Favorite Musical Elements/Ideas/Techniques

I'm not sure what exactly to call this topic, but what are some things that you love to hear in music?

For me, there are a few...

I love hearing a melody being played staccato by one instrument, while another plays the exact same melody legato over top of it. I don't know why. ^^ But that is particularly effective in marches.

Also, octave jumps in melodies (or 6ths and 7ths... just big intervals like that). They just make them SOAR, and its awesome.

Another, I love differences in texture within the same section of a piece. For instance, we played a piece in band this year where the low brass/reeds had a strong, marcato melody. Over that, the horn section held out loud, yet beautiful chords, almost heroic sounding. And on top of that, the high woodwinds played a very active triplet part in the high registers. The differences in the parts were huge, yet together it was an awesome musical moment for me. ^_^

What about you? :D

Though this is more of a general thing, I tend to enjoy big, bombastic, passionate kind of endings in music. If not big and bombastic, at least incredibly passionate :D.

I get what your saying. I love the same techniques you do. Those techniques serve to create a foreground, background and other ideas. Its kind of like looking at a picture or a painting and noticing how all the different elements interact with each other. One element on top of another, something else seems to be going on in the background and yet there is a main focus to the painting, but all the other elements serve to tell the story.

Pizzicato I always find amazing. The pizz. part in Prokofiev's Troika, from the Lt. Kije Suite is amazing.

Chromaticism is nice, like in a lot of Shostakovich's work.

I particularly enjoy it when a solo instrument uses kind of like a wave pattern, it's like going down the scale from high E to B then Gsharp, and then it moves up and goes down the scale like E to Csharp and A, and it sounds so awesome when the musician plays it reversed, and go up and then down, or Vice Versa

I like a lot of Debussy's techniques. I really like the whole tone scale when it is used nicely. I like unfinished chords such as a regular C major with a 7th added to the top. I also like taking the third out of a chord and adding it to the top to make it a 10th and then playing the whole thing as a rolled chord. I like 7th in the bass when they are used in creating a lush harmony. I like sudden changes from minor or from minor to major like through an arpeggio or something. I like a lot of passion and big flowy luxoroius piece such as Rachmaninoff or Tchaikosky would do it. I also like really creative sounds as Ravel and Debussy would do it. Sort of like a "soundscape" like the trills and the creative way of using 2nds and chords to make a sound rather than a melody or accompaniment that will host the melody. (I know that probably did not make any sense).

I like Impressionism.

I love key changes! Especially when a theme is repeated right after it's first stated in the half-tone above.

And when there's staccato eigths notes just going on and on top of it. :) I'm strange okay? :)

Strings: sul ponticello, pizzicati (both normal and snap), glissandi, and long phrases that sound like singing (cello's especially good for this).

Woodwinds: flutter tongue, trills, tremolos, staccato accents, short melodic phrases.

Brass: rips, sharp staccato accents, fanfares, long phrases (Horn in F especially).

Pitched Percussion: doubling melody at key points, offsetting meter, sharp accents.

Voices: staggered entrances, close dissonances within consonant chords, tension and release.

Unpitched Percussion: accents.

Rising/falling octaves on the piano. Mmmm...