Gabe is a good friend, a filmmaker, writer and musician, and a longtime collaborator. He put this together using location footage from Jersey City, NJ, interviews, and live video from the recording session.

Preview the record at hudsoncityrecords.com, or at iTunes, Amazon and eMusic

Visit Gabriel’s website.

The professor is happy!

Let your counterpoint guide you and write from the top down. Don’t worry about chords until it sounds good. Think about the beginning and the end of the phrase and how you want to get from point A to point B.

The “A” motif in my composition “D Tune” (Ex. 1) is only three notes (A, F#, E)  and two chords (D, A7). Since I stretch this melody out a few times in this piece, I have some space to fill. I wanted to experiment with ways to move to the V7 chord, and counterpoint and nice lines that create linear tonal movement can fill the space between chords, and provide musical tension and harmonic motion.

Ex. 1) The first melodic motif, the “A” melody from in “D Tune”.

The first time through the tune, beginning at M. 90, the A motif is played twice, first stretched to 9, and then to 10 measures, with a counterline accompaniment beneath. In the below reduction (Ex. 2) I’ve some chord changes, but there are a lot of question marks. The overall motion, however, is I to V (audio examples follow the score excerpts:)

Ex. 2) Harmony is implied by the two voice counterpoint and the improvised bassline. In some case the real name of the chord is subjective, as the lines themselves drive the harmonic motion without a distinct chord progression.

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Ex. 3 is the first 8 bars from the the second section, measures 135-142. The A melody is in the second to top voice, a new counter melody on top, some of the same counterline below. With three voices and a bass, interesting harmony starts to happen:

Ex. 3) By using a linear approach to harmony one is able to fill a lot of space with few chords, and in this tune there are just a two few specific chords (D in M.135 and A in M.142) an and some implied harmonies in this excerpt.

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The next A melody phrase (Ex. 4, M. 143-152, below) is much denser. Cross-doubling and moving unisons emphasize and widen the sound of the counterpoint, and the high voice “D” melodic pedal-point (see my earlier post) rings out. Between the high “D” pedal, and the two note A-F# melody, there’s a strong feeling of D major. Or is there? It’s almost as if the D major chord is pedal point, or a background wash, with the harmonies below layered on top. This time the voices move down and almost force the V chord (which has a pretty bizarre voicing):

Ex. 4) The “A” motif is the second voice from the top (red arrows), and things happen around it. Dotted red lines show one of the strong linear movements (M. 151-2); these two tritones imply a circle of 5th resolution, with contrary movement in the outer voices. Throughout this excerpt chords form and disperse. Hopefully it all makes sense to the ear, but no matter–for if your counterpoint is good, and each part is melodic, pretty much anything is possible. The “chords” that form don’t make sense in a traditional harmonic way. Plus there are some chords that don’t make any sense, or impossible to name. As long as the lines make sense anything is possible.

A scrolling video of the reduction played slowly by Finale’s piano:

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The chord symbols in Ex. 4 don’t really make sense, but you can see the common tones strong voice leading, and a widening voicing scheme with contrary motion in the outer voices, all moving ahead to the V7.

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Let your counterpoint guide you and write from the top down. Don’t worry about chords, write what sounds good. Think about the beginning and the end of the phrase and how you want to get from point A to point B. Techniques like this are ways to do something different from writing a melody with block chord accompaniment and chord changes.

This type of linear harmony and voice movement might set you free from traditional chords, and hopefully answer some of the questions you ask yourself as you face that blank page.

 The full score of both examples:

A score of the full piece and a rehearsal demo:

Click for “D-Tune” PDF Score

The layering of chords, with inner roots and strong voice leading are an important part of linear harmony; it’s a melodic way of writing with chords, and with apologies to Schoenberg and Debussy, a jazzy way of using “Klangfarbenmelodie”, or “timbre-structures”, or “sound-color-melody”.

I’ve used my tune “Take it Inside” in a previous post to show linear harmony composition techniques. I want to explore some more of the details of writing music that implies layers of chord structures. Remember that linear structures/chords/counterpoint may be harmonically non-functional–the normal rules may not apply.

Example 1 shows a distillation the tune’s main progression. This “white key” modal texture forms the background harmonic layer.

Ex. 1) Chords above and bass line below – this is the the progression from the first few bars of “Take it Inside”. What’s important is that the bassline moves while the chord structures above are static. The pickups (to the F/E, Db/F and Fmaj7 chords) show you where the strong measures are, where the next chord phrase begins. The effect is a wash of white keys above, with a bass that has strong linear movement.

While the rhythm section repeats the above chord phrase, the horns have figures that move in and out of the hazy tonality–I wouldn’t say that you can hear these chords once it gets going, especially if the bass player improvises and doesn’t always play the bass notes indicated. Plus the piano player’s voicings will probably be much different from the simple version above, and this will add to the haze and fog. With the horns playing increasingly dissonant and non-conforming lines and phrases as the piece evolves, we might lose our ability to hear traditional chord progressions and even chords. This effect will be heightened if the rhythm section starts to play more “out”.

The real action starts to happen after the full melody goes around once (it’s close to an AABA form): the two-part counterpoint in the upper voices follow the chord loop, at least for a while (Ex. 2):

Ex. 2) Fairly straight-ahead lines on top with a strong moving line in the middle. Think of it as a three-part texture, including the bass note. Any chords are implied, and there are notes outside of the scale that one might expect.

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A few bars later at next repetition of the progression (Ex. 3), the melodic idea from M. 80 grows. This excerpt is overall more outside the “chord”, but still sounds relatively consonant. As long as the counterpoint works, and especially if the bass player is playing freer and not laying heavily on the roots, this dual layer harmonic approach works well.:

Ex. 3) I would expect the piano player to hear chromatic, dissonant notes, and play more “outside”. The background harmony is devolving and the contrapuntal, linear texture is taking over.

The audio clip:

I think of the lowest horn voice as a functional, if momentary bass note, or “root”, which establishes a middle chord which is layered over the background. Is it an illusion? I call this middle bass part (for now at least) an inside root. Check out Ex. 4, a reduction of M. 96-102, and see if you agree with this idea:

Ex. 4) Strong downward motion by the lower voice, and chord-like intervals create an inner harmony with a life of its own.

The strong inside line attracts your ear–t’s what might be called a power tone or guide tone line in traditional jazz harmony, or a suspension in classical-speak. In the examples below this inside line pulls focus, and you may start to hear it as the bottom of the chord; we naturally compare what’s above with what’s below, and the sound of what’s above can change in an instant depending on the line underneath. Strong voice leading holds it together.

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The layering of chords, with inner roots and strong voice leading are an important part of linear harmony; it’s a melodic way of writing with chords, and with apologies to Schoenberg and Debussy, a jazzy way to invoke what Schoenberg termed Klangfarbenmelodie, or “timbre-structures”, or “sound-color-melody”.

I think this is something I think we do naturally by ear when we start layering harmony by improvising with chords. Think of playing a low note on the piano, holding it in the pedal, or in your ear, then jumping up and play something in the midrange, then back to the bass for a new note. You can usually make anything work, including weird dissonances. as long as everything is melodic. Along the way, you may start to see some inner structures that resemble and sound like chords.

More about the particulars of strong voice leading in the next installment. Here’s the full score and a live performance of “Take it Inside” by my ensemble:
“Take it Inside” full score:

Reblogged from Brian Lauritzen:

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A couple of days ago, an article appeared in Bloomberg that was so misinformed, so short-sighted, so petty, so ignorant, and so utterly ridiculous that to let it go unchallenged would be irresponsible.

The article came from Manuela Hoelterhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor for Bloomberg Muse and author of Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli…

Read more… 1,095 more words

So now it’s time for back to basics–this post is the first installment of a series specifically about linear and non-functional harmony.

So, for the moment, forget what you know about chord “progression” and instead thinking about broader and less defined tonal movement. Tension and resolution happen (though not necessarily where you expect it)…and perhaps there is never a cadence, a ii-V, or even a tonic key center.

Linear motion can imply sharp harmonic movement, or more subtle sound/color movement, with or without a predefined chord progression. Chords can happen though, and if you look up and down you might see some recognizable harmonies. You’ll definitely hear them. So let your ear be your guide as you write, stop playing roots and start writing lines.

The coda of my piece “Princess Tongora” from Hudson City Suite uses one key center: G major. I have a few lines noodling around that spread and amplify G, and for our purposes this few bars is simple and direct example of the power of linear movement. The section repeats three times, each time the band gets a looser and more free, so you get a swirling cacophony of organized but moving sounds and colors. Chords? You be the judge.

In the reduction below (Ex.1) you can see the lower voice moving down chromatically G-F#-F, then to D, while the upper voice moves up, down, then up higher and down, then up to Eb-E-F-E before moving back down to the chord tone B. There’s a lot of motion and melody in this phrase, and a lot of dissonance. Using the power of linear motion I create pressure, then let the air out at the end. When you look at the vertical structures, in this case the green whole notes, you can see the tonal areas that our ears momentarily settle into before moving on–we hear these momentary tonalities. The phrase starts with a solid Gmajor chord,  but the second “chord” in this example can be heard in (at least) two ways: Gmaj7 with an 11th, or D7 with an 11th. The third stop along the way is a G7–or is it?–there’s an Eb, E and F above, and it doesn’t really sound like G7. Then, at the end we’re back at Gmajor.

Check it out–here’s the audio clip:

Ex. 1) Each stop along the way is a tonal area. There is a melody, and there are “chords”, born from the liner movement of the inner parts. Notice how the contour, the spread of the voices change over time: widening then moving in. What are the chord changes?

Now look at Ex. 2 a more fleshed-out reduction showing the full orchestration, numbers 1-4 refer to the implied chords:

Ex. 2) The upper melody moves away from the first and last B, and the Eb after #3 is quite dissonant. The lowest voice on the top staff moves down G-F#-F-D, while the lower voices mix it up a bit, but still move down, like right after #1: F#-D, and right before #3: G-F-D. I’m getting a lot of mileage out of just a few notes.

The full score excerpt:

And here’s a full score of the entire piece with the audio. Hudson City Suite by the Scott Healy Ensemble is available here, at amazon.com, and on iTunes.

Click here for the score.

Professorscosco is worn out by the holidays, a burning, but very cold rooftop New Years jazz gig, and a long bike ride today, and is thus not inclined at the moment to pontificate about music theory. But WordPress keeps urging me to post, post, post, and I did just review the recording of a gig last November, so I’m just throwing this up here because I really like the way it sounded live: “Hey Claude” – officially it’s a tribute to Claude Debussy on his 150th birthday, unofficially I really wanted to write something with alto flute, and I had some cool little melodies lying around.

Old Claude (along with Ravel and others) gave us modes, whole tone scales, b5 chords, tertiary harmony, linear harmony, sound-color melody – far from simply “impressionistic” music, but detailed and rich compositions with some really serious harmonic content.

Live mp3 and score below:

Click for a PDF of the full score.

Reblogged from Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts:

There are many ways to use this technique in your writing, but here I’d like to examine how in counterpoint a repeated or sustained top voice becomes perhaps a “tonic”–our ears use the top voice as a non-melodic point of reference while the action happens underneath.

Looking at this technique is also a great way to get your feet wet in linear harmony. Sounds complicated, right? Nope.

Consider the sound melodic pedals make, a steady, drone upstairs, where it’s obvious. Along the way, voices move underneath, and vertical dissonance, tension and resolution happens. Every stop along the way has a different sound, but perhaps not in a traditionally harmonic way. So, while the voices move horizontally, our ears hear intervals vertically. It would seem that our ears naturally compare each sonority, and compare it to what came before, and perhaps develop expectation of what will come after. If it’s a non-harmonic, or linear texture, we have a different expectation as we don’t perceive a traditional root movement. This is when it’s the most cool.

Sometimes even the most dissonant intervals can sound normal (or almost). But just try to put a chord symbol to it. Most of the time you can’t, and that’s why I find myself writing out chord structures for the piano, or giving just a few notes for the bass player to improvise a part over.

I want to examine a very obvious example of melodic pedal point, where the second voice moves down from right next to the top voice, then moves down, then move up close again. It’s melodic, but it’s not; we hear the horizontal motion, but we also soak up the vertical tension and resolution, the relative dissonance and consonance as the piece unfolds.

Again, I’m using my own work due to copyright restrictions. Here’s an excerpt from “Princess Tongora” from my upcoming ensemble record Hudson City Suite. There are melodic pedal points and linear harmony throughout, and dissonances, especially minor 9ths (which are highlighted below), sound, well not quite “normal”, but justified and cool.

Click to enlarge, musical excerpt below. Don’t forget it’s a transposed score:

A MELODIC PEDAL POINT…
…is a non-harmonic technique where a top voice repeats or holds a note, and action, movement happens under it. Like a bass pedal upside down. In linear harmony the movement of the line dictates the “trueness” of the harmony. Even though we naturally hear harmony from the bottom (bass is the root, etc.), repetition of a melodic pedal can justify just about any interval. or structure, as long as dissonant notes are approached and resolved in an ear-friendly manner.).

The melodic pedal continues until the solo, it’s an important gesture in the piece.  Note that even the chord changes initially have a common tone (F), which, if the pianist plays it on top of the voicing, continues the melodic pedal idea. Also, the Bb/E chord, with the F on top, exploits the dissonance (F-E)–by now we’re used to it, and it sounds “normal”. Frequently linear and non-harmonic ideas work after repetition. The groove is set up by the rhythm that takes over in the 4th bar of E, and that propels us into the solo.

Audio:

Score:

The rhythm section gets to start the groove at the 4th bar of E–and the melodic pedal point idea is really strong in the piano part.

The soprano blows over the well-established pedal/repeated rhythm texture–this is a way to unify solo and ensemble sections. Without chord changes it’s a different process, ie. no chord changes, more abstract rhythms and melodies etc.

Here’s the full score and tune from the record–we cut out some bars at the beginning and added the tag at the end as an intro:

Princess Tongora Score

All audio and scores © 2012 Scott Healy–no use without permission.