Root movement thoughts

Mostly to clarify my own thoughts-




Most of the music I have written is in a kind of pan-modality, sometimes having sections in distinct modes and other times modifying the "scale" as I go for melodic or harmonic purposes. I use various tetrachords or trichords in the step order to segue from one modal structure to another. This usually involves a shift in the root of the perceived tonal center.




Since a fifth is a fourth inverted, a third and a sixth, etc. it seems reasonable that the only root movements possible are within a tritone. So, I can shift a half or full step, a minor third, major third, or perfect fourth.




The fourth is basically my dominant function, so I try and steer clear of that one except when I am winding up a section that needs some sort of cadential close. It's also boring and predictable. A half step move upward (flat second degree) has an almost equally boring subdominant feel. The interval of a second is so overused in most pop music that I use it sparingly.




That pretty much leaves root movement by a major or minor third as the remaining points of interest. They are fairly easy to elide in and out of. Octatonic scales are the easiest, they have great 3rd relations (not the kind from Arkansas). I am using these methods again in the school band piece, where they seem like they would work well, but I am reminded why I made my last orchestral work my octatonic blow-out and then decided to try something else. My first new piece post-school needs to be something much more radical. I have an idea but I'm still turning it over in my head.

Chord of the Month- March 2016

I have used this chord before, now I am making use of it again in, of all things, a piece for a mixed middle and high school chamber ensemble. This is my "angry" chord, basically a restacked Eb #11 to use a crude description. It has a pent-up energy that can be released easily enough by resolving dissonant tones either up or down, the structure leaves places to fill in melodic motion. It rewards a driving rhythmic treatment, best using an irregular or compound meter of different pulse lengths. So far that has been 2/4 + 3/4, and 2/4 + 2/4 + 3/4.


I am taking something of a risk placing music of this sort in front of 8th through 12th graders, I know. Yet the little group I have this year has already proven that they can be much more than the sum of their parts, we have already performed a suite from Monteverdi's Orfeo using a harpsichord continuo. The challenge has been to focus them on the music and away from the usual adolescent immaturity and drama which that cohort is so prone to.


I have to pull my punches so much in the writing that it has been frustrating and slowed me down, since I am trying to balance what will be musically effective with what is technically possible. It's like writing for choir in that sense, pretty disciplined stuff. But as I like to say, who wants to do the easy things? Besides, this will be a good sketch for a longer piece for standard high school band, which I might be able to interest some publisher in. As my teaching phase draws to its close and my physical condition devolves, I have little choice but to go off the cliff and try to make my living by composing, finally.