Gigue in Eb

This is another dance I found in my old archives (composed in the sequencer a long time ago).  It's a Gigue which is the last dance in a traditional Baroque Dance Suite.  It's usually in a fast 6/8 meter so I tried to emulate that feel.  I imported the midi into MuseScore and edited the slurs and accidentals (for correct enharmonics in chromatic sections).  The overall form is ternary as there's a Musette (meant to imitate bagpipe drones) couched in the middle in between the Gigue sections.  This dance uses what I have heard termed "shifted tonality" - where distant key centers are juxtaposed chromatically next to each other.  Note:  the contrabass is there because the whole dance suite is written for a string orchestra, even though it doesn't come in until the end of the musette.  I would love to hear your comments, suggestions or observations!

This piece made me smile! My ear anticipated a baroque piece but was pleasantly surprised to hear such surprising harmony. Its a very catchy tune! 

9 minutes ago, DarrenEngland said:

This piece made me smile! My ear anticipated a baroque piece but was pleasantly surprised to hear such surprising harmony. Its a very catchy tune! 

Thanks!  I haven't composed in a style akin to this in years.  Don't know if I even can anymore LoL ...

Amazing, are these pieces you are posting part of the "lost suite" you told me about? I have always been really interested in shifted tonality, as I have seen it used many times with really beautiful results (this piece included). I believe it is commonly used in videogame soundtracks and in fact, it might just be me, but this piece gives me nice videogame music vibes. Amazing job! I am also planning to learn about shifted tonality in the future but I want to get a really solid grasp of common period music and tonality first, which I am still quite far from accomplishing 😅 .

24 minutes ago, JorgeDavid said:

Amazing, are these pieces you are posting part of the "lost suite" you told me about?

Thank you!  Yes - I found the Dance Suite I was talking about earlier on my old rewritable CD - an archive of some of my old music.  The Dance Suite includes a kind of too slow Allemande in E major (so I guess it's not really an Allemande as I can't imagine anyone dancing to it), a Courante in Ab minor that's in 2/4 (so it's not really a Courante either since they're supposed to be in 3/4), a Sarabande in B minor that's not of the highest quality, a Gavotte in C major which is great but unfinished, a Bourree in F minor that's also unfinished, and finally this Gigue that you just heard.  Nothing really holds these disparate "movements" together as a single entity though so I'm not really justified in grouping them together besides the fact that they're meant to be dance-like ... none of the melodic material has anything in common and I didn't make a macro-tonal plan - I just kinda composed stuff and some of it ended up sounding dance like and having certain characteristics of certain dances.

24 minutes ago, JorgeDavid said:

I have always been really interested in shifted tonality, as I have seen it used many times with really beautiful results (this piece included). I believe it is commonly used in videogame soundtracks and in fact, it might just be me, but this piece gives me nice videogame music vibes. Amazing job! I am also planning to learn about shifted tonality in the future but I want to get a really solid grasp of common period music and tonality first, which I am still quite far from accomplishing 😅 .

Could you point me to the specific video games where you have heard shifted tonality used?  I first learned the concept of shifted tonality from Prokofiev, including but not limited to the Symphony No.1 with it's famous symphonic Gavotte movement and his 'Visions Fugitives' and many other works.  Thanks for your review!  I do admit that video game music is no doubt a big influence for me - I just don't know which videogames might have had shifted tonality.  ???

EDIT:

P.S.:  There is also a Minuet in F that I forgot to mention that I posted up here too!

I might be wrong and not be shifted tonality, since as I said I am not really well versed on the technique yet, just heard about it enough to roughly know what it is. I am not sure if the technique needs many tonal shifts in a row or if just shifting to distant tonalities in a chromatic matter would also count as "shifted tonality". I think I have heard similar effects in videogame music but since I rarely check out scores from videogames I cannot be sure where. However I remember this, since It is a recent video. It is about the music of Banjo Kazooie. The composer makes constant use of a similar technique but it might not be the same thing. Check out this video from 4:10 to 4:18. The composer shifts cromatically between two keys a tritone apart quite often. He uses that technique constantly throughout the music, but I am not sure whether it would be the same technique you were talking about.

https://youtu.be/TcEWPJPS7gc?t=242

I watched the video and now that I think about it - I don't really have a very well defined concept of what shifted tonality is.  When I wrote this gigue I was thinking that the constant shifts up a half step were the shifted tonality parts of it.  That would certainly include Banjo Kazooie and Yookah Laylee since they frequently step up by half or whole step in their chord structures.  But I no longer think that that gimmick alone is what constitutes "shifted tonality" - maybe music that takes modulation as it's norm or frequently subverts the tonic with outlandish chords is probably more akin to that term (which that video you shared made me think of).  How to use SPACE CHORDS to make epic progressions - this video also exemplifies how one can choose chords in such a way as to basically subvert any hint of a specific tonality all while still staying tonal (which seems contradictory).

Thanks for that video you shared btw!  I didn't realize that I had missed some of 8-bit music theories content over the past few weeks.

If you change tonality at fixed intervals (semitones, tones, minor third, major third, or tritone, to cover up the chromatic scale and back to the first tonality) you are doing multitonics, which is a technique developed in jazz. In this case going back to a Giga.

https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/20800/what-is-a-multi-tonic-system

I am not sure what the difference is between "shifted tonality" as I know it from Prokofiev versus this multi-tonic system.  What if one continually chooses chords that don't imply any tonic?  Such as the "Space Chords" video above?  Or what if the tonics aren't organized in a symmetrical fashion?

Multi-tonic implies you split the chromatic scale in equal parts just to run over it with tonalities to reach the original one.

Most often_

By minor thirds: C - Eb - Gb - A - C

By major thirds: C - E - Ab - C

But you can do it by tritone: C - F# - C

or by tones or semitones.

In this cases there is always a tonic, but changing.

If you change tonalities out of this order, that's not multi-tonic.

In that case using the "Space Chords" approach could land you with multi-tonics or it could not.  If you choose the right chords always following the same pattern it would be a multi-tonic, if you choose always a different pattern you could end up with no tonic at all.

27 minutes ago, PaperComposer said:

In that case using the "Space Chords" approach could land you with multi-tonics or it could not.  If you choose the right chords always following the same pattern it would be a multi-tonic, if you choose always a different pattern you could end up with no tonic at all.

 

OK,yes.

Multi-tonic system implies there is a clear evidence of the tonic (dominant-tonic pattern) for each tonality. See Coltrane, for example.

15 minutes ago, Luis Hernández said:

See Coltrane, for example.

For those who don't know - we're referring here to the famous "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane:

The most feared song in jazz, explained - this video might be a little too basic but it explains the chord progression in detail

Giant Steps - if you just want to hear the recording