Chapter 21 on Modal Mixture
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
On Modulation —
— On Modulation — Dean W. Billmeyer University of Minnesota American Guild of Organists National Convention June 25, 2008 Some Definitions • “…modulating [is] going smoothly from one key to another….”1 • “Modulation is the process by which a change of tonality is made in a smooth and convincing way.”2 • “In tonal music, a firmly established change of key, as opposed to a passing reference to another key, known as a ‘tonicization’. The scale or pitch collection and characteristic harmonic progressions of the new key must be present, and there will usually be at least one cadence to the new tonic.”3 Some Considerations • “Smoothness” is not necessarily a requirement for a successful modulation, as much tonal literature will illustrate. A “convincing way” is a better criterion to consider. • A clear establishment of the new key is important, and usually a duration to the modulation of some length is required for this. • Understanding a modulation depends on the aural perception of the listener; hence, some ambiguity is inherent in distinguishing among a mere tonicization, a “false” modulation, and a modulation. • A modulation to a “foreign” key may be easier to accomplish than one to a diatonically related key: the ear is forced to interpret a new key quickly when there is a large change in the number of accidentals (i.e., the set of pitch classes) in the keys used. 1 Max Miller, “A First Step in Keyboard Modulation”, The American Organist, October 1982. 2 Charles S. Brown, CAGO Study Guide, 1981. 3 Janna Saslaw: “Modulation”, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 5 May 2008), http://www.grovemusic.com. -
Many of Us Are Familiar with Popular Major Chord Progressions Like I–IV–V–I
Many of us are familiar with popular major chord progressions like I–IV–V–I. Now it’s time to delve into the exciting world of minor chords. Minor scales give flavor and emotion to a song, adding a level of musical depth that can make a mediocre song moving and distinct from others. Because so many of our favorite songs are in major keys, those that are in minor keys1 can stand out, and some musical styles like rock or jazz thrive on complex minor scales and harmonic wizardry. Minor chord progressions generally contain richer harmonic possibilities than the typical major progressions. Minor key songs frequently modulate to major and back to minor. Sometimes the same chord can appear as major and minor in the very same song! But this heady harmonic mix is nothing to be afraid of. By the end of this article, you’ll not only understand how minor chords are made, but you’ll know some common minor chord progressions, how to write them, and how to use them in your own music. With enough listening practice, you’ll be able to recognize minor chord progressions in songs almost instantly! Table of Contents: 1. A Tale of Two Tonalities 2. Major or Minor? 3. Chords in Minor Scales 4. The Top 3 Chords in Minor Progressions 5. Exercises in Minor 6. Writing Your Own Minor Chord Progressions 7. Your Minor Journey 1 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-minor-keys A Tale of Two Tonalities Western music is dominated by two tonalities: major and minor. -
Music 160A Class Notes Dr. Rothfarb October 8, 2007 Key
Music 160A class notes Dr. Rothfarb October 8, 2007 Key determination: • Large-scale form in tonal music goes hand in hand with key organization. Your ability to recognize and describe formal structure will be largely dependent on your ability to recognize key areas and your knowledge of what to expect. Knowing what to expect: • Knowing what keys to expect in certain situations will be an invaluable tool in formal analysis. Certain keys are common and should be expected as typical destinations for modulation (we will use Roman numerals to indicate the relation to the home key). Here are the common structural key areas: o V o vi • Other keys are uncommon for modulation and are not structural: o ii o iii o IV Tonicization or modulation?: • The phenomena of tonicization and modulation provide a challenge to the music analyst. In both cases, one encounters pitches and harmonies that are foreign to the home key. How then, does one determine whether a particular passage is a tonicization or a modulation? • To begin with, this is a question of scale. Tonicizations are much shorter than modulations. A tonicization may last only one or two beats, while a modulation will last much longer—sometimes for entire sections. • A modulation will have cadences. These cadences confirm for the listener that the music has moved to a new key area. A tonicization—though it might have more than two chords—will not have cadences. • A modulation will also typically contain a new theme. Tonicizations, on the other hand, are finished too quickly to be given any significant thematic material. -
Major and Minor Scales Half and Whole Steps
Dr. Barbara Murphy University of Tennessee School of Music MAJOR AND MINOR SCALES HALF AND WHOLE STEPS: half-step - two keys (and therefore notes/pitches) that are adjacent on the piano keyboard whole-step - two keys (and therefore notes/pitches) that have another key in between chromatic half-step -- a half step written as two of the same note with different accidentals (e.g., F-F#) diatonic half-step -- a half step that uses two different note names (e.g., F#-G) chromatic half step diatonic half step SCALES: A scale is a stepwise arrangement of notes/pitches contained within an octave. Major and minor scales contain seven notes or scale degrees. A scale degree is designated by an Arabic numeral with a cap (^) which indicate the position of the note within the scale. Each scale degree has a name and solfege syllable: SCALE DEGREE NAME SOLFEGE 1 tonic do 2 supertonic re 3 mediant mi 4 subdominant fa 5 dominant sol 6 submediant la 7 leading tone ti MAJOR SCALES: A major scale is a scale that has half steps (H) between scale degrees 3-4 and 7-8 and whole steps between all other pairs of notes. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 W W H W W W H TETRACHORDS: A tetrachord is a group of four notes in a scale. There are two tetrachords in the major scale, each with the same order half- and whole-steps (W-W-H). Therefore, a tetrachord consisting of W-W-H can be the top tetrachord or the bottom tetrachord of a major scale. -
HOW to FIND RELATIVE MINOR and MAJOR SCALES Relative
HOW TO FIND RELATIVE MINOR AND MAJOR SCALES Relative minor and major scales share all the same notes–each one just has a different tonic. The best example of this is the relative relationship between C-major and A-minor. These two scales have a relative relationship and therefore share all the same notes. C-major: C D E F G A B C A-minor: A B C D E F G A Finding the relative minor from a known major scale (using the 6th scale degree) scale degrees: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 C-major: C D E F G A B C A-(natural) minor: A B C D E F G A A-minor starts on the 6th scale degree of C-major. This relationship holds true for ALL major and minor scale relative relationships. To find the relative minor scale from a given major scale, count up six scale degrees in the major scale–that is where the relative minor scale begins. This minor scale will be the natural minor mode. 1 2 3 4 5 6 C-D-E-F-G-A The relative minor scale can also be found by counting backwards (down) by three scale degrees in the major scale. C-major: C D E F G A B C ←←← count DOWN three scale degrees and arrive at A 1 2 3 C-B-A Finding the relative major from a known minor scale (using the 3rd scale degree) scale degrees: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 A-(natural) minor: A B C D E F G A C-major: C D E F G A B C C-major starts on the 3rd scale of A-minor. -
Beyond Major and Minor? the Tonality of Popular Music After 19601
Online publications of the Gesellschaft für Popularmusikforschung/ German Society for Popular Music Studies e. V. Ed. by Eva Krisper and Eva Schuck w w w . gf pm- samples.de/Samples17 / pf l e i de r e r . pdf Volume 17 (2019) - Version of 25 July 2019 BEYOND MAJOR AND MINOR? THE TONALITY OF POPULAR MUSIC AFTER 19601 Martin Pfleiderer While the functional harmonic system of major and minor, with its logic of progression based on leading tones and cadences involving the dominant, has largely departed from European art music in the 20th century, popular music continues to uphold a musical idiom oriented towards major-minor tonality and its semantics. Similar to nursery rhymes and children's songs, it seems that in popular songs, a radiant major affirms plain and happy lyrics, while a darker minor key underlines thoughtful, sad, or gloomy moods. This contrast between light and dark becomes particularly tangible when both, i.e. major and minor, appear in one song. For example, in »Tanze Samba mit mir« [»Dance the Samba with Me«], a hit song composed by Franco Bracardi and sung by Tony Holiday in 1977, the verses in F minor announce a dark mood of desire (»Du bist so heiß wie ein Vulkan. Und heut' verbrenn' ich mich daran« [»You are as hot as a volcano and today I'm burning myself on it«]), which transitions into a happy or triumphant F major in the chorus (»Tanze Samba mit mir, Samba Samba die ganze Nacht« [»Dance the samba with me, samba, samba all night long«]). But can this finding also be transferred to other areas of popular music, such as rock and pop songs of American or British prove- nance, which have long been at least as popular in Germany as German pop songs and folk music? In recent decades, a broad and growing body of research on tonality and harmony in popular music has emerged. -
Probing the Minor Tonal Hierarchy
Probing the Minor Tonal Hierarchy Dominique T. Vuvan, Jon B. Prince, and Mark A. Schmuckler Volume 28, Issue 5, pp 461-472, Music Perception DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2011.28.5.461 Probing the Minor 1 Running head: MINOR TONAL HIERARCHIES Probing the Minor Tonal Hierarchy Dominique T. Vuvan University of Toronto Scarborough Jon B. Prince Murdoch University Mark A. Schmuckler University of Toronto Scarborough Probing the Minor 2 Abstract One facet of tonality perception that has been fairly understudied in the years since Krumhansl and colleagues’ groundbreaking work on tonality (Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982; Krumhansl & Shepard, 1979) is the music theoretical notion that the minor scale can have one of three distinct forms: natural, harmonic, or melodic. The experiment reported here fills this gap by testing if listeners form distinct mental representations of the minor tonal hierarchy based on the three forms of the minor scale. Listeners heard a musical context (a scale or a sequence of chords) consisting of one of the three minor types (natural, harmonic, or melodic) and rated a probe tone according to how well it belonged with the preceding context. Listeners’ probe tone ratings corresponded well to the minor type that had been heard in the preceding context, regardless of whether the context was scalar or chordal. These data expand psychological research on the perception of tonality, and provide a convenient reference point for researchers investigating the mental representation of Western musical structure. Keywords: tonality, music perception, minor key, pitch, probe tone Probing the Minor 3 Probing the Minor Tonal Hierarchy Krumhansl and colleagues’ pioneering studies of Western tonal hierarchies (Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982; Krumhansl & Shepard, 1979) have become of central importance to work in music cognition. -
In Search of the Perfect Musical Scale
In Search of the Perfect Musical Scale J. N. Hooker Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA [email protected] May 2017 Abstract We analyze results of a search for alternative musical scales that share the main advantages of classical scales: pitch frequencies that bear simple ratios to each other, and multiple keys based on an un- derlying chromatic scale with tempered tuning. The search is based on combinatorics and a constraint programming model that assigns frequency ratios to intervals. We find that certain 11-note scales on a 19-note chromatic stand out as superior to all others. These scales enjoy harmonic and structural possibilities that go significantly beyond what is available in classical scales and therefore provide a possible medium for innovative musical composition. 1 Introduction The classical major and minor scales of Western music have two attractive characteristics: pitch frequencies that bear simple ratios to each other, and multiple keys based on an underlying chromatic scale with tempered tuning. Simple ratios allow for rich and intelligible harmonies, while multiple keys greatly expand possibilities for complex musical structure. While these tra- ditional scales have provided the basis for a fabulous outpouring of musical creativity over several centuries, one might ask whether they provide the natural or inevitable framework for music. Perhaps there are alternative scales with the same favorable characteristics|simple ratios and multiple keys|that could unleash even greater creativity. This paper summarizes the results of a recent study [8] that undertook a systematic search for musically appealing alternative scales. The search 1 restricts itself to diatonic scales, whose adjacent notes are separated by a whole tone or semitone. -
Secondary Dominant Chords.Mus
Secondary Dominants Chromaticism - defined by the use of pitches outside of a diatonic key * nonessential chromaticism describes the use of chromatic non-chord tones * essential chromaticism describes the use of chromatic chord tones creating altered chords Secondary Function Chords - also referred to as applied chords * most common chromatically altered chords * function to tonicize (make sound like tonic) a chord other than tonic * applied to a chord other than tonic and typically function like a dominant or leading-tone chord - secondary function chords can also be used in 2nd inversion as passing and neighbor chords - since only major or minor triads can function as tonic, only major or minor triads may be tonicized - Secondary function chords are labeled with two Roman numerals separated by a slash (/) * the first Roman numeral labels the function of the chord (i.e. V, V7, viiº, or viiº7) * the second Roman numeral labels the chord it is applied to - the tonicized chord * secondary function labels are read as V of __, or viiº of __, etc. Secondary Dominant Chords - most common type of secondardy function chords * always spelled as a major triad or Mm7 chord * used to tonicize a chord whose root is a 5th below (or 4th above) * can create stronger harmonic progressions or emphasize chords other than tonic Spelling Secondary Dominant Chords - there are three steps in spelling a secondary dominant chord * find the root of the chord to be tonicized * determine the pitch a P5 above (or P4 below) * using that pitch as the root, spell a -
Transfer Theory Placement Exam Guide (Pdf)
2016-17 GRADUATE/ transfer THEORY PLACEMENT EXAM guide! Texas woman’s university ! ! 1 2016-17 GRADUATE/transferTHEORY PLACEMENTEXAMguide This! guide is meant to help graduate and transfer students prepare for the Graduate/ Transfer Theory Placement Exam. This evaluation is meant to ensure that students have competence in basic tonal harmony. There are two parts to the exam: written and aural. Part One: Written Part Two: Aural ‣ Four voice part-writing to a ‣ Melodic dictation of a given figured bass diatonic melody ‣ Harmonic analysis using ‣ Harmonic Dictation of a Roman numerals diatonic progression, ‣ Transpose a notated notating the soprano, bass, passage to a new key and Roman numerals ‣ Harmonization of a simple ‣ Sightsinging of a melody diatonic melody that contains some functional chromaticism ! Students must achieve a 75% on both the aural and written components of the exam. If a passing score is not received on one or both sections of the exam, the student may be !required to take remedial coursework. Recommended review materials include most of the commonly used undergraduate music theory texts such as: Tonal Harmony by Koska, Payne, and Almén, The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis by Clendinning and Marvin, and Harmony in Context by Francoli. The exam is given prior to the beginning of both the Fall and Spring Semesters. Please check the TWU MUSIc website (www.twu.edu/music) ! for the exact date and time. ! For further information, contact: Dr. Paul Thomas Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition [email protected] 2 2016-17 ! ! ! ! table of Contents ! ! ! ! ! 04 Part-Writing ! ! ! ! ! 08 melody harmonization ! ! ! ! ! 13 transposition ! ! ! ! ! 17 Analysis ! ! ! ! ! 21 melodic dictation ! ! ! ! ! harmonic dictation ! 24 ! ! ! ! Sightsinging examples ! 28 ! ! ! 31 terms ! ! ! ! ! 32 online resources ! 3 PART-Writing Part-writing !Realize the following figured bass in four voices. -
The Piano Improvisations of Chick Corea: an Analytical Study
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1996 The iP ano Improvisations of Chick Corea: An Analytical Study. Daniel Alan Duke Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Duke, Daniel Alan, "The iP ano Improvisations of Chick Corea: An Analytical Study." (1996). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6334. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6334 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the te d directly fi-om the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. -
Secondary Dominants (Applied Dominants)
Dr. Barbara Murphy University of Tennessee School of Music SECONDARY DOMINANTS (APPLIED DOMINANTS) DEFINITION: A secondary dominant is an altered chord having a dominant or leading tone relationship to a chord in the key other than the tonic. An altered chord is a chord containing at least one tone that is foreign to the key. Using secondary dominants results in the tonicization of the chord of resolution. Tonicization is the process of emphasizing a chord by making it seem like the tonic for a relatively short period of time. Usually this is accomplished by embellishing the chord with a chord that has a dominant or leading tone relationship to it (a secondary dominant). ANALYSIS: Secondary dominants are analyzed as 'x/y' where: x is one of : V, V7, viio, viio/ 7, viio7 y is a major or minor triad in the key. y can be one of: Major key: ii, iii, IV, V, vi minor key: iv, V, VI y can not be a diminished or augmented triad since diminished and augmented triads do not act as tonic triads. RESOLUTION: 1. Normal resolution: x/y resolves normally to y. 2. Irregular resolution: x/y may resolve to a chord that is a substitution (primary or secondary) for y. 3. Deceptive resolution: x/y may resolve to the chord whose root is a third below the root of the y chord. PART-WRITING: The part-writing of a secondary dominant is essentially the same as for the diatonic dominant or leading tone chords: For V and V7: 1. root resolves down a fifth to the root of the next chord (normal resolution).