In this post I’m going to discuss some types of cadences and turnarounds. Cadences are a topic that comes up for my first year foundation Understanding Music Theory students (as well as for many others), and this will acts as a resource to demonstrate the four types of cadence they need to know.
Ondine is the first movement from Ravel’s fabled 1908 composition Gaspard de la nuit. The piece is regarded by many as one of the most demanding piano works.
This article was originally published back in 2014. As with other well-read posts on this site, I’m trying to revisit some to tidy up some of the writing and audio and generally make them a little more professional.
Taken from their 1974 Light of Worlds album, Summer Madness is perhaps one of Kool and the Gang’s coolest tracks in a slew of well known dancefloor fillers.
The cynic in me feels there aren’t too many great new love songs made these days, Inside Voice from Joey Dosick certainly bucks that trend. Joey is part of the Vulfpeck collective and released his EP Game Winner back in 2016, pointing out this was recorded while he was recovering from a basketball ACL injury.
Massive is wavetable synthesiser released by Native Instruments back in 2007 to great fanfare. It’s known for its brutal sub ripping basslines, formant filtered vocaloid patches and grizzly distorted effects.
A breakthrough for me as a musician, and particularly as a composer, was when I stopped imagining harmony in rigid frameworks. The first instrument I excelled at to some degree was the guitar (being a fairly average pianist), and that had a great impact on the way I thought about chords.
As a music technology teacher it’s often useful to go through a track in its entirety as a case study. Normally using your own music makes the most sense as you have access to all the stems and have prior knowledge of the sound design, chord progression choices, where samples are taken from etc.
When I was younger and first getting into learning about harmony I was always fascinated in particular by certain jazz pianists and their ability to string long complex chord sequences together, drifting in and out of original key with ease.
How to write convincing progressions is a question that often comes up with my students. With a basic grasp of music composition it’s possible to string together coherent chords that sit nicely within a key and support the main melody or motifs.