CONCEPT: WHAT IS MUSIC?
EAR: SING AND WRITE COMMON FOLK TUNES USING PITCH CLASS NUMBERS (SEE LIST OF SONGS)
NOTES: NON-TRADITIONAL OPTIONS
MELODY: CREATE A TUNE
HARMONY: STABLE AND UNSTABLE PITCHES
ART: PEER GYNT IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
CWM: FINDING “HOME” IN CCLI TOP 25 MELODIES
What is music, really?
Quiz: What Music Is, really.
After watching the video, take this quiz to demonstrate your mastery of the subject:
https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/preview.php?title=real-world-fundamentals-01
EAR/MELODY: FINDING TONIC IN A MELODY
Here is your challenge for the week: Listen to the short audio found on CCLI SongSelect Top 100 (25) and find “home” in the melody of each tune. Your goal is to confidently identify the scale degree on the first listen. Until then, take as many listens as you need to answer with assured confidence. This is a crucial first skill to develop, for if you can very quickly find where “home” is, then you can know where all the other scale degrees fall. It will help you harmonize, find the bass line and the chords. But first, find tonic.
What is the FIRST WORD in this snippet to be SUNG ON TONIC (scale degree 1, “home.”)? Write down your answer and discuss.
EXPLORING THE MEANING(S) OF MUSIC
Listen to this musical example three times, each on a different level. With the first listen, write down how it makes you feel—which might change every several seconds, so you might have multiple words about your emotions. The second time that you listen, approach it as if it were a story—as if it were a dream sequence (there is an opening scene, and then some action, and some sort of ending). Compare stories and see what you come up with. (See this for the intended program of the music.) On the third listen, go into as much detail as possible about the purely musical elements that you hear—what pitch and key, what instrument(s) and range, what is the form and structure, the tempo and rhythms, etc. Most people listen on the first level, reacting to how the music makes them feel. Most music appreciation courses explore the second level. But in a course like this, we want to go deeply into all of the musical elements. Why would we do that? So that we can create music that does the same thing. See the Wikipedia article for at least some details.
Lesson 1: What is Music, Really?
a. Fundamentals: the very basics
i. Hello, and welcome to music theory for the real world, and in particular Fundamentals of Music Theory. I’m your host, Ken Read, and that’s Garrett behind the camera.
ii. Fundamentals of music theory, let’s make sure we understand what it is we’re covering in this class. We’re covering Fundamentals, by which we mean the Big Picture, the First Things, the Primary Cause, we’re talking about FUNDAMENTALS.
b. Let’s go back to the beginning.
i. Do you mean like DO-RE-MI?
ii. No, I mean, The very beginning: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness hung over the face of the deep. And God said let there be light, then God created earth, sky, land, sea, plants and vegetation, fish and birds and all animals, everything with the breath of life in it, mountains and valleys.
iii. Why did He create all that in six days?
iv. Well, one is to bring glory to himself.
v. And the second reason is because all of those things are beneficial and valuable for mankind.
vi. That’s right. Do you know that God really cares for his creation? And as the crown of his creation, made in God’s image and given authority over the earth, just as God himself has authority over the universe, God has gone to special care to make everything in accordance with what would be of help to us. Including music.
vii. So music is here to glorify God and to edify mankind.
c. Music: Our course in Fundamentals of Music Theory is going to be built around a catechism, which is a series of questions and answers. Here is the first question: WHAT IS MUSIC? Surprisingly, the answer to that question may be more difficult than you might think. We all might think we know what music is, but when you really get to try to define it, it becomes a bit elusive. [sound. Emotion. Feeling. Harmony of the spheres. Intentional. Beautiful. Intellectual and valuable. Country AND western. Glockenspiel.] It’s our natural inclination to be either too broad or too narrow in our definition of music. Either we say that music is everything, including silence, in which case music is nothing. [EXAMPLE: 4’33”] in which case it loses its meaning altogether. On the other hand, we tend to be too narrow in our definition, so that we describe only music that I like. So, what is music, really?
i. Sound (not noise). Music is sound. But so is noise.
ii. Organized (not random). Organized sound. A bird’s call is organized sound, but we can’t call it music from a practical perspective.
iii. humanly-organized (not speech). But what’s to say that this isn’t music. [EXAMPLE: RANDOM BODY NOISES] What would it take to make that ‘music’? [EXAMPLE: SEQUENCED AND REPEATED NOISES]. This was more musical than only humanly-organized sound.
iv. with purpose. The purpose of communicating somehow.
1. (conveys an abstract emotion)
2. What does it mean? Next lesson…humorous, romantic, serious, sad
d. Theory
i. Theory (not fact)
ii. Of what makes music “work” (describe, analyze). Sometimes a song works for me, not for you, works for you, not for me. We need a way to explain why it seems successful to me or to you.
e. Whence cometh music?
i. Created by God (creator of every good and perfect gift)
1. Music in heaven
2. Music of the spheres
3. Adam spoke poetically
ii. Discovered by people (not handed to us. Cultural)
1. Refinement of melody
2. Development of harmony
3. Systemization of rhythm
4. Invention of timbres
f. Why music?
i. For the glory of God (Prov 25:2)
ii. For the edification of people (all things for our enjoyment)
ILLUSTRATE: (Is this Music?)
4’33” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4
Andrew’s Pots
CELEBRATE:
OBJECTIVE QUIZ
CREATE:
Invent/record music that has no melody. In a sentence, tell what it “means.”
MELODY:
Doe A Deer (Do-Re-Mi). Discover the background to the melody, which is the seven scale degrees in solfege. Now as you sing the pitch of each scale degree, describe how that pitch “feels” to you. Which are stable, and which feel the need to resolve?
HARMONY:
Make an entire song using only the 3 stable (CEG) or the 4 unstable (BDFA) pitches. Try it with the melody of Do-Re-Mi. It doesn’t quite work right, and yet clearly of the two chords one works better than the other most of the time. What are you learning about stable and unstable pitches when they are put into a chord?
EAR:
Sing “a third above” the melody of any tune. Try it with “Here I Am to Worship.” Sing your harmony part by itself. Why doesn’t it sound exactly like the melody? Discover where the half-steps and whole steps lie. How did you make those adjustments so naturally, to fit the diatonic scale? Now play it on a keyboard and count where you naturally are singing a major third, minor third, or perfect fourth above the melody.
NOTES:
Pitch of Do-Re-Mi. Start on a middle C in treble clef. See how each line and space represents a pitch, like the keys on a piano.
POP:
“Here I Am to Worship” works by doing a four-chord loop. What are the chords? What is the relationship between the melodic pitches and the pitches of the chords? How often are you singing a note that is part of the chords, and where are you not? Is it harder to sing a note that is not supported by the chord?
ART:
Find the form, the chords, and the melody of the entire song “Pop Goes the Weasel.” What are you discovering about stable and unstable? About form? In what way does the “bridge” of the song provide a different mood, and in what way does the bridge lead back home? Now do the same for Mozart’s C major sonata. What are the similarities? What are the differences?