Conference napalm::commusic_v1

	Good Topic - what in the world made you think to enter it?   8^)

	I was surprised to see you write that open voicings sound organish 
(organic? 8^).  I would have thought the opposite.  I'll have to try out some
pad voicings to see...

	I took a lot of theory courses in my late high schopol/early college
years and remember the parallel voicing rules...  I found that popular music
almost invariably does exactly the opposite.  We're just a bunch of rebels, I
guess!  Having sung in many church and college choirs, I am all too familiar
with the type of chord voicing you refer to.  

	For one thing, I think its important to get away from the idea that all 
chord elements need to be present.  You alluded to this in the idea of leaving 
out the third.  I'd take that a step further and say that its also necessary to 
realize that the root of the chord doesn't need to be on the bottom (i.e., first 
inversion).  Of course, I'm using popular music as a reference here.  Let the 
bass guitar or synth take care of establishing the root.

	I've also found that pad voicings get nicely "rounded out" by adding the 
2 or 9 to the chord, sometimes as a replacement for the third.  In popular music,
the 9th chord is almost impossible to do without!  This is true if you're 
playing piano, guitar or filling in background material (such as pads).  Of 
course, it can get to be to much and at some point you have to put a halt and 
use the straight root/third/fifth or root/fifth to dig your heals into the 
phrase and establish some absolutes.  I find that in standard progressions, use 
of the 2nd/9th in the V of the key gets to be too much.

	Dan

OK, let's get the stupid question out of the way early on: what are you calling
a "pad?" It sounds like a multi-pitch voice/patch, the way you use it. (Just
when I thought I was up on my music-technodweeb lingo...)

Bob

    I agree with what I've read so far.. avoid triads in one octave, add
    other tones beyond 1/3/5.  I like to use a 3rd in the root as a passing
    tone up to a 4th (hot stuff..).  Another thing for string 'pad', (yes I
    use the term too) realism is that I record two separate tracks driving
    the same sampler patch.  I play each in a very open fashion, choosing
    quite different key ranges for the two different passes.  This gives a
    'section' feel to the part, as if the various string groups are playing
    a different part.. which is what happens for music scored for strings
    anyway.  Periodically trimming down the chords to a melody line or a
    high string harmonic, then filling back in on the chorus gives some
    much needed variation.
    
    karl

    Re: .5
    
    Parallel motion means having all the voices in the chord moving in the
    same direction and the same amount, i.e. like playing bar chord on a
    guitar, as you go from a G to an A chord, every note moves up exactly
    one whole step.  This is considered in classical theory to be a no-no.
    Pop music uses it all the time, though.
    
    Re: .1
    
    Dan, you may have misunderstood, I consider a chord with all voices
    in one octave to be closed, not open.  It was these I thought sound
    organ-like, i.e. the voicing seems to shout out "keyboard!"  A part
    played by a real string section would normally stretch over a few
    octaves, eh?
    
    
    						Brian

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>Note 2584.0                 Voicing Of Chords In Pads                  6 replies
>IXION::ROST "Rockette Morton's illegitimate son"     33 lines  26-FEB-1991 10:55
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>OK, here's a music theory type question, dedicated to Dave "Mr. Fingers"
>Blickstein  8^)  8^)
>
>When I read through books on harmony, like Piston's, the standard rule on chord
>voicing is to avoid parallel motion, and then there are sub-rules about which
>tones in a chord can be dropped, which can be doubled, etc.  Anyway, the rules
>are based on pre-20th century harmony, where all the rules get broken.

Actually, the 20th-century is when the rules got made; Schoenberg made rules
about serialism, Messiaen made up his own rules for scales and colors and
chords, Perle made up lots of rules about serialism, and lots of textbooks
were written about rhythms, Schenker analysis and generative harmony.
Bach used parallel fifths.  Bach use similar motion.  Bach modulates
wildly, all in his chorales alone.  He would have failed Piston's harmony 
course.  Piston's book is a very conservative pre-Schenker approach to
harmony and is awfully dated now.  If it's not helping you, it's not your
fault.  The rules are artificial.  If Bach didn't follow them why should I?

>Now when playing parts in my sequences, I've noticed when using tightly voiced
>chords (all notes within the same octave) that regardless  of what sound I'm
>using, the chord voicing makes it sound like an organ.  I seem to get better
>results by using what I call "two-fisted" chords, you know, spreading the chord
>out over a couple of octaves.
>
>An example for a string pad playing C major might be playing a C, the G an
>ocatave and fifth above, the E in the next ocatve, then the C in the octave
>above that (three octaves above the lower C).  

This conforms to the harmonic series distribution.  Piston recommends it
in his Orchestration book (now revised postumously) for distributing a
chord across a large ensemble.  However you may use any voicing you like.
Examples abound in scores of very close chords, for example in Rites of
Spring by Stravinsky, chords that you would easily find in Billy Taylor,
are in the strings in very close voicing.

>I find that it often doesn't seem to matter whether I play the third in such
>pads; i.e. leaving out the E and replacing it with a G, a C or some note from
>an extended chord, like a Bb (C7), D (C9) or A (C13) seems to work as well or
>better.  In fact, the ambiguity of leaving out the third seems to give it that
>dreaded "new age" sound.

Open fifths are incredibly rare in classical music.  Debussy exploited them
in parallel motion.  I even used them in a serial piano piece.  Open 5ths
are ambiguous, but the overtones tend to make them imply a major chord.
They are very polarizing.  You expect the chord with the open fifth to be
the tonic or dominant, so if it's moving in parallel, it seems to be 
modulating, even if no out-of-scale tones are used.

>I've also been screwing with chords based on fourths rather than thirds, like
>Scriabin's "mystic chord" (in C: C-F#-Bb-E-A-D) which is a pretty ambiguous
>chord when you think about it.  

Try resolving it to F major or B major.  Schoenberg used quartal harmonies
in his Chamber Symphony ca. 1905.  Chords of perfect fourths aren't hard to
interpret as dominant chords with suspended non-chord tones, and to 
resolve strongly to a tonic chord.

>What sort of harmony do you like to use in pads?  Is leaving out the third the
>first step on the path to playing the devil's interval?? 8^)  8^)  8^)

I like white noise and other low-Q sounds.
>							Brian
>================================================================================
>Note 2584.1                 Voicing Of Chords In Pads                     1 of 6
>STOHUB::TRIGG::EATON                                 29 lines  26-FEB-1991 11:38
>                                  -< musings >-
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>	Good Topic - what in the world made you think to enter it?   8^)
>
>	I was surprised to see you write that open voicings sound organish 
>(organic? 8^).  I would have thought the opposite.  I'll have to try out some
>pad voicings to see...
>
>	I took a lot of theory courses in my late high schopol/early college
>years and remember the parallel voicing rules...  I found that popular music
>almost invariably does exactly the opposite.  We're just a bunch of rebels, I
>guess!  Having sung in many church and college choirs, I am all too familiar
>with the type of chord voicing you refer to.  

Some of the "rebellion" in pop music comes from Debussy, Stravinksy, and
various folk/ethnic/world musics.  Concert music does it all 50 years before
pop gets around to it.  Much pop music in the 60's and 70's was naively
modal.  Check out some Rennaisance motets.  Other times pop artists just
go for some easy fingering and use what they hear; that comes out of
guitar fingering and tuning.

>	For one thing, I think its important to get away from the idea that all 
>chord elements need to be present.  You alluded to this in the idea of leaving 
>out the third.  I'd take that a step further and say that its also necessary to 
>realize that the root of the chord doesn't need to be on the bottom (i.e., first 
>inversion).  Of course, I'm using popular music as a reference here.  Let the 
>bass guitar or synth take care of establishing the root.

You could also learn this from Bach's chorales.  Particularly chords on an
unaccented beat have a lot of freedom. However, chords on important beats,
the beginning of phrases, the major cadences, the beginning of measures,
should be typically clear and full unless you want weakness.  This is a good
rule for pop music, which is always tonal, centric, and tertial.

>	I've also found that pad voicings get nicely "rounded out" by adding the 
>2 or 9 to the chord, sometimes as a replacement for the third.  In popular music,
>the 9th chord is almost impossible to do without!  This is true if you're 
>playing piano, guitar or filling in background material (such as pads).  Of 
>course, it can get to be to much and at some point you have to put a halt and 
>use the straight root/third/fifth or root/fifth to dig your heals into the 
>phrase and establish some absolutes.  I find that in standard progressions, use 
>of the 2nd/9th in the V of the key gets to be too much.

You can extend cadences with sequences and other cadences into the dominant
before resolving to the tonic.  This is good for variety.  

>	Dan

The usual conservative rule was to use larger open intervals in lower octaves
and close intervals in higher octaves.  Using the full triad two octaves 
above middle C in strings seems like a typical pop thing to me, but I 
never listen to rock.

It was my impression that there are so many harmony books today, including
ones geared at poppers, that you could just walk into Briggs and Briggs and
buy a couple and get what you seem to want.  Isn't that so?  Certainly there
are tons of classically-oriented books on generative harmony, modern form,
and the old standbys like the Hindemith, Piston, Berry, 
Salzer, Schenker (last two
from Dover publications) and others.  There's a wealth to choose from,
not just a conservative like Piston.  Try the library first.
The arrangers you admire probably always have degrees from USC and took
all the classical classes.  Read the same books they read and adapt it
to pop.

Tom

RE .6 (Brian)

>    Re: .1
>    
>    Dan, you may have misunderstood, I consider a chord with all voices
>    in one octave to be closed, not open.  It was these I thought sound

	My mistake - I meant closed.  When I think of open voicings, I think of
hymns where the voicing is root, fifth above the octave, third above that, and 
finally the repeat of the root.  I can almost envision a pipe organ as I write.
Maybe that's our difference in terms - IU'm thinking pipe organ and you're 
thinking rock organ?

RE .7 (Tom)

	Tom, thanks for the comments!  You often fill in a lot of the details
of my musical training, which, I'll have to admit, scarcely went beyond 
counter-point exercises.  I never studied music history, so the placement of
changes in compositional practice have always been vague to me.  


>You can extend cadences with sequences and other cadences into the dominant
>before resolving to the tonic.  This is good for variety.  

	I don't really know what you mean by "sequences".  I can tell from the
content that my Roland MC50 is probably not involved, though 8^).

	Dan

	i thought the back of Keyboard had lots of theory books for poppers.
	They may not be wonderful, but you guys could review them for
	one another in this conference.  In fact, why don't you start a
	note that reviews pop harmony paperback texts?

	A sequence is a section built from a repeated /transposed phrase.
	If it's well connected the harmony is continuous and cadential,
	in conservative concert music.

	the following major triads make a cheap sequence:
	(either it is one chord up a fourth, or usually heard as two
	chords moving down a major second)
	C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb B. 
	or
	C F  Bb Eb  Ab Db  Gb B
	The gestalt of how these group is determined by where the beats
	fall and how long the melody over it is.  If the melodic phrase
	over it spans two chords, that groups two chords together and
	makes the sequence one of moving down a major second.

	For groupings, read Cooper/Meyer The Rhythmmic STructure of Music.
	Tom

    Just to precise what open and closed voicing should mean (according to
    jazz harmony books).
    
    Open voicing: the piano DOES NOT play the root of the chords.
    
    Closed voicing: the piano PLAYS the root of the chords.
    
    Any combination of 3,5,4#,9,13 etc can be played in both of the above
    voicing.
    
    Open voicing is done so that the bass player can specify the root with
    "no danger" of getting in conflict with the piano.
    
    A more permissive definition of open voicing is that the piano does not
    play the root as its lowest note (to stay out of the bass way), but it
    can play it in inversions.
    
    For spreading over the keyboard, in jazz they say that the ideal is to
    space notes as much as possible with the left hand,  and as little as
    possible with the right hands.
    
    ...In practice, being a lousy player, I do what I can.
    
    E.

    
    	Having been playin with an all string ensemble
    (violins,viola,cello, and bass) i can testify that all the classical
    composers seem to obey very view of the rules mentioned, other than
    certain voicings seem to be stylistic identifiers.
    
    	I agree with Tom's assessment that 60's voicings were usually
    more a matter of how do i know how to play this chord rather than
    how might i. It took the later 60's for classically trained musicians
    to come in and try and make their pile!
    
    	And Brian, i just gotta know - what do screwed chords sound like?
    Do they scream, pant, moan, howl?? Can they be sequenced? ^8 ^8 ^8
    
    	bob