Cadences are closing formulas, in which the harmony, melody and rhythm, fall into their place at a natural breathing point. The word? Up until now we looked at individual notes and their role in the melody and harmony were they chord notes or non chord notes? We analysed music at it? In this lesson we will focus on the overall song structure.
Normally a song has some logical resting points. Musical sounds, like language, are built into clauses, sentences and paragraphs; and a melody also is punctuated by commas, colons, full stops and rests. It can be divided into two or more phrases. A phrase can have any length between 1 and 8 bars or even longer , but the four-bar phrase is by far the commonest, and therefore has even been called the normal phrase. Normally we find the same subdivision in the harmony.
The chord progression is divided into two or more logical blocks which support the melodic phrases, and every harmonic block ends with a cadence. The full stop, also called closing cadence, has a strong sense of finality.
It gives a distinctive ending to a piece of music or a section of the music. The listener is in no doubt about the fact that it is concluded. The open ending or half cadence is much weaker than the full stop. A deceptive cadence is an authentic progression which does not end on I, but on another chord most common is VI which give the impression of surprise. You probably already know that there are more than one of them; it actually has three different forms:.
We will follow musical history, and therefore we start with Minor Aeolian. A minor Aeolian is the so called parallel of C major, which means that in this scale exactly the same notes are used as in C major only the white keys on the piano , and therefore exactly the same chords. But they have other functions within the overall harmony, as you can see in the following picture.
In minor, like in major, the tonic, subdominant and dominant chords are the primary chords. In the picture they are accentuated by drawing a nice rectangle around them. And the dim-chord B- is accentuated in red. Now we can see that major and minor are a sort of mirror-images of each other. In A minor it is exactly the other way around: the minor triads are the primary chords and the major triads are the secondary chords.
This means that in A minor the minor triads bear the main functionality, while the major triads are the mediants. There is also another nice symmetry. This has no musical significance but we still wanted you to see it. Again we are going to play around with the same seven chords. But because of the fact that in the minor scale they have other functions the result will be quit different. In the minor Aeolian scale there is no leading note, and therefore the change Vm — Im is not as strong as V — I.
To make the ending more defined just like in the major key , the logical thing to do was to change the Vm into V and Vm7 into V7 of course. The harmonic scale has in it an augmented second flat sixth to sharp seventh, F to G in A minor harmonic which is quite difficult to sing and was traditionally considered unmelodic and forbidden.
To overcome this problem also the sixth was sharpened. Raising the sixth also gives us the possibility to change the diminished II- into a minor triad. As we saw earlier, major and minor are mirror -images of each other. In the harmonic and melodic scale minor was altered to sound more like major by raising of the sixth and the seventh degree. In the same way major can be altered to sound more like minor Aeolian , by flattening of the sixth and seventh note.
Lowering the seventh gives the possibility to change the diminished VII- into a major triad. So, again we see a nice symmetry between major and minor. In minor melodic all chords except Im and IIm are major triads, and in the major-minor scale all chords except I and VII are minor triads.
Compose your own music just by playing around with the Easy Song Builder. This is totaly free music composition software; an extra feature to help you compose songs while you follow the compose music lessons, or just for fun.
You can create a song just by listening and choosing. The only thing you have to do is make some choices and push some buttons. The program does the rest, it is a sort of artificial intelligence that knows everything about the art of composition. After downloading ESB , start the program, and follow the instructions in the manual. Choose Lesson 1, this only contains the elements we have discussed so far. So, what are you waiting for? Make a beautiful song, and discover and develop your own creativity in the process.
Become a music composer yourself. With the soon to be released version 2. Fantasia Chromatica, J. Sunday 26 September Monday 27 September Tuesday 28 September Wednesday 29 September Thursday 30 September Friday 1 October Saturday 2 October Sunday 3 October Monday 4 October Tuesday 5 October Wednesday 6 October Thursday 7 October Friday 8 October Saturday 9 October Sunday 10 October Monday 11 October Tuesday 12 October Wednesday 13 October Thursday 14 October Friday 15 October Saturday 16 October Sunday 17 October Monday 18 October Tuesday 19 October Wednesday 20 October Thursday 21 October Friday 22 October Saturday 23 October Sunday 24 October Monday 25 October Tuesday 26 October Wednesday 27 October Thursday 28 October Friday 29 October Saturday 30 October Sunday 31 October Monday 1 November Tuesday 2 November Wednesday 3 November Thursday 4 November Friday 5 November Saturday 6 November Sunday 7 November Monday 8 November Tuesday 9 November Wednesday 10 November Thursday 11 November Friday 12 November Saturday 13 November Sunday 14 November Monday 15 November Tuesday 16 November Wednesday 17 November Thursday 18 November Friday 19 November Saturday 20 November Sunday 21 November Monday 22 November Tuesday 23 November Wednesday 24 November Thursday 25 November Friday 26 November Saturday 27 November Sunday 28 November Monday 29 November Tuesday 30 November Wednesday 1 December Thursday 2 December Friday 3 December Saturday 4 December Sunday 5 December Monday 6 December Tuesday 7 December Wednesday 8 December Thursday 9 December Friday 10 December Saturday 11 December Sunday 12 December Monday 13 December Tuesday 14 December Wednesday 15 December Thursday 16 December Friday 17 December Saturday 18 December Sunday 19 December Monday 20 December Tuesday 21 December Wednesday 22 December Thursday 23 December Friday 24 December Saturday 25 December Sunday 26 December Monday 27 December Tuesday 28 December Wednesday 29 December Thursday 30 December Friday 31 December Saturday 1 January Sunday 2 January Monday 3 January Tuesday 4 January Wednesday 5 January Thursday 6 January Friday 7 January Saturday 8 January Sunday 9 January Monday 10 January Tuesday 11 January Wednesday 12 January
0コメント