parallel motion chords - music theory question

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steevio
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Re: parallel motion chords - music theory question

Post by steevio »

tone-def wrote:
steevio wrote:one of the problems with using a monosynth with three oscillators, is that you are effectively making triad chords and if you send lead lines, arpeggios etc. to them you are playing parallel motion chords, and many chords just dont sound right in parallel motion, we've become so indoctrinated by western chord progression.
i use diminished chords a lot, if you use the diminished scales you can play lead lines and arpeggios in the way you want.

suspended chord also sound good to my ears.
yeah i use the diminished scales alot, but not so much the diminished and suspended chords for some reason.

would like to expand on this but right now i'm ultra busy, hopefully the thread wont die before i'm back,
thanks bros for the input
steevio
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Post by steevio »

one thing that worries me about using the diminished scales is the lack of distinct tonality.
techno seems to work best with a strong tonal feel

one thing which ive tried is to have an element of the track which has a strong perfect 5th tone, and even though in the WH diminished scale, this is a tone outside of the scale, it sort of implies the tonic and somehow doesnt clash. dont know if that makes sense, or maybe i'm just creating a nine-tone scale.. :?:
AK
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Post by AK »

With regular triad chords ( ie: consisting of a root a third and a fifth ) I think you always get that western 'indoctrinated' feel. I too, do not like using too many major or minor triads, not so much that I feel they are cliche', it's probably my desire to escape from sounding 'traditional' if that's the right word.

parallel motion chords! as for theory on that subject, I'm not sure. If they are to be diatonically correct, then I guess a series of chords could be worked out via the scale being used. So in essence, it's potentially an open question.

I personally like diminished chords too, esp. with osc detuning - dunno why! it's the tritone that I really like I think and something like an aux diminished scale would work with parallel motion chords of a diminished type. On 'C', you'd have C-D-Eb-F-Gb-Ab-A-B. ( That's probably not enharmonically correct but hey ) I'm not too overly keen on either a major or minor 3rd as that's essentially the 'flavour' of the chord type and it becomes instantlyy recognisable and tedious to my ears. In fact, having said that, I'm tiring of the tritone too. :?

But there's got to be a few scales where 'cluster' chords would work fine - That Aux Dim scale on 'C' has your C/D/Eb - essentially like a Cmadd9 ( no 5th ) chord to me but I know what you mean with the cluster sound. It tends to cloud the chord type and gives it less obvious interval separation - which works well in some contexts. If you imagine a C diminished 7 chord on that scale with the C/Eb/Gb/A, you have an interval separation to create a minor/add9 chord - or your cluster chord as you described it, on each of those scale degrees whilst being diatonic and not in a standard I-IV-V ( where that would be the most obvious place where parallel motion, or unchanging chord types would obviously function best ) Obviously a diminished chord would work on each of those scale degrees too, some interesting potential for harmonies when you look close. I think the answer is experimentation, I can't think theoretically on this without either sticking with I-IV-V or fifths and fourths.

It's interesting, I'd like to chat more on this too but I gotta get back to work, I'm not able to think in depth at the minute as I have too much to do but wanted to mini-bump the thread.
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Post by steevio »

AK wrote: I'm not too overly keen on either a major or minor 3rd as that's essentially the 'flavour' of the chord type and it becomes instantlyy recognisable and tedious to my ears. In fact, having said that, I'm tiring of the tritone too. :?
sounds like youre tiring of 12 tet there bro.

i'm kind of locked into 12 tet at the moment for my live set because its too risky not using a quantizer with an analogue seuencer in a live situation.

so i'm trying to make the best of it.

maybe a better quetion would have been 'what scales lend themselves to unusual chords moving in parallel motion' in fact i dont really know exactly what i'm asking.

ive been experimenting with the HW diminished scale, so in C;
C Db Eb E Gb G A Bb

so this has the major and minor triads + diminished quadriad contained in it, and because its a symmetrical scale there are lots of combinations of 3 tones which transpose and stay in scale, seems like alot of scope there.

i read on a jazz forum that improvising on the diminished scales can quickly become cliche'd sounding, that worries me, but i havent noticed it myself yet...

one useful way to get interesting chord tones from a monosynth that dont sound too obvious, is too run OSC 1 an octave or two below the other two, and using a pulse wave, treat the fundamental as a sub bass sinewave and adjust the higher harmonics with the Pulse width and mix in the other two oscillators, this gives you a more complex chord, and if you dont want the sub you can HP filter it out.
AK
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Post by AK »

I guess it all boils down to what type of sound you think fits your type of music. I'm not tiring of 12tet necessarily, moreso it's the use of obvious chords and scales that get me thinking, 'oh no, it's those intervals again'. I don't look to Jazz as a way out of that as I don't think it fits my idea of what I like, I'm quite liking the feel of sustained tension and unresolved dissonance in music, the more I play with dissonance, the more my ears seem to adjust to it more than I did when I first started experimenting with that sort of thing.

It's chords that I have found ( to an extent ) that have me uninspired, I know this thread is based on that but a lot of the time I'm leaning towards contrapuntal harmony. The use of counterpoint to create a harmonic structure has me thinking it's a much more less obvious way to approach things and you do effectively create chords, just that they are by the individual parts when they fall together and don't feel like a progression or like there's an immediately noticable chord structure.. Anyway, that's separate from this thread, I was just replying to the 12tet thing.

Maybe you are already thinking the right way with tone clusters, if it's less obvious a chord structure you want when using fixed intervals, I'd be looking down that sort of line. I guess any scale can quickly become cliche'd, I must admit though, when using a series of diminished chords or even just the tritone, it's all too easy to end up with the same sort of music as you might have done the other week. There's not a huge scope of experimentation ( at least not that I can see ) if you are thinking diatonically.

What about Augmented chords? 4 semitones + 4 semitones and then by using say the whole tone scale, you'd have 6 diatonic chords. Say you were in 'C': C/D/E/Gb/Ab/Bb could all have an augmented chord built on them. I'm not sure how a track built of pure Aug chords would sound but to be honest, it's the sort of thing I do like to try, just to get a different sound when I tire of something I have been doing previously.

Out of interest, is it possible on the Voyager to use say a square wave LFO to change the semitone pitch of an oscillator? I was just wondering, if it was, you could get some alteration on the 3rds ( or whatever ) in really interesting ways.

I quite like your idea of 4ths, well, or 5ths actually. Like detune +7 and -7 semitones, like a C, G and an F in the lower octave. Doesn't sound like a sus4 chord like that, plus it's neutral and it's going to work on a lot of the scale degrees diatonically in say a typical natural minor scale for example. Well actually, having said that, you'd get an 'A' and a 'Db' on the 'D' and 'Ab' respectively. :?
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Post by steevio »

@ AK
i'm not really looking to jazz as a way out either, its just that those cats know their sh!t when it comes to music, the knowledge base is immense compared to us grubby lot, so its my first port of call when i want to understand harmonic relationships.

the problem i find when interpreting jazz knowledge is always that scales are always discussed as relative to particular chords, and in the context of chord progression, which to me is largely irrelevant in techno.
for a loop based hypnotic music form, progression is cyclical, i think its why the diminished scales work so well, they are collections of tone loops.

the stacked 4ths (C F A# etc.) sound is very recognisable, and like everything else can become tiresome quickly. i dont know if anyone here will know Emerson Lake and Palmer, but their album Tarkus from the 1970's was constructed entirely from quartal harmony, and its got a really distinct sound.

i think tone clusters are the way to go for me because they are ambiguous sounding and dense, perfect for techno moods.

in the end the old cliche' 'if it sound right, it is right' rules for techno, but because i'm setting up analogue sequencers for live work, i have to have a flexible tone system, which allows many different possibilities, but throws out interesting combinations of tones. when i talk about chords, i'm not necessarily meaning chords in a tradtional sense, eg. a chord can be the combination of 3 or 4 different sounds, serving different purposes in the track that happen to fall in the same place as you pointed out,
this is easy to acheive and control when using analogue sequencers.
AK
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Post by AK »

yes mate, and i must admit, im a bit of a 'scale over chord' guy myself. Duff jazz guys have tired licks and phrases that have become habitual and although i agree that 'those cats know what they're doing etc', i find very few improv musicians online. Once jazz peeps start talking about muscle memory licks and phrases, i question the jazz. Now thats not to say they arent well versed, just that the improvs have become pattern or scale orientainted and therefore, almost routine.
Like i say though, the chord/scale approach is kinda where im at, not so much pentatonics or blues scales over a given chord, but going in and out of key and jumping about to unrelated keys. Maybe thats a point to bear in mind if you are harmonising over unchanging intervals? Im a bit of a weirdo when it comes to music though and what sounds good to me, annoys another. You clearly have good ears though so you know where its at. At some point, id like to talk about odd scales over odd chords. I am on a constant ride to find interestin harmonies and fit them into a techno groove, in, hopefully, a musical and danceable way.

Good topic bro.
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Post by tone-def »

AK wrote:yes mate, and i must admit, im a bit of a 'scale over chord' guy myself.
same here.
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