My “morning noodles” project is going well! I’ve only missed a few days, and there are other days when I produce more than one page of noodling. Lately I have been tossing the solfege dice and working with whatever RNGsus gives me.\u00a0 It’s a set of 15 blank D12 dice. On 12 of them I wrote the solfege syllables, and 3 of them I left blank.<\/p>\n
Why solfege dice instead of dice already marked with the notes of the scale? Well, someday I hope to say “alright, today I’m thinking in a different key” instead of orienting myself with the key of C all the time.<\/p>\n
The 3 blank dice are often useful; they usually break the 12 random notes into nice phrases. For example, this morning I got<\/p>\n
fi fa la (blank) fi di si mi ri li fa la (blank) li<\/p>\n
I started out by thinking of it as [F# F A]\u00a0 \u00a0[F# C# G# E, D# A# F A]\u00a0 [Bb]. Then I realized, I could think of it as in the key of Bb minor, with just 2 “spicy notes”,\u00a0 E and A. That would take advantage of the fact that I tossed a Bb there at the end, all set apart by itself.<\/p>\n
I HATE thinking in keys with multiple “black notes”. Starting at the top of the circle of 5ths I’m OK with the top, a little to the right and a little to the left. No more than a quarter circle either way. So when I saw F# C# G# E, right away I was thinking an E chord shell with extensions, or some kind of F# chord. How could that fit with the Bb at the end? F# can’t exist in the same key with Bb!!! — uh, yes it can, if it’s Bb minor.<\/p>\n
The chords in Bb minor are<\/strong><\/p>\n Bb minor<\/p>\n C minor b5<\/p>\n Db major<\/p>\n Eb minor<\/p>\n F minor<\/p>\n F# major (whaaaaat??) — actually Gb major<\/p>\n Ab major<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n That means that using E instead of Eb is a tritone (or sharp 11th), one of my favorite chords. The A is less weird — it’s the major seventh.<\/p>\n I moved the phrases around so I currently have<\/p>\n Eb Bb\u00a0 F A,\u00a0 Gb Db Ab E\u00a0 (down up down, down up down)<\/p>\n Eb Bb F A, ….Bb\u00a0 (up down up, up)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My “morning noodles” project is going well! I’ve only missed a few days, and there are other days when I produce more than one page of noodling. Lately I have been tossing the solfege dice and working with whatever RNGsus … Continue reading \n