New Music Taking Shape and Releasing Soon!

This week I am pleased to announce that a second week of recording leaves me about half way through the process of completing my musical study on timbre. Thinking about it, this piece needs a slightly more epic name than that and I hope you will agree once you have seen this weeks passage which is from this piece again, however taking on a slightly more grand form than last week’s. I now have some basic and un-finalized compilations of the recordings, and thus as I expected are not fully into the mixing and mastering of my piece and will talk about the production in next weeks blog.

My co-write project has also taken major steps forward, and is nearly at the recording stage. I can now confirm that with regards to this it will consist of two songs amongst a larger piece of music, largely informed by a variety of genres including folk, rock and soundtrack, but what I am most excited about is the implementation of some acousmatic elements/ non musical sound effects in this piece. This is a decision in both my part and the other musician who I’m working with, as we are creating very atmospheric music that will be quite open to interpretation, we think it will be very impactful to include sound references that people will draw meaning from.

This leads me nicely on to talking about another project which I talked about pushing back last week: the White Shores re-recording/ remastering. This will not just be including acousmatic elements as well now, but the recordings will actually be from where the photographs featured in the video were taken. Something I had hoped to do original, but was unable too and since I have pushed back this project, I decided to coincide it with returning home to Jersey for the term break.

That about sums up this week with regards to my music, so onto this weeks passage of music!

This week I have chosen a very complex cadential passage across multiple instruments that has any musical features worth talking about:

The recordings here are not the final product, and are not mixed but are rather a temporary compilation for the purpose of this blog.

I have chosen this as it uses a concept I was never taught about in music, nor did I read about but rather discovered myself over years of arranging work, and I don’t have any name for it, but the term micro-harmony somewhat describes what is going on. (I don’t know if that is an actual term, however I have never heard it before in any formal context so I doubt it.) I don’t claim that the music is amazingly original because of this, as it is present in many eras and genres of music, but it is more so a way of thinking about and constructing more complex harmonic passages in a logical way that could be very useful for people interested in writing music.

How is this used?

Well… This passage features polychords because of different part interactions and these need to be talked about before the “micro-harmonies”.

In this score we have 4 harmonic instruments (instruments that can play full chords), 5 melodic instruments (the violins) plus the mandolin, which is somewhere between these two types of instruments but is being used more as a melodic instrument. 2 of the harmonic instruments, the piano and classical guitar are playing a chord sequence whilst the other 2, the synth and the electric guitar are playing a static harmony (F#m/ F#5) which is they key. (unfortunately got cut out on the image.) The chord sequence is: (i, VII, i, v) x 3 then (vi, i, VII, VI, ii, v), however since the electric guitar is accenting pulses 1 and 3 which are chord i anyway, this doesn’t clash and more so implies a rhythmic cadence, and due to the particular synth patch, the 3rds in it are not present enough in the mix to really clash, thus they just anticipate the final chord.

Where this passage gets interesting is the violin part which I will analyse both harmonically and rhythmically. Harmonically the violins sound and very loud and clear i chord, and i7 chord in the last bar, however accents on pulses 1 and 3 minimise the clash. This harmony is however something grows through the passage and each violin emphasises a different chord in the key to create it. The first violin, highlights i, III, v, i, in the first 4 bars which the others follow a bar after one another (a cannon) however each harmony works to build up a i7 chord in bar 4 before they all sound notes of a i chord in the final bar. Each, effectively having its own micro-harmony that works within the passage.

With regards to the rhythm, the pulse is every dotted crotchet beat, and the gradual shift from each violin accenting each dotted crotchet to every other quaver creates an interesting rhythmic effect that anticipates a change in rhythm in the other instruments for the 2nd to last bar.

Overall, this results in a constant tonic in one set of instruments whilst another chord sequence is played by other instruments. Also note that quite independently the synth plays a C# in the bass from bar 3 making it a 2nd inversion, but also implying chord 5 independently. And the guitar plays vii5 just before the end which is notes 3 and 7 of chord 5. Both of these also have a very cadential sound by themselves that work, but fit into and against a larger passage of music to create a more complex sound, and thus are another example of what I mean by micro-harmony.

I also used a minor chord 5 to allow the violin part sequence to work, as a E natural would not have worked in that passage. This is quite untraditional of cadential sequences, but not un heard of, but it is certainly not what makes this seem somewhat classical, that comes from the circle of fifths at the end, (VI, ii, v7, i). It also comes from the rhythmic change I mentioned earlier, known as a hemiola, where the pulse changes to seem like it is in a different time signature, in this case, it goes from a 4\4 sounding 12\8 triplet rhythm to a 6\4 sounding 12\8 rhythm. This is a very old technique heard most prominently in Baroque, but it is still widely used throughout musical history.

Also note the variety of instruments here, and playing techniques on them. This gives a very interesting timbral effect, which is what this piece is largely focused on.