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Brief Survey of Famous Women Composers
*Of course, there are tons of women composers. This is something I did as an intro for non-music major type folks. If you want to use women composed pieces for examples in a theory class, I’ve been using this resource: http://musictheoryexamplesbywomen.com/ and there’s also this: https://adaptistration.com/2018/01/02/an-operational-women-composers-database/ There are more, but to keep this brief, I’m going to…
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Rhythmic differences in musical styles
*This post is predominantly me thinking thru things I want to teach this weekend. Most examples will be from rep we are singing this quarter.* One of the tricks for getting good at Aural Skills/Ear Training is to know what the expectation for a given idiom is. This is because your ear can often hear…
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Chords
Chords are a way that we group notes that work together so that we can talk about their joint impact on music. Often we think of chords as a simultaneity, notes that occur at the same time. But chords can also be arpeggiated, or broken up, and still understood to act as a unit: The…
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Tuplets
Tuplets are when a beat is subdivided differently than the meter might indicate. The most common example is triplets, specifically eighth note triplets, where a beat normal subdivided by twos has three even subdivisions. This is shown with a bracket or the notes beamed together and a 3. Quarter note triplets, also called drag triplets,…
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Compound meter
Earlier I posted about simple meter: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/10/24/simple-meter/ and today I want to write about another common type of meter, compound meter. Remember that Time signatures are a purely visual phenomenon – how we write music out on a page. Meter is aural – how you hear it. Generally, these two things match, but sometimes there are reasons they…
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Circle of Fifths
Now that I’ve written a basic introduction into major and minor keys (https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/11/20/major-keys/ and https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/11/20/minor-keys/ ) let’s talk a bit about how keys are related to one another. Most music that can be described as functionally tonal, where it is useful to talk about keys and functional harmonic chordal relationships, doesn’t stay in one…
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Minor Keys
I reference “key” and “minor scale” in the post on solfège https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/06/13/solfege/ , but now we’re going to go into it a little bit more. A key is a framework for organizing notes in a tonal hierarchy. Read about tonality here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/09/26/tonality/ Keys are centered around a tonic pitch and tonic chord. This chord/note…
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Major Keys
I reference “key” and “major scale” in the post on solfège https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/06/13/solfege/ , but now we’re going to go into it a little bit more. A key is a framework for organizing notes in a tonal hierarchy. Read about tonality here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/09/26/tonality/ Keys are centered around a tonic pitch and tonic chord. This chord/note…
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moving and mundane changes
so, I’ve moved cities and jobs. I’m now working what amounts to full time (6.5 hr days) and with the stress of moving and unpacking and getting acclimated to the new schedule (early mornings!) I have had no energy/brain power to write the last couple weeks. Hopefully I’ll be able to write next week, as…
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Simple meter
Meter is how we describe how individual beats act in groups. This is often conflated with time signatures (briefly covered here: https://functionalanalysis.blog/2017/07/02/basic-rhythm-reading/ ) but it is slightly different. Time signatures are a purely visual phenomenon – how we write music out on a page. Meter is aural – how you hear it. Generally, these two…
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Dr. Kit Music 