Favourite Composition Devices

Currently I'm really loving this chord I found in Webern, a tritone with a P4 built ontop (or often I enjoy the vice-versa, which is a nice chord that's essentially a major triad in 2nd inv. with a suspended and raised fourth depending on how you use it). It's so fun to experiment with! Some people have mentioned modes and I agree completely, but there are other fun scales like the octatonic scales or even making up new scales essentially based on modes.

Some nifty orchestral things are putting the clarinet and bassoon in unison (it makes a really beautiful tone) and glissandos all over the place in the trombones and strings.

Hmm...

* Complex forms, taken from real life (example PIER 6 - GATWICK, Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Series)
* Series of random non repeated intervals. 23 interval series... Non repeated elements
* Thin vs Thick in orchestration. The ability to trick the audience that they're listening to something that they're not really... (for example have the first 5 minutes with a string quartet, so the audience get a really good feel of the sound, and then hit the rest of the orchestra).
* Multiple input
* Interactive elements (still in vere early stages)
* Adaptive music (not much unlike the above, but much more advanced for use in computer games)

and many more, but these are the main ones that I have made "mine", through extensive research and appliance... :-\

I like writing my vocal lines as hard as possible. I will have no friends.

Pitch-sets.
Percussion. Oh yeah.

Generating illusory tonalities.
Creating WEIRD harmonies out of melodic lines that resolve to major or minor triads. Or major/minor triads. Whatever.

COUNTERPOINT!
Techniques drawn from early music - modalities, etc.
Melisma.

There's a technique I used quite a bit in my Scherzo for string quartet. I took a dominant 7th chord and altered the spelling to make a German 6th. It makes for a surprising modulation, especially dropped in the middle of nowhere. I learned about it in my music theory classes.

at the moment I'm liking taking my melody, and writing a chromatically descending bassline, and trying to harmonise it in a logical fashoin, difficult, but fun.

Hmm...

I like major seventh chords (my favourite chord is F-A-C-E, heh). For orchestration, my favourite doublings are: bassoon and horn in octaves or unison, harp harmonics against celesta (very very shiny and beautiful), clarinet and oboe in a relative close interval, and low string pizzicatos with harp. For special effects, I like harp bisbligando (sp?), bowed vibraphone, wind chimes (not really special effect, but meh), whistle tone on flute, and etc...

Originally Posted by Zetetic

I like the Mozartian diminished-dominant alternations that you have can before a cadence.

Can you think of any examples in his piano concerti?

Hmm, most of these actually are more guilty pleasure devices than favourite (as in I use them when I feel lazy to compromise ), but...

-Quintal/Quartally loaded harmonies
-(Series of) Ostinatos
-Parallel, quasi-chromatic chord progressions
-Metric modulation
-Imitative counterpoint, especially call-and-response
-Using strings for just about everything (though I'm trying to move away from that)

Originally Posted by Mark

at the moment I'm liking taking my melody, and writing a chromatically descending bassline, and trying to harmonise it in a logical fashoin, difficult, but fun.

I had a go at something like that recently, after seeing this bit in Petrushka that initially seemed to make no harmonic sense to me at all... Basically harmonising a really simple major/minor melody with a completely chromatic bassline... it sounded really good, really eerie with the melody I used.

Originally Posted by 920bpm

I had a go at something like that recently, after seeing this bit in Petrushka that initially seemed to make no harmonic sense to me at all... Basically harmonising a really simple major/minor melody with a completely chromatic bassline... it sounded really good, really eerie with the melody I used.

awesome, care to post it...?