The "cantankerous old man" could teach you about a million things you don't know. He has already taught me a ton.

He has more knowledge in his pinky than you have in your whole pretentious body.

END

I must apologise to the participants and followers of this thread for my uncharacteristic outburst. I hope I haven't soured your taste for the subject matter.

I was giving what little I had to share and was frustrated that my inexpertise was being insulted rather than broadened. I should have taken time to reflect but did not and events have overtaken me. I cannot undo what has been done and so must suffer the consequences.

If I've misled anyone I assure you I was not aware of it. I have imparted nothing that isn't supported by printed matter, mostly university text books. I know that doesn't necessarily make it correct but it is the best I can do.

_________________

Gary, you know from our pm's that I wasn't pretentious and that it is only from your encouragement that I was able to continue without full confidence in my knowledge or ability.

Alas, he was not as generous to me as he was to you.

No harm done. Musings on dissonance and the (ahem) ‘definitive nature of music’ are bound to be contentious. I added nothing constructive because there’s nothing I can add and I’ve long been of the opinion that these things are rooted in culture. I think I understand why some received ideas don’t work for me and I did my best to lay those arguments out. You have a proclamatory style and I react to it. That is how we are.

I don’t recognise myself as “criticising everyone” – I hope that’s not true. I admit to being generally lazy in the forum but usually all bases are covered by members aplenty willing to offer an answer. Where something lies in my area of expertise (very narrow!) I’ll usually try and throw a little light.

I felt I was able to offer something substantive albeit brief on the use of the ma7 as an ending chord and a perspective on an alternative to the idea of movement as tension/release. Maybe this latter is a bit of a sacred cow? You mentioned the release on resolving to the tonic at the end of Twist and Shout. The final chord in that song is D9. The blues has a lot to answer for!

I am relieved, dire tonic, that you find no harm done.

I re-read your post and see that I had mis-read your tone and will be more cautious in future.

I also see the folly of my ma7/flat 7 point. I was thinking of the non diatonic seventh on the tonic or subdominant.

Had we been corresponding by traditional mail rather than with the relative immediacy of the forum this would probably not have happened.

Thanks keystring for your helpful response about the chords and accidentals. I understand it now, at least through reading it. I think it will take awhile for all of this to become more ‘intuitive’ for me. So until then I’ll just keep referring to the helpful notes everyone is putting up in these threads!

And thanks keystring, dire tonic and Richard for the discussion about dissonance. I’m not sure I understood a lot of it. But I like the explanations of both the science of it, and how culture influences our expectations of how music should sound. I found the notes about the barbershop quartet interesting and went to listen to a few on Youtube after reading to hear how the voices combine to achieve a fifth voice.

As for dissonance, I think this is what I hear in ocean etude with some of the notes. In this piece I think of them as “growly” or "rumbly" note combinations. When I first started practicing the piece, I thought I must be hitting the wrong notes in these parts. But soon, with a little more tempo and in the context of the surrounding notes, those sounds made sense to my ear.

Re Lili Marlene 2e

Just in case anyone is still following the analysis of this particular piece,
I have another observation / question.

In one of these analysis fora the notion of "cadence" was introduced,
that is, V7-I or ii(7)-V7-I.

The ii(7)-V7-I pattern occurs repeatedly in Lili Marlene 2e.
Are all of these cadences?

In particular, consider M12-13:

The harmony is Dm7-G7-C then C7 and on to the final cadence.

Now on the surface, the Dm7-G7-C looks like a final cadence:
G7 in root position to C in root position;
melody ending on the tonic.

But to my ears. the C at the start of M13 doesn't sound at all like a stopping point. We want to hear the "resolution?" to the G over C7!--but that's a dissonance, right?

Certainly M11-12 are still solidly in the key of C.
What is pushing the music forward past this seeming cadence
into another dissonance?

Cadence doesn't actually mean two particular chords (V-I etc.). It means the end of a section or a piece, and this is indicated by such chords, and also through other elements of music such as rhythm. Very often the music will slow down, and before I could truly read music my eye would hunt for fat white notes instinctively. Music often uses a series of V-I and similar at the beginning in order to establish the tonic so that the ear gets set to that. I think that in jazz and non-classical "seven chords" are used more frequently (????)

In blues it's very common, ever-present. A lot of blues in the major key consists of nothing but 7ths on 1,4 and 5 then typically finishing on the tonic7. It creeps in everywhere, as you say, into jazz and pop music - e.g. Twist and Shout which we've seen finishes on the tonic9.

For the real thing listen to BB King in a major key or check out this rather sterile but very clear example. Almost everyone will have heard the standard blues endings at 2.22 showing also how context, and probably conditioning, affect our expectations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6TvaVqcKk

[obscenity deleted]

Thank you. Well, this tells us something right away. Namely, in one type of music you may have the "seven chord" (major triad, minor 7, as in C7) being a device for tension-resolution in the cadence sense. The whole music and expectations from custom set you up for that, because of the way the rough chord moves into a smooth one. But in other music that roughness is just a pleasant common texture. The textbook explanation that we are given, gives us a simplistic explanation that makes theory easy to understand -- and I'd use it that way --- but I'd also know that there's a large world.

At the top of bar 11, the melody is on F, so that's clearly not the end.

When we get to the C major triad and C melody note at the top of bar 13, try something: Make that a whole note, and just skip the rest of it. Play it that way a few times, trying very hard to forget that you know the rest of the song.

I think it's mainly that we all *know* that there's more melody to come.

The ii7 - V7 - I thing is kinda like a wheel that goes around and around. But it's a special wheel that can only stop on I.

I'm very comfortable with the process of finding where phrases and pieces end. I'm much less comfortable explaining it to someone else what to look for. I seem to rely on intuition and experience.

M12-13 does look like a ii-V-I cadence but isn't conclusive.

I would venture that the melody falling from D to C without being precedeed by a higher E, let alone G and F, is insufficient to close the piece.

Not wanting to get into hot water with continued remonstrance of the importance of the 3-2-1 (preferably 5-4-3-2-1) descent to tonic or the 7-8 rise from the leading note in the melodic line can anyone else offer an explanation as to why this is not a final cadence and how it is we "know" there's more to come?

By that I mean only that the song has been world famous since 1943. It would be quite rare to find a musician who doesn't know it. Of course the whole tune is better than the truncated version. But if it were possible to forget it, there is a resolution of sorts there.

Because there are two more chords in measure 13 that move the music along. I'm unfamiliar with the 3-2-1 idea. I'm sure that music ends in all kinds of fashions, but very often on the tonic.

Since Richard first pointed out 3-2-1 endings last year, I have started to notice them in a surprising number of places.

I stumbled upon a series of very interesting videos on youtube that could in my opinion be really helpful for someone interested in analysis: http://www.youtube.com/user/AustinTPatty/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=da

This is the question I'm trying to answer.

Why does the C at the start of M13 not feel like a stopping point - apart from more music being written after it?

If I remove M12-13 the only change is the tonic being arrived at via the leading note instead of the supertonic. Is the change from 2-1 to 7-8 enough to finish the music?

If I made the second F in M12 an E could the song finish on lamp? Would it be musically complete with a 3-2-1 finish?

If either change makes the song musically complete would it need another two bars to balance it proportionally? If it needed more by way of proportion, and I genuinely mean no disrespect here, would it matter if the next two bars ended on a major seventh or a ninth?

Is there something else that that I'm missing?

Because with the overall rhythm of the piece, an ending for the third part which is only 2 measures long would be too short. If that same passage was in beat 4 of the last section, it would sound final. However, climbing up from the leading note to the tonic is also more effective and final than coming down from the supertonic to the tonic. That is why the leading note is the leading note. If you are a singer or violinist, and not restrained by the tuning of a piano, you can even heighten it by making B closer than a half step to C.

Having written this, I also know what niggled at me about the idea of a rule that says you should have 3-2-1, and why now I'm fine with the overall idea. This rule gives me no feeling to the music at all - it's just a rule. But if I actually look at how music feels, then it is clear. If Oh Christmas tree were in C major, then the ending would be "B D C" We feel B as leading note wanting to go to C, the B and D circle the C like moths circle a flame, and then land in the C. Here there is a musical feeling, rather than a rule (which isn't a rule --- you are not "wrong" if you write music that doesn't end in 3-2-1).

Similarly, D to C isn't that strong, because the supertonic is a whole step away from the Tonic. There is no strong movement pulling D to C. D is neutral and is just as happy climbing up to E, as it is to go down to C. So if you have a 3-2-1 or 5-4-3-2-1 movement, it's like watching something slide down a hill, and you expect it to keep going in that direction. There is a downward momentum and a landing. I can accept 3-2-1 in that sense. But otoh, I prefer to feel it as music and explore, rather than remembering a rule and then looking for that rule. Music is sound.

Brilliant, keystring! I never thought of switching the bars.

Yes, it does sound final if I swich M13 and M15. So proportion also plays an important role.

ETA: It also works by duplicating either M13 or M15.

I did not take 3-2-1 as a rule. I took it as an observation. It's a result of observing and experimenting with music, not a rule that states things must be this way, or are always this way, or should be this way, or are wrong if they're not this way.

I find it useful to notice patterns in music, and describe them. Otherwise music is just a bunch of random patterns and there's no unity and no understanding for me.

I think it's a mistake to interpret the results of observations and the naming of patterns, as "rules." They may become principles that it's useful to remember if you want to compose in a specific style, but they're not rules. My ear is not sufficiently developed to be able to discover these principles purely by noodling at the piano, or even by playing written music and only responding aurally without thinking analytically about it, and so I appreciate learning about patterns and their typical effects. Not as a way of straitjacketing music with rules, but as a way of understanding music.

And landing on C instead of B in M14 lets me finish on other, even non-diatonic, notes/chords in M15 albeit with different parting moods so I'm learning a lot about this proportion business.

Richard, you wrote something earlier in regards to phrases, of being able to perceive them due to experience and instinct, but not being able to teach how to do it. I think this brings us to some interesting things.

One is that when we play music, we absorb patterns, just like a child can speak grammatically before learning grammar in school. That is, the child can say "I saw a dog run across the street." instead of jumbling dog, street, run, across. Theory then tries to get at those patterns and if you got them first instinctively, you'll say "Ah yes - now I see why I always seem to know this! That's what's behind it." Reversing this, without some backup theory, you have to dig in an actually try to see what it is that makes you hear a phrase as a phrase. Apparently whatever we do instinctively is harder to define to others. I've been told that the easiest thing to teach are the things that you struggled with yourself, because you had to take it apart or have it explained.

This leads to a second thought, namely that the stuff of music exists in and of itself, and we can sense a lot of it. The explanations in theory are a way of codifying it. As such it's a crude approximation of the real thing. And maybe we need overlapping different code systems to get a better picture since nothing fits 100%. Knowing this might help with potential disputes as people with different "systems" (classical, jazz, ear) come in. In the same vein, any "absolutes" that go "This is how it is, totally, no other way" should probably be considered with caution.

OK, this discussion of knowing instinctively about resolving to the tonic and all that reminded me of something that may be helpful and even amusing. Here's another melody that virtually everybody will recognize (even though I did it hastily by ear and didn't get the durations right).

It's just a one note melody line, no chords, which shows that it's the melody that resolves, the chords just go along for the ride.

It also illustrates the business about familiarity with a melody, and knowing how it's supposed to go. (The last note here doesn't go where it's supposed to.... ;-) )


http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/ResolutionExample.pdf

http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/ResolutionExample.mp3


I'll be out of town on business all next week, so I'll see your responses perhaps on the 24th.

Hi, all. I've been away a while. But I find this discussion very illuminating.
Clearly the rhythm of LM requires the other 2 measures, so that does push it along.
(But then what about God Save the King, which seems to be missing a measure?).

I also found the 3-2-1 vs 2-1 makes sense when I listen to it.
Switching measures, to me it sounds OK with FDC (498) at the end,
but the FBC (47,1) in the middle seems harder to get past.
So I guess that reinforces your point.

And John reminded me of another issue:
why do we name the chords and do the harmony from the bass up?
Why not melody down--if indeed the melodic progression defines the tension-resolution?

I don't know whether I mentioned this before, but from singing in a choir,
I got the impression that the harmony follows the melody, not vice-versa.
Soprano of course has the melody,
the alto follows the soprano typically a third/sixth down,
the tenor line rides "above" the melody but an octave down,
and the bass pounds away on 1, 5 and 4 to keep the beat going.

My piano teacher of the last 2 years uses a "method"
that consists of learning some kind of "walking bass" line in LH (I may be mis-using terms),
rooted in the chord-name note,
with melody in RH and one or two notes of the "chord" (from lead sheet) in the RH below the melody note.
It's a bit different from the LH-chord RH-melody of typical "chord" methods,
and also from the two-part approach of "beginner classical" methods,
but I'm thinking it's probably more musically complete.

His approach to composition (at least for students) is to invent a chord sequence
(e.g. put I at the beginning, V7 I at the end, and "roll dice" for the middle),
make up a melody that fits the chords, then "harmonize" it as described above.

From where does the measure appear to be missing in G S the Q?

We tend to hear music from the bass up though this apparently isn't universal to all cultures. The bass is more fundamental to the music whereas the melody can adapt itself to lyrics, for example, that change from verse to verse. Early music forms such as chaconnes, passacaglias and grounds depend on the regularity of the bass.

The harmony follows the melody? can you be more specific as to whether you mean in the writing or the performing, etc.

The melody isn't always the highest note. Frequently in contemporary music the harmony is a third or sixth above the melody. And The Beatles used harmony a fifth apart in Love Me Do. Something of a novelty, I believe.

For choral harmony, it's logical for the alto to take the closest note down from the melody as long as it doesn't break the 'rules' of harmony as in parallel fifths, etc. The bass tends to keep to the root notes on the stronger beats and the tenor has to fit in with what's left, often having to double another voice when the harmony squeezes into close triads.

The composition varies with genre, style and effect.

To get something in the style of Springsteen, for example, where you want something anthemic and suitable for live performance, you want to keep the melody within a small compass using only four or five notes most of the time (Philadelphia, Born in the USA) then the chord first method is ideal. If you're writing for a woman's voice like Annie Lennox and want a wider vocal range (Love Is a Stranger, Right By Your Side) I prefer to write the melody on piano or a recorder and consider the harmony as an afterthought.

For beat music it's often a good idea to start with a rhythmic base such as a drum machine pattern and the poetic style of Dylan might best start with the lyrics. Elton John's music is always lyrics first, of course, and being composed on piano rather than guitar stands out as more poetical, melodic and often more adventurous harmonically.

If you're thinking of moving in that direction I would try different styles and forms regularly and often.