Philip Glass - Chord Trick - Modal Modulation
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- Опубліковано 8 лип 2024
- #harmony #musictheory #minimalism
I don't have the perfect name for this technique. Modal Modulation in Place? Harmonic Gating? Constrain to Scale? Hopefully you watch the whole thing and come up with a moniker for this powerful minimalist harmonic trick.
00:00 intro
00:42 housekeeping
01:27 basics
02:38 Glass "the hours"
03:59 Glass Etude # 5
05:50 Glass Etude # 15
06:53 John Adams "Gates"
08:32 "gating" arpeggios
09:06 naming the technique
10:22 conclusions
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"E is still an E, but now its E flat, or maybe even E sharp, just to make, y'know, your life weirder". I absolutely love that, it made me giggle
Very underrated channel. The proficiency of a person often shows in how simple they are able to explain a concept and this is channel is a very good example of this.
thanks!
Some of the modulations in grunge music reminds me of these concepts, it's a really interesting topic
9:07 "what do we call this?" I'm noticing a lot of the better techniques have no name. 😂
This channel clears up A LOT. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
As a beginner learning piano and music theory I instantly became a fan of Glass.
It seems that I identify with his approach and what you are explaining here.
So, thank you for explaining.
love the content in this channel. I'm glad to see this channel take off.
More to come!
3 mins in... and you've a new subscriber.
Another way of looking at voice leading, almost as an end in itself, but it also happens to describe a chord progression, like writing counterpoint, but the parts also happen to describe a harmonic or chord progression.
So glad more people are discovering your channel. You deserve it, Chris. 🥳
Tearing herself away sounds like his work islands from glassworks
Hmm, I'll have to break out my John Adams albums from back in the day.
In my music uni here in Berlin we called it Modal Interchange.
yes... i've used that expression as well. thanks for that.
Wowowowow. Super awesome video ❤❤❤
Many many thanks
Really nice explanation and examples, thank you.
Wonderful tips
Glad you like them!
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing
My pleasure
Quite interesting Chris.. That Mode with a semitone change modulates very smooth yet effective in the feel.. 👌Thanks.. Warm cheers.. 🙏🎸
I’m really enjoying your channel! You make music theory, fun and intriguing. Very inspirational. Thank you Chris.
i'm very pleased to hear that, thanks.
Would love to see a tutorial on how Nico Muhly developed this idea
Great idea. He’s on my interview list. He’s got a new version of Orfeo by Monteverdi for modern instruments at Santa Fe fight now.
Keep up the good work!
Indeed.. minamata piano thème from ryiuichi sakamoto or promenade sentimentale from vladimir cosma
Yes. Gorgeous and spooky and lovely. Thanks for these sorts of videos that "deconstruct" what makes certain styles of music work. I don't want to be Philip Glass, but I would love to be me through the lens of Philip Glass.
Haven't had a chance to verify this with all your examples, but this seems to be various applications of Neo-Riemannian transformations, which also incorporates Chromatic Mediants. For example Dm to Db is an example of 'Slide'. Refer to Richard Cohn, 'Audacious Euphony'. These are really interesting and useful chord movements.
yes! i'm a rank beginner with his theories, but others have made this observation as well. super powerful technique.
The massive jump in subscribers was because I joined your channel...
..ah. thank you!
@@ImpliedMusic Don't take me seriously :)
@@seanonel
I play guitar, well close to 30 years now. I have always been able to play a little bit of piano but have found myself composing more and more on the piano first then take it over to the guitar. I find Phillip Glass's piano playing really cool. I mainly play metal and have found myself emerging myself in Progressive Metal. I have found playing things on the piano first is a great way to get my creativity flowing.
Greetings, I've been following you for a while and absolutely find it incredibly useful. I'm a guitar/drummer. Your teaching style is so friendly and easy to follow if you're not schooled. Thank you so much, peace
that's great to hear!
Your channel hasnt blown up enough yet, so i helped a bit with a sub. Great work man ❤
Thanks for the sub!
Yeaaaah baby, more Philip Glass.
i can see what side my bread is buttered on...
Spooky and lovely
Merci!
thank you!
I’m glad you’re getting a bunch of views now! I randomly got recommended one of your vibes a week or so ago and loved it and I’m now a devoted fan!!
Yay! Thank you!
but these technique was used before by lots of bossa nova popular composers, shifting subtly one note to other in chord changes, with more complexity and other things but it was the same idea of changing little things from one chord to other making something that's no a "euroclassical" modulation but it´s not diatonic and sounds very natural but it's very complex, it's not the only example of this technique in popular music but i think it is one of the most rich ways of using this tools you explain
So true
n @ImpliedMusic thanks for your your reply, did you read books by Philip Tagg, he's a very interesting musicolgist, works a lot with evidence and no theory, a heartfull recomendatio
Thank you for showing the midi grid, its really helpful :)
Came across your channel about a week ago. A couple of videos in and it was obvious that I had to subscribe. Nice work 😊
Same!
I think of it more as morphing than modulating, since modulation has such a particular key centric meaning.
Excellent video, it was suggested by the algorithm, new sub here.
I'm glad you mentioned the DAW function. They all copied it from Studio Vision's feature which iirc was called "constrain to scale". I remember an arranger showed that to me 30 odd years ago, and he was mad when he switched to Logic that the feature was missing, but it showed up around version 7. He mostly used it for harp glissandi though, lol.
Constrain to scale, yes!
@ImpliedMusic come to think of it, he was just using the original Vision, since he'd deliver on 3/4 and da88. It took so long for some of those classic sequencer features to get added to modern Daw's lol.
Hi ! That kind of technique has been described in Neo-Riemannian theory, and their use of the Tonnetz. There are basic operations that describe how two triads can be related by smooth voiceleading. Check out articles by Richard Cohn especially. I can send you some of them if you can't find it.
Thanks for the video ! ;)
Yes. You’re only the second person to hop me to that and I’m definitely going to dust off my reading on that. Many thanks.
Sent here by the algo and love your vibe and your teachings. Keep it up ❤
many thanks.
Fascinating!
I like how you highlighted some stylistic similarities between Philip Glass and John Adams. "Grand Pianola Music" (1981) has a lot of those small and beautiful modulation shifts you discussed, and John Adams weaves a shimmery, pulsing rhythm throughout the composition that is utterly enchanting.
Ooo, yes, great example.
I'm a new subscriber: I found you through a 'short', which YT showed me, as I follow two or three film composition channels. Very much enjoying your content!
Welcome aboard!
inspiring-thanks!
Quantization is a similar technique from electronic music, such as modular synthesis. Quantizers act like fluid gates that allow signal to pass through by shifting it to the nearest allowed value, or quanta. The allowed values are often depicted graphically as tones chosen from a chromatic set, such as choosing a particular mode or subset. There are also quantizers that operate on smaller intervals, like microtones. The key insight related to this video could be to route the CV signal for an instrument through a successive series of quantizers such as by using a sequential switch.
Brilliant
Really useful tip. Loving your channel.
Thanks for your videos. Great content!
this was great
Great Video :) Thanks you Chris for putting out such useful and educational content 🔥
New subscriber here. Great teachings! Im really enjoying the Philip glass and Steve Riesh videos.
Love this, love Glass. My theory is woeful but I tend to think of this in the same way as pedal tones, except they can change also when they need to. I play finger style guitar and have been playing with triad arpeggios for a while, I’ll definitely keep this in mind. 👍🙏😎
Subscribed! Thank you for the useful content! ❤
Thanks for subbing!
Interesting topic. You explain this technique very well. Great stuff!
thanks patrick!
Name suggestion: Chromatic Tonic
Yup, great content. Subbed!
Welcome aboard!
If you would go even further with the minimalist approach - how would you apply this concept on just one chord? 🤓
great question. but here's the thing... i'm not really thinking of 'chords' per se, more terrains of modes, or a set of notes. for example though, if i had a Dm7 tonality (4 note chord) humming along underneath, i could potentially chose several different modes that might work... Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian... each of those modes would add notes, and slightly different extensions that color the tonality. does that make sense?
@@ImpliedMusic it absolutly does. I'll have to try it out! Thank you for beeing so generus with your time :)
Been a fan of Glass since Glassworks way back in the 80s. I learned how to play some of his pieces from that album. This harmonic style always reminded me of Bernard Hermann, who in his film scores always does something similar. Love the channel, keep- up- the good work!
Started playing about with chords half step away from each other the other day and loved it but thought to myself how can i use this its maybe a bit to spooky. But what you was doing here the philip glass stuff. Loved it will play about with that definitely.
Alright, that little DM, Dm reminded me of Michel Legrand’s Thomas Crown Affairs (1968) soundtrack. Chess anyone?
Great film
Great post, very educational and decodes a lot of things that were a mystery to me. Hey, what model is your mic arm? Thinking of getting one for my vocal both to affix to the ceiling, that possible you think?
thanks! the boom arm is a 'frame works'. it came pre-wired, with the cable in the arm, which is tidy, though maybe it's not the greatest cable ever. i did have to add the short extender for the SM7B, but that was inexpensive. (get the Shure branded extension if you need one)
Such a good video! Especially if, like me, you are a big fan of Glass. Quick question, what tool are you using to display the chords as you play in the bottom right corner?
a great little teaching app called Chordie... it's also handling the Keyboard.
@@ImpliedMusic Thank you 🙏🏼
I appreciate your focus on Glass. He is the most approachable composer, and I have been mimicking his style. I can break apart the components by looking at the sheet music, but didn't understand why, or even what was going on. If at some point you can focus on Etude 6, especially the two measures with the recurring theme that are fortissimo, that would be great. I know there must be some principle at work.
thanks. i know that etude well. that section(s) the Fm - Db - C - Eb progression, does some very fun stuff. the progression itself is in line with the root motion in 3rds Glass uses frequently, and the ascending scale on the Fm chord, partnered with the use of the alternating 9ths in the Db and C chords, are bright. my take on the scale and 9ths is how they function rhythmically to reframe the piece. we've just been through a long section of 2:3 and suddenly it's a very aggressive 8:8 series, with dissonant tones on strong beats. rocks pretty hard.
@@ImpliedMusicThank you for your reply.
Hi there. Great videos...I just discovered your channel! What software are you using that is showing what the chord is based on the keys you are playing?
A Mac desktop app called “Chordie”. Great teaching tool. It has a staff and fretboard too
Hi and thank you for the video, Is there any book about those techniques used in minimal music? thx
You could research “neo-Riemmannian” theory. He was a theorist who wrote extensively on this topic, and who’s ideas have been explored by others.
This is great! I am wondering, isn't this kind of Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, but on a limited scale?
I’d love to know more about that.
@@ImpliedMusic I'm no expert in music theory but my understanding is that harmolodics means that any note is nothing by itself, but it can be the bass note of one chord, the #3 of another, a flat 9 in a melody, all at the same time. A radical equalisation of pitch in harmony, perhaps. Surely leads to intense listening but Glass' use of a C in an arpeggio of two forms (Maj/min) is kind of the same thing, to my mind..
yes, i see your point. i love the notion of a radical equalization of pitch n harmony.
I noticed that you describe one case (The Hours) as Amin to A-flat maj, but another case (Etude 5) as Fmin to Emaj. They're the same thing, just different spelling, but that difference in spelling would imply some important difference which I don't hear. For my ears, in The Hours, it should again be Amin to G#-maj.
Yes. That’s slippery stuff. I’ll sometimes extrapolate unexpressed notes, and perhaps somewhat arbitrarily assign a scale… I think in non-functional analysis there’s a bit of grey area around spelling. Maybe it’s just the way my hands feel on the piano, or the subtle melodic tendencies I’m intuiting. In any case, it seems you’re digging in nicely.
Consider checking out Neo-Riemannian Theory...
exactly. the secondary transformations apply directly.
Love the video. I’d like to know more about the relationships between keys when shifting from one to another. Do these shifts mirror the tonic, dominant, subdominant relative motions within a single key? Are they based on the two keys having some minimum number of notes in common? Parallel chromatic motion? Are there any tonal rules governing these shifts, or is all just about “what sounds nice”?
great questions. Glass does leverage this for Tonic /Dominant relations fairly often. other composers, notable Reich, seem to float freely, basing the shifts on whims. I asked the same question to Reich almost 30 years ago, when we were discussing "Different Trains," and he replied, "i invite you to examine the score." i guess he meant i had to make up my own mind about it.
This has been happening in Jazz since the 1960s- not understanding what the difference between these ‘gates’ and pedal points are
Agreed, I’ve said previously that this similar to that jazz technique.
Could you actually initiate a true modulation by including other out-of-key chords after that first change? For example, if I went from A major to Bb minor, could I go to C# major and then to G# major or something? Pardon my chord-naming, it's probably wrong. I don't have too much formal training.
Short answer yes. The issue of what’s “true” is the stumbling block. Most listeners will accept modulation that’s based on functional harmony quickly, while common tone or chromatic mediant shifts may not feel cadential.
That Etude #5 modulation reminds me of the soundtrack for the videogame "Dear Esther" ua-cam.com/video/3MfJkqAuQRA/v-deo.html
May I ask you a question? Why do you say the chords can be "respelled"? That word really doesn't sit well with me. It implies a relationship between the notes that I don't think they have, as though Ab, A, A# belong to a family in a way that E, F, Gb don't--or do they, Fb, F, F#? It seems to be copping out on describing musically what he's doing, which you do say at other times, alternating between chords that share some notes and vary on others, or something like that.
I think the point is that there is no obvious musical relationship between Am and AbM, so it's hard to talk about it in any traditional musical way?
great questions. i'm respelling individual notes to conform to a new scale, and the result is a (new) chord. (a new tonality, or sonority). the relationships are certainly up for debate, and there's considerable scholarship around it. in these brief tutorials, i try to offer one way of looking at the process. your results may differ.
i now understand radiohead
I wanna 'steal' this progression for my composition. Its not copyrighted 😂 I hope?
We’re all in trouble if chord progressions are copyrighted 😆
@@ImpliedMusic hehe
Im swipin it then. Thanks
using consecutive fifths is forbidden though
Yeah, strictly. Red mark for sure. 😊
@@ImpliedMusic In all seriousness they apparently do these sorts of modulations in Georgian polyphonic singing but as I remember gradually note by note (so as to avoid consecutive fifths unwittingly?) which would imply a transition chord that would be either A augmented or D diminished in your first example. In any case the unusual Dm Db chord sequence would make sense harmonically if considered leading to F.
Music for bad spellers.