Composing Phrase by Phrase 7

Bigger Phrases, Bigger Consequents

Hello and welcome or welcome back to the Composing Phrase by Phrase Blog! I've been working on a composition and writing my thoughts on the compositional questions that come to mind for each phrase. Last week, I laid out three big points I wanted to hit in the composition. This week, it's time to start elaborating on those ideas and filling in the phrases. First stop: the beginning.

Refresher - here's the opening phrase.

String Quartet phrase 1

It's two four-bar units, each in a 2+2 format. The head of each unit uses the first bar of the composition that kicked this whole project off. The second half of each unit introduces a new element for contrast and to open up space that allows for a longer form composition. In addition, the two four-bar units aren't repeated exactly. Measures 5-8 are played at a different scale degree than the opening. The goal, again, is to open up more compositional space for a greater time scale.

The original composition had an eight-bar phrase which was comprised of two four-bar units. To achieve a longer section, I'm thinking of bigger phrase groups. If I've got a section that 32 bars long, and it's coming to a closed cadence every 8 bars, it's going to feel a little stunted, especially if those 32 bars are followed by another 32 that follow basically the same format. Repeating the opening material with harmonic alteration brings the whole phrase to an eight bar unit that ends with an open door to lead the ear onward.

All together, that sets the table for a 16-bar phrase in an 8+8 format. What are the next eight measures> I'm glad you asked! These are the next eight measures.

the next eight measures

Like the opening, these phrases begin with material from the original sketch (measure 9 from the sketch) before peeling off in a different direction.

String Quartet 9-12

Original 9-12

It's also written with two four-bar units. Unlike the opening, however, these don't follow a 2+2 call and response kind of plan. The melody remains in the first violin, harmonized by the second. The cello gives light support with plucked bass notes while the viola provides some harmonic glue in the form of repeated eighth-notes. It's a fairly standard classical arrangement, all told, although I'd get some strong side-eye from 18th century composers if they saw the harmonies I was using.

like this

Moving on. The second half of each four-bar unit uses a descending chromatic scale that leads the ear into the next four measures. Like measures 1-8, measures 9-16 repeat the melodic material at a different harmonic level to allow for another open cadence. We're only on the second phrase of the piece! We've got a ways to go before we can shut the door and move to a different room.

A couple points of note. The second melody of the measure happens to use a lead strongly reminiscent of the second theme.

mm.9-12, violin

second theme

This is entirely happenstance. Happy happenstance! But a happy accident nonetheless. I suspect that, if I had tried to plan this, it would have come across stilted and contrived. Maybe it still does, but much less so, I think. The descending chromatic scale also relates to the half-step motif heard in measure 2. This is less of a coincidence.

There's also this little melodic blip (that's official music theory language, for you) that pops in from the viola on the third measure of the phrase.

Viola interjection

This doesn't mean anything structural quite yet. At the moment, it merely provides a slight shift in attention within the arrangement: the second violin backs off a moment to provide light filler with the bass, while the viola takes the role of harmonic support for the melody. It's also worth noting the viola is generally moving in contrasting motion against the violin - there the violin is descending, the viola is ascending.

There's another textural shift in the fourth bar of the phrase. We move away from three distinct layers of music (melody+harmony, filler, and bass) to the whole ensemble playing the same material, albeit in harmony instead of in unison. This kind of technique might be called planing, especially as it shows up in early 20th century music, although it's really an evolution of a much older style of harmonization called fauxbourdon (in France) and its related but technically distinct practice, faburden (in England).

Anywho. While I am avoiding talking about music theory in detail for the sake of a broader readership, I will say that this whole sixteen-measure phrase unit follows a long harmonic scheme. Chords don't change one bar at a time, but rather in two or four-bar units. The following score highlights the harmonic changes.

Harmonic Plan, mms.1-16

One last thing before I sign off. The end of measure 16 sounds like it's aiming for an A-chord of some kind. A-major, if the key signature is any indication. If I followed that line, the next bar would look something like this:

16-17, expected resolution

Instead, I do this:

16-17, actual resolution

We'll have to get into what I do with that next time, though. For now, I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the compositional process! If you liked what you read, consider subscribing to the blog for weekly updates. If you really liked what you read, consider joining my Patreon. Members get audio realizations of scores in the blog, as well as compositions not featured here. Either way, thanks for reading!

Hits: 1117

Composing Phrase by Phrase 5

How to Draw an Owl

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my Composing Phrase by Phrase blog series! We're chugging right along, finished up phrase 4 last week. This week, I'm going to quickly touch on phrase 5 and take a turn towards the future incarnation of this piece.

Honestly, there's not a lot about phrase 5 I haven't already said about phrase 2. I'm looking for an idea that is complimentary to phrase 4. That is to say, it has some contrast with the phrase before it, but not a lot. Here's the phrase I came up with:

phrase 5

The most obvious new thing about this phrase is how its consequent is the same as phrase 4's. The antecedent is different is all. This is a marked difference from the first section, whose endings only contain similarities instead of repetitions.

Other than that, about the only thing I want to point out about this phrase is how its beginning recalls material from the first section, specifically measure 9. While it's not a precise repetition, the use of something familiar in this section helps ground the listener in the idea of "Yes, these two parts belong together." That can be a challenge when minuet/trio forms get much longer. With smaller works, it's not so necessary.

phrase 2 and 5 comparison

Oddly, I've struggled with ways of expanding this phrase without disrupting the balance of the section. I think it's because in the small format I have right now, hearing phrase 4 in its entirety again, even with an intervening complimentary phrase, is somehow too much. It's not unheard of for trio sections to be shorter than the "minuet" section, sometimes significantly so. As a cellist, the gavottes from J.S. Bach's 5th cello suite comes to mind.

Moving on!

What comes next? We're going from five phrases to six, technically. There's a bit of a problem, though. I could keep adding complimentary phrases... eventually, that's going to get old. Complimentary phrases merely add a little spice at a point where the ear wants something new. The big way around that is to write contrasting phrases. Difficulty is, the more an idea's elements contrast with what comes before it, the more you need to work on transitioning the material from one point to the next.

There's also the question, "Can the idea itself support a longer form?" Right now, the answer is "No." Take a look at the first section again:

First section (not revised)

Even though there's metrical diversity, there's very little rhythmic diversity (almost none, really). The idea has a very narrow range and contains a fair bit of motivic repetition within itself. There's also no breathing room. The tune is singable, sure, it just requires fast lungs. Keep on going on like that and you get musical hyperventilation (maybe desireable for effect, just make sure you plan for it).

It's worth taking a look at why the idea has the traits it has. For one thing, it started from a place a pedagogy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with writing works aimed at students and amateurs, and in fact I wish more composers would do so. It does add constraints to your idea making that maybe aren't suitable for long form compositions.

For another, it's written for unaccompanied cello/string-instrument-of-choice. String instruments, among other things, do not require the player to breathe beyond what's necessary to stay alive. The fact it is unaccompanied, too, means the instrument has to fill many roles all at once: melody, harmony, rhythmic interest. In this tune, as in much fiddle music or Bach's aforementioned cello suites, the composition fills all these roles by having the instrument fill almost every inch of compositional space. There are other solutions to this problem, they're just not the default.

So what do? The first step is to take the music ideas I have and start to blow them up. Uh, like a balloon, not an explosive. First off, I'm going to move away from unaccompanied string instrument to string quartet. This takes the pressure off the one instrument to do it all, girlboss style, and spreads the musical roles across several. It also immediately expands the possibility of many musical elements: texture, density, and range being the biggest change.

Second, I'm going to take the basic motives I have and just literally add space between them. Like this:

phrase 1 with rests

Then, I'm going to fill in the rest of the owl a little bit. Like this:

How to Draw an Owl

Er, I mean, like this:

phrase 1, revision 1

There are a lot of things to go over, here. Before getting into nitty-gritty-kitty-litter, some structural stuff first. For the antecedent, we've got violins playing chunks from the first phrase of the original idea, with a few changes here and there which I'll explain next week. Then, the viola (inner voices, unite!) picks up the consequent with a new idea - a repeated A with a bit of Bb added as spice. To help overlap these two chunks, I've extended the ending of the violin's idea just a little bit with a new rhythmic feature, a dotted-eighth+sixteenth-note+eighth note rhythm. These kind of "phrase joinings" help shift the listener's ear from one part of the ensemble to another without creating a disruptive break in the musical flow.

Phrase Joinings

In this case, the Bb is also added for a specific reason. For the finished work, I'm going to keep the contrasting material I wrote for phrase 4 and 5 in Bb-major. Putting the Bb in, even just a dash of it, from the beginning will help tie the future section together with this beginning. It's easy to belabor this kind of thing, so I'm not going to hammer on the foreshadowing.

As far as the musical density goes, I'm keeping things fairly light at the beginning to give plenty of head room for dynamic changes later. Violin 2 harmonizes the melody in violin 1; when the viola enters with its motive, it is only sparsely accompanied by pizzicato in the cello and violins. The aim is a sort of buoyant feel to everything which I'm reinforcing with staccatto markings (read: space between played notes) and accents on weak and off-beats.

Ok, that's a big shift! Some of the concepts I'm bringing up, like musical density, will make more sense as I present more of the composition. I think that's fodder for a completely different blog series, though. In the mean time, if you enjoyed reading, consider subscribing to the blog to keep up with future updates! And if you really enjoyed reading, maybe support me on Patreon? Supporters get access to recordings of the work in progress, as well as other compositions and scores.

Either way, thanks for reading!

Hits: 904

Composing Phrase by Phrase 3

The Third Phrase

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my Composing Phrase by Phrase blog series! I'm two phrases into a planned 12-16 phrase composition right now. We've got the first idea, we've got a similar but slightly contrasting phrase, and now we're on to phrase three.

Some music terms. Last week, I established the idea of an antecedent-consequent phrase. It's a musical line that has a head (the antecedent) and a tail (the consequent). Moving up from describing phrases to larger structures, the two-phrase composition I left off with is a binary form. We have a phrase (which we can mark as A) and we have a contrasting phrase (which we can mark as B). The letters are used to help theorists and composers keep track of what repetition happens when. If we wrote out the full form with the repeats, it would be AABB. You play phrase A and then play it again, then play phrase B and play it again.

Now we're adding a third phrase. If two phrases make a binary form, does adding a third phrase make a ternary form? You would think so, wouldn't you. But no, it probably wouldn't. I mean, we could have a third phrase with similar but different material. If you did and kept going like that (ABCDEF... etc) you would end up with something called a through-composed work. I think a composition with three different phrases would be better described as such than ternary, which has a specific meaning I'll get to later.

Instead of adding a third contrasting phrase, the other plan would be to repeat a phrase we've already heard. With only two phrases, that means phrase A will come back. We'd end up with two sections. Section one is phrase A, repeated; section two is BA, repeated. The repeats are arguably merely conventional rather than strictly necessary, but enough music actually makes use of them that I think it's fine to perform them, myself. Digression aside - this scheme, A:BA, is called rounded binary. This as opposed to simple binary.

Using this plan, the composition would first look something like this:

phrase 3 draft

If I really wanted to be cheeky, I'd call it a day and end the post here. I won't, though. There are a few things I would like to change in order to make this a more satisfying composition. The first has to do with cadences. The sequence of cadences (at measures 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24) is: open, closed (repeat) open, closed, open, closed (repeat). The cadence I've got my eye on is the one in measure 16. Remember that closed cadences have a degree of finality to them. Following them with more music is possible, but will more likely come across as tiresome, especially as the composition gets longer.

In fact, it's not unheard of for composers to poke fun at other composers who continue writing after an otherwise satisfying musical conclusion - check out Mozart's Musical Joke for an example.

The simple solution is to alter measure 16 to an open cadence. Before I do so, I'm going to turn my attention to another element that could use a little massage. That is the melodic shape, or arc. It's admittedly a little odd describing sound as having a shape. I mean, it does, it's just a three-dimensional shape that unfolds in time, so we're getting pretty meta thinking about it. To simplify, languages often describe sounds as "high" or "low" tones, or maybe "thick" versus "thin," or any other variety of metaphor.

The melodic shape is a description of how the melody changes between these qualities over time. Western music notation actually helps reinforce this metaphor by making the notes and staves resemble dots on a graph. So, if you looked at a C Major scale exercise, for example, its melodic shape is a straight line up and a straight line right back down.

C major scale

The shape of the first phrase is in two parts, both of which have the same shape. Bars 1-4 start at F#, makes its way down to A, then curls back up to F# before making a little tilde kind of thing towards E.

Phrase 1, with curve

Bars 5-8 are the same, they just settle on D, instead. The shape somewhat resembles a sine wave. If we continue to measure 9-12, we find a similar shape. The melody starts again on B, goes down to D, goes back up to B, then goes down and back up to B again. 13-16 follow the same shape again, but bigger. The melody drops all the way from B to the low A before rising to F# and settling back down to D.

phrase 2, with curve

For a composition with just two phrases, I think it's totally justifiable to have melodic arcs as similar to each other as these. Adding a third phrase of the same shapes is starting to push on the boredom button. Altering the shape somewhat at measure 15-16 will be a goal as I rewrite the cadence from closed to open.

There's also another issue. The melody has a "ceiling" rather than a "peak." The highest notes of a phrase are very important for establishing a sense of direction or aimlessness, whichever you're going for. In this case, the multiple B's in phrase 2 are the highest points of the melody. It would be nice to push higher at one spot to create a peak that stands out as a feature.

With all that in mind, here's the new line I came up with for those two measures.

revision 1, measure 16 cadence

Now, you hopefully see (or if you're a Patreon patron, can hear) how opening the cadence allows for a more natural continuation of the music into the third phrase. The rewrite also introduces the melodies first big melodic leap. This adds a good point of interest to break up the otherwise almost entirely step-wise motion of the notes.

That revision makes me think it would be a good idea to do something similar at the end of the first phrase.

revision 2, measure 8 and 24 cadences

This revision creates foreshadowing of the later rise in measures 15 and 16, as well as helps establish the coming B in measure 9.

I could stop here and be left with a perfectly decent little rounded binary composition. For the sake of exploration, I'm going to make one more little change. The repeated B's in the second phrase follow a very common pattern called The Rule of Three. Basically, our monkey brains start paying attention when something happens twice, and then get really happy when it happens a third time because that establishes a pattern.

You know the only thing better than The Rule of Three? The Rule of Three with a twist. You establish the expectation of a pattern, then deliver on that pattern... but with a twist. A little change. A slice of lemon in the water. To demonstrate, I'm going to change the third B to a Bb and alter the rest of those four bars to draw from a D minor pentatonic scale instead of the D major.

This produces a dramatic contrast that I'm going to underline with a change in dynamic. It is enough of a change that my ear feels like the cadence needs to help bring the harmony back to D major, as well, so I've rewritten measure 16. This rewrite helps to reestablish the prior harmonic material and maintain momentum into the final phrase. Double plus good!

Lastly, I'm going to tweak the last phrase of the composition with another big arc up to a final peak (there's that Rule of Three again - a rise to a peak in phrase 1, a rise to a bigger peak in phrase 2, and a rise to a biggest peak in phrase 3). I'll also touch on F-natural instead of F# for a little color, and to help recall the shift to D minor that happened earlier. My ear is also telling me it would help for the end of the second section to loop back into the repeat for the sake of maintaining forward motion. The first/second ending repeat is a notation that allows me to save space by telling the performer the first pass ends differently than the repetition.

Here's the final result.

Revision 3, final rounded binary form 

Phew! That's a lot of words for just a couple of changes. Hopefully you can see the impact that had on the final product, though. These revisions do push the composition out of beginner/intermediate student reach and into more advanced instruction. It's also drifted outside of "folk melody" territory. That's fine. It was going to do that as the piece expanded, anyways.

That's all for today! If you enjoyed reading, consider following the blog on your RSS feed. If you really enjoyed it, and/or would like to see MIDI score videos of the revisions in progress, join my Patreon! I also offer pedagogical compositions and exercises for strings, as well as random projects that catch my fancy as time allows. Either way, thanks for reading!

Hits: 1047

Composing Phrase by Phrase 6

Second Theme

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase, a phrase by phrase breakdown of a composition in progress! Last week, I made the jump from unaccompanied melody to string quartet. In the process, I added space to the original theme in order to help support a longer composition. What comes next? Two things - planning out a form, and starting to fill that form in.

Planning first. I've got two points right now. The first is the revised version of the original theme, which looks like this.

First Theme excerpt

The second is the Bb major contrasting theme I wrote couple weeks back. I haven't done a string quartet version of that bit yet, though, so let's get into it. Here's the original...

Second Theme original

...and here's the string quartet version.

Second Theme quartet

The first thing to notice is I evened out and maintain a consistent meter. I did this because the revised first theme is even more wonked out than the unaccompanied version. The original form of the first theme is metrically uneven, but it was also rhythmically consistent. The addition of harmonic highlights adds a layer of rhythmic depth the original doesn't have, and even though it's not a lot a lot, it adds enough off-kilterness I felt it would be good to balance that out in the second theme.

Another point of balance is the arrangement. The revised first theme is given to the first violin and harmonized by the second violin. For the second theme, I turn it upside down - the theme is given to the cello and harmonized by the viola. The two violins add a high sustained tone on top to give a nice pad of color the theme can move against. It's a little bit like... Bob Ross's wet-on-wet painting. You establish a base and by adding color before the base dries, you get nice mixes and blends you which would otherwise be very difficult to achieve.

Other than the meter, the melody is basically unchanged. The original had a rest at the end of the four-bar antecedent and another at the end of the consequent. I took the opportunity to fill this space with a line that leads the violins away and back to their high harmonic pad. The phrase, altogether, has the following arrangement: mm.1-2 cello/viola melody with violin pad; m.3 all four instruments harmonizing together; m.4 cello and viola cadence, violins lead back to repetition of antecedent. Here's a visualization of the effect in the score.

Trading Foreground

This technique of shifting the listener's attention to different parts of the ensemble is extremely important as works get longer and longer. This instance is a very localized example. Symphonies and operas and the like will do the same across large swaths of the composition. The very best will have this kind of foreground shifting at the phrase level, as well, so I'd say it's good I practice that where I can.

The eighth measure is also worth taking a look at. The original theme simply and sensibly cadenced and left it at that. In this case, it felt right to reharmonize the expected closed cadence to an unexpected open cadence (nerd-speak: a deceptive cadence using the V of vi). That created the space for a phrase extension, passing the ending curlicue between the violins and viola/cello pairings before everybody comes together for a unison statement of the curlicue, helping reinforce the actual cadence as the actual authentic cadence.

Now, I've got two points, it's time for a third. When I originally planned out the form, I thought I was going to go for a sonata form. In brief: Exposition (Themes 1&2 or more expose themselves); Development (Themes run from the police); Recap (Themes 1&2 or more return, now reformed and functional members of society). That's not what I ended up with, which is fine. Revising is part of the creative process. You'll have to just wait and see where it goes.

Nevertheless, I did another arrangement of the original theme in full, unchanged. It looks like this.

Theme 1, full statement

The arrangement gives the melody to the first violin, harmonizes it with the second violin and viola, and the cello holds down the bass. The result is a rich, full-bodied sound that is especially resonant given the key-signature uses lots of pitches that align with the instrument's open strings. There are very few harmonic alterations in this statement, barring a couple of chromatic bends in the consequent, because this was intended to be the expository statement of the theme in full after a somewhat chaotic and disjointed introduction.

I'd also like to draw attention to a rhythmic element in the cello. One thing I was always on the look-out for were ways to help massage the blocky regularity of the original theme. The first two measures of the section show one way to do this. The overall meter is 5/8 (musical units are grouped in fives). The melody and its harmonization are entirely eighth-notes. The cello is given quarter-notes. Now, I could have arranged the cello's part in an alternating quarter/dotted-quarter pattern, like this:

alternative arrangement

Instead, I opted to keep the quarter note rhythm consistent. The consequences of this is, the cello's rhythmic pattern runs over the bar-line and creates a two-bar musical line under the melody's 1+1 phrasing. This type of metric overlapping would probably be called polyrhythm, but this is such a simple case I'm more inclined to call it a basic polymeter: the melody is in 5/8, the bass is in 5/4. Whatever you call it, the effect is the same. The longer bass line helps glue two units of the melody together into a single structure.

As a nod to classical balance, I opted to make the second half of the theme metrically similar. This also helps drive the music towards its cadence a bit better.

Ok! I think that's plenty for today. If you enjoyed reading, consider following the blog on your RSS feed for weekly updates. If you really enjoyed it, consider joinging my Patreon, where I post audio samples of the blog excerpts along with other compositions that don't make it to my website. Either way, thanks for stopping in!

Hits: 772

Composing Phrase by Phrase

Phrase 4

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my Composing Phrase by Phrase blog series! I've been writing a new composition one phrase at a time, then writing about some of the decision making process that went into making the music sound like what it does. Right now, I've got a fiddle-like tune for an unaccompanied string instrument (cello by default because I'm a cellist). Last week, I finished up the third phrase, bringing the composition to a close as a short, rounded-binary form.

We're not done yet, though! The goal is something like 16-24 phrases, so we've got a ways to go. So, let's get composting! Er. Composing!

A Phrase Diverged in a Wood

What to do next? Well, I've got two directions, both equally valid for different reasons. First: I write a fourth phrase into the two sections I have already. Second: I start a new section and write the first phrase for it.

If I were to take the first path, I would start by looking for a way to expand the first section of the composition, ending it with an open cadence instead of a closed one. The easiest way to achieve this would be to take what is now the first phrase of the second section, make it the second phrase of the first section, then write a new third phrase for the whole shebang. At only four phrases, I probably wouldn't need to do too much revising beyond that.

I'm not going to do that, though. Instead, I'm going to take the other path and start a new section. In the last post, I brought up the ideas of through-composed and binary forms. In through composed, each phrase or phrase group is basically its own thing. There's not a lot of obvious repetitions between sections. A truly astounding example of a long-form through-composed work is Sibelius' 7th Symphony, a 20-25 minute long composition which, even though you can recognize many similarities across the piece, never quite repeats itself the same way twice.

In binary, you've got two sections we label A and B. Binary also comes in two flavors - simple and rounded. In simple binary, the layout goes A:B. In rounded binary, the beginning material makes a return. If the composition is short enough, it might only be the ending of the first phrase. In longer formats, the first phrase might return in its entirety. The layout goes in some form of A(X):(Y)A. The form for my composition as it stands is A:BA.

Now, we're going ternary. When I brought it up, I said that the current form of the composition might qualify as ternary form. Ternary is simply A:B:A. The reason I didn't label it as ternary form is because there's a very common format where you basically glue two binary sections together into one big composition. This form has its roots in baroque dance, especially (but not exclusively) the minuet and trio genre. Theorists are welcome to get angry at me when I prefer to use "ternary form" for this kind of format and make exceptions for individual works where applicable.

Is that what we're going to do today? Heck yes. Because I'm lazy? Y... yes. But also, no. The reason is, as I push the composition longer and longer, I'm going to need more contrasting material in a desperate attempt to retain the listener's valuable attention. Since I'll need contrasting material at some point, I might as well work it out now while the starting idea is fresh.

What makes for musical contrast? Many things, but there are three in particular that are the places to start looking. One is melodic arc. I covered this last week when working out revisions of the basic material. Another is rhythmic and/or metric profile. If I've got a lot of one type of rhythm, I might want to switch it up a bit to keep things fresh. The last is harmonic context. This is the least non-musician friendly, but basically think of it like color. If one painting has a lot of blues and purples, a painting with lots of oranges and yellows would contrast pretty strongly against it.

Rhythm is the easiest place to start. My composition has lots of eighth-notes and not a lot else. To make a clear contrast will be pretty easy: use longer notes. I'll probably be well served maintaining the whole mix-meter business, though. Bam, done.

Melodic arc: my composition is mostly step-wise movement, to such a degree that was the first element I went to revise. A musical idea that has lots of leaps is a pretty simple way to contrast that.

Harmonic context: most of the composition as it stands is D major pentatonic, meaning it draws primarily from the five pitches D, E, F#, A, and B. There are a couple of moments that move outside that box, but those are the exceptions. I can shift the compositions final (currently D) to something else, but I'd achieve a bigger contrast by changing the scale type. Here, the blank page rears its head. There's, like, a billion scales to choose from. To narrow it down, I'd look first at minor pentatonic, or diatonic scales (D major, for example, would have seven unique tones - D, E, F#, G, A, B, and C#).

All that said, here's what I came up with:

4th phrase

Let's break this down. Musicians will immediately notice the key signature change. It's helpful to remember that key signatures are really just a notation short cut, so if a piece has lots of B-flats, say, you slap that at the beginning of each line to say, "Yeah, there's lots of B-flats, do try and remember," and then musicians will forget anyways and go, "Whoops, I'm pretty dumb, how did I miss that?"

Photo of a musician realizing they forgot missed the key change

Taking a tally of the pitches used in the new melody, we've got lots of B-flats, C, D, F, G, A, and even a couple E-flats. We also start and end on B-flat. Also this pretty firmly suggests the use of B-flat major as a harmonic context (there's more to it, but I really don't want to get into it right now).

There's also longer note durations, and more leaps. There are also some differences in dynamics. Rather than being primarily forte (loud-ish) with piano (soft-ish) as a contrast, this idea is primarily piano with forte as a contrast. Another difference is the use of rests. So! Contrast achieved, mission accomplished!

Oh, but there are some similarities, as well. Trouble with contrast is, if you get too contrasting, you risk the composition feeling disjointed and haphazard. Maybe that's what you're going for, if you're Mr. Bungle or something, but if so you've got to make sure to establish that as a compositional idea pretty early on.

Similarities include the use of irregular and mixed meters, and the return of step-wise movement using eighth-notes. There's also a similar phrase structure as the first phrase of the composition: four bars ending with an open cadence, four bars ending with a closed cadence, repeating bars 1 and 2 as the head of the phrase's consequent. Unlike phrase 1, this phrase changes the melodic arc a bit more to bring the music to its closed cadence.

Phrase 1 and 4 Structure comparsion

There's plenty more to be said, but I think I'll leave off there. If you enjoyed reading, consider subscribing for future updates! If you really enjoyed it, consider joining my Patreon for MIDI and sometimes live video recordings of the music presented here. I also include updated versions of the music which don't make their way to the blog, compositions perfectly playable on their own.

Either way, thanks for reading, and I hope you come back next time!

Hits: 657

Composing Phrase by Phrase

The Second Phrase

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my Composing Phrase by Phrase blog series! The goal is to write a full musical composition and explain the reasoning for certain musical choices I make along the way. Last week, I set up the ideas for a single, eight-bar phrase composition. Now, it's time to expand on that with a second eight-bar phrase.

Why eight bars? For the simple reason that it is a very common phrase length in the music I'm most familiar with. You can find plenty of phrases that are shorter or longer, but those tend to be the exception in Western classical music. The eight-bar phrase is also used in Irish/Scottish fiddle music, the blues, pop songs... It's all over the place. Because of its ubiquity, the eight-bar phrase makes a good default to work from.

To keep people up to speed, here's the phrase I wrote for last week's blog. A thorough break-down of its characteristics can be found in the article here.

phrase 1

Since the next goal is to write a two-phrase composition, I want to lay out some considerations for what the second phrase might contain and how it might be organized. The main concept moving forward is "contrast." Once an idea has been established, there are many charateristics which can be used to help create a contrasting idea: dynamics and articulation, rhythm and/or meter, melodic and/or ensemble range, musical texture, density, pitch center, scale type, etc. etc. There's a lot to play around with!

There's also different degrees of contrast. If I play a melody softly, then repeat the melody with the exact same notes only loudly, then there is minimal contrast. Alternately, if I play a melody with just a single violin and then follow it with a melody played by a full orchestra that is entirely different in dynamics, rhythm, density, and draws notes from an entirely different scale, then we will hear a high degree of contrast.

It's a pretty simple formula. The more elements are different, the more contrast.

The step for this article is only to write a two-phrase composition. Because the tune is so short, it will be very difficult to write a second phrase that highly contrasts the first without the ideas sounding totally disconnected from each other. The work will likely feel unbalanced and incomplete. I don't think it's impossible, but a composer would have to start with that as a goal from the beginning. That's a challenge for another day, I think.

So, the second phrase should have a lot of similarities with the first. The most obvious is to keep drawing notes from the pentatonic scale that has already been established. It will also be a good idea to keep the asymmetrical meters and driving eighth-note rhythm. I could play around with dynamic levels, but this idea draws strongly upon fiddling genres like jigs, and those tend to be played at a consistent dynamic intensity. For now, I'll keep with that feel.

What does that leave us with to vary? For starters, I don't want it to begin with the same content as measures 1-2 and 5-6. These pairs of measures are exactly the same. If I were to hew closely to the jig, that whole phrase would also be repeated. By the end of that, we've heard that idea four times and are ready to move on to something different.

Where should I start looking for new ideas, though? Last week, I talked about open and closed cadences, phrase endings that either feel like the musical idea will continue (like a comma) or feel like the musical idea has concluded (like a period). This concept of "open" and "closed" can also kind of be extended to the beginnings of phrases. It might seem a bit odd to say that an idea's beginning might be closed, but think of it like the first parenthesis of a parenthetical. It signals a clear beginning of a thought. Or, an "open" beginning might be more like starting a sentence with an ellipsis, as if you are walking in on a conversation and hearing only the middle of a speaker's sentence.

In this harmonic scheme, a major pentatonic scale with a final of "D," the closed beginning of a melody would start either on D or a harmonically similar pitch, like F/F# or A (this is a whole topic I should write an article about, but not today). An open beginning would probably start with E or B. I've already used a lot of E's, so, using Sudoku logic, it would probably be a good idea to start the next phrase on a B. After humming a few ideas to myself, this is what I came up with.

phrase 2

There are a couple of obvious differences to look at. First, the meter. The asymmetrical 5/8 is still present, but this time, 6/8 bars are used as a slight point of contrast. To my ear, it helped the second phrase flow a little bit better. Second, I've kept the 2/4 quarter-note cadences and arranged them in the same "open"+"closed" order. This works for such a short composition, but the sequence of cadences will become very important as the composition becomes longer.

Perhaps a less obvious difference is the way the phrase structures its ideas. A quick definition of concepts first. These eight-bar phrases are each made up of two four-bar phrases. The first four-bar unit of each phrase ends with an open cadence and the second of each ends with a closed cadence. This arrangement can be called an "antecedent/consequent" phrase. The first four-bars+open-cadence is the antecedent, and the second four-bars+closed-cadence is the consequent.

In the first phrase, each four-bar segment is a single line without much obvious repetition within themselves. Between the two phrases, measures 1-2 and 5-6 are rote repetitions of each other, while 3 and 7 are slight variations which lead to their respective cadences. Here's the score with highlights to show the relationships.

phrase 1 antecedent/consequent

That said, the consistent eighth-note rhythm carries the momentum all the way across each four-bar unit. There's not much rote repetition within the antecedent or the consequent themselves, only between each other.

The second phrase arranges its ideas somewhat differently within each four-bar segment. Instead of one long four-bar line (really, the first phrase is a 1+1+2 line), the first segment of the second phrase has a rote repetition of measure 9 at measure 11. The arrangement of 2+2 measures helps create a subtle sense of contrast with the first phrase. Much of the musical character is the same, but the pacing of ideas is a little different.

phrase 1 and 2 repetition patterns

There's another point of repetition in the final two measures of the phrase. Measures 15-16 are almost, but not quite, the same as measures 7-8. Tying cadences of phrases together like this is a very common strategy for shorter compositions like this as it helps connect the composition to itself a little better. This type of repetition aids the compositions balance by bringing back familiar musical material after the contrasting ideas.

phrase 1 and 2 cadence highlights

One final, very subtle similarity: melodic arc, or shape. I think I'll actually save this for the next article, because this one has gotten quite long enough. Hopefully you've learned a thing or two! If you would like to support the blog, you can subscribe to it on your RSS feed. If you'd like to support me more directly, you can subscribe to my Patreon, where you'll be able to access video scores of this composition in progress, as well as get scores of pedagogical compositions I write for string players.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed the read! Until next time!

Hits: 903