S
SEDstar
Active member
So, in another thread, and one "fairly" well received... I made the observation that the more I learn about "musical calculus", and music theory/classical theory in general... the more I am struck as to how it applies to everyday music... and, well, that its where "rules of thumb" in music come from.
Here, for part II ?
This was wholly unexpected. A member here, and I might hasten to add, a member who is often characterized as "spouting musical calculus, yet curiously never posting anything for anyone to hear"... well, he sent me a PM.
I must admit, entering flame war(s) FOR theory, spouting musical calculus... while never posting anything track-wise to "prove" what he's saying is right, well, I will admit to (previously) siding with the herd mentality, namely, if you never post any music track to support what you say, its baseless.
So... I have this link in his message on my PM. I will admit I rather *yawned*, stretched, and largely ignored it. Well, I sat and thought today while getting called into work for an "emergency we're shorthanded" 3 hour day...
"You know, putting aside the fact that the guy never POSTS a track, its not like what he was saying was wrong." And indeed, what he does post that I understand, well, its correct technically. Since I cant DIS-prove what I do NOT understand, well... likely it might be correct too, eh?
SO, since I'm up ANYways on my "day off" working... and got off "early" (LMAO) and sleeping in is ruined... I took a look at his link. A link, I might add, he has proffered before in other posts, now that I remember it.
Huh. He reccomended me reading chapter 6 and onwards, in particular. Well, I aint a chapter 6 Kind of guy, ya know? I'm a former engineer, a regular geekazoid only the last 15 years turned into a tough-guy redneck... I suffered thru chapter 1 thru 5, too. For the background...
I forgot about the "you need chapter 6" admonition. The information was seemingly accurate, though LOOSELY based around music. What little I knew about these various "fields" that the text invoked, I could vouch for, I'm fairtly well-read.
Yet, having forgot the "chapter 6" admonition, I found myself going "This is nice... COOL even, but WHAT the ^%$# has this got to do with making my music better? When do we get to a POINT? Some practical Instruction?"
Then I remembered him saying "chapter 6", and I had just HIT chapter 6, and it got "tres interesting". Humm. Practical application and examples, I see here. Oh, THATS cool, if it DOES anything... Oh, if I believe this, THATS why Smoke on the water sounds funny when I do it from memopry myself... Hmmm...
Here is where I admit freely that "modes" had escaped me before this. I had mistaken "modes" (locrian, Ionian, Mixolydian, etc etc...) for scales of a sort. Since I was using largely Pentatonic minor, they somehow "didnt apply to me"
ABout having had my fill of the text that had only gotten "somewhere" 6 chapters in, I gave up. Sitting there, I thought, "What you have to lose?", and I went to the computer. Fired up the compositional software.
Now... MANY is the day I tried to take a simple melodic idea, in PentMin... and flesh out a "tune" around the simple melodic idea. MANY is the time I failed. WHY oh why, I would bemoan my fate... does "the pros" songs have simple, direct, melodic lines.... yet sound so much better? I can clearly HEAR Pentatonic minor being used, over and over again... also, HOW do they keep re-using a simple note melody, different but the same, over and over again? What are they DOING?
Well, fresh from the "modes" example... I thought "if D to D (dorian) mode is good enough for smoke on the water, well, it must be very good indeed...." and I proceeded to write a simple 2 measure Pent Min note melody. The same sort of puppy shit line I have written 100 times before and played with. I LIKE it when I hear it, like,m once or twice... but after 15 seconds it gets "stale" quickly".
Oh yeah, Dorian mode... I took my 1-2-3-4-5 PentMin scale notes, and made them 2-3-4-5-6. Added that line to the end of the basic melody line. Huh... sounded like the melody repeated, yet slightly "different". Huh. I LIKED this...
I repeated it several times. Basic stuff. I cut and pasted the simple Base/Dorian line into another channel... (this was guitar, mind you...) and raised it an octave. liked THAT too. Cut the time signature in half, and re-wrote it three more times on the "lead guitar", same guitar but an octave up.
fast regular line, another in retrograde, and anther in melodic inversion... then a final one in retrograde/MelodicInversion...
I had my basic repeating BaseDorian line.... and 4 more quicker derivatives of it... since the quicker lead lines (if you wanna call it that, lol) were half the length? I added a long 1 measure drone of the final note of each of them... making them 3 measures long each.
I repeated them in succession twice each... ending on the original. Hey, I LIKED it. I quickly had a SIMPLE melodic idea working on rhythm guitar and a simple lead line that "blended" perfectly, yet changed a lot, yet stayed the same somehow. "Plopped" the main rhythm line onto bass... made a very simple drum line digitally...
and "voila" I had a full 1-minute expansion of my "simple melody idea", that somehow didnt get "stale" 10 seconds into it, like usual. ALL from using a simple idea of the dorian mode. It really set the very simplistic lead line "off" from the rhythm. It both "stood out" and "blended in" perfectly.
Heck, I was WONDERING why my simple guitar songs got so "stale" so quickly... why I couldnt DO one... heck, I figure, I cant WAIT to try this dorian thing on my Classical tracks... it should serve to "hold interest" when a longer melody is repeating and getting stale quite well on a instrument.
I wonder what OTHER modes I can invoke this smoothly? This easily? to hol d interest when an otherwise "great melody" is getting stale? My GOD man, this one thing has exponentially increased my options when doing what I do, classically or pop-wise... the number of lines I come up with that I like in a key, has been quadrupled...
and yet, I realized I had JUST scratched the surface getting into the "useable portion" of the text...
so, I'm not going to ruin the surprise, and blab the members name. It doesnt matter. I've never heard his stuff, and I might never. It might be good, it might suck. I dont know... but i DO know, that chapter 6 cured JUST WHAT AILED ME, and I had no way of knowing, and he was very insightful and correct. This one simple trick is going to reverberate thru all the stuff I write from here on out, when anythign starts to get stale, start using modes before that happens...
if only the guys "presentation" of himself in posts and his musical theory ideas he has learned, were presented better, there's a lot to be gained there.
I mean, he homed RIGHT in on exactly what I was missing, like an ICBM missle... it was a real "AHA!" moment. Why didnt I see this before? LMAO...
and for FUTURE REFERENCE...? ANytime you 20-year-experience guys are sitting there, going, "Why isn't sedstar doing blah-blah?", its because I am self taught, and learned a little here, a little there, out of order from the normal instructional course, LMAO. "TELL ME WHEN YOU NOTICE I MISSED SOMETHING!!!!" , hee hee
Here, for part II ?
This was wholly unexpected. A member here, and I might hasten to add, a member who is often characterized as "spouting musical calculus, yet curiously never posting anything for anyone to hear"... well, he sent me a PM.
I must admit, entering flame war(s) FOR theory, spouting musical calculus... while never posting anything track-wise to "prove" what he's saying is right, well, I will admit to (previously) siding with the herd mentality, namely, if you never post any music track to support what you say, its baseless.
So... I have this link in his message on my PM. I will admit I rather *yawned*, stretched, and largely ignored it. Well, I sat and thought today while getting called into work for an "emergency we're shorthanded" 3 hour day...
"You know, putting aside the fact that the guy never POSTS a track, its not like what he was saying was wrong." And indeed, what he does post that I understand, well, its correct technically. Since I cant DIS-prove what I do NOT understand, well... likely it might be correct too, eh?
SO, since I'm up ANYways on my "day off" working... and got off "early" (LMAO) and sleeping in is ruined... I took a look at his link. A link, I might add, he has proffered before in other posts, now that I remember it.
Huh. He reccomended me reading chapter 6 and onwards, in particular. Well, I aint a chapter 6 Kind of guy, ya know? I'm a former engineer, a regular geekazoid only the last 15 years turned into a tough-guy redneck... I suffered thru chapter 1 thru 5, too. For the background...
I forgot about the "you need chapter 6" admonition. The information was seemingly accurate, though LOOSELY based around music. What little I knew about these various "fields" that the text invoked, I could vouch for, I'm fairtly well-read.
Yet, having forgot the "chapter 6" admonition, I found myself going "This is nice... COOL even, but WHAT the ^%$# has this got to do with making my music better? When do we get to a POINT? Some practical Instruction?"
Then I remembered him saying "chapter 6", and I had just HIT chapter 6, and it got "tres interesting". Humm. Practical application and examples, I see here. Oh, THATS cool, if it DOES anything... Oh, if I believe this, THATS why Smoke on the water sounds funny when I do it from memopry myself... Hmmm...
Here is where I admit freely that "modes" had escaped me before this. I had mistaken "modes" (locrian, Ionian, Mixolydian, etc etc...) for scales of a sort. Since I was using largely Pentatonic minor, they somehow "didnt apply to me"
ABout having had my fill of the text that had only gotten "somewhere" 6 chapters in, I gave up. Sitting there, I thought, "What you have to lose?", and I went to the computer. Fired up the compositional software.
Now... MANY is the day I tried to take a simple melodic idea, in PentMin... and flesh out a "tune" around the simple melodic idea. MANY is the time I failed. WHY oh why, I would bemoan my fate... does "the pros" songs have simple, direct, melodic lines.... yet sound so much better? I can clearly HEAR Pentatonic minor being used, over and over again... also, HOW do they keep re-using a simple note melody, different but the same, over and over again? What are they DOING?
Well, fresh from the "modes" example... I thought "if D to D (dorian) mode is good enough for smoke on the water, well, it must be very good indeed...." and I proceeded to write a simple 2 measure Pent Min note melody. The same sort of puppy shit line I have written 100 times before and played with. I LIKE it when I hear it, like,m once or twice... but after 15 seconds it gets "stale" quickly".
Oh yeah, Dorian mode... I took my 1-2-3-4-5 PentMin scale notes, and made them 2-3-4-5-6. Added that line to the end of the basic melody line. Huh... sounded like the melody repeated, yet slightly "different". Huh. I LIKED this...
I repeated it several times. Basic stuff. I cut and pasted the simple Base/Dorian line into another channel... (this was guitar, mind you...) and raised it an octave. liked THAT too. Cut the time signature in half, and re-wrote it three more times on the "lead guitar", same guitar but an octave up.
fast regular line, another in retrograde, and anther in melodic inversion... then a final one in retrograde/MelodicInversion...
I had my basic repeating BaseDorian line.... and 4 more quicker derivatives of it... since the quicker lead lines (if you wanna call it that, lol) were half the length? I added a long 1 measure drone of the final note of each of them... making them 3 measures long each.
I repeated them in succession twice each... ending on the original. Hey, I LIKED it. I quickly had a SIMPLE melodic idea working on rhythm guitar and a simple lead line that "blended" perfectly, yet changed a lot, yet stayed the same somehow. "Plopped" the main rhythm line onto bass... made a very simple drum line digitally...
and "voila" I had a full 1-minute expansion of my "simple melody idea", that somehow didnt get "stale" 10 seconds into it, like usual. ALL from using a simple idea of the dorian mode. It really set the very simplistic lead line "off" from the rhythm. It both "stood out" and "blended in" perfectly.
Heck, I was WONDERING why my simple guitar songs got so "stale" so quickly... why I couldnt DO one... heck, I figure, I cant WAIT to try this dorian thing on my Classical tracks... it should serve to "hold interest" when a longer melody is repeating and getting stale quite well on a instrument.
I wonder what OTHER modes I can invoke this smoothly? This easily? to hol d interest when an otherwise "great melody" is getting stale? My GOD man, this one thing has exponentially increased my options when doing what I do, classically or pop-wise... the number of lines I come up with that I like in a key, has been quadrupled...
and yet, I realized I had JUST scratched the surface getting into the "useable portion" of the text...
so, I'm not going to ruin the surprise, and blab the members name. It doesnt matter. I've never heard his stuff, and I might never. It might be good, it might suck. I dont know... but i DO know, that chapter 6 cured JUST WHAT AILED ME, and I had no way of knowing, and he was very insightful and correct. This one simple trick is going to reverberate thru all the stuff I write from here on out, when anythign starts to get stale, start using modes before that happens...
if only the guys "presentation" of himself in posts and his musical theory ideas he has learned, were presented better, there's a lot to be gained there.
I mean, he homed RIGHT in on exactly what I was missing, like an ICBM missle... it was a real "AHA!" moment. Why didnt I see this before? LMAO...
and for FUTURE REFERENCE...? ANytime you 20-year-experience guys are sitting there, going, "Why isn't sedstar doing blah-blah?", its because I am self taught, and learned a little here, a little there, out of order from the normal instructional course, LMAO. "TELL ME WHEN YOU NOTICE I MISSED SOMETHING!!!!" , hee hee