Favourite Composition Devices

Originally Posted by swankswede13

That sounds really cool! Would it just be normal music but with no barlines and a really free sense of rhythm? So it would impossible to fit the melody into any time signature. I'm suddenly intrigued It would be so FREEING to master that technique I can think of all the amazing "rubato" pieces. So, do you just start with one melody/line that's free of any traditional rhythmic structure?

There's several ways to approach this.

• Time, no set signature - tempo is constant; rhythms are set; but there's no 1...
  
• Freely interpreted - rhythmically, giving pitches without stems allows the performer to dictate rhythms (open noteheads vs closed noteheads will steer them into holding some notes longer than others)
  
• Free - giving the performer pitches only, with no indications will garner surprising results. Though, not as modern a concept as you might think:

dig Louis Couperin's Unmeasured Preludes...



...

Why not just tell them to play some music, and then listen? Just kidding. It really is an intersting concept.

Colin Thomson

Originally Posted by colinthomson

Just kidding.

*pokes Colin in the chest*

I hope so...

I base a good chunk of my entire musical concept on freedom and interpretation of open-ended stimuli.

oh, so it's really hard to do with a normal notation program. well, I'll get to work on penmanship
Thanks for the insight, Robin!

Originally Posted by swankswede13

oh, so it's really hard to do with a normal notation program. well, I'll get to work on penmanship
Thanks for the insight, Robin!

Not so hard - Finale will do it easily: hiding measures, stems, key sigs, etc. ...spacing properly becomes a pain (score vs parts), but again not too complicated.

Fugues with subjects chromatically moving down from tonic to dominant
Passacagalias (all of my best compositions yet)
NOT motoric Bach-like continuous rhythms
Ending music on the dominant chord

Originally Posted by echurchill

Ending music on the dominant chord

I enjoy:

-Odd time signatures, especially for variations on a theme
The augmented scale
-Harmonies in a minor piece that use both harmonic minor and natural minor (i.e. i - bVII - bVI - V)
-Altered dominant chords
-Modes of the major scale, as well as modes of harmonic minor, melodic minor, and harmonic major
-Polyrhythms
-Mixing harmonic minor and the blues scale
-Modulating up a half step by actually using a dominant chord, not just doing it randomly like every show tune ever
-When drummers fall and skin both their knees
-Enharmonic chords in harmonic minor (i.e. bvi, in which the diatonic natural 7 of the scale, which is really a #2 of the chord, functions as a b3; or V+, in which the diatonic b3 of the scale, which is really a b6 of the chord, functions as a +5)

When drummers fall and skin both their knees

Originally Posted by spherenine

When drummers fall and skin both their knees

I like drummers...I've concluded that, in 90% modern art music, the difference between jazz and classical is a drummer.

Interesting thought.