Main divisions of ch 4, “Playing”

1.Writing for solo instruments
2. Chamber Music
3.Orchestral Music
4. Accompanying the Voice
5. Orchestral Accompaniment of the Voice
6. Choral Accompaniment
7. Concerti

As a church musician I observed examples of many of the topics discussed in ch. 4.
We never had a case of the choir accompanying an instrument (6) or performed a concerto (7), but did perform 1 through 5.

In most of our church services, there was a meditative interlude before communion. This often featured an instrumental or vocal solo.

One of the settings for the Lent liturgy was accompanied not by the usual organ but instead by 3 musicians — cello, bass, and piano. I think that might be considered a chamber group. We also had a guest appearance by a local Medieval group, with one instrument on each part (one soprano recorder, one alto recorder, one tenor recorder etc).

There were two years we had “singalongs” of Handel’s Messiah, complete with full orchestral accompaniment. The instrumentalists were from a local high school orchestra.

On Counterpoint

Playlist for Music Composition, Craft and Art

Here’s a playlist of 8bit’s videos, in chronological order.

Alan Belkin’s text Musical Composition, chapter 2, uses these seven examples

Fig. 2.1 Mahler Symphony 3 , Last movement

I had a couple of things that caused me to lose momentum since I last checked in. One is politics — after keeping away from news since November, I did finally Gaze into the Untempered Schism. I became depressed and anxious for several days. After that I started watching random Youtube shorts because I was too demoralized to focus!

Another reason for loss of momentum is, I’ve had trouble setting up a person / group to report back to. My former tutor is swamped right now. And the Discord server I joined doesn’t seem to be a good place for me. I haven’t figured out how to behave in that environment. Instead of working on the music project, I’m obsessing about how much / how little I should say in the Discord, did I say the wrong thing, are they wishing the awkward old lady would go away etc etc.

Back on track!

My daughter has volunteered to be someone I can submit things to once a week. Not that she is going to read them or listen to them — just that I can hand her the thumb drive and check off that box. Break the big project into smaller pieces.

This video was  helpful!

This is an amazing performance by Alessandro Granato and friends. Alessandro leads the channel Orchestral Fantasy and plays many of the instruments in this version.

First we hear a quick demonstration that the arpeggios of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier (book 1, prelude in C) form a progression of chords with wonderful voice leading.

He then plays a series of his own block chords, spread out over the right and left hand.

The chord progression evolves using different inversions of the chords, creating a melody floating on the top and a bassline on the bottom. The melody and bassline don’t ever duplicate each other, and often are moving in different directions! (I remember this idea from voice leading in Music Theory 2).

The results are lovely!

He then arpeggiates these chords several different ways. On the piano, bottom to top. On the piano, top to bottom. Then he plugs in the synth. Note that when the synth arpeggiator doesn’t quite line up with the musical phrase, he makes use of those little glitchy irregular moments.

Nathan talks about a period of time where he was trying to increase his following on Instagram, so he posted a synth improvisation every day. The Instagram account was a mixed success, but he was very happy with the amount of productivity that came from the assignment. He put together his album “Signals” based on the best of the improv tracks.

He says that it’s easy to get so into watching tutorial videos (or shopping for plug-ins? 😉 that you aren’t actually making music. His concluding remarks were “Give yourself an assignment; see it through to the end; do that over and over”.