10 Min Tips To Teach Music Podcast: Episode #26
EP 26: How to organise musical material
In today’s podcast, I am going to expand on last week where I offered some ideas on how to get organise the material you have developed.
As I said last week…
Once you have the material, you can go about “organising” or “arranging” it.
WAYS TO DEVELOP AN MOTIF / IDEA:
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- Repeat/cycle
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- Invert
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- Retrograde (play it backwards)
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- Expand the interval (intervallic expansion) or Contract the interval (intervallic contraction)
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- Transpose
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- Displace the pitch (change the octave of one note)
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- Fragment the melody
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- Extend the end of the melody
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- Rhythmically augment or diminish the melody
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- Rhythmically alter the melody
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- Change the articulation
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- Vertically arrange the notes of the melody
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- Change the instrument combinations
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- Metric changes
- Rhythmic displacement through accents, syncopation, morphing, addition, subtraction, repetition.
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WAYS TO ORGANISE BLOCKS OF SOUND:
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- Consider the roles of the layers – traditional vs non-traditional (Melody, bass, accompaniment, primary, secondary, rhythmic )
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- Repetition of ideas as interjections
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- Transposition of the idea as a whole or in part
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- Limited pitch set with rhythmic change to create different moods or sections
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- Limited interval set with rhythmic and register change to create different moods or sections
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- Juxtaposition of two ideas
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- Stop – Wait – Go sequence with ideas (good for two or three cellular ideas)
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- Interruptions or interjections (good for chordal ideas)
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- Dovetailing, call and response (antiphony)
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- Superimposition of both ideas simultaneously
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- Polyrhythms
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- Cyclic patterns (good for motivic ideas) – use addition and subtraction like the minimalists.
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- indeterminacy – (good for timeless ideas to create a bed over which something more important grows or develops)
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- Traditional formations – AB, ABA, ABACADAE (with smaller ideas), sonata, minuet and trio
- Traditional roles – as in jazz arranging style or pop arranging style.
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THINGS TO ADD TO THE BLOCKS OF SOUND OR MOTIVIC IDEAS:
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- Countermelodies
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- Ostinati
- Drones
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