petezombie

I've been frustrated with this problem before; however I think a lot of what is beautiful about music is within the mistranslation you get between the ideas in your head and the notes you actually play. One thing I found interesting is how I remember melodies differently in my head after I hear or come up with them. I came up with this whole tone melody and i put these chords underneath to link them all up harmonically; every time I try to sing the melody to myself on the street I always end up singing it more diatonically and correcting all the diminished fifths into perfect ones. But I know a lot of people tend to do that anyway. This probably did not really answer any questions for you, but at least it made me exited!

Hello! I am currently reading Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony and I just arrived at the Minor Mode chapter where he begins to discuss the use of pivot tones in order to use leading notes within the Natural Minor scale. I guess in a way pivot tones are way of using the leading tone progression possible with the Melodic Minor scale while still maintaining the tonal impressions of the Natural Minor scale. I'm just really confused when I try to put these theories into practice and I get this impression that Schoenberg is contradicting the rules he set down at the beginning of the chapter in his examples (which I'm sure he's not and it's probably just my confusion if anything). I think it mainly has to do with when he talks about "chromatic raising" on page 102; using the A minor scale in these examples he talks about how if "two successive chords employ f [subtonic] and f sharp [leading note] respectively, then the same voice that had the f must take the f sharp respectively". However I thought that the rules he set up at the beginning of the chapter stated that f must go to e since it belongs to the descending form of the scale (natural minor) and f sharp must go to g sharp since it is apart of the ascending form of the scale (melodic minor). I'm just confused about how chromatic movement can be used without compromising the laws of the pivot tones. I apologize if any of this sounds confusing; in fact it might only make a little sense for someone who has read this book. In any case I'm mainly asking if anyone has either read this specific chapter in the book and can help me understand or if anyone could recommend any theory books with regards to handling pivot tones within the Minor Mode. Thanks for reading this and i hope to hear from you soon, Pete.

Hello, I just started working on a paper for my music class that is due in a weeks time; the objective of the paper is to take a piece by Beethoven and compare three different performances of that piece. I've decided to use the 6th Symphony mainly because I have a great performance by the Boston Symphony orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein on DVD which I want to use. However I'm looking for two more performances of the piece and I was wondering if anybody on this fine forum could recommend any performances by specific orchestras and conductors that they enjoyed and found interesting. Since this piece is considered one of Beethoven's most programmatic I was thinking of maybe focusing on how different performance treated these extra musical features like the bird calls and the storm. I wanted to see how far different conductors tried to evoke extra musical imagery or whether they tried to keep it strictly musical, if that makes sense. This is just an initial idea though and no approach to this paper will really be concrete until I finally find two other performances which I want to use. If anybody has any thoughts on the 6th symphony or noticed anything interesting about specific performances they have heard I would love to hear about it, anything that will spark any ideas in my mind is welcome! Thanks for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon, Pete.