Running out of music

[Karlos]

motorollin wrote:

Of course I realise that there is more to music than just sequences of notes, but I still maintain that two pieces of music which contain the same sequence of notes in the same order are bound to sound similar.

Try listening to some of Hybrid's "Additional Remix and Production By" to see how different a melody can sound even when unmodified, just by changing the harmony that goes with it. If you listen to their remix of Filter's "Take A Picture", where the vocals (transposed up about a semitone) are used against a somewhat melancholic backdrop it sounds nothing like the original uptempo song...

[Wain]

So if you heard Bach's IVth played with a varied rythm, tempo or form, would you consider it a different piece of music? Or someone attempting to use someone else's work to make something new?

Bach's fourth what?

What I'm saying is that I can take a piece by a previous composer and make it completely unidentifiable by altering its rhythm, tempo, and form...it's really quite easy to do.  Pitch material has nothing to do with what makes a piece of music familiar to the ear.  This is evidenced by the fact that most of us do not have perfect pitch, yet can identify Beethoven's 5th.

Most importantly...changing the form would completely alter the piece into something remarkably different, the changing of form requires that the material be drastically altered (including the necessary deletion, addition, or restructuring of new material)...remember form determines underlying harmonic structure, shape, development, and process of a motive or melody.  Just so we don't get sidetracked, remember my point is that there are infinite varieties of form, which provides us with another of many reasons why we aren't "repeating" music from the past.

More specifically, yes, it is quite possible to change ANY piece of music into a completely different sounding piece by altering the rhythmic properties of said piece.  There are an awful LOT of serial pieces that use the same row and are not identifiably similar.

I beg your pardon?

 What I was saying here is that if you were talking about 20th century orchestral works than it's likely that the reason you feel that way is because you don't know how to "hear" them...I'm not saying whether this is the case or not, but the general public doesn't tend to enjoy a lot of pitch-collection based music purely because their ears are attuned to the standard tonal V-I idiom, and they don't know what to listen for...which in turn makes it seem kind of rambling and pointless...if not horribly noisy.

[motorollin]

Wain wrote:
Bach's fourth what?

Symphony.

Wain wrote:
What I'm saying is that I can take a piece by a previous composer and make it completely unidentifiable by altering its rhythm, tempo, and form

Interesting...

Wain wrote:
Beethoven's 5th.

Beethoven's 5th what?

Wain wrote:
What I was saying here is that if you were talking about 20th century orchestral works than it's likely that the reason you feel that way is because you don't know how to "hear" them...I'm not saying whether this is the case or not,

Oh ok then :-) Rest assured my musical education is sufficient for me to understand what I'm hearing!

Wain wrote:
but the general public doesn't tend to enjoy a lot of pitch-collection based music purely because their ears are attuned to the standard tonal V-I idiom, and they don't know what to listen for...which in turn makes it seem kind of rambling and pointless...if not horribly noisy.

I can understand that. I remember when I was studying for my A Level in music one of our set pieces was The Rite of Spring. At first it sounded horribly dissonant. It does take time for your ear to tune in to it and realise that music doesn't have to be "nice" to be beautiful.

I am struggling with this very concept with my other half. I'm trying to educate him to the beauty of Radiohead, but he can't see past the melancholy melodies and Thom's often harrowing voice. He'll take I-IV-V-I any day :lol:

--
moto

[Wain]

Quote:

    Wain wrote:
    Bach's fourth what?


Symphony.


Quote:

    Wain wrote:
    Beethoven's 5th.


Beethoven's 5th what?

I'm picking on you.  JS Bach didn't write any symphonies.  Symphonies are more relegated to the classical period.  If you're talking about sinfonia as Bach used the term, those are a different thing.  Regardless, musicologists don't use nomenclature like this in regards to Bach.  Whereas in Beethoven it is, while colloquial, assumed to mean the symphony.  I did want to make sure you weren't talking about one of the Brandenburg concertos or a Tocatta or the like however.

I can understand that. I remember when I was studying for my A Level in music one of our set pieces was The Rite of Spring. At first it sounded horribly dissonant. It does take time for your ear to tune in to it and realize that music doesn't have to be "nice" to be beautiful.

 and the Rite of Spring is still essentially tonal...it's got nothing on Webern or Ligeti or Penderecki in terms of being listen-able to the average layperson.

 :-D

Interesting...

Think about it like this...I can write a piece that begins with [10|8|6] (which many pieces do), I can take p10, place it at a low octave and hold it at a grave tempo for 6 bars of 4/4, then rest 1 measure and a 64th of a beat, play p8 at octave 6 as a grace note to p6 at octave 3.

This will absolutely not sound ANYTHING like three blind mice, even if I repeat it.
 :-)

[motorollin]

Wain wrote:
I'm picking on you.

Oops, just spotted my error. I meant Brahms :oops: I'm glad you mentioned Bach Toccatas actually. I forgot I've got a book of all of them somewhere - think I'll dig it out and see if I can still play them :-)

Wain wrote:
JS Bach didn't write any symphonies.  Symphonies are more relegated to the classical period.

Eugh, nothing ruins symphonies like being forced to pick the structure to pieces for an exam!

Wain wrote:
and the Rite of Spring is still essentially tonal...it's got nothing on Webern or Ligeti or Penderecki in terms of being listen-able to the average layperson.

I have never listened to those composers. Must look them up - thanks. I had never heard anything like the Rite Of Spring until I studied for my A level. Up until that point all of my musical training had been focussed on classical and baroque niceties. Imagine my shock when I heard Stravinsky for the first time! It was quite an eye-opener.

Wain wrote:
Think about it like this...I can write a piece that begins with [10|8|6] (which many pieces do), I can take p10, place it at a low octave and hold it at a grave tempo for 6 bars of 4/4, then rest 1 measure and a 64th of a beat, play p8 at octave 6 as a grace note to p6 at octave 3.

This will absolutely not sound ANYTHING like three blind mice, even if I repeat it.
 :-)

Actually you have just convinced me with that very example. Those same notes are the same ones which appear in, for example "Let It Be" by The Beatles (although with a different rhythm and stress). Yet that also sounds nothing like Three Blind Mice :-)

--
moto

[Wain]

Eugh, nothing ruins symphonies like being forced to pick the structure to pieces for an exam!

AGREED!!!! :-P
Music history and analysis classes drive me absolutely insane.

I will warn you that Ligeti and Penderecki typically composed in a style usually referred to as "form and process" music, there are other terms as well, but it's really messed up stuff.  They tend to work with clouds of sound as a texture.  (Ligeti is one of my favorite composers of all time, he's influenced a LOT of my orchestral work)

Ligeti's most famous work Atmospheres has over 70 staves in the score.  The 50-something strings are all individually divisi...and playing different things simultaneously.  It's used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  He also wrote a piece for 112 metronomes...it's utterly hilarious to listen to.

Penderecki's most famous work is Threnody for victims of Hiroshima...it's pretty amazing, he manages to create things that sound like helicopters and air-raid sirens orchestrally.

Webern was a student of Schoenberg, part of the second Viennese school, and is the quintessential king of serialism.  There's not much more to be said there, in my experience ppl tend to either like serialism or not for the most part.  He's the  first real genuine master of post-tonal composition...Schoenberg and Berg both tended to have tonal elements(or echoes thereof) in their work.

Cheers!
 :-D