In my last post I raised the idea that the consonance of an interval is not just one thing, but has two distinct parts: The sensation created by the sound of the two notes played together — smooth or rough, pleasant or unpleasant The sense of stability of the note — does it feel restful,…
I just passed the 10,000 photo mark on the stop motion animations, good thing I’m not hand-drawing them like Winsor McCay! The one I’m working on, Real Girl, has a lot of dissonant notes in it. The melody ranges far from the roots and makes some slightly dizzying harmonic jumps. I want to use it…
I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been working on an animation of my song Real Girl. It’s a complicated one, a dance of harmonic tension and resolution. The bass and melody chase each other around the lattice like courting butterflies. Meanwhile, there’s more to be extracted from the Be Love video. A mode is a…
At the very end of the chorus, Be Love showcases one of my favorite notes, the 7b3. Most of the notes of the inner lattice can be approximated on the piano, but not the septimal minor third. It’s in between the keys. Blues pianists can evoke it by trilling between 2 and b3, but only variable-pitch instruments…
The chorus of Be Love is solidly in major territory. The chords are I, V, IV, the classic backbone chords of the major scale. The verse, however, is going to be back in the Northwest — I, bVII-, IV. I have to get back over there somehow, and I want to lead the ear strongly so…
The V chord, the major chord based on the 5, is a powerful compositional tool. It points, very clearly and with a lot of tension, directly at the tonic. If you want to lead the ear to the I, the V chord is the top-of-the-line triad. Why this is so is still a bit mysterious…
Be Love was written and arranged on the lattice. I consciously used the lattice as a tool to make the music do what I wanted it to do. Working with this song has taught me a lot about leading the ear. Different parts of the lattice have different sounds. The upper right, the northeast, is…
There are two basic directions on the lattice: multiplication and division. If I start with a note, and then multiply it by 3, or 5, or 7, I will get a harmony note with overtonal energy. Such a note is in the natural overtone series of the original note. Overtonal energy is stable, restful, it…
An interval, in music, is the difference in pitch between two notes. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition: In music theory, an interval is the difference between two pitches. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or harmonic…