These excerpts are from Diether De La Motte's "Study of Harmony":

 

Thank you very much.

I tried very hard to convince the improvisers that what they are doing is a kind of coincidence, but I'm afraid I haven't succeeded. Improvisation has been so ingrained in their flesh that ...

 

Your summation is not inaccurate, it's just not pertinent to this thread. Improvisation is certainly randomisation, but as far as creating a FIXED melody, not a VARIABLE one, it is not relevant. Improvisation is composition on the spot to many people including myself and a great improvisation contains many factors and some randomness that needs to be in a thread of its own. Additionally, so do the skills required to make someone good at it and its accompanying theory.

You do not have to convince me of your statement but it becomes confusing when it is unrelated, that's all.

 

I'll make OP's brain more comfortable. These guys have made available 68 billion melodies with 12 pitches in an octave. Download and use them in whatever way you like ...

Melody datasets generated by All the Music, LLC
https://archive.org/details/allthemusicllc-datasets

Files for allthemusicllc-datasets
https://archive.org/download/allthemusicllc-datasets

 

Randomness at best leads to improvisation. Improvisation is something between composing and randomness. Improvisation is the advanced form of randomness.

Considering improvisation as the main goal makes the use of accidents permissible. There has to be a strong reference point to stop random thinking.

If we ignore all the principles and refer all the problems to emotions and non-speculative factors, then the artist will at best become an improviser, not a composer.

Once again, you'd say it's not related to the OP's question but it's related.

 

@Riviera - you do get that composition and improvisation are not the same word? There is a reason for that and this thread is not the place to discuss comprovisation, because that is NOT what the TA asked for.

 

OK! I end it here and leave the OP in bewilderment. I hope he got the answer to his question and the problem was solved.

 

@Valnar Thank you very much for that post.
Wise words from Diether De La Motte's Study of Harmony.
The advice in that one page ought to be 'case closed' for the entire thread.

For some of us - it is old news that can't be repeated too often.

For others it represents what they most fear, i.e., that their lack of musical talent, and their reluctance to 'actually work at it' can never be compensated by theory tricks.

And for some notorious others it is regrettably completely irrelevant because
- they won't read it;
- if they read it they won't understand it;
- if they understand it they will refuse to assimilate it;
- if they assimilate it they will still continue to invent stupid questions solely to be engaged in meaningless pseudo-clever dialogue as a failing band-aid for their insecurities.

Aside: @Valnar - Thanks again for the book ref.
Follow up - I found it at LibGen. Below is a page from the preface which supplements the advice from your well chosen page.
Mindless allegedly-rule-seeking trollster's might like to focus on constructive words in there like harmonic practice, harmonic styles,
and on derogatory terms like artless rules.

Next prediction for the stupidest response might be... "but that's a book about harmony - I'm talking about melody"

 

@Ad Heesive as a comprehensive sourcebook this is great. However, in some advanced composition and reharmonization techniques especially forms in all genres/styles, it does not cover everything, especially stylistically. No book could without being a florilegium. That's why I left all the details to people who wanted to go in deeper. Otherwise, it then becomes pitting one style against another which is silly because it is all music.
To make such a statement I have to back it up I suppose. This comes from a more recent and also respected composition and harmony book. One of many examples I have at my disposal that are not in La Motte's study.

Another important category of composition might be referred to as through-composition. In its most widely accepted meaning, the term more or less suggests that new music appears where formal repetition might be expected, and/or that the piece does not include literal repetitions of entire sections of its form. In this sense it is the opposite of strophic 32 bar song forms or other formal scenarios involving literal recapitulation.

- Jaffe, Something Borrowed Something Blue: Principles of Jazz Composition, 212.


Also check out Ron Miller's books "Modal Jazz Composition and Harmony" (Vol1 & Vol2).
(You can probably find it at Libgen too).
Also has a lot of information not covered by La Motte.

 

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Agree 100%.
My praise for the La Motte book is not its scope (although that is impressive)
My praise is for its attitude to putting repertoire and theory into a sane perspective, i.e., repertoire first, theory second.
And we know this is just stating the bleedingly obvious and yet, here we are, answering questions from people who are deluded enough to believe that magic artless rules will solve their problems and that the art of music making can be objectified into their preferred pseudo-science.

Regarding your additional music theory sources - I'll bet they are legion.
And it's wonderful that so many readily accessible sources exist today.
I've commented many times on how for me personally "I'm not a huge fan of listening to jazz (some brilliant, but much that doesn't move me) and yet I think I have learned significantly more about music theory from jazz theory books than from any other source". In my early days of playing and writing in rock bands - in total ignorance of theory - any attempt I made to study classical theory felt totally alien whereas jazz theory books seemed to make a lot more sense (despite me preferring to listen to classical rather than jazz ).
Now I'm happy to assimilate theory from wherever I find it,
but I still really value my days of creating in ignorance most highly.
Just 'going for it - creatively' is all that really matters, the knowledge can come later.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2021

Totally agreed !

I find that funny because I am the opposite in where I went next. I think that if anyone truly wishes to stay open to learning they want to go as far back (and forwards) as they can. With me, I was taught counterpoint techniques by a phenomenal musician, well-respected. His skills were unquestionable. However, many years later I realised there was no one way to do anything so I looked at all the great classical counterpoint exponents and writers and found even more. From there I was able to decipher there were no real limitations in either style/genre, just appropriateness for their respective styles and more importantly, they were interchangeable.
The same went for improvisation. I started to go back into history and look at early improvisation from what would be called a written (composed) improvisation versus an on-the-spot improvisation.
I love the beautiful differences too between classical quartet free improvisations and quartets in free jazz. In classical improvisations they are focusing a lot on melodic counter-melody, dynamics and rhythmic balance and creating a story. In jazz, they do a similar thing except the harmonic approach and rhythmic aspects are like chalk and cheese. Nonetheless, they do it with the identical intent, to create something unique on-the-spot.

I hear you. There was a real beauty in "That sounds good to me".
We still have that, only our ears prick up to things they would not have in our teens
I remember hearing Nirvana the first time and thinking WTF is that asymmetrical harmonic progression doing in a pop song? It pretty much became the norm. Some call Cobain a genius. I think he did what you just said...knew what he wanted to do and say and did not care if it was right or wrong, it simply worked for him.

 

And so it's nice to find the same attitude being expressed in the lovely Jazz theory references @BaSsDuDe just mentioned.

From Ron Miller - Modal Jazz. Composition and Harmony. Vol-2 - At the end of his Chapter on Melody


Trolls beware
- Diether De LA Motte (Classical) and
- Ron Miller (Jazz)
both have a message you really don't want to hear...

"It's all about actual ENGAGEMENT with actual music - not about pretending to be clever."

 

edit....


All music is equal

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 22, 2021

Just for the record, this is one Martha Arthur who is a film actress from Ghana, and I believe that she knows who she is. I'm not sure if she understands anything about music theory though

 

We are doomed to live alongside ambiguity. Neither learning nor thinking will make ambiguity away. The common destiny of all men, ambiguity. The only choice we have is to love the ambiguity and get used to it.

 

Getting back to melody in composition. While distracted I decided to see if anyone had composed a tune called 'Ambiguous'...
As it turns out there is a Japanese lady. The song for a pop tune has both predictable and unpredictable harmonic shifts even a diminished and I found it more interesting than a large proportion of Pop tunes out there. The string intro is almost a contrast by simple instrumentation difference to most of the rest of the song....
I do not understand a single word she is singing but the Pop writing is really good and the composer understands harmony and key changes for effect... the playing is good too. Melodically it works with this style of rock pop music and is not a usual expected structure.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 22, 2021

Ambiguous Art!
AABA AABCA ...... Art

Spoiler

When nothing is important...

 

@Riviera - Given that you persistently seek a rules-based answer to every question, I decided to provide an authentic rules-based answer.

So, I just took your verbal salad and fed it into an Artificial Intelligence Turing Test Text Generator.
This is the reply that the rules-based algorithm generated in conversation with your garbage.

We will be ready to accept ambiguity as our fate. It is not our choice to accept our destiny, our life together, because it is not ours. We will not be fooled by the words of a man who cannot understand ambiguity and cannot feel that ambiguity. We will not be fooled by false interpretations of the same word. I want to be happy and healthy and prosperous and successful and free. But there is no hope or satisfaction in the world.

Personally, I found the AI part of the conversation far more illuminating than what @Riviera wrote.
But at the end of the day Garbage IN - Garbage OUT - And that's the problem here...
There is no significant difference between the gibberish @Riviera generates and the gibberish generated by an algorithm.
If I posted both paragraphs and asked the readers to figure out which was human - I think most people would guess neither

There's a real message here for music making too.

 

Well done, Ad! You gave a good example. It's not about music, but has a good connection to music.

Without a reference point, music would be similar to what you brought in your sentences.

 

Yeah, give your ambiguity a big hug from me as well.

Dude, you'll perhaps find what you seek in coding, engineering etc - even there, there can be often be more than one way to reach a goal. BTW, have you ever considered that maybe getting into the ambiguous, messy, uncertain business of music creation/expression was, for you, a profound mistake?