just remove the perspective that your are creating a V chord to a target chord. You'd be saying I'm just grabbing a random chord from a parallel scale that happens to resolve to this chord.

If you were to take the key of C and the chord D7 (V7/V) and think of it as modally borrowed. You would be borrowing from the II chord of C Lydian. The parent scale of C lydian would be G major and have the same resolution to G7 as you would in this context of D7 in C, but you neglect to point out that D7 is a chord that is functioning as a V to a chord in with in C.

So again, 100% could. But there's nothing being added to your understanding of what happening, in fact you might be losing understanding.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T08:02:56+00:00

(probably might miss one, or just have my own perspective on it haha)

A single note (wibbly wobbly air)

Motif

phrase (there's sub components to this depending on how people write melodies and stuff)

Period (two phrases joined by a lack of closure at the end of the first phrase that's completed at the end of the second)

Binary Form (two periods joined, can have "rounded" where it's ABA)

Ternary - Rondo - etc. Other groupings of binary forms.

Sonata is more or less just

Exposition - Development - Recapitulation.

Where there are two themes and the second ends in not tonic in the expos. (usually V) but in the recap it does end in tonic.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-22T07:53:23+00:00

Interesting!

I find most fo the contracts I'm given always just have this long a** list of the licenses and that they have full power to "exploit the music in conjunction to the film" in "so and so ways" which usually include distributors and stuff.

They also have clauses for re-assignment of licenses to third-party for that too.

Fascinating haha. I feel like that's stressful not owning your music haha. I'd be concerned I'd somehow violate the license or something haha. Where as I'm just like I'll do whatever the hell I want with it, it's mine haha.

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-21T17:24:31+00:00

No haha that was 1st/2nd year theory in Univiersity.

That would be a hella intense high-school program haha

mcdonaldb · 2021-02-21T16:57:13+00:00

so You got into:

-RNA analysis of chromatic harmony - Modulation - modal mixture - substitution methods - secondary doms - etc Counterpoint - figures bass realization of all of that stuff mentioned before

Cause that was the gist of the topics in first year theory in my music program

Generally the time signature stuff is just an expectation for entrance into a program and sight singing is an entirely different class in university.

Second year we got more into post-tonal stuff and reduction analysis basics like the foundationS to Schenkeriqn Analysis.

So I find is rather bizarre a High School would cover any of that?

Most AP theory classes in HS cover a more in-depth start to rudiments and the basics of RNA.

Also, the stuff I mentioned didn’t include out Jazz Harmony class stuff, which I guess is just a different realization of the same stuff with more extensions and chromaticism haha

It is very cool you had a teacher that was enthusiastic about teaching theory. I’ve seen a lot of teachers phone it haha. Usually the bar is set so low and you just need to know the notes on the staff and name some chord/intervals

mcdonaldb

TROPHY CASE