[TL072]

This 58 page book I stumbled across on the internet might be of interest to some of you on here.

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The author uses examples from classical music, but not be a classical musician, I just skipped the examples and enjoyed the reading.

Basically the writer talks about the way in which musical ideas are connected to a narrative structure in our memory. Rather than talking about harmony, the writer gives a simple (not too academic) overview of how we tend to perceive music over a time period.

The writer then gives some nice simple ideas of how to create continuity, contrast, transitions, variety, climaxes, and so on.

I think many of the ideas would be very familiar to electronic musicians and this writing might inspire some ideas if you are feeling a bit stuck on a track.

For a while I have been thinking about what vocabularies could be used for explaining changes and structures of tracks. This author explicitly sets out to avoid talking about harmony (in anything but the most general terms) and talks about these units of music - so quite nice.

[exatoh]

Quite interesting, thank you!

[U-235]

Very interesting, I plan on checking it out. As I have a classical background I find this interesting.

[Moppy]

An excellent read and is proving to be very useful! Thanks for sharing

[N-BDY]

Seems like a cool little book. Already got a few ideas just browsing through it.

[Luke_Nukem]

Definitely gonna give this one a read, although I do really struggle with long reads on screen. Maybe I need to find a printer...

[Son of Akira]

I agree, but I'd add that anybody with expertise in harmony/western harmony will and should say the same thing: harmony is not and should not be mistaken as part of the essential definition of 'what music is'. To me, somebody that's studied harmony a fair amount, it's actually a way to tell if a person knows what they're talking about .

The basic definition is 'music is rhythm and melody' and that falls in line with the linear time/narrative/horizontal process...

Wait, I know what you're thinking!

Isn't rhythm and melody a rigid definition, especially for some electronic music?!! Well, no, because it allows the lack of rhythm and/or melody to be considered anti-rhythm and anti-melody, still maintaining the proper context. In fact, much of what might be considered anti-rhythm/melody is actually rhythm and melody. If we hold down a single key of an organ so it drones, that IS a rhythm and a melody, albeit a very simple (or super abstract and complicated ) example of both