Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [tonal]

For questions related to music with a tonal center.

57 questions
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How to create Chord progressions that make sense

I've been reading over Walter Piston's Harmony book, and it has been an eye-opener to say the least. I understand concepts like tension and release, voice leading and so forth, but I still don't quite understand the process of generating harmonic…
Sketchyfish
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How to escape the C Major trap when improvising on the piano

I play/practice the piano for some decades and when improvising (Jazz, Romantic, and sometimes even Baroque), I observe a certain magnetism of the C Major key. I'm able to play scales, arpeggios, cadences in every key, but this didn't help. For this…
Wolf
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Theoretical Question about "Smoke On The Water"

This popular riff is often one of the first an aspiring guitarist learns, as it is easy to play and distinctive. But when I am trying to understand it in terms of music theory, it makes me wonder. Just the plain tones are…
StefanH
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How to make C lydian not sound like G ionian?

What are some concrete melodic and harmonic tools to establish the correct tonic center in a lydian melody? The reason for asking about lydian specifically is that there is no minor seventh for the dominant, which would seem like a sure-fire way to…
oyvind
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What are the significant schools of 20th century music theory?

I'm reading the following paper, Lerdahl, F. (1988). Tonal pitch space. Music Perception, 315-349. I'm interested in comparing what is written here with other equivalent theories. Some of these mentioned in the paper I've read so far are…
user1953384
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What are the benefits of determining form before composing?

I've heard time and time again of composers who say "It is better [for beginners] to know your form, and have a general idea of important chord progressions before you begin thinking seriously about melodies, basslines, etc." How does one actually…
Sketchyfish
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Why Orlando Gibbons is considered "the end of modality, the beginning of tonality"?

According to Glenn Gould (minute 28:20), Orlando Gibbons represents the end of modality, the beginning of tonality Can anyone deepen the meaning of this? Could you please point to a specific musical passage or phrase by Gibbons thanks to which we…
Saturnix
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Why is the hexatonic scale that can be derived via a chain of perfect fifths so little-known?

When learning about European classical music, it's heptatonic scales. The pentatonic scale is also very well known and widely used in folk music in different parts of the world. However, before I started reading in Wikipedia about hexatonic scales,…
Liisi
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General procedure for determining the name of an interval given a major key / diatonic collection

I'm attempting to program a library that lets one make use of concepts from Peter Westergaard's tonal theory. The current problem I'm trying to solve is to determine the specific name of an interval given two notes (including octave, so something…
chairbender
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What is a tonal plan?

What is a tonal plan? As I understand it, it's a set of notes around which the melody is formed. Or does it mean changes of tonality?
sam
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Names of different definitions of key

If we read the Wikipedia page for musical key, or the question about the Definition of minor key, we might notice conflicting views regarding the definition of "key". On one hand, we have a view that only tonal music is "in a key", and modal music…
piiperi Reinstate Monica
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How does the tonic establish itself in a melody?

Whenever I hear an explanation about what the tonic or root note is, it’s about how it creates some kind of gravitational pull in the music. How does it do that exactly? How does our brain piece together what the tonic is? This concept has always…
YoungCapone
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Why did the natural major scale and the minor scales come to dominate common practice music?

I suspect that it might have something to do with tonality and functional harmony. A diminished or augmented tonic chord, due to dissonance, would be less satisfying and conclusive as the final chord of the piece than a minor or major chord -…
Liisi
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What is tonality when you're not playing with a diatonic scale?

Is there any definition of tonality which generalizes beyond a diatonic scale? For instance, can you have resolution from a dominant to a tonic if you're only using a pentatonic scale? Clearly you can't just say a dominant is the chord rooted on…
lightning
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What are the newest innovations in generative theories of music?

I was just reading "A generative theory of tonal music" by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, and my impression was that it is a monumental work. However, I haven't found much that has been done by other authors to contribute to the subject since it…
lightning
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