Suspended Chords = Accepted Dissonance?

[TFHT]

I was just screwing around on my keyboard and I came up with a simple little melody I am going to expand on, but I'm a little confused as to what I am doing. I think the melody sounds fine, but it is totally dissonant.

I first play E-G-D, then C-G-D, then I raise that top D a step to an E.

If my calculations are correct, the melody goes from a D add9 Sus 4 chord, to C Sus 2, to a basic C.

Admittedly I used the Internet for help finding out those chord names...My question about these chords is basically should I be playing these if they are dissonant? They have names so they obviously exist, and they sound fine to me, but I'm no Yo Yo Ma. Are my ears off, or do these chords actually "make sense" musically, despite the fact that they are dissonant? I understand that dissonance is often preferred, for adding tension and what not, but I don't know if I'm doing this right.

[Random Guitarist]

Personally I'd suggest that the EGD is Em7 without the 5th

[Edit] Or are there root notes on the left hand you haven't mentioned?

[TFHT]

Personally I'd suggest that the EGD is Em7 without the 5th

[Edit] Or are there root notes on the left hand you haven't mentioned?

Nope, no roots yet. Just three notes in each chord, with the first chord actually being played as single notes one after the other, and then two chords, with me keeping the bottom two notes held down while going from the top D to E.

SO, regardless of what they are actually called, Is it "ok" to play these chords if they are fundamentally dissonant? I'm afraid if I told people what notes I'm playing, they would say "NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT! Chords can't be dissonant! Unless you are Hendrix or James Brown, but you lack the funk!"

[Scramble]

>Is it "ok" to play these chords if they are fundamentally dissonant?

No, is not okay play these chords! The motherland is offended. The workers are insulted. Please stay there and wait for NKVD re-education visit.

[TFHT]

>Is it "ok" to play these chords if they are fundamentally dissonant?

No, is not okay play these chords! The motherland is offended. The workers are insulted. Please stay there and wait for NKVD re-education visit.

LOL! Point taken!

But seriously, if you have dissonant chords and notes, do they not need to be resolved?

[tacitus]

You decide whether to resolve or not - sometimes leaving it hanging and not providing the expected resolution is a good trick. Other times, you can get carried away and then it all sounds a bit like jazzers playing six-note chords just because they can, and then there's an ocean of unresolved stuff going on. Unless it's carefully planned the obvious resolution might be to stop listening ...

But, there's nothing to stop you resolving one dissonance and making a new one on the process that then needs resolving = that's one of the oldest tricks in the book - for example playing g and e above it, move g down to f, resolve e to d, move f to e, resolve top d to c and you can go on in sixths and sevenths till the cows come home.

Don't get too hung up on giving every moment a chord name. In classical, the little stuff is called 'passing notes' and they don't really affect the harmonic structure, even if they can be instrumental (groan) in the business of creating and resolving dissonances.

It's all good.

[Scramble]

LOL! Point taken!

Hmm, not sure you did get the point. Harmonic rules are not really rules, more accepted practise and suggestions, which are a useful way of producing in many cases what are pleasing sounds for many people, but in no way are they to be followed rigidly. You do what you think sounds good.

As RhinoTime said, E-G-D is better understood as Em7. (I'm a bit surprised you think that progression is 'totally dissonant', even in the context of simple pop it's hardly dissonant.)

And +1 for what tacitus said.

[shufflebeat]

Music rules are all very well but they aren't really rules in the usual sense, more a theory for understanding and explaining. They are very good for exposing patterns and structures and differentiating between what was carefully constructed from original inspiration and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

In the olden days as radical punks we were intent on overthrowing everything by constructing chord sequences that subverted pop music convention, unlike the Ramones who seemed to be undermining from within (splitters) Years later when I was playing with a "properly" trained musician he explained in pretty simple terms all the sequences I thought would defy explanation.

[Exalted Wombat]

Common Practice harmony (i.e. not the modern stuff based on "different for the sake of being different") is about setting up tensions and resolving them (or resolving them in an unexpected way, or surprising the ear bt NOT resolving them...) Dissonance is good. Without it, consonance has no meaning.

A little theoretical knowledge is not dangerous, but can be thoroughly misleading!

There ARE "rules" - descriptions of what has been found to work well, in a particular context. Use them, in so far as they are useful. The trouble is, until you gain enough knowledge and experience to use the rules properly, you won't KNOW which rule is useful in any given situation!

Did someone tell you this would be easy?

[shufflebeat]

Dissonance is good. Without it, consonance has no meaning.

Ooh, I like that, I might have that as a sig when I run out of inane drivel.

descriptions of what has been found to work well, in a particular context.

That doesn't define a rule in any school I've ever been to.

[Exalted Wombat]

descriptions of what has been found to work well, in a particular context.

That doesn't define a rule in any school I've ever been to.

Sure it does. Rules need a context. To take the most basic example: killing is wrong, unless it's a war. (If you're going to get all philosophical about this, what right have you to put your opponent in a situation when he has no alternative but to kill YOU? At least commit your own sin!)

Parallel octaves are wrong in vocal harmony. Unless you're going for a Glenn Miller voicing.

Parallel 5ths are obtrusive. Now listen to THIS

But both are good rules, in the right context.

[hollowsun]

Parallel 5ths are obtrusive.

I've always joked with my daughter that Debussy would have failed a basic GCSE music composition assignment with 'Clair de lune'!

[shufflebeat]

That doesn't define a rule in any school I've ever been to.

Sure it does. Rules need a context.

We went to very different schools - but I take your point, maybe I'm confusing laws with rules. Much like Fr Tierney, in fact.

[Chaconne]

Exalted Wombat is correct really in that context has been forgotten - so people think its weird that parallel fifths or octaves were frowned upon as if everyone must have been "dead square" back then or something. But really they makes sense when you think this was just the beginings of codifying part, writing when they could never have imagined the complexities that would develop centuries in the future.

And they do make sense - parallel fifths sounds like the simplistic chants everyone wanted to get away from - and the idea was to be less lazy so the challenge was to avoid them - be clever - they were not banned.

Same with an octave -its a waste of a voice - unless you are looking for an effect.

Like all rules they are challenges - do what you can within these boundaries and only when they become so rigid that a genius cannot live within them - expand them. Until then see what you can do, or put your case forward for being a genius.

These days of course every rule has been broken so it is hard to imagine a time when what you could do was circumscribed - but the context will give the reason - which is mainly that we have 20 / 20 hindsight - wereas only a genius could have forsight to see the future.

[Exalted Wombat]

Parallel 5ths are obtrusive.

I've always joked with my daughter that Debussy would have failed a basic GCSE music composition assignment with 'Clair de lune'!

Well, he would have if the assignment was "harmonise this in 4-part Bach chorale style". But although teachers do sometimes insist on learning to walk before running, they are rarely as closed-minded towards new ideas as some people like to imagine.

[shufflebeat]

Ok, just to clarify, apart from self defined like 'an octave has 12 semitone intervals' or a bit woolly like 'major thirds sound nice', can anyone point me to a universal rule off music that is a rule and not an artificial construct?

[Scramble]

What exactly do you mean by a 'rule' here? Where do you think rules come from? ('An octave has 12 semitone intervals' isn't a rule, that's just a definitional truth.

[Exalted Wombat]

Ok, just to clarify, apart from self defined like 'an octave has 12 semitone intervals' or a bit woolly like 'major thirds sound nice', can anyone point me to a universal rule off music that is a rule and not an artificial construct?

Consonant intervals are between notes with simple frequency ratios. The most consonant interval is a unison, 1:1 ratio. Then an octave, 2:1. Perfect fifth, 3:2. Major third, 5:4 (are you beginning to recognize the Harmonic Series yet?)

But be careful! We mostly use tempered intervals these days, to enable chromatic harmony. The frequency ratio of an equally-tempered perfect fifth is a lot more complex than that of a "natural" major seventh. But harmonic progressions resolving onto rather flat perfect fifths and horribly sharp major thirds somehow still works! And music is still recognisable on an out-of-tune honky-tonk piano. How "wrong" can an interval be and still sound "right"?

Does your brain hurt yet?

[Elephone]

Going by the subject title...

Suspensions in classical music (almost) always resolved, but of course the dissonance is an attractive sound even without the resolution... if embraced.

[shufflebeat]

What exactly do you mean by a 'rule' here? Where do you think rules come from? ('An octave has 12 semitone intervals' isn't a rule, that's just a definitional truth.

This is getting to the heart of how I understand the original question. If a rule is a tool for measurement based on observation as in "twice the frequency = an octave interval = half the guitar string length" then that's fine but it's an acknowledgement that how we in the West understand (mainly classical or maybe "establishment") music has something to do with the laws of physics - that's it. To extrapolate that so far as to decide that one or other musical intervals, techniques, progressions, etc. might be more or less valid than another (is it ok not to resolve a suspended chord?) seems a bit imperialist and denies or at least fails to appreciate the complexity of, for instance, the "horribly sharp major third".

Physics tells part of the story of course but it can hardly be regarded as universal.

[shufflebeat]

My (genuinely inquiring) question about "rules of music" was intended to differentiate between:

1) rules - what schoolchildren now call a ruler used to be known as a rule so a measurement tool

and

2) laws - guidelines to proper conduct, a term often interchangable with rules.

[oggyb]

My (genuinely inquiring) question about "rules of music" was intended to differentiate between:

1) rules - what schoolchildren now call a ruler used to be known as a rule so a measurement tool

and

2) laws - guidelines to proper conduct, a term often interchangable with rules.

There are many conflicting laws, but I can't lay my hands on any rules.

Music needn't have pitch, or rhythm, or more than one part. It's just organised sound.

Laws like "resolve your dissonances" are just based on 700 years of musicians refining the guidelines into something you can follow to make pleasant-sounding music.

[tacitus]

Yes, music is 'organised sound', but the question is the context, or terms under which you organise it. For example, let's compare art and commerce. Using colour for a moment to make the point easier, in commerce you know red and blue are the two most popular colours (well, roughly) so you might offer your product in red or blue. If it's for girls, you might offer it in pink, for boys in camo. Those are commercial decisions based on the desire to shift as many of your products as you can. Harmony according to the 'rules' is, effectively, red and blue music. When you move into art and you're doing it for the love of it or being paid a grant whatever you produce, you can choose the colour that best expresses what you want to convey with your artwork. You can choose an unpopular colour of horrendous clashes; that's your choice. A great artist can do things with blue you can't do with all the colours of the rainbow, so being commercial doesn't necessarily involve doing it horribly, but if you're no genius then you stick to what works. If you're rubbish it's not going to matter whether you follow the rules or not. Mozart followed the rules far better than I ever did, plus he knew when to break them.

Oh, and parallel fifths and octaves is a construct chiefly applicable to four part harmony, which in turn is a construct devised to maximise the potential of not writing music in parallel fifths, octaves and so on. While a good part of the classical repertoire can be reduced to a 4-part harmonic basis when you take out all the doublings, that hasn't been the be all and end all of harmony for some time now, so it's probably more fruitful to consider the aims of the original 'rules' - promotion of chordal music that isn't just like playing bar chords on your guitar. Flowing internal parts, good voice spacing, effective use of both consonance and dissonance and so on.

And thereby hangs an important point about reducing what you write to a series of chord names, in that as soon as you've done it somebody WILL play them like a succession of bar chords and thus lose any adroitness in the part writing you may have originally achieved. I'm not saying it won't work - again, as in composition, the performance depends on the calibre of the musician(s) involved. But if you have written anything at all felicitous you might want to notate it in some way that doesn't lose the detail ...

[shufflebeat]

^^Yup^^

[oggyb]

@tacitus, I think, further to your point about the merits and uses of the musical laws, we can say that this sort of music is really just "stylish tension and release". Avoidance of consecutives, preparation and resolution of appropriate dissonance, etc. These make music stronger if you're writing for parts. They don't necessarily work if you're writing bar chords and you have other priorities there such as voicing the "centre of gravity" of the sound.

I always think of music in counterpoint though, even if I'm writing mostly chord-based music. There's a fascination for me in writing the simplest version of something that also forms a strong musical journey.

Regarding your colours analogy, this really just comes down to your choice of light and shade in the composition. You can choose to put green and pink together, like Shoenberg did, but it's not organised sound until the lights and darks of part-writing (whatever that might mean in context) give those colours meaning. In my opinion.

Might be over-thinking it now...