Composing With Chord Materials – Suggestion Card
Harmonize a melody using different chord extensions and chord formations like triads, seventh chords, chords by fourths, seconds or clusters:
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Expanding Your Musical Ideas – Suggestion Card
Never get stuck again and unleash your creativity by re-purposing your musical materials:
Exploring Rhythm – Suggestion Card
Rhythm and melody go hand in hand as it creates movement, tension and contributes to the emotional value in the development of your musical ideas – learn how by using polyrhythms, different meters, accents, metric modulation and other techniques:
Composing With Scale Materials – Suggestion Card
Use scale materials like modes, symmetric scales, two-octave scales or create your own to compose your melodies and extract your harmonies from them.
Composing With Intervals – Suggestion Card
Experiment with the different interval relationships and learn how these can affect the feel of your main melody and chords – more about intervals:
Metric Modulation
Tempo can also be modulated just as you can modulate to a different tonality. That can be achieved by simply performing a given musical passage in a faster or slower tempo, or even gradually change the tempo (Ritardando or Accelerando).… Read More »Metric Modulation
Asymmetric Divisions of the Meter
Also called irregular meters, these can be considered the sum of two or more simple meters or time signatures. For example, a 5/4 can be the sum of a 2/4 + 3/4 meters. As a result, the natural accents of… Read More »Asymmetric Divisions of the Meter
Rhythmic Accent and Polymeters
In this post I will be mentioning two ways you can influence the listener in how a given rhythmic part or groove is perceived. In some cases you can even use the same rhythmic cell that you have been… Read More »Rhythmic Accent and Polymeters
Polyrhythms
Polyrhythms are a way of introducing some freshness and novelty in the way you combine different rhythms played by different or a single instrument. Also referred to as cross-rhythm, a polyrhythm is essentially a combination of two or more different… Read More »Polyrhythms
Polytonality and Polymodality
It is the use of two or more distinguishable key centers, simultaneously. However, the term bitonal can be used instead of polytonality, referring to the use of two key centers in the musical composition. One of the most important aspects… Read More »Polytonality and Polymodality
Polyharmony
Polyharmony refers to a musical passage in which polychords are used in a chord succession or create a harmonic flow. As mentioned, when introducing the way polychord structures are built, the component triads can either be kept distinct through simple… Read More »Polyharmony
Harmonic Ambiguity
A chord is ambiguous when it can be associated or implies more than one tonality or mode. As an example, every major or minor triad can be associated to two or more tonalities. For instance, the C major chord exists… Read More »Harmonic Ambiguity
How to Use Polymodal Chromaticism
The term polymodal refers to the use of more than one mode at a time. Usually the layered modes share the same tonic, like C Dorian and C Lydian. Polymodal chromaticism is related to the fact that it is possible… Read More »How to Use Polymodal Chromaticism
Pandiatonic Harmony
This is a musical technique that consists of using diatonic material to dissolve the sense of functional harmony in a tonality, as opposed to using chromaticism for that effect. It is the practice of allowing chords to be formed from… Read More »Pandiatonic Harmony
Post-Tonal Harmony
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the tonal system was already falling apart due to the extreme use of chromaticism and post-tonal is a term that is used for music that doesn’t follow the traditional conventions of tonal harmony.… Read More »Post-Tonal Harmony
How to Use Modal Mixture
This technique is used to explore contrasts between different modes that share the same tonic root of a given chord. It can be used more freely if the used chord is ambiguous enough to allow the implication of several… Read More »How to Use Modal Mixture
How to Use Modal Modulation
Using this technique implies that you already know how each mode sounds and how to make chords that sound like the mode. If that isn’t the case, take a look at this post of how you can make “modal… Read More »How to Use Modal Modulation
Non-Functional Harmony
Any system that doesn’t fit the tension and release cycle that is pervasive in functional harmony cadences is called non-functional harmony and it occurs when no chord “wants” to specially resolve to the next one. In fact, such chords are… Read More »Non-Functional Harmony
Modal Interchange
In this post, I will be showing you how you can effectively use modal interchange and add variety to your chord progressions and (re)harmonizations. This is a technique that consists in temporarily borrowing chords from a parallel tonality or… Read More »Modal Interchange
Modal Harmony
In this post we will be looking at how modal harmony works and how you can use it in context, using different chord formations and chord extensions. By the end of the post, you will have a good idea… Read More »Modal Harmony