Taking a look at the C major scale, you can see that each note has a relative degree of stability or instability. We also call this consonance and dissonance. Traditionally, the rules of counterpoint dictate that the unison, third, fifth, sixth, and octave are consonances. The unison, fifth, and octave are perfect consonances while the sixth and third are imperfect consonances. The second, fourth, diminished fifth, tritone, and seventh are called dissonances.

It’s important to note that dissonance doesn’t mean being wrong or bad. Dissonance simply indicates an increase in musical tension.

So a diagram of the C major scale, showing the relative degree of stability to instability, would look like this:

How can you use this as a composer?

Think of where you want to take the listener. A melody is like a roller coaster. It goes up, it goes down. It builds tension and releases tension. The final release doesn’t come until the ride is over and you are still again. Your job as a melody writer is to take your listener on a journey, weaving through tension and release just like that roller coaster ride.

A very practical way to illustrate this is to look at the end of melodic phrases. Perhaps your entire melody has 8 melodic phrases. It would make sense to increase tension in the first few phrases by ending on relatively unstable tones. Then you can resolve it, but not completely, on the fourth phrase. Increase the tension again, and then release it completely on the last phrase by ending on the first or fifth scale degree.

This is also a great strategy for improvisation. If you’ve got 32 bars to solo, don’t resolve until the very end. Or, depending on the section that follows, you may want to increase the tension during the entire solo so that the following section can provide the release.

We just looked at how to use tension and release on an entire melody by choosing stable and unstable tones for the endings of melodic phrases. You can also look at the individual melodic phrases and determine the motion between tension and release you would like the listener to feel within each phrase. You can zoom in and out as far as you need to help you create the desired effect.

Obviously, tension and release are created by a combination of factors, like rhythm, harmony, motion, and so on. I’ve only discussed one aspect of tension and release in melody so far. Here’s the bottom line, whenever you need to make a melodic choice, ask yourself, “What level of stability or instability am I trying to create?” Then make the appropriate choice.

Start with a single note or single word

Play a single random note and just listen to your imagination. Does a second note enter the picture? Does a chord or harmony enter the picture? If so, then add what you hear to the mix and keep listening like that. Don’t think about it or edit what you hear in your mind, just dictate.

If you don’t hear anything in your imagination, then force it. Play a single interval up or down. Does that spark another idea? If so, then dictate. If not, play a different interval. If after a number of tries your imagination doesn’t take over, then force it even more. Play a pattern or a sequence that you are familiar with and build a melody around that.

The important thing to remember here is that your melody is not going to be perfect. It’s just a first pass. You can edit after you have 32 bars or so of material to work with. The point is you can’t have a melody to edit if you don’t start writing one.

You can apply the same technique to lyric writing. Write a single word. Use a random word generator or just pick a word from a book. What does your imagination tell you to write next? If nothing comes to you (which would mean that you really just aren’t paying attention) force it by just making stuff up. Rhyme comes later. Prosody comes later. Form comes later. Same as with music, you can’t edit a lyric until you have a lot of lyrics to edit.

An exercise like this should open your mind to the constant stream of ideas that is always occurring beneath the surface of your conscious mind. Just practice opening the aperture until you always have music and lyrics to write.

Table of contents for 2006 Celebrations and Reflections

1. Top Ear Training Articles for 2006
2. Top Songwriting Articles for 2006
3. Top Music Theory Articles for 2006
4. Top Music Hacks for 2006
5. Top Peak Performance Articles for 2006
6. Top Music Business Articles of 2006
7. Top Music Technology Articles for 2006
8. The Best of The Graham English Blog 2006

Looking back over 2006 I can say that I learned a lot. And it seems that I taught a lot too! These music theory articles should keep you busy over the holiday break.

• The Rules and Principles of Counterpoint
• Deceptive Cadences
• Advice To Beginning Musicians
• How To Master Musical Textures
• Internalize And Eternalize The Music By Transcribing Solos
• Learn Orchestration Free Online
• Piano Voicings Part 6: Clusters
• Piano Voicings Part 5: Kenny Barron Voicings
• Piano Voicings Part 4: Upper Structure Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 3: Fourth Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 2: So What Chords
• Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings
• The Holy Six
• Top Secret Patterns (shhh, they’re free!)
• Who Else Wants To Master the Diminished Scale?
• The Golden Mean in Harmony Part 2: Tritones: The Devil’s interval
• The Golden Mean in Harmony Part 1

The First 10 Seconds

Imagine being inside the mind of a busy A&R guy or in-demand producer. It’s running over important decisions to make, artists to direct and develop, managers to call back, record execs to please, and they probably have a personal life to take care of on top of everything else. Let’s say that all the stars are lined up for you and your demo is in their hands. They pop it in the CD player and press play.

This is the crucial moment. As they say, “you only get once chance to make a first impression.” What first impression do you give?

Give your listener a musical and rhythmic hook to grab onto right away. Head over to the billboard charts and play the first 10 seconds of the top 10. Notice the elements that pull you in. Is it the beat? Is it a melody or the harmony? Notice where they fail to pull you in. After all, just because the song is on the charts does not mean it’s a great song!

Now, knowing that you don’t have the clout of a currently charting artist, don’t make your listener wait 30 seconds to get to the meat of your song. Mix an extended version for you and your friends if you must, but keep only what’s absolutely necessary for everyone else. You will gain serious points for considering the busy schedule of someone who listens to songs for a living.

The Chorus

The chorus is the emotional high point of your song. Therefore, it must feel like it lifts. A simple way to do this is to write a melody that reaches it’s highest note during the chorus — preferably the very first note, a natural spotlight — and write the melody of the verse to lead into the chorus from below. One of the biggest mistakes I hear is a melody that peaks at the end of the verse and then drops into the chorus where it gives the listener a sense of falling energy, the exact opposite of what we want to do.

You chorus, if it is to be memorable, should be easy to sing along with and contrast the other sections. A strong chorus needs different elements than what came before, both musically and lyrically. Give your chorus a different melody, different harmony, different lyric, and a different form than the other sections of your song. Make your chorus stand out.

The Collaboration

I grew up in the age of Prince, the wonder-kid who played every instrument, wrote all the songs, sang all the vocals, and on top of all that, he danced his butt off. Me, I’m a mere mortal. I’m good at a number of things, bad at even more, and I excel at maybe a few diverse skills. I continually improve my weaknesses, strengthen my strengths, and for everything else that I’m not good at, I enlist the help of someone better than me.

In the process of collaboration, I get commitments and agreements in writing, I pick and choose my battles, and I still take responsibility for the end result. Do the same and hopefully you won’t end up getting screwed.

Confusing Mystery with Obscurity

Riddles are great… as long as you get permission. But if I don’t know you and you start a conversation with me as if I’m your personal cryptographer, then you had better pay me for my time. Don’t test your listener’s patience right from the start or assume that they care to do the preliminary scholarly or autobiographical research to find out what the hell you’re talking about.

Show, don’t tell is an admonition given to beginning writers who use too much exposition instead of using action and dialogue. If the writer uses action and dialogue to reveal a character, the story should be more interesting to the reader. The reader should feel like he is seeing the scene unfold before him. As a result, the reader can interpret the meaning of the story on his own.

Use the five senses to keep your listener involved and avoid writing about an experience, write from the experience. Write as if you are inside the emotion of your song. Then show us what it looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like.

Understand and master these 4 elements of your songwriting and watch your listener appeal skyrocket.

Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Topics covered:
Hooks, song titles, song ideas, lyrical insights, melodic insights, hook placement, and much more…

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06

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In 1973 he founded the world-renowned Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and guided this highly regarded institution into the top rank of leading contemporary music schools, mainly on the concepts and methods included in some 70 music education books he authored during this period.

Dick Grove was very active in the music education field, creating many of the courses for the “School Without Walls”, as well as products for Grove/Rasch Music Education Systems. These products are based on his 20+ years of classroom experience in the fields of harmony & theory, keyboard, eartraining, improvisation, composition, arranging, orchestration, songwriting and contemporary musical styles.

Dick Grove passed away on Dec 26, 1998.

He will be remembered forever by all of his students and friends.

Dick Grove’s Credits

Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Topics covered:
Chord progressions, I-IV-V, The blues, classical music, mashups, melody, modal progressions, music software, rhythm…

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06

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• Consonances: unison, third, fifth, sixth, octave
• Perfect consonances: unison, fifth, octave
• Imperfect consonances: sixth, third
• Dissonances: second, fourth, diminished fifth, tritone, seventh

• Direct motion: when two or more parts ascend or descend in the same direction by step or skip.
• Contrary motion: when one part ascends by step or skip and the other descends–or vice versa.
• Oblique motion: when one part moves by step or skip while the other remains stationary.

Four Fundamental Rules

• First rule: From one perfect consonance to another perfect consonance one must proceed in contrary or oblique motion.
• Second rule: From a perfect consonance to an imperfect consonance one may proceed in any of the three motions.
• Third rule: From an imperfect consonance to a perfect consonance one must proceed in contrary or oblique motion.
• Fourth rule: From one imperfect consonance to another imperfect consonance one may proceed in any of the three motions.
• *Oblique motion, if used with due care, is allowed with all four progressions.

FIRST PART

• Note against Note: It is the simplest composition of two or more voices which, having notes of equal length, consists only of consonances.
• *More perfect than imperfect consonances should be used. Imperfect consonances are more harmonious than imperfect ones.
• *The beginning and the end must both consist of perfect consonances. The beginning should express perfection and the end relaxation. Since imperfect consonances specifically lack perfection, they cannot express relaxation.
• *In the next to the last bar, there must be a major sixth if the cantus firmus is in the lower part; and a minor third, if it is in the upper part. Thus, the seventh degree has to be raised in the Dorian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian modes. (The second degree of a mode occurs always as the next to the last tone in the cantus firmus, the seventh degree always as the next to the last tone in the counterpoint.)

• Polyphonic, while literally meaning “many-voiced,” refers to multivoiced texture of considerable interlinear independence, often imitative; it is understood to have qualitative implications beyond its literal, limited meaning.
• Homophonic would literally denote a condition of interdependent voices, but its traditional connotation is of texture where a primary voice is accompanied by a subordinate fabric sometimes interactive in tentative ways, the bass normally in a contradirectional or other contrapuntal relation to the primary voice (or voices).
• Chordal is a term referring to texture consisting essentially of chords, its voices often relatively *homorhythmically related.
• Doubling refers to lines *homorhythmically-homodirectionally-homointervallically associated.
• Mirror association, usually understood as strict, involves a relation that is homorhythmic-homointervallic-contradirectional.
• Heterophonic is a relation that is *homodirectional (parallel in contour) but *heterointervallic-having minor diversification of interval content.
• Heterorhythmic is a term that means having dissimilar rhythms (see below).
• Sonority is defined as the overall resonant character determined by texture (including doublings) and coloration (including articulation and intensity of dynamics.)
• Counterpoint (contrapuntal) is a condition of interlinear interaction involving intervallic content, direction, rhythm, and other qualities or parameters of diversification.
• Monophonic means single-voiced (monolinear).

From Theory of Harmony by Arnold Schoenberg:

*In the following system, the prefixes homo- (uni-, or co-), hetero-, and contra- are adopted to refer to conditions of identity, mild and very local diversification (as in the conventional “hetereophonic”), and more pronounced contrast, respectively. Moreover, three specific parameters (aspects, dimensions, spheres of reference) are adopted as relevant to the evaluation of textural conditions: these are rhythm (specifically rhythmic pattern), direction (of melodic succession), and linear intervallic content.

1. Within the parameter of rhythm, the terms homorhythmic, heterorhythmic, (both of these in conventional usage), and contrarhythmic all emerge as potentially applicable and useful.
2. Within the parameter of direction, the terms homodirectional, heterdirectional, and contradirectional (“motion” in a straight line exists as a possibility along with motion up and down) all have potential applicability to relations among components of texture.
3. Within the sphere of intervallic content, the terms homointervallic, heterointervallic, and contraintervallic can all be used to describe particular textural situations and relations, usually applying to specific intervals rather than classes.

Understanding musical texture will give your music more creativity, originality, depth, as well as justification for your musical choices. Master these qualities and experience unlimited compositional options.

These days, transcribing is easy. There are many great freeware programs that will allow you to rip a song from your favorite CD and load it into an audio editor where you can define regions for quick playback or looping and even slow a section down–without changing pitch for more difficult parts.

Some of my greatest musical epiphanies occurred while transcribing and realizing, “Oh, that’s what the hell they were doing!” I strongly encourage you to put pen to paper and internalize and eternalize the music.

Check out this extensive site put together by the Philharmonia Orchestra:
The Sound Exchange: The Orchestra: Instruments

Peter also points to Garritan forums where “Gary Garritan is working on realizing a completely free version of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov Principles of Orchestration…”

How cool is the culture of [tag]opensource[/tag]?!

And when you’ve finished writing and recording your song, send it my way for a free and constructive review.

Here’s a handful of my top techniques that I use to develop new and interesting chord changes.

1. Stick with I-IV-V
I know, it’s not new, but I-IV-V doesn’t have to be uninteresting. There’s a reason why these chords are so fundamental to our harmony. So master them. Use their constraints to challenge your songwriting ability.

2. Copy another song’s chord changes
Just take a look at the top 10 in the past 10 years and you’ll find a long list of songs that use the same chord progressions. The chord changes to Prince’s Purple Rain have been used before that song and after that song many, many times. The challenge then becomes how to write a unique melody over those chord changes.

3. Copy another song’s chord changes and modify them
One of my favorite techniques to come up with chord changes is to simply copy another song and then modify it. You can modify the color of the chords (major/minor/dominant 7/major 7/etc.). You can modify the rhythm of the chord changes by making them change faster or slower or syncopate them. You can play the chords backwards or start in the middle. You get the idea.

4. Create a chord progression mashup
You can follow the popular mashup trend right now. Take two or more songs and then combine their chord progressions. You can cut them up, play them simultaneously or play them sequentially. I haven’t done this yet, but it sounds fun

5. Write a modal progression
Modal progressions–made popular by Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)–are a very easy place to start. The best modes to begin with are mixolydian and dorian. If you’re going to stay in a single mode throughout your song section, the challenge becomes making the melody interesting enough to sustain the listeners interest. And if all of your song sections are going to be in the same mode, then the challenge is to make each section contrast.

6. Write a blues
The blues doesn’t have to sound like the blues. There’s no point in trying to be another Robert Johnson. Just listen to Prince’s Kiss or U2′s When Love Comes To Town.

7. Dig into other genres
Classical music is an endless supply of time-tested music to recycle. Sting’s Russians is a great example of a song that is based on Prokofiev’s “Lieutenant Kije” Suite.

8. Use music software
I’ve used Band in a Box to inspire me and I’ve messed around with other music software that’s resulted in a few keepers. Check out the del.icio.us musicsoftware tag for the latest releases.

That’s it for now. I’m sure you have some chord progression shortcuts that I haven’t thought of yet. Please share them.

Single Review: Cyndi Lauper “Time After Time”:

Cyndi Lauper has withdrawn from her lover in the poignant ballad “Time After Time.”

Tearful guitars start the single, setting a lonely tone. It’s two a.m. Lauper hears the clock on her nightstand tick. She turns and touches the right side of the bed. It’s her boyfriend’s spot. She wonders how he is doing. She can’t make sense of her emotions, which seem to change every hour on the hour. She remembers cuddling in his arms at night. She nearly forgot the special moments she had with him.

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick/And think of you/Caught up in circles confusion/ Is nothing new/Flashback warm nights /Almost left behind/Suitcases of memories/Time after.

Further in the verse, she says that he thinks she’s running away from him. Although he’s tries to contact her, she has already shut him out. He pleads for her to calm down. She eventually does, but she finds herself sinking back into her melancholy.

Sometimes you picture me/ I’m walking too far ahead/You’re calling to me, I can’t hear/What you’ve said/ Then you say go slow/I fall behind/ The second hand unwinds.

In the chorus, her boyfriend says that he will be there for her whenever she needs him. He will rescue her if she starts heading towards a downward spiral. Each and every time, he will comfort her.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me/Time after time/If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting/Time after time.

In the second verse, she believes he wants nothing to do with her. She perceives herself as a lost cause. However, he’s calling her friends and family, trying to figure where she is and if she’s doing all right. He knows her better than she knows herself.

After my picture fades and darkness has/Turned to gray/Watching through windows, you’re wondering/If I’m OK/Secrets stolen from deep inside/The drum beats out of time.

The chorus is sung again.

Part of the first verse is sung again.

You said go slow/I fall behind/The second hand unwinds.

The chorus is sung again.

Lauper realizes he is not going to let her flounder and self-destruct.

Time after time/Time after time/Time after time.

In “Time After Time,” Lauper believes she is a difficult person, unworthy of love. She runs away and shuts people out. However, her devoted boyfriend who loves her unconditionally is willing to help her through anything. The relationship is given depth. The couple’s intimacy and history is apparent. They’ve been together for a long time. They love and have seen each other through every tough part of their life. Now, it’s her boyfriend’s turn to help her.

Lauper’s vocals are full of loss. But there is a glint of hope in them also. She knows she will not be abandoned, despite how much she may fight his compassion.

“Time After Time” is a sure-fire classic.

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