Unit 7: Composition - Extending Ideas Write-Up

Some of the many techniques that can be applied to musical composition to extend ideas and add depth and interest are:

• Harmony - Adding harmonies to melody’s and instrumental riff’s can be done in multiple ways. The first and simplest is to replicate the melody being played but transpose it into a different key, but one which is relative to that key so it works musically and sounds “right”. Other ways of doing this don’t completely replicate the melody but play notes in the same scale so each pair of notes individually are in harmony with each other, but they don’t follow a melodic pattern, and this can lead to more interesting melodic relationships which could inspire further musical progressions. Generally speaking, musical thirds and fifths are the most commonly used harmonic supplements, but that's not to say others couldn't be used, but for example when working in the key of C using a major scale, the musical second would be D, but the C and D played together sound dissonant and enharmonic, where as a musical fifth of C and G sounds more harmonically rich so is more commonly used. I’ve used a harmony technique in my second track, both with the two bell sounds which are in harmony with each other, and then the bass notes and the bells are also in harmony with each other, but the bass doesn’t follow the bells.
• Augmentation - Augmentation can relate to a melody or a rhythm both tonal or atonal, and is a way of describing a small change to the melody or rhythm that has an effect on its perceived sound. A chromatic change would be the changing of an interval between notes to change a melody, for example changing an interval of C to G into C to G# would be an augmentation (in this case of a semitone) making an augmented fifth rather than a perfect fifth, which changes the sound of the melody. It can also apply to the length of the notes in the melody without changing their pitch, for example changing a 4 bar melody of all  crotchet notes to all quaver notes would half the length of each note, thus making that melody two bars on the logic grid rather than four, but keeping the actually melody the same.
• Inversion - This is where you play a melody you have used in your track backwards, beginning with the last note and ending with the first.As all the notes are the same, in most cases this fits with the chord progression and creates interesting harmonies with different notes over chords that you may not have thought to otherwise write. Inversion could however cause a clash if the progression uses diminished chords but in mos tcases will work. Inversion could be used as a clever transition between parts of the song in structure, or could in it's self act as a bridge or new section to a composition.
• Melodic Phrasing - Often when composing in logic you could make a melody that loops every two or four bars which would eventually become boring, so extending the melody or introducing more notes to a phrase adds necessary diversity to the piece. It could be used as a segway between two melodies, where a dramatic change between the two may sound strange, the addition of new notes that appear in both phrases may create a subtle transition between the two.

• Adding Instruments - A good way to keep a piece interesting maybe to add new instruments to a piece, to suprise the listener and create a fusion between genres and origins in the composition that may not otherwise be established. This could be experimented broadly with, and could be done using Logic's software instruments, synthesizers and outboard electronic instruments or acoustic instruments and percussion recorded into the project. Adding new instruments may then induce further musical ideas, and new tonal properties may influence the overall vibe you aim to create with the track, which could inform the decisions you then make as you progress to a finished track. I used this when extending my short idea 1 to extended idea 1, where I added an off beat guitar with delay, which gave the track a reggae vibe it intially didn't have, which in turn inspired me to change the sound of the kit and additional elements to emulate a more dub reggae style of composition.

All of these techniques could be considered when progressing  compositions as they all could add interesting elements to the tracks, and in some cases take them in a direction you could never of anticipated when first conceiving an idea for a track.