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Composing Secrets : 1.Tracks and Instruments

Topic started by rjay (@ 206.152.113.140) on Thu Aug 24 12:45:43 EDT 2000.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Composing Secrets - Tracks and Instruments

Most songs have the following structure:(you can
think of them as parallel tracks)

1. Melody
2. Bass
3. Chord/Accompaniment
4. Drums
5. Percussion

Melody is sung by the singer or could be the
'solo' played by an instrument, when singer
is taking breath. In most music,
melody states the theme of the song/composition
and carries the emotion. All the other tracks
should provide a context to what is says or
reinforce and enhance it.

Human voice, flute, sax, trumpet, and synthetic
sounds serve well as melody instruments.

Drums set the basic pulse and rhythm and there
are many drum kits: acoustic, jazz, techno(used
in ;chandralekha - Thiruda; for example), power
(pottu vaitha kadhal thittam) and many many more.

Bass is usually played by a double bass - huge
violin, plucked like a guitar, or with a guitar
itself. With electronics, synth bass sounds are
generated from keyboard itself(kadalikkum pennin
kaigal - has a wonderful synth bass sound
in its intro.) Slap, Electric, Fretless,
are a few more common sounds. I will get you
recordings of these in isolation.

Accompaniment or backing is usually provided
by piano or guitar class of instruments.
And there are two types: block chords, where
you play the whole chords and hold them,
versus arpeggio and broken chords where
you strike the notes one after another.
In most western music, piano and guitar
are 2 pieces of the five piece orchestra
(voice, piano, guitar, strings, drums)

Strings typically provide counterpoint,
but can also play accompaniment.
My definition, Counterpoint is nothing but alternate melody
which either responds to the lead melody
or plays against it. Examples to follow.

Percussion is the name given by westerners
to all non-western beat instruments! ;)

Shakers, Morocos (chicku chiku) and sticks
and claves and others are examples.

Even bongos (from Africa) and our Tabla are
named percussion, but they are actually
drums because they can play alone and provide
rhythm without the drums.

We can proceed learning in two ways:

(i) We will explore the General midi sounds
128 instruments (16 categories and 8 in each)
and one drum kit. We will take each sound one
by one and learn to identify it and see what
its unique value is and how it has been used
in TFM. I can upload audio demos.

(ii) We can later see the song structure along time
axis (measures) - in terms of intro, theme, break, pallavi
, charanam structure and learn how orchestration
is effectively varied to serve the needs of
the listener at each position.

Basically, tracks and measures are the two
dimensions to understand a composition.

As an aid we can pull apart some famous songs of your choice to see how they are put together. And I can take one of my own compositions and share what thoughts and decisions guided its creation.

Game?
Here is a link to the tutorial that RJay has prepared:
Melody Making Exercise.

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: UV (@ 134.113.4.168) on: Thu May 22 14:17:16 EDT 2003
  
  rjay nice reply.
  Poorva janma vasani,vitta kurai thota kurai
  whatever its time to make some music :)
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 14:45:59 EDT 2003
  
  Mozart and Total recall
  -----------------------
  
  When he was a kid, Mozart went to a cathedral with his father. They played a music there and he liked it. When wanted the sheet music for it, they would not give him, because being sacred music they did not want it played in un-sacred places.
  
  Mozart went back home and wrote the entire multilayered harmony from memory.
  
  OK, how did he do it? It is possible for me and you to memorize a song in first listening.
  
  I have reasons to believe that Ilayaraja or Rahman would be able to do it more accurately than me or you.
  
  Here are some of my thoughts:
  1. An expert listens analytically. He enjoys the notes, but his mind keeps talking to him in judgements - wow, here comes the flute, solo, oops that was a octave jump, here come steps.
  He makes notes at multiple levels. And he constantly is aware of what the music reminds him of - oops this theme sounds like the interlude in Chopin, this sounds like Aayiram thamarai mottukkalae prelude or is structured like it.
  
  2. His recollection is more a RECONSTRUCTION from these notes.
  
  This is one theory. I used to believe in it until say last month.
  
  As I was doing phrase-limited composition exercises, I used to get a whole pallavi-anupallavi idea in a flow and what was more surprising, I could remember this without much effort. And I also observed that this was often when the tune was emotionally satisfying and unique in a sense!
  
  So the new understanding I have is that, the brain develops a way of organizing new patterns by comparison and contrast and finds a way to encode and retrieve whole patterns.
  
  Reading Balakumaran recently, he speaks of opening a center of attention through meditation, which enabled him to memorize whole chunks of reading material as he read ones. I know UV wants the reference ;)
  
  Indian tradition talks about Eka-chanda-grahi's and Medhavi's - those who can grasp anything presented once. Researching this and Astavadhanam are my other favorite brain-eaters.
  
  Coming back to total recall, Adi sankara's life has a similar story. I am not sharing it here for any religious purpose, just the cognitive challenge.
  
  Adi shankara's discipline once composed 20 or 40 stanzas of poetry. He read it to Adi Shankara. In a few days, he lost the manuscript and was crying. Shankara dictated him the entire poetry back. How did he do it?
  
  Again, we could use the reconstruction theory -
  Shankara might have reflected and deeply processed
  each line in multiple levels, what the disciple stated and why and how it compares and contrasts to what others have said and why and so on. And this could have helped him reconstruct it.
  
  But then there is the intuitive theory that says, it is possible for brain to do all this reconstruction so quickly and under surface consciousness, that he could have just recited instantaneously.
  
  There could be mechanisms of single trial learning.
  
  Intuition or out-tuition, deep processing (perceiving relationships in multiple levels) is a key that experts use and we need to start doing.
  
  
  
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 14:56:47 EDT 2003
  
  This is the classic exercise used to demonstrate deep processing.
  
  Here is a list of five things: read once.
  
  Coffee cup
  Cat
  Telephone Pole
  Aluminium
  Buffallo
  
  
  Now, turn away and recollect, how many did you.
  
  Now, get back and read the list again, This time, as you read each item, see if it is living or non-living.
  
  Done?
  
  Now recollect. Definitely you would have done more.
  
  What if you used two dimensions to classify -
  Living/Nonliving and Indoor/Outdoor. Coffee cup is Indoor Nonliving and so on.
  
  You will take more time to process the list, but I am sure you will recollect all of these.
  
  It is like setting up a set of mathematical equations to which the items in question are an answer. Or taking mutiple snapshots from various angles and later putting it together into a 3-d object.
  
  Analytical listening of music might be similar. We observe patterns in various dimensions that are working together. An expert has internal agents (daemons) each taking care of a particular dimension to pop up when an unusual, remarkable trick on that dimension is being detected.
  
  Maybe that is what we mean by experts using more of their brain, while the frontbencher is actually enjoying the sound of music.
  
  The theme of these series of writeups is that these daemons have to be trained one at a time, exclusively and then they work together amazingly well.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 15:03:59 EDT 2003
  
  Deeper processing can be done in different ways too. Here are two more ways to quickly memorize the list:
  
  1. One coffee cup, two cats, three poles, four aluminium and five buffallos (pegs and visualization)
  
  2. The coffee cup was taken by the cat and hung on the telephone pole where the aluminium buffalo was standing. (Bizzare funny associations)
  
  The fun element is very important. The lyrics writing thread often has excellent parodies of existing songs. Attempting a parody or humor, is an effective way to shut down the serious critical mind in creation.
  
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 15:49:42 EDT 2003
  
  I found this interesting experiment:
  
  Robert Solso, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Stanford University He recently showed six faces to British portraitist Humphrey Ocean and a graduate student with no known painting skill, then asked them to draw each face on a notepad. Meanwhile, they were attached to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, which measured their brain activity as they worked.
  
  While drawing, both Ocean and the student triggered the fight posterior parietal area of the brain, which is involved in identifying visual images. But the painter activated it less, likely because he processes faces more efficiently, says Solso. Both subjects also activated the fight middle frontal area, though Ocean triggered this site of "higher order thinking" more. While the student was "slavishly copying the faces," says Solso, the expert was busy integrating their features into an artistic image.
  
  --------------
  
  Here are my observations:
  
  The novice is caught in surface processing, may it be visual features or notes and beats. Expert has categorized them, so his processing is higher order (in terms of patterns)
  
  
• From: hihi:-) (@ 128.111.112.46) on: Thu May 22 16:26:46 EDT 2003
  
  rjay: do you still live in the same place? it would be interesting to meet you. (i am in the CA now).
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 17:01:33 EDT 2003
  
  hihi :-)
  
  What do you mean by same place? I have moved from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, but it looks like I still live in the same place (which I carry around)
  
  ;)
  we will arrange for a video conference...
  rjay
  
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Thu May 22 17:34:01 EDT 2003
  
  THis is a must read:
  http://www.wiwi.uni-marburg.de/lehrstuehle/einrinst/mafex/Netzwerk/Publikationen/Dokumente/OnlineArtikel/genious.htm
  
  Talks about 'genius' by hard work and more specifically, that genius use their long term memory as a working memory and this is what gives them the edge.
  
  
• From: UV (@ 134.113.4.168) on: Fri May 23 12:12:09 EDT 2003
  
  rjay here is something interesting
  nothing to do with music but something about ramanujam
  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47285724
  
  

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