Music myths!

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AK
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Re: Music myths!

Post by AK »

4am wrote:
AK wrote:
4am wrote:because every instrument has a different range, the root note of the scale has an impact on the notes that the instrumentalist has at his disposal.
i mean that if, e.g a bass guitar has an E as lower note, and the piece is in Eflat, the bassist will be (unless detuning) able to play the root note only one octave higher -> the finger positions used depend on the tonality.
this has a more noticeable impact when wind instruments (e.g. saxophones) are involved, that's why a lot of jazz music is in Bflat (tenor sax) or Eflat (alto sax).

classic musicians care more about the tonality of the pieces.
bach wrote a piece in every tonality when he developed the tempered scales, but i think it was more intended as a reference to establish this new tuning.
The particular range of some of those instruments are not why the argument exists where different scales convey different moods. This was something Beethoven believed in and Sax and Bass Guitar weren't even invented then. I'm nopt sure what you mean but does the above mean you subscribe to this theory?
i mean that the range of every instrument and the tonality of the piece played influence the approach you have when you play it. my opinion is that the different feeling perceived is more influenced by this factor, than by the root note.
what really determinates the emotion is the color of the harmony (major, minor, diminished etc.).

beethoven is a special case, he had serious hearing problems (at first tinnitus, and later completely deaf), and from the middle of his life on wrote music basing on his internal hearing and memory. i'm not sure he's the best reference for this question, i'm also not sure he isn't...

Yeah I understand what you are saying as far as this goes. I'm not really up on the certain registers of any given instrument etc but essentially, this guy was using Piano as the medium for the tunes played to the students.

Anyway, I did this thing last night where I have some sketch composition ideas on a Yamaha groovebox and I cycled to my favourite ones and transposed them up and down 1, 2, 3, and 4 semitones. I'm disagreeing with the fact that I nearly agreed now, I think it sounds well different to how I heard the tunes as I sketched them out.

So I've come full cycle again and I'm back where I started, I DO think transposition alters the mood of a piece of music. Fck what that John Powell says. :lol:
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Re: Music myths!

Post by NoAffiliation »

scales theoretically should sound the same because of the orthogonal relationship of the notes in their perspective vector space. the music exists because gravity exists. our "subjective" anticipation and emotional response to music is directly related to the fact that for our purposes as humans walking, the earth is flat. -surprised flower

one of the members on this site has a piet mondrian as their avatar. the majority of his body of work investigated the relationship between orthogonal lines and primary colors
Torque
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Re: Music myths!

Post by Torque »

There's not a big difference between the emotion solely based on root keys. But there is a big difference between emotional effect when changing keys. I rarely hear much techno that completely changes key which is a shame because there is allot of power in that.
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Re: Music myths!

Post by oblioblioblio »

very very hard to do it right w/ techno.

I quite like key changes in deep bass... that's a nice way to use that emotional power.
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hydrogen
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Re: Music myths!

Post by hydrogen »

Torque wrote:There's not a big difference between the emotion solely based on root keys. But there is a big difference between emotional effect when changing keys. I rarely hear much techno that completely changes key which is a shame because there is allot of power in that.
Isn't this why DJing is so important in techno? Its what got me hyped about it in the first place. Straightfoward tunes and the Dj builds the progression. Unlike trance or progressive house where that is all done for you.
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Barfunkel
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Re: Music myths!

Post by Barfunkel »

Key change can easily sound very cheesy and trance-y, it's kinda hard to get right, especially in techno.
AK
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Re: Music myths!

Post by AK »

I don't agree with a key change being 'trancey', I'm not quite sure how you arrived at that, not that I listen to trance but I doubt it features much modulation of key sigs.

Anyway, for me, I'd imagine the usual song construction of more commercial genres might throw up challenges such as making your track 'song-like'. For me parallel keys don't really qualify as a key change, like C major/A minor, it's just the same notes but with an altered tonal centre so it just sounds like a 'bridge or a chorus' etc.

I'm more concerned with using chords to create certain feelings and moods rather than trying to specifically change key co's it might be cool to do it. Chords that aren't necessarily diatonic with the key sig are things I find interesting as it forces you to harmonize them in challenging ways and you get to develop a nice almost 'alternative' sound. But with something like a key change, it can also create a lot of interest to the music. Probably not a thing you'd want with pounding Techno but I don't like to think about what I'm writing, I just call it electronica, I know some people hate that but I think when you instantly label your music, you can get trapped into the current trend of things like musical fashion.

I think with obvious key modulations you can end up song-like, moving from C major to G major for example, it's easy to do as all you do is omit the F and introduce an F# but say you were in C minor and the tonal centre is based around a Cm chord, having a section of music that moves to say F#m completely changes the feel of things, the move from C to F# is a tritone and creates tension but obviously all that would depend on how well the music has been written around this type of thing.

I have a passion for tritone based stuff though so I'm biased! :P
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Re: Music myths!

Post by JonasEdenbrandt »

AK: Transposing your own stuff like that dosen't say that much. The problem is that you wrote the music and you know what key is "right" for it. Therefor you will think it sounds "wrong" when it's changed. Same probably goes for people who are very used to hearing music in a certain key.
Say if a classical music fan bought a CD of Beethovens 9th and the conductor desided that he was going to play it in DbMinor instead of DMinor the music fan would prolly feel that something was horibly wrong. What would have happend if it was written in DbMinor to begin with is actually what it's all about.
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