Posted
I've been trying to get chromatic notes again - I mean notes outside the scale of the moment. I have tried all sorts of things but I seem to be stuck with scales of seven notes. Even if you pick a chromatic scale you only seem to get seven notes instead of the twelve I would expect.
I can get chromatic notes by using static notes or by adding the note I want to the chord in the progression editor but neither of these methods allows the chromatic note to survive a transfer to different harmony. I suppose I could define a "special" scale but this is pretty cumbersome. Am I missing an easy way to do this?
I do think chromatic notes are both common and important. In classical music there are, for example, chromatic passing notes and neighbour notes all over the place, not to mention pedals. In jazz all the "out" notes are by definition outside the scale of the moment. In the blues you get "crush" notes. In pop there are passing notes ....
I would therefore like to suggest a new "class" of note called chromatic. It would be similar to all the other types (horizontal, vertical, etc) but it would disregard the scale of the moment and define its pitch relative to the nearest note in time in the figure (I realise the details of this would need some thought).
Sorry, but I find only having "scale notes" available quite a limitation. I know Andre and the Cognitone team have given this some thought but does anybody agree with me?
Thanks,
Tim
Tue, 2009-03-31 - 22:49 Permalink
Whether out of scale notes are really "out of scale", or, as I would rather think, are just the result of a momentary switch to another scale (or another layer of harmony), that is indeed a very interesting question. I would be highly interested in papers that explain the theory behind this, but haven't found any so far. I would also expect this topic to be very disputable.
In any case, the catalog has scales with more than seven steps and these can be used. Even when the chromatic scale is in effect, the chord will still limit the set of notes for voice leading purposes in many situations, so using more complex chords and very relaxed Interpretation constraints is helpful if you want passing tones and such.
The general challenge with passing tones is that they are not portable/reusable in other harmonic contexts and that's contraty to the whole figure concept. Even if you were able to tweak your favorite chromatic notes and passing tones for one progression, they likely won't work for another (at least when the rhythm of chord changes differs).
Have you experimented with layers? Try a melody on layer 2 with different chords (superimposition) while the accompaniment is on layer 1 using the straight progression.
Tue, 2009-03-31 - 22:59 Permalink
Thanks, Andre.
I'll keep trying to tweak things - I'd forgotten about the "near-bypass" setting so I'll get back to that and investigate using layers too (although that wouldn't be all that portable without copying the layers of course).
The sort of chromatic note that I miss having easily available in synfire and which I think should be portable are the ones in ornaments. How about a turn with notes a semi-tone above and below the principal note (I know they aren't always like that ... but they can be). The relationship is independent of the scale but should be portable to different harmonies by maintaining the semi-tone relationships.
Thanks anyway,
Tim
Wed, 2009-04-01 - 00:28 Permalink
[quote="Tim UK"]How about a turn with notes a semi-tone above and below the principal note (I know they aren't always like that ... but they can be). The relationship is independent of the scale but should be portable to different harmonies by maintaining the semi-tone relationships.
Usually those trills and ornaments happen within the (temporarily assumed) scale too. Admittedly that scale might be hard to find. Synfire could offer some feature to add them automatically. Or a segment could be tagged to allow chromatic alterations, i.e. a chromatic component of +1 or -1 would translate in the chromatic scale.
The latter is simple to experiment with. I'll try that (AR369)
EDIT: Perhaps the easiest way is to tag a segment to ignore voice leading ;-)