Monday, December 31, 2012

Of my (selfsourced) musical terms


If I know of the idea, what harm is if I’m using a different name than the official term for it? I try selfsourcing myself on ideas, but by no means I try to stand against the academic ones that exist. I like being experimental here, and as I like shortcutting my way to ideas that are too impatient to way for my whirlpool exercises to find them.

My point here is that there are some effects I realized in music making, and though it is not official and I am sure it has its own sweet Italian denomination for it, I’ll go with my own names for them while I haven’t found the right names. They’re few and simple and experimental, but I like how useful they already presented themselves to be.

One of the main thoughts is something I go about Aerial movements, which going for a higher note in the scale. It’s the simple technique of using that adjacent higher note that when accurately placed sounds terrific. Grounding movements is about going below the normal level of notes and going up again, and can be the opposite response to Aerial movement.

I call it an unchained resolution when the main notes are free from the arrangement of the riff, usually ending in an aerial resolution. The dense quintessence of the melody usually can be removed from these decorative arranges, and generally it gives a feeling of being lifted.

One other idea is about these main notes, these that hold the soul of the melody. It’s one of these ideas I have without a name, and the best word I have for it is Dwelling. It represents the instruments that reinforce these notes unchained from arrangements, and if well used it can make the melodies very powerful. It is about reaching that note and strike it with passion, and let it ring, and bend or make a tremolo. Dwelling definitely is the best moment in playing songs for me.

And the other idea I’ve noticed is called Lacing. It’s how I mentally refer to the little fancy resolution with notes at the end of an ascending or descending scale so it won’t feel like a loose end. Though this might be later fractalized, I’m also calling it lacing the other effect of going through a chromatic exercise and lacing it at the end with the proper rhythmic theme of the melody. The lacing can be the creation of chaining arrangements, and then it can be resolved with the unchaining with an aerial resolution, and there you go with a solo already.

Be aware, though, as I don’t want to sound like I am close to composing songs. These are mostly my perception of patterns I can see in music I listen to, and my application of these ideas is still pretty much soulless. But I am working in trying to see by myself how the combination of notes and different scales can give us differing emotional responses. For one, gypsy and middle-eastern ‘broken’ scales are incredibly magical and even my own clumsy choice of notes makes it sound musical.