This month, we have
the pleasure to announce that Pizzicato has found a new
companion software, EarMaster. This software is
developed by a Danish company and is really wonderful for ear
training.
It answers the
questions related to how you can learn skills like singing in
tune, recognizing intervals, chords and scales, playing with
high rhythmic precision, and much more. It gives you numerous
practical exercises to increase and develop these abilities.
You can discover
EarMaster at www.arpegemusic.com/earmaster.htm and buy it on the main
Pizzicato order page. By using it, you will also increase
your familiarity with the basic elements of music, as we
describe them in this letter. So, become a better musician
and develop your skills with EarMaster!
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You can now watch all
the Pizzicato videos on YouTube, on Arpege Music's channel at
www.youtube.com/arpegemusic
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A free corrective
update, Pizzicato 3.4.3 will soon be available. Consult www.arpegemusic.com/clients3.htm
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Back to music
composition. Last month, we analyzed music as a composite of
six basic elements: Rhythm, Melody,
Harmony, Sound, Effects
and Form. These are the bricks that build up
a piece of music. Each one of them can take many different
shapes and aspects, but the important point here is to be
able to recognize them and know that they exist.
These six elements are
very elementary. By thinking about them when you listen to
music, you can watch how the composer used these basic blocks
of music.
Now, what is the next
level in building a piece of music?
If we can observe the
presence of these elements in any music, it does not mean
that we are able to create a piece of music just by knowing
that these 6 elements exist. Being able to observe the
various kinds of bricks that make up a house does not mean
you can yourself build a house. Another level of approach
must be studied. Other skills must be developed.
We will cover here a
series of viewpoints on music. They may seem arbitrary. They
are! But you will find that each one corresponds to a
subjective concept, to something that can be observed and
experienced by the attentive listener.
The advantage of these
viewpoints on music is that you can use them to shape music
the way you want. They form an intermediate way to describe
how music evolves. They represent an expressed form of music
that lays between your global concept of a music and the real
notes and sounds of that music.
They describe what the
listener experiences while listening to a piece of music. But
their main interest in music composition is that they give
you a path to go from an idea or feeling to a real music
composition, with notes and instruments.
We will analyze these
viewpoints in both ways. The first one is the passive way.
Listen to music and "see" the music through these
viewpoints, so you become accustomed to your new
"musical eyes". By doing so, you can establish
links with the six basic elements of music and notice how
each one of them may interact with each viewpoint. So this
makes a lot of possible combinations. The second way to
analyze these viewpoints on music is to apply these
observations and combinations to the reverse process, which
is when you have a conceptual idea of a music composition and
you want to give it a substantial form with notes and
instruments. So this is a path that can be used to compose
music.
At this point, I have
located at least nine different viewpoints that can be useful
for music analysis and composition. Each viewpoint may be
analyzed in combination with the six basic music blocks
already mentioned or any combination of them. So we have many
combinations and examples to cover for the next few letters.
Let us start right away...
What do I
really mean by the word "viewpoint"?
It is simply a
specific quality of music that can be observed objectively
and/or subjectively. You will find that some viewpoints are
more subjective and others are more objective. But you, as a
person, will be able to experience and observe the phenomenon
I will be talking about.
To give you an
example, if you look at a row of persons, you can objectively
observe their relative sizes, whether they are male or
female, the colors of their garments. More subjectively, you
can feel their attitudes, whether they seem happy or sad,
interested or bored. Well, the music viewpoints we will talk
about are similar criteria, but they are applicable to a
piece of music.
Keep this definition
in mind while we inspect and analyze these musical
viewpoints. They are "angles" from which we may
analyze and view music.
Viewpoints and
the layers of music construction
Before analyzing the
first viewpoint, here is a useful description of the general
process of music composition, related to the viewpoints. You
can roughly divide the process of music composition into
three main layers.
The starting point of
a music composition may be many different things, but it sure
must include your first idea of what you want to express with
your music composition. Let's take an easy example. You love
her very much (if you are a women, you love him very much :-)
and you want to express this deep feeling into music. Well
this "I love her (or him)" is the first point. It
is the highest level of your composition. Your composition is
expressed here in its purest form, as a pure idea or feeling
or emotion that you want to express. This first step could be
practically anything you can think of. The only condition
would be that you really mean it and feel it as yours and you
really want to express it. This is the top level layer of
music composition, high in the sky, you might say. Now if you
want to express this into a music composition, you have to go
down to earth, into more practical actions then dreaming
about your feelings...
Now, the lowest layer
of a music composition is something that can be played by
musicians so that the final music will actually express your
original, high level feelings. To go from the ideas and
feelings to a score full of precise notes and rhythms written
on paper is not so obvious and many persons wanting to
compose music will just become quite lost in the process.
There is nothing like a 'unique universal method' to go from
one pure idea to a nice music composition. There are only
paths to go from one point to another.
The introduction of
musical viewpoints is just another path to go from ideas to
finished music composition. It is an intermediate layer,
between high level concepts and real notes written on paper,
ready to be played.
So we have:
1. Highest layer =
Ideas, feelings, emotions
2. Intermediate
layer = Musical viewpoints and their evolution
3. Lowest layer =
a score with precise notes and instruments, as a
combination of the six basic elements of music
So let us analyze the
first proposed viewpoint.
Musical
viewpoint number 1 - Orderliness
We could call it
"order versus disorder" or "order against
chaos".
Music is obviously
sound that has been organized. For sounds that have not been
organized, we use the word noise.
What is the basis of
"being organized"? Of course, it is the
introduction of order into a series of elements, so that they
are well assembled together, they all fit together well. But
what is order? How do you perceive that various elements have
been assembled in an orderly fashion? A definition of order
found in a dictionary says "A condition of regular
or proper arrangement". Another interesting
definition says "Logical or comprehensible
arrangement of separate elements".
Let us take an
example. Let us take many books and place them at regular
intervals on a table, all in vertical position and facing the
same direction. Let us say that on another table, the same
quantities of books are just thrown there randomly. Any
sensible observer will say that the first table represents
order and the second table represents the lack of order,
which is disorder (the word chaos would be used for
an extreme disorder).
The books on the first
table will obviously look like they have been arranged
according to a predefined pattern. They are in similar
positions, they are all books, they are the same distance
apart from each other. From these observations, we can say
that order will be noticed whenever a series of similar
elements are present, arranged in time or space according to
a regular pattern, a somewhat repeating pattern.
For our purposes, let
us use the following practical definition:
The
orderliness of a system is increased by the presence of
similarities and decreased by the presence of
differences, amongst its component parts.
The elements of a
music composition are obviously assembled in an orderly way.
A program that would assemble notes, rhythms and sounds on a
complete random basis would never get agreements from people
as to being a nice music composition.
But order is not an
absolute quality. There can be many degrees of order. We can
compare the two tables and say that the first table has more
order in it than the second table. But compared to a fire
where all the books are burning, both tables will look much
more in order than the burning books. So it is always
relative.
So we need to study
the relative degrees of order inside music and specifically
in relationship with the six basic elements of music.
Let us start with rhythm.
If we listen to a
regular beat, we can say that - by the above definition - the
order present in that beat is very high. Each note is the
same (sameness is the highest level of similarity) and each
beat is separated from the previous beat by the same time
duration. This is the simplest rhythm that can be and it has
a high level of order in it. All its component parts are the
same, there is no difference. It is quite easy for the
listener to notice this simple form of rhythm.
Listen to the example...
Listen to this simple
example for a while and experiment what you feel about that
simple rhythm. After a few beats, you can completely
understand its pattern. You can easily agree with the rhythm
and create it inside your head. There is no mystery left, it
is so obvious. And it becomes rapidly boring and
uninteresting.
If two musicians play
a regular rhythm, but with a different tempo and with no
attention to each other, what will happen? If you concentrate
on one of the beats and try to ignore the other, you will
find it regular and ordered. Same with the other beat. But
the combination of two different rhythms will create a
general atmosphere of disorder. Two things are there, but
they are not synchronized, they are not arranged harmoniously
with each other and at the same time they are part of the
same sound context.
Listen to the example...
So there is a big
difference in the component parts of the sound and at the
same time there are similarities, as the two beats are each
one repeated regularly and use the same sound. According to
your tolerance level for order and disorder, you will be able
to appreciate it by following the two patterns independently,
or you will reject it as incomprehensible and you will not
appreciate it at all. The perception of order is then
relative to the subject who perceives it.
Now take a random
pattern, with different instruments and with random beat
durations.
Listen to the example...
There are too much
differences and almost no similarities in this example. How
do you feel while listening to it? Do you understand it? Do
you like it? What is lacking in it? It does not contain much
order and will probably seem like random noise to you. Almost
no aesthetic value as a whole.
Now take the following
rhythm.
Listen to the example...
What is your
experience while listening to it? When you listen to the
first few notes, you will notice that there are different
durations between each notes. The notes are from the same
instrument, so there is a similarity, but the durations will
at first look much different and not comprehensible. But
after a few moments, you will notice that the same pattern
repeats itself. When you hear the pattern for the third time,
you feel like you have understood the pattern and the first
feeling of disorder will easily change into a feeling of
order. Did you experience it that way?
If you play it again,
your reaction will be different, as you now know that the
pattern is regular and you have the pattern in mind. This
shows you that by listening to a music many times, you can
learn to understand its orderliness and at the same time the
feeling of order will increase. Orderliness is then not only
relative to the listener, but it can also change as the
listener acquires a deeper understanding of the music he
listens to.
The next newsletter
will continue on that subject, as there is more to observe
about orderliness and rhythm. As rhythm is a quite simple
phenomenon, we will be able to analyze it much deeper and
discover some rules that are applicable to music composition.
Right now, I suggest
you watch the following YouTube videos. They are related to
rhythm and percussion instruments. For each one of them,
discover the effect they have upon you. Watch them several
times and see if your viewpoint changes, specifically, the
orderliness viewpoint, your feeling about how much order or
disorder you can observe.
Then you can do the
same with any music you like and focus on noticing the
rhythmic orderliness generated by the music. In the next
letter, we will analyze more about rhythmic orderliness.
Dominique
Vandenneucker
Designer of Pizzicato
