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232 | Morphing Music with Modes - Pachelbel’s Canon
Playing with modes to make new music
August 28, 2023
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When you write music, modes give you a range of emotional options to choose from. The major modes (Lydian, Ionian, and Mixolydian) are relatively bright … while the minor modes (Dorian, Aeolian, and Phrygian) are sonically more dark. And based on the mode you pick, you can create the kind of vibe you want, as I explain in this video:

https://youtube.com/live/00zzQ42bOz4

And what’s really cool is that even once you’ve composed a chord progression, you can morph it using modes. Reshaping the overall sound of a song by shifting from one mode to the next. And the result can be amazing — like morphing a Norman Rockwell painting into a Picasso, or vice versa -- to produce entirely new art.

To see what I mean, take the key of B major (a.k.a. B Ionian), which includes seven basic chords.

On a guitar, these chords are played like this:

 

And using just these seven chords (or even only a subset of this group), you can come up with all sorts of songs.

But using modes, you expand your palette as a songwriter, accessing even more patterns from which to build chords — and by extension, chord progressions.

Each mode is simply a permutation of the major scale — like these in the key of B. In other words, it’s all the same notes. Only each respective mode begins and ends on a different note.

And just as there are 7 chords in the Ionian mode, these same 7 chords appear in all modes derived from the underlying pattern. For example, C# Dorian includes the same chords as B Ionian … as does D# Phrygian … E Lydian … etc....

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393 | NEW Color Notation Tool

Fellow music nerds, the color notation tool is ready for testing: ColorMusicNotation.com

🥁 🎺 🎸 🎹 🎻 🪕

It’s super slick -- you just upload traditional (black) notation, and your score is quickly turned into a PDF of color notation.

@jake_k in our community has developed this tool, and it’s AWESOME! In this video, Jake and I talk about color notation, the tool’s backend process, and lots of other stuff….

Check it out:
-- This is the beta testing phase, so please SHARE any feedback in the comments below for improvements needed.
-- Also, if you get any errors (e.g., a file cannot render), send the file as an attachment for troubleshooting to: [email protected]

Guido d’Arezzo developed “modern” notation in 1026 … so it’s time for an upgrade, yes? We are the vanguard of music, my friends.

00:20:47
397 | AI music is NOT real

Here's my take on AI music. But what do you think?

00:00:36
354a | Creep (video)

An explanation and PDF is in the following post (354b).

00:01:14
400 | COLOR GUITAR TAB

Hey all, very good news:

1) You can now colorize GUITAR TAB using the render tool here: ColorMusicNotation.com

-- Open the attached PDF to see an example.

-- I'd like to personally thank everyone who has bought @jake_k a coffee so far. His work in developing this tool is excellent.
https://buymeacoffee.com/jake_kirsch

-- There's more to come on the new guitar tab feature. But use it now to try it out!

2) Also, you'll find a new button added to the Library that links directly to the render tool.

Cocteau_Twins-Cherry_Coloured_Funk-colormusic.pdf

@MikeGeorge I apologize if this is not the correct way to request something like this. Hopefully you will see it.

Would it be possible to get an updated Guitar Chords Circle of Fifths document as found in the Library? When I download and try to print this graphic it is extremely blurry.

My hope is to be able to print this on card stock or something and add it to the back of my ChordMap Circle of Fifths for easy reference to these chord diagrams.

Also, do you have one of these Circle of Fifths for Piano Chords as well?

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Hi Mike, I’m new to the group. When are the livestream going live?

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376 | The Rosetta Stone of Music

Music is a language. A language that your ears naturally understand, but that’s also utterly foreign to your eyes … as a mess of confusing dots and lines and squiggles.

It’s frustrating, to say the least. Because it means that you’re already fluent in this language (or at least you can easily hear it), but at the same time you’re not able to speak it (by easily playing and creating it yourself).

And as long as you’re confused by the visual language of music, you’ll struggle with the syntax of song, unable to fully articulate the music that you can hear inside.

So what’s needed is a way to align your hearing with your sight. That is, you need a method to illustrate the patterns of music in such a way that they LOOK as natural and simple as they SOUND.

In other words, you need a “Rosetta Stone” to help bridge the gap between the musical language of your ears and that of your eyes.

And with color, you have the answer — using the special connection between the circle of fifths and the color wheel, along with the natural link between the circle of fifths and the chromatic scale.

By leveraging your familiarity with color to decipher the otherwise cryptic sequence notes, you can finally crack the code of music. This is our musical Rosetta Stone.

 

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371 | Music vocabulary: letters vs. numbers

In music theory, there are two basic symbol sets:  letters and numbers.

While the letters specify each individual note, the numbers highlight the general intervals between the notes.

A helpful way to understand this distinction is to think of all the notes in a key as a family, where the letter name of each pitch is like the name of each person while the scale degrees are like the titles used to describe the different members of the group.

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369 | The Musical Insights of Escher

To understand music theory, it helps to know M.C. Escher — the Dutch graphic artist (1898-1972). He was an engineer, mathematician, illusionist, and philosopher as much as an “artist.”

His evolution was fascinating, exemplified by these two self-portraits made six years apart. On the left is “Self Portrait” from November 1929 (age 31), while on the right is “Hand With Reflecting Sphere” from from January 1935 (age 36). Clearly the man’s mind was expanding as time advanced.

And this expansion arose from his studies of symmetry, dimension, and patterns … patterns that are eerily reminiscent of those we see in music.

For example, notice how his self-referential “Drawing Hands” (January 1948) represents the fundamental structure of the circle of fifths. It’s radial symmetry echoes the strange framework of music, where time (or the concept of a beginning and end) becomes abstract.

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