Tag: music

Teach Yourself Music Theory – 6.) Those Sick Beats

Being in the music industry, I find too often people trying to make a living by selling “beats,” implying that the word is synonymous to their cool groove they spent hours on with their laptop program for upcoming rap artists that are so fire. Let’s make this clear…

A beat is the pulse in a piece of music. That’s it. When you are listening to your favorite song, you are more than likely tapping your foot or nodding your head in-time to the beat. Of course, you might be hearing some notes that appear on the beat – or within the beat. In the grand hierarchy scheme of things, the notes that appear between the main pulse are part of the beat divisions or subdivisions.

But now we need a framework; so we incorporate meter, which is how beats are divided and grouped into larger recurring units giving emphasis to certain beats. You have already seen this in place on a score with the use of measures grouping notes together and having the bar lines on the staff separate the measures from one another.

The first beat of a measure is called a downbeat and gets the most power. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the upbeat which is the lightest and appears before the downbeat on the last beat of the previous measure. So just before the bar line.

So the first way to categorize meter is by how the primary beat is divided. If the beat is easily divided in two, then it is a simple meter. On the other hand, if the beat is divided into three, then it is called a compound meter.

Groups of two or groups of three essentially. Now, the next way to categorize is by how many groups there are. If there are two groups of two/three, then it is called duple meter. Three groups mean it is triple meter, and four groups is quadruple meter. So, if we have three groups of beats that are easily divided into two, we should call it: simple triple meter.

In the examples shown, you’ve probably seen two numbers that somewhat look like a fraction found in math. These “fractions” are your meter/time signatures that tell you the meter type. The top number tells how many primary pulses are within a measure, and the bottom tells the beat unit — more on that to come next time!


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Tip #26 – Three Ways to Develop your Parallel Period

For those that have a composition featuring a parallel period where the beginning section of the antecedent phrase mirrors exactly that of the start of the consequent phrase; this is your intervention. You don’t have to continue like this and repeat measures just to tell your listener that you are crafting a parallel period.

Whiling deriving the consequent phrase by exact identity to that of the antecedent is a sure way of getting a parallel period, there are other ways. Try transposing the opening subject and motifs up/down in transposition.

Another way is by extra embellishment to the lines.

Finally, the notes as well as the intervals of the figures can change, but keep the same contour, shape, and rhythm. The listener will still be able to tell the similarity from these kept variable aspects of the melodic line.


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Tip #25 – Escape Chord Movement

To remind, an escape tone is a nonharmonic tone that creates dissonance on a weak beat by moving stepwise, and resolving my skip to a chord tone on the next strongest beat.

This nonharmonic motion can also by applied to the chordal resolution of a cadential phrase to delay the resolution as well as introduce new harmonic motion to lessen the impact of a direct V – I ending. Also, by simply introducing dissonant tones one degree lower/higher than the intended triadic chord tone, it can result in the same effect.


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How To Beat Writer’s Block – Tip #1

Remember newspapers? Those things that you would get every morning and trust on accurate news coverage, but because it was a process to sit down an read an article, we’ve transcended into using whatever trending topic appears on our phone as reliable information?

Yeah, those newspapers.

Well, they don’t have to be a fossil anymore. To first installment of beating writer’s block is to take a news article headline and sing it. Craft a melody that would fit the words of the title – so make sure that it is relatively long in length, possibly a sentence.

Once a version is created, make a variation or a new version of a melody singing the headline. Along the way; be a little bit critical and make edits to they rhythm, flow, intervals, and contour of it.

Finally, erase the words you were using. Now, you can take the melody elsewhere and use it as an individual theme, or put new lyrics on top of it. Possibilities are endless!

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Tip #24 – Getting the Best Out of Bitonal Cadences

They say two heads are better than one, so why not two tonalities/modalities?

This works well when there are two performers (or one that can be divided into two voices – like left & right hand piano) that can individually create their own tonal center.

Not only is it writing a cadential phrase for each, but it writing a cadence in which they sonically sound good with each other… or not, if that is what you want to go for.

Experiment around, and see which pitch collections work well with each other.


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Tip #23 – Finding a Good Modal/Synthetic Cadence

Today is a small tip on how to use your ears and basic knowledge of voice-leading when it comes to building a cadential sound when in a tonal mode – or using a synthetic scale.

First, know where is your tonal center, or I chord. This will obviously be your home base.

Now, find scale degrees that can act as sol/5 or ti/7 to the root of the scale.

Next, find other leading tones and see if they can be added to the previous incomplete V structure.

Finally, experiment with these tones, adding and subtracting, to build a cadential chord that has a strong pull back to your I chord with an unresolved sound. Easier said than done, for sure, but this exercise will certainly train your ears more to know how your compositions flows within a mode or synthetic scale.

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Tip #22 – Quartal Chords

In music, a lot or harmony is made up of chords built on pitches with intervals of stacked thirds to each other – hence, that is why they are called “triads.”

In the world of triads, you get chord types like major, minor, augmented, and diminished depending on the combination of thirds between pitches.

Now, what would happen if we were to change the rules of building chords? Instead of stacking thirds… how about we try one interval up: a fourth? Quartal chords.

A lot of listening and experimenting will be involved to find out sonically which chords built on fourths within the key sound like the I – IV – V etc. Also, you can play around with stacking other intervals.

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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 5.) General Guide To Intervals

An interval is the distance between two different pitches/notes. The two different notes can either occur at the same time (called a harmonic interval) or consecutively one after another (called a melodic interval).

The smallest, and most basic, interval used in Western music is the semitone/half-step. A semitone is the distance traveled from one key on a piano to the next adjacent key. Combining two semitones together make a whole-step. Half- and whole-steps make up a lot of the fundamentals understanding different aspects of music.

Now, what do we call intervals that aren’t two notes right next to each other? Below is a graph that I’ll explain:

The first process of finding the name of any interval is counting how many semitones it is made of. Start with the lowest note of the pair and count on the keyboard how many semitones are traveled to reach the higher pitch. From there, look at the letter names. How far apart are they? Remember: the letter names go in a repeating ascending order of – A B C D E F G A B C D … From there, you can find on the graph above what to name the interval.

So, say you went from middle C to G3. G3 is lower than middle C (otherwise known as: C4), so let’s count up from there. Middle C is five semitones above G3. Counting letter names we get: G A B C , which means a distance of three letter names were traveled. From all this information, we can conclude that this is a perfect fourth of P4 in abbreviation.

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Tip #21 – Substitute Dominant!

Hey, if this works in jazz music, why not in other styles of music?

To explain what a substitute dominant chord (or “tritone-sub” as it is also called – which you will see & recognize why later), take a cadential V7 – I progression:

Now, erase everything except for the tritone of the V7 chord:

If you recall, a tritone can be spelled both a d5 as well as a A4 interval. Keeping that in mind, flip the tritone upside-down. From there, you might have to respell in an enharmonic.

Finally, fill in these bare bones with what can be made as a dominant chord. As you can see, the substitute dominant acts as a bII7/I and that can be your shortcut to getting to it.


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Tip #20 – Coming Home to your Newly Renovated Tonic

Along your musical journey in your upcoming work, you might stray away from your home (the tonic) only to come back… at yet, while it seems familiar, there is something different. Things aren’t quite the same…

Sometimes to achieve this sense of a perfect cadence, but with emotional feels of nostalgia – or maybe something is out of place – the tonic triad “home-base” needs to be modified in some way.

This can be done easily by adding a note outside of the usually harmony. 7ths and upper extensions can work, but aim for when voicing this newly adapted tonic that this additional color tone is placed discretely to give the chord a new shading.


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