Applying classical forms to new music

[Arpangel]

I’m looking forward to your "Switched On" version of "Appalachian Spring"



("Switched On" being a phrase used by Wendy Carlos to describe her electronic renditions of Bach's works, and is used as a quote only in the context of this post)

[Ben Asaro]

I’m looking forward to your "Switched On" version of "Appalachian Spring"

LOL
Though I am following a classical form, this is going to sound a lot more like Krautrock than Bach!

[Arpangel]

It is strange though, a lot of classical works do sound better on the synthesiser to me, sometimes it’s because you can really go to town on making the lines stand out from each other, so you can hear the counterpoint really clearly.
I’ve got an old vinyl album of Erik Satie played by a small string ensemble and a Moog Modular, it’s so beautiful, totally beyond.

[Ben Asaro]

3 of the 8 melody lines for the first subject are pretty much done! Looks like this will be in D Major. If anyone more familiar with the rules of counterpoint could have a look, I think I've followed the rules correctly!

[GilesAnt]

If you are aiming for strict counterpoint you ,might want to change the parallel octaves in bar 1 between VCO2 and 3 (D to E). But things like this depend on the bigger picture sometimes.

[Ben Asaro]

If you are aiming for strict counterpoint you ,might want to change the parallel octaves in bar 1 between VCO2 and 3 (D to E). But things like this depend on the bigger picture sometimes.

Thanks for pointing that out, I did notice the parallel octave, and it may change as the other voices come online. I am not trying to create a strict counterpoint but once the voice count starts getting high it's alway nice to know that I'm following most of the standards for harmonization.

Nice catch, though, and I appreciate your looking it over!

[merlyn]

If you were going to give this to someone to play you could lay out the rhythms in a way that is easier to read. In the first bar of VCO 1 the fourth beat is a rest, a quarter note rest on the fourth beat would make that obvious. I would find the first bar easier to read if the third beat was a sixteenth note, a sixteenth rest, an eighth rest then a quarter note rest on the fourth beat. That way where the beats fall is more obvious.

[Ben Asaro]

If you were going to give this to someone to play you could lay out the rhythms in a way that is easier to read. In the first bar of VCO 1 the fourth beat is a rest, a quarter note rest on the fourth beat would make that obvious. I would find the first bar easier to read if the third beat was a sixteenth note, a sixteenth rest, an eighth rest then a quarter note rest on the fourth beat. That way where the beats fall is more obvious.

Thanks for reading it over and for the pointers! This is not going to be read by anyone, it's just my way of writing when I'm away from my sequencers.

[RichardT]

3 of the 8 melody lines for the first subject are pretty much done! Looks like this will be in D Major. If anyone more familiar with the rules of counterpoint could have a look, I think I've followed the rules correctly!

I think you’ve got more ‘coincident ‘ notes than would be normal, such as the first D. But that’s not really against any rules.

[Ben Asaro]

3 of the 8 melody lines for the first subject are pretty much done! Looks like this will be in D Major. If anyone more familiar with the rules of counterpoint could have a look, I think I've followed the rules correctly!

I think you’ve got more ‘coincident ‘ notes than would be normal, such as the first D. But that’s not really against any rules.

Thanks for taking a look! It's been going through metamorphosis all day, thanks to everyone for their valued input!

[Ben Asaro]

Major revision to the first statement. Very happy with this one, just have to work on how it will be developed, and start writing the second statement!

[Ben Asaro]

Here's a quick audio export from Notion of the first subject. I'll be transcribing this onto my modular over the course of the weekend. The one thing that I cannot notate is the Subharmonicon, I don't know if you could notate it if you wanted to, it's more of an improvisational instrument. But here are the melodies as laid out in the above photo:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17Pr6l3 ... sp=sharing

As a side note: if anyone is looking for a really good music notation app for iPad, I can strongly recommend Notion by Presonus. The instruments sound surprsingly good, it's very intuitive to use and supports full export options: image, PDF, WAV, MP3, MIDI, etc. For only $15 it packs a LOT of bang for the buck!