No sax, still got keys

On hols, no saxophone with me, but there are music places that rent out pianos an hour. Got to practice on an upright for an hour. The particular model of upright I got I definitely did not like the tone, sounds very brittle. Also, it was quite difficult to play softly, and the sustain pedal just went on forever. Not sure if it's because if it's an upright or just the brand (which I have no idea). My CP33 definitely reminds me of my teacher's Yamaha Grand, this one was totally out of my range.

Currently working through self-assigned homework, just finished several pages of background rhythm lines, next up will be smooth voice leading for chords.

Secondary Dominants, oh my

Practicing using secondary dominants against this month's ballad. I'm purely using the backing chord changes off Wikifonia directly and adding in my own chord changes with secondary dominants and some sus chords. The final one for the backing will be re-written as this is just homework for utilizing secondary dominants :)

Harmony practice

Working on some harmony practice today, but no audio sadly as I can't seem to get a good clean export from Musescore no matter how I tweak the playback and synth settings. It seems to use the original soundfont, not the open source GM soundfont (which I think the piano is pretty good for notation).

Ah well.

Melody on Progression

Fooling around with voicing the chord progression from yesterday as well as creating a melody to sit on top. Logic/EXS24/Grand Piano

ii V I progression

Working through some harmony lessons, here's testing a basic ii V I harmony in the key of C, Finale with GPO

12 Bar Blues Compo

Jumping in between books at the moment - this is one of the exercises from "Exploring Jazz Saxophone".

Patterns in Chords

Currently working through Chapter 2, and the 2nd exercise deals with forming chords a perfect 4th/5th apart, as well as those a 2nd and 3rd apart.

Spending some time on the keyboard seems to indicate a pattern of sorts.

Chords a 4th above/5th Below
For the chords a 4th apart, in their root position (i.e. no inversions), all one has to do is move the 2nd and 3rd notes one tone up to get to the chord a 4th away, to what I think is the first inversion.

E.g.

C to F (CEG -> CFA, 2nd inversion of FAC)
Dm to G (DFA -> DGB, 2nd inversion of GBD)
Em to Am
F to Bdim 
G to C (GBD -> GCE, which is 2nd inversion of CEG)

Am to Dm


On the keyboard in the C Major Scale, with the left hand, it means moving the thumb and middle fingers one key to the right.

Chords a 5th above/4th below
Similarly, a pattern can be found for chords a 5th below.

E.g.
C to G (CEG to BDG -> 1st inversion of GBD)
Dm to Am (DFA to CEA -> 1st inversion of ACE)
so on and so forth....

Again on the keyboard, this is done by shifting the last and middle fingers on the left hand one key to the left.

Chords a 2nd above/below
Erm, no patterns here, since they are basically moving all the keys either one key to the left or right..

Chords a 3rd above
And here another pattern emerges
C to E (CEG -> BEG, which is the 2nd inversion if EGB)
Dmin to F (DFA to CFA, which is the 2nd inversion if FAC)
so on and so forth....

On the lefthand keyboard in CMajor, this is moving the last finger on key to the left.

Chords a 3rd below
The final pattern I noticed.
C to Amin (CEG to CEA, which is the 1st inversion of ACE)
Dm to Bmin (DFA to DFB, which is the 1st inversion of BDF)
so on and so forth....

So on the left hand keyboard in C Major, this is moving the thumb one key to the right.

Not sure how useful this is, but perhaps it could be down the road.

NOTE: This are my personal observations, and it could be correct, or incorrect. Use the information here at thy own peril.

Chapter 01 Ex 8 - Wayward Rhythm

Wayward rhythm is the last exercise in the book, and apart from following the rules ("Basic Note Values") listed in the beginning of the chapter, no instruction apart from using an unpitched instrument.

The instrument I choose was the Pueblo Drum from the Garritan World library. I like it, and a quick google indicates it may be used for Native American drumming, so, woot! As I would love to write some sort of tribal style music and this is an instrument to consider.

Also had to figure out how to get Printmusic to switch to a percussion track, not to difficult just a setting away.

Chapter 01 Ex 6 - Abandoned Dwelling

This lesson features the E Phygian scale, with a melody that is supposed to sound dark and omnimous. Hopefully this brings the idea across. I've swapped out the concert flute with a Native American Flute sample from Garritan's World Instruments, to fit the vibe.

Chapter 01 Ex 5 - Morning Lake

Exercise 5 features the D Dorian mode, fixed rhythm and a melody expressing water. I went with this idea of a lakeside in the morning.

I also found the section in Printmusic where effects can be added, an added the AU MatrixReverb, one of my favourite reverbs.

Chapter 01 Ex 4

Figured out yet a few more bits with Printmusic - you'd need to enable one of the Human Playback styles in order to have the markings e.g. mf or the fermata played back. The rit marking doesn't seem to do anything though. Hairpin crescendos also seemed to work though I had to put the dynamics at either end of the hairpin.

Chapter 01 Ex 3

The third exercise focuses on "the row" where one must use a fixed sequence of notes, and repeats are allowed.

In addition, I also learned a few tricks with Finale and the Garritan samples. Figured out how to lock it to 4 bars per line - been working on 12 bars as standard - and that using the "Notation" version of the instruments e.g. n-flute plr 1 vs flute plr 1 - it's the correct instrument for use with Finale, and allows the articulations like legato and staccatos to be properly played back.

Lucky read on the garritan forums - wonder if its the same for other scoring programs as well.

Chapter 01 Ex 2

Gah has it been a week since I worked on this?!

 

Foxes curiously look around, sniffing the air for signs of humans. Oh no! What is that! Hide hide hide! Oh, it's just a cat. La de la, look around, foxes all around!

Chapter 01 Ex 1

Straight export from Printmusic with "Classical" humanization. This begs the question - am I allowed to use rests? The general rules seem to say yes, but the exercise itself says to use the rhythm given. Mmmm.

Personal review:
a) Should have added in performance markings, as indicated in the general rules
b) No rests is correct
c) Should have titled the piece.