Відео

Thought-provoking. (Maybe wash up a bit before recording, though?)

Thanks for the video, Alex, it's me again ;-) I heard the "pattern" quite a few times in the past, when it comes to music. For me this term is far to abstract to be helpful with learning music or to make music without music theory. You connect "pattern" with the circle of fifths which is a good thing, especially when you APPLY it directly. The circle of thirds and this "one note moving" pattern sounds quite nice. I have an idea for a video which is certainly helpful for me and probably for others as well: In my music I "accidentally" (or intuitively) use specific practises, stylistic devices or however you wanna call it. It mean something like secondary dominants, pivot chords, pedal tones, harmonic planing, modal interchange. I know I use some of these techniques without beeing aware of them. But I WANT to be aware of it to dig deeper and fully understand their purposes. I know it is a broad term.

Hello. It is a very interesting and great tutorial. one thing though, I wish you could display the music in Sheet notation which is better and faster to grasp. thank you. regards

Thanks for this inspiring Video. You made advanced harmony theory easily approachable. This videos is worth watching multiple times.

Thanks, this was interesting!

Excellent presentation. Patterns in music are liberating.

Really useful! Love this videos showing the composition process

I really like your process for breaking down how you create a melody. I think you would work well with Tabletop Composer here on YT. If you're ever interested in working with another channel I think just a conversation between you two would divulge a lot of musical information.

I stopped watching videos explaining counterpoint with these strict rules from the baroque era like 2 notes against 1 etc. I really learnt to dislike that stuff. I'm glad that yours is different. Thank you. My first question is: what is the difference between counterpoint and four part harmony/writing? Your approach to write the melody and think of the harmony next is very appealing. Getting from block chord harmony step by step to 4 independant lines by using different note lengths, passing notes and extended chords isn't that intimidating then. Like you I usually start with the bass line after the melody (your bass line sounds a bit more like tenor to me). I like the method of writing different harmonies/chords down to have more "visible" options when writing the individual voices. My favorite of your tips is to have a bit of movement in at least one voice to not sound like a cadence. Tbh, I don't care a lot about parallel 5ths, octaves, crossing voices, large intervals, doubling 3rds etc. I like the statement: If it sounds good it is good.

Thank you for the great example on what counterpoint can sound like. I like that you used a particular mode and explained its use.

Straight to the point, I like it!

That was realy inspiring. Thank you.

Thank you for this video. It's so easy to write a song keeping the same predictable tempo. A change up of tempo is so refreshing 👍

Informative, but I must say, there's some issues with the historical context here that parrots some unfounded myths...in the Medieval and Renaissance, the diminished fifth or the tritone were not "the devil in music", this expression is actually coined by Fux, in the baroque period, and it's not specifically about the tritone: "mi contra fa est diabolus in musica" refers to some instances of augmented unisons and tritones, and is just a condemnation of enharmonic clashes in general, not the tritone in particular. Another important distinction is that diminished fifths and augmented fourth are NOT the same thing at all. Only the augmented fourth is a tritone, as the diminished fifth has two whole tones and two diatonic semitones, not three whole tones. This makes a huge difference. In the Renaissance and early baroque, melodic leaps or outlines of a tritone were absolutely to be avoided, but the diminished fifth was entirely permissible melodically (and actually quite expressive). And harmonically it's unavoidable to have either of them treated as a consonance in certain situations, like in so-called "tenor cadences", which we find all over the place (because the alternative is having a 6/4 chord, which is never admissible). It became common and unavoidable pretty much as soon as 4+ voice polyphony emerged. Let alone being used as a permissible dissonance - passing tritones, or a 4-3 suspension with an augmented fourth, were seen as totally okay, and actually super expressive and not devilish at all. For example in the early baroque, it was absolutely standard (whether indicated in the figures or not) for a plagal cadence in minor modes to be realised by continuo players with a passing 6/4 with an augmented fourth.

Happy to see you’re back!

Lovely work on this Alex !

Great discussion of the utility of diminished chords. Something else that isn't necessarily obvious on its face is that there really are only three diminished chords (since there are three half-steps between minor thirds), and all others are merely inversions of one of those three (if you include the dim7), so it doesn't matter much if you play Cdim or F#dim - they're the same chord, but how you think of them can determine what you do next. For a long time, I've found it cool how you can use them to do all kinds of weird, unexpected modulations and still make them work. I think of them almost like superglue for joining together different, disparate musical ideas that otherwise wouldn't stick together. They're also great for building anticipation in general, and a good example of this is the Bbdim7/C# in the beginning of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", right before the initial statement of the theme. Also, nice reference to Rush's "YYZ". 😀

I wanted to write a comment already at minute 3 of your video that I use diminished chords as a pivot chord in modulation. But you mention that later. So, I wanted to comment that I often stack another minor third on top to further extend the possibilities to modulate. And you mention it later, too. My knowledge in music theory is simply too small. Do I have to study Wagner now? 😁BTW, thanks for the video.

shit shitty advice who do you think you are???? the piano part is bad and the string arrangement is even worse!!!

Hey there, just wanted to say I really appreciate all the knowledge you drop on a consistent basis. As kids growing up in post-hardcore bands we used these sort of time signatures and referenced tempo changes all the time (simply because the music we were influenced by did) - with no clue to the theory behind what we were doing. Years later practicing composition for film/media, I find myself quite privileged to have access to all the education I never had a path to back then, through you and like-minded music makers sharing everything they know out here for others to benefit. It's very much what's enabled another career path for me. Thanks man.

That first bar in the violas is not playable in double stops (not the first beat at least).

Salut Alexandre! Très bon vidéo. Il n’y a pas de son pour le dernier exemple la 2e fois (à la toute fin). Mais tu dois déjà le savoir…

Is this D minor? I'd like to see the chord changes so i know what the harmony is.

no audio at 18:35. My string parts look a lot like #7 to wrap a choir and usually an organ.

Thank you so much. *Sigh*, this is gold even if it "only" touches more of the choral like string writing. Just the first example is beautiful (the rest of course, too). Not only dark, but hopeless, sad, suffering. I'm currently disovering the violas a bit more. I love their grittyness in the lowest octave especially for aggressive ostinatos. I rarely use divisi. I'm not sure how to implement it in the DAW with my strings library (CSS). I just lower the expression about 20-30% on the divisi tracks.

Very interesting!

Some solide advice here. Thanks!

Toujours aussi intéressant. Merci de partager ce savoir. Peut- être un jour un tuto sur la façon de programmer les Vsti ?

Keep going! Your Instructions are great. 18:34 The example is muted... Please check it!

Do you think there are some basic voicing types I didn't mention? Let me know in the comments!

The dynamic range just isn't there. It sounds "big" sure but can't be cracking MF let alone FFF. On the other side of things the intimacy isn't there either, I mean maybe with close mics, but the quieter dynamics just don't seem to be there either. I guess you can fake it with processing and using the synth to create fake FFF layers for blending, maybe that's what they meant by "all in one" 😁 I'm not really sure why they're still selling this package. Colossus will get there much easier, plus it has the chamber orchestra. Abby Road One or BBCSO will be far more convincing/diverse overall, and Albion legacy is available on the cheap doing pretty much everything Albion One does. Maybe it would have it's place if there weren't so many cheaper options available from other sample developers, and they weren't trying to charge the same price as their other flagship products. The fact is it doesn't sound convincing/dynamic enough, I'd rather work with something like Audio Imperia's Nucleus Lite, even without Legatos. I don't find much benefit in having Legatos on large sections anyways (the ear kind of fakes it for the big stuff if you blend them properly). And if something doesn't sound convincing you might as well be using a lighter/cheaper library for sketching, saving the $ for a top of the line product or subscription.

It is not absolutely essential to know the theory to write music, but knowing it allows you to be much more precise, and to work so much faster.

This. I have seen epic orchestral remixes of some orchestral soundtracks and for some reason all they do is slap some big room reverb, add cinematic drums, have a choir sing the melody line and have loud brass. Ironically, it ends up sounding less epic and more emotionally artificial than the original.

Do you also see a creativity benefit in using scores and music written that way? Im far from comfortable with writing and reading music but sometimes when i get stuck on developing something the way I usually do, I'll take the time to write it properly and then mess around with it from there to see what comes out. Like choosing a bit and transforming it in various ways, stuff like that. I find this much easier using scores than without them.

Hi, sounds great. I would like to ask you if you think that composing by hand is something orthodox or impractical nowadays?

Merci Alexandre!

Il y a tellement de libraries tu pourrait utiliser un autre librairie et avoir les même résultat selon le mixage et la production que tu lui apportera. Mon humble avie haha

Is this your piece?

Thank you for the video. It's kind to share such valuable knowledge.

holy shish it sounds incredibly good, like from some high budget movie, man youre awesome

With A.I rising, i feel like more organic or human the composition, better the future.

Nice piece and explanation of choices and reasons for those choices. I think we learn as much knowing why someone did something as we learn trying to reverse engineer why Ravel made his choices.

Excellent orchestration!! But... I confess that I missed viewing the orchestra score, because at least for me it is clearer than seeing the midi file. In any case, I would like to thank you for a class as brilliant as this one!!

Kind of reminds me of Lully

It was interesting to see the way you used modulation. I never thought of modulation this way. Could you make a video of how to use modulation more freely and creatively in compositions? Usually i only see people talking about it like "here is a theme in major, now to make it sad, we modulate to minor"

“My heart will go on” was played on Tin Whistle in the middle of the movie

First things first: man, this theme is perfect for the next adventure blockbuster! I would love to hear it fully orchestrated. Great video becaus of many things you mentioned: to not understimate the imporance of the rhythm of a melody. It has such a huge impact. You demonstrate very well where a composition may fork to a different harmony while keeping the main melody. You nicely showed how to vary motifs and phrases. I hope you will pick up this topic in one of your next videos. I'm curious to watch it.

Now show us by example.

Sounds like Pärt. Just kidding. Beautiful handwriting

Viola concerto?