Maddrummer

Psalm 5 from the Latin Vulgate Bible. This was my final project for 16th century counterpoint. This is the "sing along" audio file too, it gives you the starting pitches and then a countoff. Anyway, I talk a lot about counterpoint on here so I thought I'd both put up and shut up. Verba Mea

part of a full length song cycle, this is the second song. no score upload yet, no need. In this little bit we get the melody and chords, more to come later. This isn't finished but it's a solid start Number 2 Number 2

probably a little late on this but it's also pandiatonic, or he could be using polytonality. both would "technically" be correct, you could argue either

In a funk yesterday. there's a quote from victoria's "O Magnum Mysterium" (not the mass) in there, for a reason too. small brass chamber ensemble. no score, just listen. if you have question about chords or construction that's cool and i could put a score up if that's the case. Chorale

Mk. First things first. The original natural modes are Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian...maybe Aeolian, I'll need to check that, but not Ionian. These modes all have a finalis and a reciting tone (these later become tonic and dominant, but don't think of them this way, they are not synonymous). The finalis is the note the mode starts and ends on, and the reciting tone is the pitch that they would hover around for text. essentially. there's some history there i'm a little sketchy on. The clefs they used were a little different. they used the treble, soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass clefs. 99% of the time you will not find ledger lines in this kind of music, and that's because they clef fits the range of the material. There are also plagal forms of each mode. a plagal mode will have the "hypo-" prefix. hypodorian, hypomixolydian, etc. the plagal mode is transposed down a 4th, so hypodorian is g to g, but d is still the finalis. This is important because they would stick to these ranges for each voice, plus or minus one note. The way it usually works in 3 voice texture would be that top voice is the natural mode (dorian), the middle is the plagal form (hypodorian) and the lowest is the natural (dorian again). This is all in the introduction in the Gauldin too, but if you have questions about that text I can help with that too

The thing about Baroque counterpoint is that it's got a lot of idioms that don't make much sense without the history behind them. Also, method's of teaching counterpoint didn't exist until about 100 years after the actual style was written. In 1725 Joseph Fux published this book called "Dr. Gradus Ad Parnossum" which broke down counterpoint into pedagogy for the first time in history. Before that, they would learn the uber basics and then be off into the world of composition, and if they couldn't make it, they weren't meant to write music. We don't do that anymore, we know how to teach and have broken their styles into a science/art thing that anybody can learn with enough patience. If you really want to learn counterpoint, learn 16th century counterpoint. Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, Byrd, and Josquin were the big names, we study their compositions most often. The way the pedagogy is set up is with 5 species. 1. whole note against whole note 2. whole against half 3. whole against quarter 4. syncopated half against whole 5. florid (free, embellished) counterpoint. anything against anything (sort of, there are still rules) Then you've got hard rules and soft rules. If you break a hard rule, you're not writing counterpoint anymore. the hard rules are what really make a composition "counterpoint". if you break a soft rule, you're not writing in the style of the time period. In 16th century counterpoint, they didn't think about music vertically at all. they didn't have chords yet, they had sonorities. It was all modal instead of major/minor, and it was all about consonance with the bass. If you learn 16th century, baroque (18th century) will make much more sense and be much easier and more natural. As far as books go, Robert Gauldin's got books on both 16th and 18th century counterpoint. Then you've got Fux (pronounced either fox or foox, it's not pronounced how it looks lol) Fux's Dr. Gradus and The Study of Counterpoint both deal with palestrina's style. In 16th century, once you get far enough and into complex enough compositions, you can see major/minor tonality start to emerge and see where a lot of idioms we still use today in tonal writing come from. The biggest rules, no parallel octaves/fifths, comes from 16th century counterpoint, along with rules one rhythm, range, dissonance, melodic intervals, all kinds of cadences (they're more complicated in this style), canons (no fugues yet, but they had strict canons which later develop into fugues. can't have fugues without key relationships, but you can see where the rules for fugues come from with this style) if you're interested in more, i could point you to some awesome scores to study and how to study them, what to look for, why it's important, how they solved certain problems, all that stuff. For example, you can't write an authentic cadence in phrygian. here's why Cantizans pattern D E Tenorizans pattern F E Bass pattern B E The B in the bass against the F in the tenorizans pattern is super not allowed. you can't correct the F with an F# (its a rule, no f sharps unless it's at a cadence, usually only mixolydian) and you can't correct the B with a Bb, because then you'd have a melodic tritone which is not allowed. And the way they solved this later became the phrygian half cadence. It's tons of stuff like that all over the place anyway, that's my way-more-than 2 cents, but I love 16th century counterpoint and I think everybody that wants to write music should know at least a good deal about it. if you have any more questions feel free to message me, i never get tired of this stuff

This piece is programmatic, and not about the pitches very often. the beginning is about density, and space and color. always color, this piece focuses on different colors and textures. there is a moment of diatonic goodness that i really like, but it goes away Sanguine Dreams

some of the treatments of dissonances were treating uncharacteristically, like in bar 9. you've got dissonance on the weak beat, which is good, it's just not treated in the style. in bar, you've got a 9th between the voices on the 4th eighth note. the c is passing in the bass, which is good, but you leap too and from that dissonance in the top voice. that happens every time those themes play together too. to our ears it sounds fine, but it's not how they would have written that back in the day. The same with some of those chromatic passages in the second voice. it's not totally uncharacaristic, especially in some of the later baroque, but you're mixing stylistic elements of early and late baroque and it gets a little confusing. Some of the time, the independence of the second part in the treble staff gets lost, especially in bars 15-18. It's really pretty though, I enjoyed it This kind of writing is not easy at all, and you've done a great job with it

It looks like you have a C trumpet playing insanely low in bar 28, it's generally considered bad practice to go below an A on a Bb trumpet, and you can use the G as long as it's sparingly. Maybe an alternative would be a trombone, or viola an octave up, or a trumpet an octave up with some kind of mute? Also, in bar 33 you have the contrabassoon playing unison with the bassoon. Why is this? The Largo section needs more interest. The first few bars are ok, but in the third bar it repeats again. Have you thought about adding any special effects? maybe some moving lines in the low winds, or some fluttery things in the high winds. something to distract the listener's ear from the fact that it's repeating itself. it's also generally not considered good to have series of whole notes like that in the maestoso, unless you're going for some sort of chorale. it might be good to experiment with different ways of suggesting those same harmonies, but without using long tones in most of the voices. arpeggios, melodic lines that emphasize those notes, hocketed lines, things like that really activate the texture and generate a lot of interest. It's good, this is exactly what you do to learn these things, nice work!

There was a surprising amount of technical work that went into this piece, considering how relaxed the actual piece is. Fantastic learning experience, and I'm very happy with the end result :) Graverobber

Mixes a funky 7/8 9/8 alternating ostinato with jazz harmonies, and some bluesy melodies. If you like it, why not check out this link below... ;)http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/transient-single/id413349690 Transient

wut? i was just asking. they sound good, i like those percussion sounds more than the stock finale ones

what percussion sound library are you using on this?

Also, and I should have said this earlier, instead of stating that you dislike parts of this piece, why not ask why I did things the way I did? Those notes didn't get there by accident, and I do have reasons for making the choices I did. Maybe the rhythm serves a specific purpose, maybe I like the sound of those modulations. I appreciate you taking the time to comment on this, but do you have anything objective to say about it? subjective is well and good, but it really isn't that much of a help to refining a piece of music.

it is a funeral march :|