Lesson with Erik Åström

Assignment # 1:
First Species Counterpoint. Given the following Canti Firmi, compose a 1st Species contrapuntal line both above and below. The .pdf of the Cantus lines is attached.

Well this is what I came up with.

I'm sorry - I should have been clearer about this assignment. When doing species counterpoint, one always begins on either the unison, 5th, or octave. One always ends on the unison, and the second to last pitch is always the leading tone, if coming from underneath, or the supertonic, if coming from above.

Sorry again, but if you could do the assignment according to those guidelines that'd be great.

Ok, I've had lots I to do and still do, I'm having a very hectic period so I haven't really had the time to do this. But I found myself some time to do this now so I'll post the changes I did on the assignments.

Thanks - I'll look these over when I get the chance, but it's finals week, so I'll be busy.

I was wondering if you have the time to help me with this now I can understand if you've had/have much to do, so have I.

Because of my exams and such I haven't had much time to sit down composing myself, I have mostly concentrated on playing the piano and done all the boring homework. But now when I'm off for summer break I've got plenty of time! So if you still feel like teaching me, here I am

Right. I looked over this work - and it's pretty good for the most part. You have several instances of parallel fifths - which for most period music is a HUGE no-no - and you've begun the bass line on the 4th scale degree, when in species counterpoint, you only ever start on the 1st when writing lower counterpoint. There are some places where you leap one direction, and then leap another, which is not stylistically correct. You also have repeated a pitch in adjacent bars - which is not exactly kosher either.

But your counterpoint's pretty strong for all that. You've countered your parallel fifths by moving in opposite directions, or simply away from stepwise motion to generate contrast, which is nifty. And I'm not one to really care about stylistic conventions. If you ever take a theory class, I'll let THEM worry about that stuff.

I think a new exercise would be a good/fun idea. This is an exercise that comes from composer Ralph Shapey, via my teacher Amy Kaplan.

Pick five pitches, all within one octave (or so). They should not be components of a diatonic scale. Analyze them for their intervallic content by counting how many of each interval exists in the set. For our purposes, intervals larger than a tritone should be inverted (5th becomes 4th, M6 becomes m3, etc.).

Write a short melody, using each of the five pitches. You may repeat pitches, but not once you've moved on to a new pitch ("A, A, D" is permissible, "A, D, A" is not).

I'll give you further instructions when you post your melody.

Ok so I did that exercise, I chose these 5 pitches

D E G Ab Bb

I was not sure if I was allowed to repeat the same pitch an octave up as you said it should be inside of an octave, but I kept the one instance at measure 11 anyways because I felt it should be like that I can change it though if it isn't allowed in this exercise.

Hmm I realise it's been a while since I did some serious composing so now when I'm in the ending phase of my summer work I want to start again. I'm very curious in what this exercise is so if possible I'd like to hear what to do next. By the way, I added a new part of melody because I was a bit bored so I'll post it here.