This is excellent!

[Gothi]

Everything has to be bait these days.

Yeah. I will have to learn not to take the baits litterally. And fwiw I believe you all when you say he is a great teacher. I just freaked about the title. Ya know, what electronic music concerns, I have seen quite a few programs promising to do the hard work for people, harmonizing, extensions advicers or midi chord progressions ready to the copied and pasted to your daw. I am trained in species counterpoint, classical voice leading, where the action to a high degree is formulated in interval theory in contrast to chord theory, so plz believe me when I say I think it is a hero´s quest to try stuff that into the heads of a generation to whom everything is a melody, rhythm and (yawn) chords. In counterpoint every voice, the soprano, the alto, the tenor, the bass is considered an individual melody interacting with other melodies to make harmonies rise from below, and not above by clashing a big fat chord all over the place. In my youth bands like Iron Maiden blew my head off with their harmonized guitar leads, and I equally freaked out when Mike Oldfield did the same trick, Wow. I want to learn that shit was my reaction. Here is a tune with my guitar player where we do the harmonizing trick when the verse goes on its second round. Instant Oldfield. Some may be able to harmonize by ear, some by helping machines, but no pleasure seems greater to me than being able to do it yourself by aquired skills, and that takes some interval theory.



Kindly
Gothi

 

[Sascha Franck]

I am trained in species counterpoint, classical voice leading, where the action to a high degree is formulated in interval theory in contrast to chord theory

How comes there's very little of that to be found in your music?

 

[Gothi]

How comes there's very little of that in your music?

What? Is that a joke? Our music is polyphonic to the core. The voice leading is just used in a folk context. Does that confuse you? Counterpoint is a technique, an alphabet, not a novel and not a style that makes you sound like Palestrina per se.

Here is a tune where you have a lot of harmonization and polyphony. Try count the number of melodies interacting in the end. How many do you hear?



Here is another ending in a massive orchestral polyphony as well:



Here is one exercise in free counterpoint. First the melodies are introduced naked. Then in pairs. And finally most of them meet in a massive sound wall.



Here is one that ends with three voices interacting in imitative counterpoint in the end.



Here is one with a canon (imitative counterpoint) in the middle part apart from a lot of harmonization in guitars and strings.


That should be more than enough for illustration to the learned. It is all over our twenty tunes, so I take that you have not really listened to any. So I have to ask: Are you mocking me for fun or do you not understand what species counterpoint is? It is the art of mixing melodies. Not writing music like Palestrina or Bach unless you want to.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Here is a tune where you have a lot of harmonization and polyphony. Try count the number of melodies interacting in the end. How many do you hear?

I don't hear any typical counterpoint at all. And no, when we talk about it on a theoretical level, it's not just "mixing melodies". And fwiw, I listened to some of your music before, so I actually just wondered about how you describe it.

 

[Gothi]

I don't hear any typical counterpoint at all. And no, when we talk about it on a theoretical level, it's not just "mixing melodies". And fwiw, I listened to some of your music before, so I actually just wondered about how you describe it.

Well, you answered my question. You do not know what species counterpoint is. There is no typical counterpoint. Both Mozart and Haydn were trained in Fux´ Gradus ad Parnassum like me, but used it for different things, their styles were not the same. Gradus is in itself just a collection of exercises not pointing to a particular style, and J.J. Fux´s own music did certainly not sound like Palestrina though it was his music that inspired him to write the book, neither like Mozart or Haydn. So plz tell me at what theoretical level my music ain´t using polyphonic techniques from counterpoint. It is nonsense to someone trained as deepshit as me, not just Gradus, but Knud Jeppesen´s counterpoint as well.

 

[Sascha Franck]

TBH, you're not coming across as someone I want to discuss this with.

 

[Gothi]

I don't hear any typical counterpoint at all.

Here are some of the rules from Gradus I either follow or break on purpose (e.g. using parallel fifths and octaves) depending on how baroque (stick to rules) or medieval (break them) a sound I want:

1. Parallel fifths and octaves forbidden (First rule of counterpoint)
2. When moving from an imperfect consonance to a perfect consonance, move in contrary or oblique motion (and not parallel. Third rule of counterpoint).
3. Avoid voice leaps higher than a fifth unless it is the octave above.
4. Avoid parallel movements in outer voices if possible, (e.g. bass and Soprano both moving up),
5. Avoid voice crossing (e.g. shift of place as upper or lower voice),
5. Keep dissonances off beat so they always resolve into triads on beat for that consonant musical feeling.

And more.

There are some exceptions to the rules as well. Some are suspended when we go from 2 parts writing to 3 and 4 parts and beyond. Further, it should be taken into consideration that some rules relate to the difficulty of singing it. Gradus is written for choirs, they do not necessarily have to be applied to orchestras. Rules are generally period specific and change over time and according to style. Still the basics remain. That is why they are so many books on counterpoint related to their specific era in classical music. Fux started the show and the rest followed.

 

[Gothi]

TBH, you're not coming across as someone I want to discuss this with.

It is easy enough. Start by actually providing a theoretical argument for your claim. Ofc I find one liners like "I don´t hear typical counterpoint at all" ignorant and offending. Anyone with true love to their subject would.

 

[Gothi]

And to finish my illustrations I will show an example where I use all species minus one. These are the species in general:

1. Species: Note against note. Here the notes of intervals enter simultaneously (e.g. by a chord instrument)
2. Species: Two notes against one (e.g. one instrument plays in 1/4 notes, the other in 1/8 notes).
3. Species: Four notes against one (e.g. one instrument plays in whole notes, the other in 1/4 notes).
4. Species: Different note off-sets are used by suspensions and prolonging of some notes over measure bars (basically that means a voice can start off beat and/or be taken into the next measure before it is resolved).
5. Species is all of them together, called "Florid Counterpoint". This is the level where the student is supposed to master it by intuition. You should now be able to just let melodies flow and entangle into a harmonic whole.

I do not use 4. that much because it is not that folk-y, but indeed present in much classical music. So here they all are minus 4 in a florid flow. Starting with the harp. We are in 5/4 in case you find the rhythm odd. It is.



Please do not tell me again that I do not use counterpoint. Anyone. That is as incorrect as can be and offending to J.J.Fux, his followers, me and any music using polyphony. It can all be analysed in terms of species. Whether you stick to the rules or actually break them on purpose.

Btw: There is a break of 1. Rule of counterpoint at one step where the choirs move in parallel fifths. This is on purpose to induce a little medieval folk into it. Likewise with the 5/4, which is not a typical classical meter.

Kindly
Gothi